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I work in a public library; I handle the majority of the materials selection for a K-7 school library; and I have two kids of my own. I also have a REAL short attention span, so my pleasure reading is mostly juvenile and young adult books as well.
So when you're looking for a good book for a kid, come on over here and I'll pink you.
Statistics for Pink Me
Number of Readers that added this blog to their MyJacketFlap: 12
Little Beauty by Anthony Browne
I am joined in my review of this book today by my friend Juicy, who is 5.
YNL: Juicy, say hello to the folks.
Juicy: [waves. Juicy likes to keep 2 fingers in his mouth]
YNL: Looking at the cover of this book, what do you think it's going to be about?
Juicy: It's about a guy who doesn't have a brain and who gets one.
YNL: That's not a brain, kid, that's a kitten on the gorilla's head.
Juicy: I SAID "FRIEND" not "brain".
YNL: Sometimes it's hard to understand you with your fingers in your mouth.
YNL: So here's the gorilla using sign language to ask for a friend, and here are his keepers. Can you tell what they're doing by the way they're standing?
Juicy: Thinking.
YNL: That's called body language, like the gorilla uses sign language. And then one of them has an idea. What do you look like when you have an idea?
Juicy: [Takes fingers out of mouth, crosses arms in front of him.]
YNL: How can you tell that the gorilla loves Beauty?
Juicy: Because she's cute? Because the gorilla's happy?
YNL: How can you tell the gorilla's happy?
Juicy: Because he has a smile on his face. [Juicy is beginning to think I am a little stupid]
YNL: "They did EVERYTHING together." What are they doing here?
Friend the Girl (Juicy's sister, 8) interjects: POOPING!
Juicy: POOPING AND PEEING!
Juicy: He's SWINGIN ON THE LIGHT!
Juicy: He turned into a polar bear. He's turnin brown he's gettin dirty.
YNL (reads): "'We have to take Beauty away now,' said another."
Juicy: They're starting to cry because they love each other.
YNL: So what did Beauty do when they asked who broke the TV?
Juicy: He lied.
YNL: Do you think it's ok that Beauty lied?
Juicy: No.
YNL: Do you think the keepers believed Beauty?
Juicy: Yeah.
YNL: So why did they let Beauty and the gorilla stay together then?
Juicy: I don't know. Because grownup cats can... It's the same as humans. Babies act different than kids, kids act different than grownups. So the the kitten acted... if that actually happened... I don't want to explain it because it's a long story.
YNL: But if they believed Beauty broke the TV... I don't get why they didn't take the kitten away.
Juicy: Me neither.
Ok, that didn't turn out how I expected. Well, we all really enjoyed the book, and Juicy kept his fingers out of his mouth kind of a lot. Cheers to Anthony Browne, wherever he is!
How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals by Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson, illustrated by Ward Jenkins
Oh my gosh do I need this book!
When you select books for school libraries, you are always on the lookout for sports-related books. It's a fact that some people - usually gentleman-type people, although there are ladies who fit this description too - just won't read anything that's not about sports. So we need sports books for every assignment: we need sports fiction
, sports poetry
, sports science project books
, and lots and lots of sports biographies.
Most of that stuff is easy. Dan Gutman
and Tim Green
can carry a lot of water for a school librarian (especially Gutman - guy, if I ever meet you, I'm gonna kiss you right on the mouth!). But then there are the bios. Now, when you select biographies of athletes, you want to cater to local tastes. I mean, of course, we're all going to buy LeBron
and A-Rod
, but you might not plonk down your school system's hard-earned $17.95 on, say, Troy Polamalu
unless your school is full of Steelers fans. Even if he is an athletic polymath with fabulous hair. Which, yeah, no Steelers fans in Baltimore.
So there's my problem. Baltimore. Which is in Maryland. We play things like lacrosse here, and do you know what I have to offer the young ladies looking for biographies of outstanding female lacrosse players? Zip. Also, our football team is the Ravens, whose players are famous not only for their athletic prowess, but also for their arrest records. So, no juvenile biographies of famous Ravens. (Way to go, JAMAL.) And? we don't even have a basketball team.
So, here in the kids' sports biographies aisle in Baltimore, we've got Johnny U
, who played for a team that doesn't even live here anymore, and Cal
, who the kids are kind of rapidly forgetting. Thank heaven, then, for Michael Phelps. Can I make little sparkly fireworks shoot out of his name? Blogger? Help me? No? Ok then you have to imagine them.
Michael Phelps is a hometown boy. Born, raised, learned to swim, went to school here... heck, the kid even uses the library where I work (when he uses a library, which, well... after all, you can't read in the pool, regardless of what the condition of a lot of our Large Type books might seem to indicate). Michael Phelps is a bona fide sports hero. Unprecedented achievement. Also, accessible to the point of goofy. Ok, there's the pot thing, but as far as I'm concerned, that just proves he's a real guy. It's not like he tortured dogs or beat up his girlfriend. He just got - one has to imagine - really, really high. Seriously. The lungs on that guy? Bad decision though. Bad. Say no to drugs.
Say yes to How to Train with a T.Rex though! Michael gives us a quantitative look at his Olympics training - in 6 years, he swam 12,480 miles, napped for 273 days, ate half a ton a year, leg-pressed 9 tons per workout... you get the idea. These figures are given scale in multiple ways: we see Michael sitting down to eat half a car, swimming the length of the Great Wall, and lifting a NYC subway car (the W, my old line!) with his legs. Curriculum connection to measurement and scale lessons - niiice! The illustrations are perfect - as loose-limbed and friendly as our hero himself. Although rendered digitally, they have a very nice, tactile, watercolor-y feel. Colors are both bright and earthy. I feel like I've seen the work of Ward Jenkins before (but apparently I haven't), and I like it.
Eight gold medals to this fun new book!
Bring me some apples and I'll make you a pie: A story about Edna Lewis, by Robbin Gourley
As soon as warm weather comes to Edna's family's farm, good things are ready to be harvested, one after the other. First, it's wild strawberries, which Edna and her sister gather (and eat - "One for the basket and one to taste"), excitedly anticipating the strawberry shortcake they'll prepare. Next, they gather the first wild greens of spring with Auntie, as Edna recites:
But I have never tasted meat,
nor cabbage, corn or beans,
nor milk or tea that's half as sweet
as that first mess of greens.
As Spring turns to Summer, Edna helps gather food that the family has grown (beans, melons, corn) and food that has grown wild (sassafras, honey), all the way to the apples and nuts of autumn. Each time, she and her family sample the goods as they're picking, but also talk about all the pickles, jelly, pies, and bread they'll make, and often quote some few lines of a song or rhyme.
This book is so seamless and languid and pleasant, even though everyone's doing a whole lot of work. The folk rhymes, the foods, and the seasons are woven together in a sunny, smooth, shining braid. And what a pleasure it is to read about the real Edna Lewis, who grew up to be a famous chef, in the Author's Note. We even get a recipe for that shortcake.
Guttersnipe by Jane Cutler, pictures by Emily Arnold McCully
Interesting.
Ben is a young Jewish boy in Canada in the early part of the twentieth century. Determined to help make ends meet for his fatherless family, he takes a job as a delivery boy for a hatmaker. On his first run, he stops by the workplace of each of his family members: sister Rose selling tickets at the movie theater, brother Max setting pins at the bowling alley, and his mother, singing in Yiddish as she sews as fast as she can.
And then something terrible happens. Hitching a ride on a streetcar, he loses control of the bike and is thrown to the ground, the silk hat linings he was to deliver scattered among the trash of the street and ruined. What I find interesting is this: Ben's failure is not a picture-book failure: a ripped-drawing mishap, an ill-tempered word, a dropped pie. This is a truly spectacular failure, a failure in real-world terms - Ben is going to lose his new job, he may be actually injured, and he will be in trouble if the bicycle is broken. One speculates Mr. Green is going to try to get him to pay for those hat linings, too. This is the kind of screw-up that freezes the blood of even an adult with many years of screw-ups behind her.
But lying there in the street, Ben realizes: "His body would heal. There would be other bicycles, other jobs, and other chances. He was only a boy, just starting out, and he had many things left to learn and to experience."
Perspective. Is it something you can communicate to a kid? Can you read this story now, and then next week, when that kid steps on his brother's meticulously-constructed LEGO masterpiece, can you invoke Ben's perspective on failure? I guess we'll see.
"This was not the end. This was only the beginning."
Always lots of heinies at the zoo, written by Ayun Halliday, illustrations by Dan Santat
The author of the zine East Village Inky has written a picture book. That's it, my world just exploded.
I read Ayun Halliday's account of new motherhood, The Big Rumpus
, when my older son was just a few months old. In that book, Ayun carted her daughter India around the East Village in a sling, wondering if her Dead Kennedys t-shirts were ever going to shrink back to normal after having worn them over her pregnant belly. Or something like that. As Ayun listlessly swiped at crusty wads of mushy peas on the kitchen floor and speculated over random puddles (apple juice? or pee?), I laughed the laugh of the unbelievably sleep-deprived. Good times.
Good times at the zoo, too, I'm happy to report. "No one tries to hide his heinie at the zoo." Like Chicken Cheeks
(reviewed earlier), we get lots of fun heinie synonymy: tushy, glutes, can, and even caboose. Unlike Chicken Cheeks (reviewed earlier), we have an elephant with "junk in her supplemental trunk" - kind of steep slang for the K-3 set, and I think they're going to love it.
The vaguely Adam Rex-y, J.Otto Seibold-y illustrations are fine, not super-noteworthy (although, gotta say, GOOD MONKEYS), but composed very well. I love the portraits of Ayun and her husband Greg on the dedication page.
By the way, Ayun, if you're reading this: my colleague Dances with Chickens thinks this book would make a terrific little song. Maybe Greg
can run something up.
Hat by Paul Hoppe
This spring, I bought a hat. My husband, who suffers in the sun, had bought a broad-brimmed khaki hat a few years ago, spent actual money on it (rather than getting it free from a vendor or a TV station), which I considered a waste, because this man is a man who will misplace anything not permanently attached to his body, and at least one thing that is, if I have anything to say about that one mole on his hip. But his devotion to his hat is phenomenal, and he has only lost it once.
I have eyed that hat appraisingly for years now. The hat keeps the rain off, shields one from both glare and UV rays, keeps the head cool, and floats, much like the hat in Hat (and you knew we'd come around to the book at some point didn't you?). But my husband's hat does not belong to me, as the hat in Hat does not belong to young Henry, who spies it left behind on a park bench. So Henry - and I - are left to fantasize about the ways our lives would be improved were we to be the owners of the hat.
The marketing drivel that accompanies my husband's hat verges on mystique. The Peterman-esque "owner's manual" implies that wearing this hat will lead to everything from boat ownership to exciting encounters with members of the opposite sex. It says, "Interesting things happen to you when you're wearing a ______ hat." Luckily, the hat in Hat does not tootle its own horn so brashly. Luckily, Henry in Hat can dream up exciting encounters with tropical beasts all on his own.
In the end, I bought my own _______ hat, despite the obnoxious marketing. It stays on when you're flying a large kite in strong wind, what can I say. The other day, some old British dude in line behind me called out, "Be careful, young lady! 'Interesting things happen to you when you're wearing a ______ hat!'" What I called back to him was, "Don't I know it! I'm buying a caulk gun at Home Depot in the rain, how much more interesting could it get?!" but what I thought was, "Bite me, British guy - interesting things happen to me no matter what hat I'm wearing!"
And in the end of Hat, Henry is persuaded by his mom to leave the hat on the bench, in case its owner should return, frantic at the loss of his or her perfect hat. I like to think that Henry's mom knows that, with an imagination like his, interesting things will happen to Henry no matter what hat he's wearing.
My mom is trying to ruin my life by Kate Feiffer, illustrated by Diane Goode
She looks pretty sweet on the outside, with her rosy shirtwaist dress and practical ponytail, green flats and matching purse, but watch out! she'll never let you do anything fun, eat anything yummy, and she talks too loud. Yikes. That last one hits pretty close to home.
So the little girl in this book fantasizes about running away (with mom's assistance), getting the cops on her side when mom reports her missing ("And they'll look at her and ask, 'Is it because you were ruining her life?'"), and ending up with the perfect life. Perfect, that is, except for the no dinner, no story, no bedtime kiss, nobody to fix her bad dream aspects of independent life.
The story is cute, and executed in a kind of contemporary first-person, slightly attitudinal voice. The illustrations are clean and lively. The limited watercolor palette is bright and friendly. I think the book maybe over-dwells on the little girl's fear and discomfort when she is parentless, but by the end, mom and dad and little girl are all together and happy.
Orangutan Tongs by Jon Agee
You know, I claim to not like poetry. In fact, I claim to have a vicious poetry allergy - this gets me out of poetry night at school and my friends' readings, including the dreaded Open Mic part of the evening. It is this allergy, paradoxically, that I think makes me extra qualified to review poetry books for children.
You see, I have observed that most kids require their poetry to work. If it's supposed to rhyme, it has to rhyme. The meter should march. You shouldn't have to rearrange where in a line you think the natural stress should fall in order to make the line come out even at the end. You should not (John Lennon) throw extra syllables in there just because you like them. "Klutzy" does not make it, in poetry for small(ish) children.
And this is why I can read four lines like "Undies" without my throat closing up and my eyes crossing.
Undies
There are lots of holes in Andy Bundy's undies.
His mom should get some thread and try to stitch 'em.
When Andy's at the beach, he's always cranky and upset,
'Cause Andy Bundy's sandy undies itch him.
(Of course, if you can work underpants into a poem, even better.)
I heard my 2nd grader reading this book aloud to his kindergarten brother, and they were beside themselves giggling. Later, in the car, they tried making up their own tongue twisters. I'd call Orangutan Tongs a must-have for the school library on that basis alone.
My Uncle Emily by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter
Now how about that? A picture book about an American poet. An imagined anecdote from her life, about one of her nephews, who lived next door. Heck, I'd buy it just to have a non-run-of-the-mill opening to talk about poetry... but as it turns out, My Uncle Emily is also a sparkling little story in its own right. The Talented Jane Yolen has incorporated much of the high drama of a small boy's day, from the dread he feels when he knows he has to do something that might get him laughed at, to the exhilarated relief of having thrown a punch. You're in trouble now, boy, might as well enjoy it.
Our Ned picks a flower for his eccentric Uncle Emily, spends some time in a dunce cap (because of that punch), eats cake with the family, and thinks about flies. It's a fine, keenly observed, neatly worded story. It is atmospherically Emily Dickinson.
As are Nancy Carpenter's pen and ink illustrations. I have observed before that Nancy Carpenter (17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore
, Apples to Oregon
) combines an old-fashioned, E.H. Shepard-y technical prowess with a talent for lively expression. And it may be an old-fashioned thing to compliment, but Nancy Carpenter's draftsmanship - her skill with perspective and composition - gives each of her illustrations an unusually precise spatial feel. I like it.
This is what Nancy Carpenter's illustration style makes me think of. I have no more economical way of saying it. Good day to you - sir, ma'am.
The Moon over Star by Dianna Hutts Aston, pictures by Jerry Pinkney
Give me a second. I am a mess. Let me get a Kleenex.
Wow.
I was four years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon (while their shorter, funnier counterpart, Michael Collins, circled the block in the car), and I still feel privileged to have witnessed that moment. Hell, my husband and I named a cat Buzz Aldrin, we're still so impressed with this human feat. So I guess I should have expected that this book would give me goosebumps.
But my goodness - this is one damn fine book. I summarized it to a jury of my (younger) peers later in the evening, and just my synopsis made them all choke up.
Dianna Hutts Aston gives us that day in 1969 as experienced by an eight-year-old girl (who may or may not be Mae Jemison) on her grandfather's farm in a town named Star. Mae and her cousins pray for the astronauts in church in the morning and build a rocket ship out of scraps from the barn in the afternoon. Mae is the oldest, so she gets to pretend to be Armstrong as they count down to liftoff together. Later, they watch Cronkite on TV and hear those immortal phrases, "The Eagle has landed," and even later, "One small step for man..."
In between times, Mae thinks about the astronauts' children and whether they are proud but also scared, and about President Kennedy, who did not live to see this dream attained, and about her own grandfather, who does not approve of the space program. "Why spend all that money to go to the moon when there's so many folks in need right here on Earth?"
When I googled this title, I learned that President Obama read this book aloud to a group of second graders at a charter school in D.C. two weeks into his presidency. Well. If I wasn't impressed by this man before (and I was), I am now. If I tried to read this thing aloud, I do not think I could manage it. Which, given the class of second graders I know best, would still be a fine thing, because they would want to know why, and I would have the opportunity to tell them.
Or I might just show them the back cover of this book, with Jerry Pinkney's freakin' masterpiece of a full moon, and then open to his two-page spread of the Apollo 11 rocket clearing the launch pad. When I see that image, I always think of my dad explaining to me, "The U.S. space program was miserable in the beginning. People used to say, 'Our rockets always blow up.'" (Tom Wolfe quoted the exact same line in The Right Stuff.)
But hundreds, thousands of people believed that we could do it, and in the end, that rocket didn't blow up, and those astronauts had the courage to strap themselves into it, and we went to the damn moon. And if all that can happen, and if Jerry Pinkney can paint the Moon just as beautifully if not more beautifully than he has always painted people and trees and birds... well, then, an eight-year-old black girl in the town of Star can do anything with her life, and that's the message of this book, and now I'm snifflin' again.
1000 Times No by Tom Warburton
I was on the desk in the children's department earlier tonight, and a lady had a baby and a little girl. When she got the call from her husband: "Come on home, dinner's almost ready," the baby started fussing and the little girl lost it. "NO!" she wailed. My kids are 20 months apart, and boy I remember that sinking feeling when you realize just how far it is to the exit, and how long your walk of shame will be, escorting not one but two shrieking bundles of raw nerves.
So on their way out I asked the little girl if she'd like a brand new book to check out, if that would make leaving the library any easier. With the tears still on her face and her breath hitching, she accepted the book solemnly. (It's the pink hair, folks, I don't kid myself)
But when the mom saw the title, she cracked up. Me too, I have to say. Noah doesn't want to leave when mom (wearing very sassy boots, I note appreciatively) says it's time. On each page he communicates "NO!" in a different way - via text message and tin can telephone, in Mongolian, Zulu, Tagalog and Robot, through heiroglyphics and by means of a vigorous head-shake. Noah is accessorized or contextualized appropriately for each utterance, until, on one page, a thousand Noahs sit in the seats of a boisterous U.N., all voicing their disapproval.
Endpaper bonus: Noah a thousand times (not really), in all his different hats.
Internet bonus: spacedlaw pointed me to the book trailer on YouTube. Even cuter!
The Day-Glo Brothers: The true story of Bob and Joe Switzer's bright ideas and brand-new colors, by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani
One of the things I do, as I state in my sidebar over there, is manage the collection for my kids' school library. I buy the books. The school is opening a new school next year, and they've asked me to select all the books for the new school's library. It's a labor of love, believe me. It may sound like fun, spending $30 grand on kid books, but when you think about covering the entire span of human knowledge, for children aged 5 to 14, it's kind of brain-melty. Just when I think I have assembled a nice, even collection, I smack myself on the forehead and go, "I FORGOT ANCIENT CHINA!" or "CRAP! THE CIVIL WAR!"
There's also the problem of picking lots of nonfiction without relying too heavily on series books. Now, lots of fine authors write series books, and I'm not saying that all series suck... but it's a fact that all series should be scrutinized carefully before purchase. Publishers do not always put their best design teams on series books, for one thing. For another, the pictures on the cover may be, er, AWFUL.
AAAA!
Which is why, when possible, I will always snatch up stand-alone juvenile biographies instead of series biographies. I read 94 series biographies this winter for an assignment - and exactly 8 of them made me say, "Oooh!". (I will not count the number that made me go, "Aaack!") For example: there are 176 biographies of Ella Fitzgerald written for children, but I will pick the one by Andrea Davis Pinkney
every time - because I believe that Andrea Davis Pinkney sat around and thought about Ella Fitzgerald while she wrote the book, that Brian Pinkney had some Ella playing in the studio while he did the paintings, that they put a little heart and soul into that book.
The Day-Glo Brothers is another of these books. Chris Barton's author's note reminds me of that scene in Working Girl when Melanie Griffith hauls out a Page Six clipping to explain just how she got the idea that the Big Investor might be interested in buying a radio station. Barton read Bob Switzer's 1997 New York Times obituary and realized that the story of Day-Glo paint was one that he wanted to tell.
You get the feeling that he had to explain that in some detail to the publisher when he proposed this, his first book. I would bet that Day-Glo, to most people, is just kind of an annoyance that we've learned to live with because it saves lives, and as long as we avoid Spencer Gifts, we don't have to deal with it much. Just saying: it might not seem like the most captivating subject at first blush.
And there we would be wrong. Not only is this biography chock-full of arresting details: a fluorescent angel food cake, a headless Balinese dancer, a flaming billboard, and a terrible accident involving a railcar full of ketchup, but also... oh come on, do I really have to finish this sentence? With facts like that, who needs skill?
But. If I had a checklist of Things To Look For In Kid Nonfiction (and I kind of do), every box would be checked (except for the "photo" box - I think kids always want an author photo and a subject photo, just to prove it's really nonfiction).
Barton sets the context swiftly, helps us distinguish Bob from Joe with a few easy-to-remember character illustrations, documents the process of discovery, provides lots of examples, and follows through on the applications of their inventions. As befits a mid-century success story, the illustrations are swingy and hep. The color palette is all black and white and grey at the beginning of the book, and as Bob and Joe embark upon their lurid journey, the colors get more and more intense - clever! Back matter and web content expand the science documentation, and Barton shares his own process of discovering the Switzer family story, in the above-mentioned author's note.
Of the things that I want the students at our school to take away from a book, this last may actually be the most important to me.
The Day-Glo Brothers is a real winner. Assignments for Chris Barton: the story of Mike Nesmith's mom, the lady who invented Liquid Paper; and the story of Hedy Lamarr - seriously? the screen siren who invented a torpedo guidance system? I want our new friend Chris to be the one to tell those stories.
Life-size zoo by Teruyuki Komiya
Quivering, wet noses. Fluffy red panda fur and coarse capybara hair. Soft brown anteater eyes. Sharp tiger teeth. These oversized, luscious photographs of many of our favorite zoo friends show ever aardvark whisker and elephant eyelash in bright, sharp detail. Yum!
As advertised, each animal is shown life-sized. Majiron the armadillo takes up about half a page, while Lulu the giraffe gets a double fold-out. The right-hand border of each page gives information about the animal: name, age, interesting facts (tapirs can open and close their nostrils!), and details to look for in the photo.
Gonna be a storytime favorite and a very popular item in the school library. It might even end up my default birthday present for the summer.
Mungo and the Spiders from Space by Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower
Well, looks like Your Neighborhood Librarian has a new artist boyfriend. Sigh. The beginning of a relationship is always so magical, n'est pas? My previous secret husbands of children's illustration have included Adam Rex, William Joyce, and Oliver Jeffers (who gets extra points for being Irish). Plus Antoinette Portis and Emily Gravett.* I have no gender hangups.
I read and enjoyed Two Left Feet
when it came out, but I don't think I reviewed it. I remember liking the artist's strong but delicate line, old-timey fashion sense, and bangin' colors, all of which Mungo and the Spiders from Space has, times twenty. It has a steampunk vibe, very like Chris Riddell's work, but more energetic. My colleague TinkerCinderBelleAhontas finds it busy, but that's just because her son is still a baby and they like soft colors and one visual idea per page. Which is cool. But my sons, my boys who are 6 and 7? Jeez, my sons craaaave "busy". They want extra bonus cartoons, they want books within books. They want trompe-l'œil effects and they want marginalia and detail-alia and backgroundalia and illustrated endpapers and extra jokes on the back cover.
All of which, not coincidentally, Mungo and the Spiders from Space - has. Plus: a plot that keeps the reader hanging, slime, goop, a butt joke, and robots. Sigh. It's love, in point of fact.
Think I'll go gaze at the cover of The Shadow World
for a little while.
*And David Roberts and Marla Frazee and David Shannon and Kadir Nelson and LeUyen Pham and a few others...
Tillie Lays An Egg by Terry Golson with photography by Ben Fink
Chickens, like penguins, are always funny. When I had chickens, and, yes, I had chickens in my city backyard, I used to go out a couple times a day to just sit and watch them bumble around and giggle to myself. Chickens - well I don't think I'm going to offend them by saying this - chickens are... not bright. My chickens, for example, were dumb enough to get themselves eaten by anything with teeth, and at least one thing without teeth. I've sworn off keeping chickens because I can't endure the heartbreak of losing any more. Hawks, foxes, raccoons, a dog, and I think possibly a family of possums consumed a total of eleven chickens at my house.
So I dedicate my review of this darling book in loving memory of Micker-Micker and Mrs. Miller, timid Penguin, big beautiful Barge, rock star Lou, Lou Two, three pullets that the kindergarten had raised from chicks, and two bad-tempered Polish hens whose names I can't remember. The funny, fun, beautiful photographs in Tillie Lays an Egg made me heave a wistful sigh thinking of how wonderful it was for my kids to have a chance to observe the life cycle firsthand, to think about food and where it comes from, and how nice it was to pet those gorgeous girls.
As you can probably tell from my photos, taking pictures of chickens is not easy. Either they are curious about the camera, and you get freaky close-up pictures of beaks and eyes - not the most attractive aspect of a chicken - or they are terrified of the camera, and run like idiots as soon as they see it. So the photographs in Tillie Lays an Egg, which are well-lit, in focus, and STAGED, for goodness sake! are not only entertaining, but really impressive.
As is the concept as a whole. Tillie, a chicken who thinks outside the coop, prefers wandering in search of worms to waiting for her turn in a nesting box. Every day she explores a different corner of the farm, and every day she lays her egg in an unexpected place. Children and adults have been observed enjoying the hunt for Tillie's eggs in each day's picture, and chuckling over the vintage chicken-themed items that pop up here and there - a chicken doormat, board games, table linens, and a juice glass that I covet.
I can't think of a more lovely hommage to these sometimes underappreciated farmyard friends, and I was so pleased to read that the chickens in the book - and all the chickeny props - are the author's own. I look forward to the further adventures of Tillie.
You're a bad man, Mr. Gum! by Andy Stanton, read by the author
"'I am glad you asked me that,' said Friday, 'because the universe is my specialist subject and I am the winner of quizzes where that's concerned.'
This audio book had our whole family giggling all the way up Interstate 95 from Georgia when we came home from Spring Break. Really. Now, I don't want to take away from the print edition, which is certainly a funny book, with hip little illustrations and a chapter entitled "Mr. Gum Has a Cup of Tea" whose entire text is "Mr. Gum had a cup of tea," but on audio...
Let's put it this way. The other audio book that we really enjoyed on that trip, Neil Gaiman's The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection
, included an interview with the author as a Special Bonus Feature. The interview is conducted by Gaiman's daughter Maddie, who asks good questions, including: "Why do you like audio books?" Neil answers this (and all the other) questions with his accustomed brevity, saying, (and I am paraphrasing here - that thing about Gaiman's brevity was me lying) that he likes audio books because he as an author can read the book as he first heard it in his head when he wrote it. Funny voices and all.
So, Andy Stanton apparently had choirs of lunatics speaking in his head when he was writing You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!. Or maybe just Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and the entire Monty Python ensemble, including the dead guy who wanted to be a doctor. His characters are by turns terrible and silly, mystical and silly, adorable and silly, crabby and silly, and... silly. PLUS we get extremely Adams-y silly stuff like"
"She ran past a cat's ears that were lying on the pavement and a cat's nose and whiskers that were lying on the pavement and a cat's body and tail and legs and eyes and claws that were lying on the paveme -- in fact it was all just one cat, lying on the pavement."
And don't look for any Special Bonus Features on this CD, or in the book, because there AREN'T ANY.
Or... that's me lying again.
Patrick the Somnambulist, written and illustrated by Sarah Ackerley
To all of the tedious, obvious, cheery-fake picture books that try to demonstrate that Being Different Has Hidden Benefits! REALLY! Your Love of Ballet
/ Eccentricity
/ Fashion Sense
/ Favorite Color
/ Intelligence
/ Strabismus
/ Bipedalism
/ Love of Poetry
/ Lack of Athleticism
/ Species
/ Size
/ Diet
/ Unusual Color
Makes You Special (and ok, most of these books are neither tedious nor obvious, I am just being lazy, because I tend not to remember books I don't like) - I finally have a response: LOOK AT THIS ONE.
Patrick is a normal penguin kid who is also a sleepwalker. His concerned parents take him to therapy. The therapist confirms that Patrick is a normal penguin kid who is also a sleepwalker. Teaches Patrick a fancy word for himself - somnambulist. Patrick adores his new word, is empowered by it, does great things under its imprimatur. Goes on Conan. Becomes a multi-millionaire at the age of six.
The little full-page watercolor illustrations are witty and sweet, done in a rather somber nighttime palette that in no way harshes the happy, giggly mellow of the text. Love the mute, soulful penguin expressions (no mouths on these penguins and yet we know just what they're thinking). Kids will get a laugh out of all the odd situations Patrick finds himself in as a result of his sleepwalking, and parents will surreptitiously enjoy, "At first his parents just thought he was just weird."
Who hasn't thought that at one time or another?
Endpaper bonus: Patrick wrapped in toilet paper, rocking an umbrella, and wearing a plunger on his head.
This book looks at stylistic movements in Western art - from the birth of Naturalism in the Renaissance through the twentieth century, ending with Op Art and photorealism.
The conversational narrative and detailed observations that characterize Raczka's earlier books (Here's Looking at Me, Where in the World?) are in this book reduced to a minimum - to the book's detriment. Instead, each style is profiled using a fixed set of questions, with the answers presented as lists, short paragraphs, and bullet points.
The art chosen to illustrate each style is in some cases perfect - van Eyck's "The Arnolfini Portrait" illustrates Naturalism; in others, surprising - Courbet's "The Stone Breakers" is a little-seen painting that is nonetheless a fine choice to illustrate Realism; but sometimes misses the mark - J.M.W. Turner's "Snow Storm" is chosen as an example of a painting in the Romantic style, but unless the viewer is familiar with Turner's other paintings, it will appear more Impressionistic or even abstract.
Fills a gap. However, unless there is a need for a book strictly about artistic styles, libraries would be better served by a more comprehensive art history book for young people, such as Antony Mason's A History of Western Art or The History of Art by Claudio Merlo.
Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young
Breathtaking. Pass-around-the-workroom-and-marvel-at-it gorgeous. Intense. Gripping. A terrific story. I seem unable to describe this book except in tiny movie-blurb phrases. It's that good.
Gazing upon the illustrations in Tsunami!, I could feel the thunder of the great wave in my chest. I felt the pressure of the silence before the wave, and I heard its hissing retreat. The two-page spread of the wave hovering over the village is the best work that Ed Young has ever done, and the story is just as strong. He depicts scale so masterfully here - the temple gate, in pieces, tiny against the crashing wave... the villagers so small as to look like confetti on the exposed beach.
I am grateful that the story is set "long ago" in Japan. If this book had been about the more recent tsunami, it would have been too emotionally wrenching for me, and possibly for younger readers too.
Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford
‘Becoming Billie Holiday’ begins with a quote by Tony Bennett: “When you listen to her, it’s almost like an audio tape of her biography.”
This book could be that biography. Nearly one hundred first-person narrative poems detail Holiday’s life from birth until age 25, the age at which she debuted her signature song “Strange Fruit.” The poems borrow their titles from Holiday’s songs, a brilliant device that provides the reader with a haunting built-in soundtrack.
As in her previous book, ‘Birmingham, 1963,’ Weatherford’s language is straightforward and accessible – almost conversational. She captures Holiday’s jazzy, candid voice so adroitly that at times the poems seem like they could have been lifted wholesale from Holiday’s autobiography, ‘Lady Sings the Blues.’
Floyd Cooper’s sepia-toned, nostalgic mixed-media illustrations provide an emotional counterpoint to the text. Resembling old photographs seen through a lens of aching hindsight, they make explicit the pain that Weatherford studiously avoids giving full voice to in her poems. For, although Holiday’s early life was one of relentless rejection, discrimination, and poverty, the author stays true to her subject, and maintains a resolute and defiant tone, albeit one tinged with regret.
Prostitution, rape, jail time, violence, and minor drug use are described in the book, but it ends on the proverbial high note, before the singer’s drug use, alcoholism, and early death. This captivating book places the reader solidly into Holiday’s world, and is suitable for independent reading as well as a variety of classroom uses.
Chicken cheeks by Michael Ian Black, illustrations by Kevin Hawkes
It's a fact, I'm a sucker for the bold, chewy acrylics of Kevin Hawkes. His love of orange and blue is apparently nearly as ardent as mine own. The guy's color contrast always puts me in mind of Maxfield Parrish. And in Chicken cheeks, his slightly just-past-normal expressions and colors are perfectly tuned to the subject matter.
And the subject matter is butts.
Yes, butts. But cute butts, not crass butts. Rhyming, alliterative, clever butts. Sure, it'll have the kids rolling on the floor (because - look - it's butts!) but it won't set parents to wincing, unless said parent is the type that thinks "caboose" as a term for "butt" is offensive. Or "patootie". Myself, I'd be thrilled if my children started using more creative terms, and I didn't have to hear "butt butt butt" all day.
I wonder where they picked that up?
All in a day by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Nikki McClure
I could not help thinking of Jonathan Bean when I took up this book. Nikki McClure's virtuoso cut-paper illustrations resemble woodcuts in much the same way his do, and she too can make a palette of black and white plus one color conjure whatever she wants. Here's the book: a little boy on a farm wanders through his day, climbing trees and watching clouds and whatnot, with measured, gentle text that conveys a peaceful message that you don't get all that often in picture books:
This day will soon be over
and it won't come back again.
So live it well, make it count,
fill it up with you.
The day's all yours, it's waiting now...
See what you can do.
This is maybe not the best quote - the book is not at all dire. I love the images too: chickens and eggs and seeds, birds on the wing. Kind of inspiring, and I'm not just saying that because the children and I planted our peas this week.
Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li
I have to say, I always found the story of Mao's War on Sparrows to be a little far-fetched. Leader of one of the world's largest countries, and he takes aim at... sparrows? Seems a little petty. On the other hand, commanding every man, woman, and child in China to go outside, 24 hours a day, for weeks, and frighten off millions of tiny birds so that they have nowhere to land and drop dead out of sheer exhaustion? Inconceivably arrogant. Almost an arbitrary exercise of power. Also, I know it was 1958, but surely somebody must have realized that eliminating such a widespread species might have complicated consequences.
All in all, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing some short-sighted, delusional monarch might decree in a fairy tale.
I recently read about it in Sparrow Girl
, a picture book set during the Cultural Revolution, written by The Talented Sara Pennypacker (the Clementine
books, Pierre In Love
) and illustrated by the likewise talented Yoko Tanaka. A little girl rescues a few sparrows from the Sparrow War and keeps them in her family's barn. In spring, when it becomes apparent that the absence of sparrows has caused a proportional increase in the insect population, and crops all across China are being ravaged because of this, she releases the last sparrows in all of China, and there is hope.
It's a lovely book and a sweet story, but it reinforced my "Naw... really? Oh come on," attitude about this event.
But I think Moying Li's memoir (the book I'm actually reviewing), subtitled "Coming of age in China during the Cultural Revolution," finally has me convinced.
And so, day after day we watched the battle unfold as vigilant Beijingers stood their ground. Then, suddenly, sparrows started to fall from the sky, utterly exhausted. Soon there were hardly any left. At dinner one evening, flushed with pride as he waved a copy of the People's Daily, Baba announced that in our city alone we had eradicated over 400,000 sparrows!
Moying Li takes us along as, step by step, her country moves from the excitement and hope that accompanied The Great Leap Forward to the paranoia, zealotry and despair of the Cultural Revolution. Her family goes hungry, is split up, endures denunciation, but ultimately survives and moves forward. The kindness and loyalty that she encountered during these years brought tears to my eyes as I read.
The pace never falters in this gripping memoir. Not too demanding, the book includes some photographs and a helpful glossary (which would have been enhanced by pronunciations - my favorite axe to grind), and would be a spectacular class read, in addition to being a great leisure read.
A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis
Edna's whole world is white and black and blue, and she yearns for something else.
"'There is white ice for sliding,' says Edna. 'There is black night for seeing stars. There is blue sea for hunting fish. But there must be something else.'"
She is not Lost
, or gay
, or afraid to swim
, or an unusual color (Not that I am saying there are too many penguin books out there - hey man you can NEVER have too many penguin books. Penguins are perfect for picture books - they are graphically interesting and inherently funny. My dad says they're pesty, but more on that later. I think they're funny - they waddle.)
I could quibble and say that Edna, living as she does in an environment wholly populated by carnivores, is surely acquainted with the color red, in addition to white, black, and blue, but really, how is Antoinette Portis going to work that in? "There is red blood when the seals come to visit." Yeah, no.
So anyway, Edna goes looking. And do you know what she finds? MY DAD, circa 1963! (or my uncle, circa 1961-1963, or my brother in 2001) Edna stumbles upon a detachment of scientists from USAP (formerly the United States Antarctic Research Program), who have been wearing the same shade of orange (cosmonaut orange, for high visibility on the ice) for more than fifty years.
Oh, wait, you wanted to know about the book? Well come on, it's Antoinette Portis. Not a Box
is one of the most genius kid books of ALL TIME, and A Penguin Story is both different - doesn't have that empowering kid-is-the-one-who-gets-to-say-no thing going on - and the same - same terrific, simple drawings, excellent use of a limited color palette. Also, one strong, determined, curious, creative kid with a lot going on upstairs.
Further endorsement: immediately after reading A Penguin Story, the men in my family (aged 5, 7, and 44; none of whom have been to Antarctica - yet) grabbed the sidewalk chalk and drew portraits of Edna on our front walk. See if you can guess which man drew which picture:
Into the Volcano by Don Wood
Into the Volcano is an intense mystery-adventure coming-of-age chapter book in comic book style - something of a departure for Don Wood, the illustrator of such picture books as Piggies and The Napping House.
Two brothers, Duffy and Sumo, visit their mysterious aunt in Hawaii, who sends them off on a perilous expedition into the bowels of an erupting volcano, accompanied by strangers whose skills are obvious, but whose trustworthiness is not.
The dangers faced by the boys are terrifying, especially an interlude during which Sumo, wracked by guilt and indecision after he thinks his brother has fallen to his death, is trapped in the dark on an underground cliff, and is visited by the specter of Death. That the children have been exposed to such peril knowingly by the adult who has been entrusted with their care is a dark vein running through the story.
A prose book with this content would probably be suitable for children in grades 3 to 5, and in fact, Sumo and Duffy appear to be no older than nine or ten, but Wood’s artwork brings the perils they face into startling focus, making the book more suitable for grades 5 to 7.
Keenly observed depictions of the Hawaiian landscape and geological processes lend an impressive veracity to this exciting and unusual offering; Into the Volcano is a rare example of a graphic novel for young people that is neither manga nor mainstream.
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What a great title! And yes, I have trouble finding good sports books for our small school library. Thanks for the recommendation, also your take on the Pot Incident!