Someday When My Cat Can Talk
by Caroline Lazo; illustrated by Kyrsten Booker
Schwartz and Wade

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Cats have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Their enigmatic smiles, their tendency to snub their humans for any minor slight, their expressions of deep knowledge and understanding. What is he thinking? is something a cat owner often considers.

The little girl hero of Caroline Lazo's Someday When My Cat Can Talk has some ideas about her cat's inner intellectual life. Her cat, she thinks, has a tale to tell about a trip abroad: "He'll tell me how he hopped a ship/and where he stowed away./He'll cheer the wind that blew his fur/as he sailed beyond the bay."

The little girl's cat travels all about Europe--from England to France to Spain and Italy.  And Lazo's rhyming text conveys a sense of fun and humor throughout the tale. Take this stanza, for example:

He'll speak fondly of the snail he met
while camping out near Cannes.
And he'll whisper why she's hiding
from the chef at Cafe Sands.

The cat comes home to the little girl, who imagines he'll tell her stories about his European travels. But the cat, alas, is a cat in the end and the little girl and the reader is left to guess about his adventures: My cat will tell me all these things/when he talks to me someday./Until then, when the sun goes down,/he always sneaks away.

Kyrsten Brooker's paintings--in a warm palette of dark greens, reds, blues, and browns--merge an impressionist style (a la Cezanne, in this case) with touches of collage.  Their quirky, but approachable, style works beautifully with Lazo's rhyming text.

Pack your bags!  Let's follow that cat this Poetry Friday.

Someday When My Cat Can Talk
by Caroline Lazo; illustrated by Kyrsten Booker
Schwartz and Wade

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Cats have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Their enigmatic smiles, their tendency to snub their humans for any minor slight, their expressions of deep knowledge and understanding. What is he thinking? is something a cat owner often considers.

The little girl hero of Caroline Lazo's Someday When My Cat Can Talk has some ideas about her cat's inner intellectual life. Her cat, she thinks, has a tale to tell about a trip abroad: "He'll tell me how he hopped a ship/and where he stowed away./He'll cheer the wind that blew his fur/as he sailed beyond the bay."

The little girl's cat travels all about Europe--from England to France to Spain and Italy.  And Lazo's rhyming text conveys a sense of fun and humor throughout the tale. Take this stanza, for example:

He'll speak fondly of the snail he met
while camping out near Cannes.
And he'll whisper why she's hiding
from the chef at Cafe Sands.

The cat comes home to the little girl, who imagines he'll tell her stories about his European travels. But the cat, alas, is a cat in the end and the little girl and the reader is left to guess about his adventures: My cat will tell me all these things/when he talks to me someday./Until then, when the sun goes down,/he always sneaks away.

Kyrsten Brooker's paintings--in a warm palette of dark greens, reds, blues, and browns--merge an impressionist style (a la Cezanne, in this case) with touches of collage.  Their quirky, but approachable, style works beautifully with Lazo's rhyming text.

Pack your bags!  Let's follow that cat this Poetry Friday.

Someday When My Cat Can Talk
by Caroline Lazo; illustrated by Kyrsten Booker
Schwartz and Wade

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Cats have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Their enigmatic smiles, their tendency to snub their humans for any minor slight, their expressions of deep knowledge and understanding. What is he thinking? is something a cat owner often considers.

The little girl hero of Caroline Lazo's Someday When My Cat Can Talk has some ideas about her cat's inner intellectual life. Her cat, she thinks, has a tale to tell about a trip abroad: "He'll tell me how he hopped a ship/and where he stowed away./He'll cheer the wind that blew his fur/as he sailed beyond the bay."

The little girl's cat travels all about Europe--from England to France to Spain and Italy.  And Lazo's rhyming text conveys a sense of fun and humor throughout the tale. Take this stanza, for example:

He'll speak fondly of the snail he met
while camping out near Cannes.
And he'll whisper why she's hiding
from the chef at Cafe Sands.

The cat comes home to the little girl, who imagines he'll tell her stories about his European travels. But the cat, alas, is a cat in the end and the little girl and the reader is left to guess about his adventures: My cat will tell me all these things/when he talks to me someday./Until then, when the sun goes down,/he always sneaks away.

Kyrsten Brooker's paintings--in a warm palette of dark greens, reds, blues, and browns--merge an impressionist style (a la Cezanne, in this case) with touches of collage.  Their quirky, but approachable, style works beautifully with Lazo's rhyming text.

Pack your bags!  Let's follow that cat this Poetry Friday.

The Apple-Pip Princess
by Jane Ray
Candlewick Press

You know how the fairytale goes. There are three sons or three daughters and the aging father or wizard or king will leave all he has to the wisest one, as determined by some task or other they must complete that will prove which one deserves to rule.

The oldest is usually ambitious, the second is vain and competitive, the third has a good heart. They each set about scheming or building or vying for the king's attention, but the third prevails through some simple act of kindness or previously unsuspected wisdom.

Think King Lear but without all those messy deaths.

Ray offers her colorful take of the old tale in a naive style, which emphasizes its folkloric origins. She uses a warm palette, perhaps drawing from a Mediterranean or North African palette (judging by the dark-skinned family, though of course that's beside the point). A handful of mixed media collages are skillfully placed for maximum comic effect when the bad siblings wreak their havoc.

Three princesses each possess something of their late mother's--two choose material things, the third picks a simple box, which she fills with such charming keepsakes as a burst of nightingale song or a splash of sunlight.  And, of course, an apple pip.

When the old king's challenge comes, Ray sets the stakes high: the land's been barren since the queen's death and devoid of birdsong or laughter. Each daughter has only a week to impress their still-grieving father. You're rooting for the youngest, Serenity, especially as the wicked older sisters only find ways to make folks more miserable.

Serenity doesn't fail in her mission, or in her ability to please readers too. She's a delight to watch in action, thoughtful and kind, and her smallest, simplest act of selflessness sprouts into something much larger than expected, as all good deeds in all good folk tales do. All her enchanted items get used in the process, but each has its payoff too. At no point does Ray belabor the message, and even the mean older sisters get a pleasant reprieve. 

Rating: *\*\*\*\

The Apple-Pip Princess
by Jane Ray
Candlewick Press

You know how the fairytale goes. There are three sons or three daughters and the aging father or wizard or king will leave all he has to the wisest one, as determined by some task or other they must complete that will prove which one deserves to rule.

The oldest is usually ambitious, the second is vain and competitive, the third has a good heart. They each set about scheming or building or vying for the king's attention, but the third prevails through some simple act of kindness or previously unsuspected wisdom.

Think King Lear but without all those messy deaths.

Ray offers her colorful take of the old tale in a naive style, which emphasizes its folkloric origins. She uses a warm palette, perhaps drawing from a Mediterranean or North African palette (judging by the dark-skinned family, though of course that's beside the point). A handful of mixed media collages are skillfully placed for maximum comic effect when the bad siblings wreak their havoc.

Three princesses each possess something of their late mother's--two choose material things, the third picks a simple box, which she fills with such charming keepsakes as a burst of nightingale song or a splash of sunlight.  And, of course, an apple pip.

When the old king's challenge comes, Ray sets the stakes high: the land's been barren since the queen's death and devoid of birdsong or laughter. Each daughter has only a week to impress their still-grieving father. You're rooting for the youngest, Serenity, especially as the wicked older sisters only find ways to make folks more miserable.

Serenity doesn't fail in her mission, or in her ability to please readers too. She's a delight to watch in action, thoughtful and kind, and her smallest, simplest act of selflessness sprouts into something much larger than expected, as all good deeds in all good folk tales do. All her enchanted items get used in the process, but each has its payoff too. At no point does Ray belabor the message, and even the mean older sisters get a pleasant reprieve. 

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Little Rabbit and the Night Mare
By Kate Klise; illustrated by M. Sarah Klise

Reviewed by Kelly Herold

Sisters Kate and M. Sarah Klise make bedtime safe again with their newest picture book.   

School is stressing Little Rabbit out: It's Monday and the teacher tells the class they're to prepare a report on any topic they'd like. Mother Rabbit suggests a variety of topics to Little Rabbit, "But Little Rabbit didn't like those topics."

Little Rabbit begins to worry and then at night, "a mysterious creature appeared in his dream and carried him away." Mother explains that Little Rabbit had a nightmare, but Little Rabbit hears only "night mare." Now he has two worries--his report and the night mare. And the only way Little Rabbit can conquer his fears is to face them head on and to "look [the night mare] in the eye."

Kate Klise serves up Little Rabbit's universal tale so sweetly and with such compassion, that you'll cheer when the hero chases his night mare off and finishes his report. M. Sarah Klise's warm illustrations draw the reader in to a comforting world of a lucky, loved childhood.  Little Rabbit and the Night Mare is a cozy blanket for light sleepers of every age.

Rating: *\*\*\

Summer hits early in Phoenix, and at 8:30 am on a cloudless April morning, the sun already glinted off cars. My mother-in-law and I sat in her white Corolla, parked tentatively in a walled and gated parking lot as if for a quick getaway. We watched for signs of life outside a low-slung, drab building near downtown, still somewhat nineties newish and post-modern, but resembling nothing so much as a concrete fortress amidst the shabby bodegas and taco stands.

We watched muscled men in scant athletic togs amble in and out of a gym. A heavyset woman tacked up signs.

I was early for a job interview. Not at the gym full of half-dressed men, sad to say. I was early and my MIL—who was graciously hosting me—kept me company as the minutes ticked by. A cab pulled up and a young woman in expensive tan slacks and white blouse, hair neatly pulled back, stepped onto the curb, briefcase in tow.

“Well, this must be it,” I said, giving MIL a peck on the cheek. I followed the signs through a courtyard into air-conditioned relief in a library with a soaring cathedral ceiling, dotted with posters of Frida Kahlo and the occasional map. Over the next half hour, another 20 or so would file in, including taxicab woman, who’d turn out to be an entertaining and coolly poised math teacher.

I sat at a table with a former computer science teacher named John, a gregarious Italian from Long Island who talked in food metaphors, and no fewer than three other people from the Chicago area, one of them a shy, soft-spoken Loyola student with glittering brown eyes who hoped to move here with her new fiancee.

I’d applied to roughly 35 jobs since deciding a couple months ago that full-time motherhood had sapped what microscopic self-esteem I’d ever possessed. I love my children, but post-partum depression had long ago slid directly into mid-life crisis, abetted by cross-country moves, my mother’s prolonged death, and a depressing list of other personal and financial misfortunes.

These days, I play what writer Anne Lamott calls radio station KFKD in my head, with its grating buzz of self-loathing, bitterness and remorse. Occasionally, it’ll broadcast some inwardly directed sarcasm for variety, but otherwise it’s pitiless and incessant, and impossible to tune out.

It seemed time to make myself useful, to go out and earn my keep, only to discover no one wanted me. You don’t get personalized replies to electronic applications, so it’s impossible to know if I’m too old, too rusty, want too much money, live in the wrong part of the country or just what.

I had only two real possibilities out of all those applications, both in Phoenix, both promising, both taking me in different directions than the journalism stamped all over my resume.

The one that brought me into the spacious library required an eight-screen application and a four-hour proficiency exam that dragged me out in the rain a few weeks ago to a high school in the far southwestern corner of Chicago. I needed to know everything from how to pick apart words to find their component sounds to the sort of literary criticism reserved for a college senior’s honor thesis. I wrote an essay on alienation and longing in suburbia.

The job is, of course, teaching. It pays $31,000 to start. And, oh yeah, all those benefits they tell you about. The carrot they dangled was a fellowship—six weeks of intensive training over the summer. Then I’d be placed in an inner-city classroom, where I’d teach by day and get my master’s and certification by night in only four semesters. Brett thought my skills and interests were a great match. I realized it would either permanently disarm my inner evil deejay or give her infinite new fodder.

I won’t get my results for another few weeks, so I had to go blindly to the interview, not knowing if faulty test scores had already torpedoed my chances. But no one else knew either. They’d taken Math or Science or Special Ed—I was the only English major in the room, I found out. I was the only one who’d ignored the fine print that said English majors need not apply. We’re a dime a dozen, apparently.

But there I was. They’d asked me to come—at my own expense, of course. I had a chance. A small one.

When the 20 of us broke into smaller groups, I was also the only one not carrying a tote full of handouts or flip charts or rocks or, in one case, bibles. We had five minutes to teach the group something, anything. Taxi lady taught fractions with paper puzzles she’d created. She let me keep one for Seth. The Bible woman had us read David and Goliath, and singled me out to read the longest bit, standing over me so her protruding belly nearly brushed the top of my  bent head. I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if she’d asked me to undress and do cartwheels.

A slender, smiling blond in tortoiseshell glasses taught about the earth’s crust with rocks she’d brought in. A self-made millionaire did a vocabulary drill in a booming, drill sergeant voice.

My turn came, and I wrote my name on the board, along with the lesson’s subject, as we’d been instructed. I wrote “descriptive writing” and passed out blank index cards. I asked them to spend one minute writing a postcard home describing the room, using as many of their five senses as they could.

I read the postcards aloud, and we identified the senses together, noting how the room appeared to them, or what sounds they heard, or if it felt cramped or spacious, or how the dry-erase markers smelled, or what the scratching of pens reminded them of.

For about 4-1/2 of those minutes, KFKD fell silent. I could savor teaching something they might like to know, and they threw themselves into pretending to be middle school students. Pens flew furiously. Hands raised with enthusiasm. The last 30 seconds saw me crash back to earth, stammering and apologetic, before plunking into my seat, my heart pounding.

The day had only just begun. Ahead lay a writing assignment, a group discussion and a solo interview. I didn’t make any obvious errors in any of them, as far as I could tell from the amiable interviewer and his gentle lines of questioning. I’d braced for some stern probing, but there were no land mines, no ambushes, nothing unexpected or unpleasant.

I emerged into the hot day, exhausted, confident that if I didn’t make the cut (I’ll know in a few weeks) it wasn’t from any major misstep or gaffe.

And then my MIL whisked me away to lunch, to an enormous salad and the tallest, coolest, most refreshing glass of ice tea I think I’ve ever tasted. I don’t even remember the restaurant’s name.

But for the first time in a long time, I felt good.

Listen, Listen
by Phillis Gershator; illustrated by Alison Jay
Barefoot Books

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Celebrate the seasons in style with Listen, Listen. This charmer of a picture book aimed at the two- to six-year-old reader makes you appreciate every quarter of the year, even depressing ol' winter. Listen, Listen has that one-two punch--a combination of snappy, lively text and intricate, nostalgic illustrations that will please the adult and the child reader.

Gershator's rhyming text is, simply, perfect. It scans and it sings as you travel through the year.  Here, for example, are the first four lines of the text:

Listen, listen...what's that sound? Insects singing all around!
Chirp, chrip, churr, churr, buzz, buzz, whirr, whirr.
Leaves rustle, hammocks sway. Splish, splash, children play.
Clouds drift, dogs run. Sizzle, sizzle, summer fun.

Go ahead.  Read it aloud.  I know you want to.

Alison Jay's detailed illustrations have an old-fashioned feel to them. They are presented as cracked oil paintings and feature old-fashioned school houses and animals like those you'd see in the work of Margaret Wise Brown.  Jay's color scheme is rich and warm--with dark reds and light blues and greens of every shade. The pages are so inviting, you want to fall into them and live in this peaceful world of seasonal activity and sound.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Listen, Listen
by Phillis Gershator; illustrated by Alison Jay
Barefoot Books

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Celebrate the seasons in style with Listen, Listen. This charmer of a picture book aimed at the two- to six-year-old reader makes you appreciate every quarter of the year, even depressing ol' winter. Listen, Listen has that one-two punch--a combination of snappy, lively text and intricate, nostalgic illustrations that will please the adult and the child reader.

Gershator's rhyming text is, simply, perfect. It scans and it sings as you travel through the year.  Here, for example, are the first four lines of the text:

Listen, listen...what's that sound? Insects singing all around!
Chirp, chrip, churr, churr, buzz, buzz, whirr, whirr.
Leaves rustle, hammocks sway. Splish, splash, children play.
Clouds drift, dogs run. Sizzle, sizzle, summer fun.

Go ahead.  Read it aloud.  I know you want to.

Alison Jay's detailed illustrations have an old-fashioned feel to them. They are presented as cracked oil paintings and feature old-fashioned school houses and animals like those you'd see in the work of Margaret Wise Brown.  Jay's color scheme is rich and warm--with dark reds and light blues and greens of every shade. The pages are so inviting, you want to fall into them and live in this peaceful world of seasonal activity and sound.

Rating: *\*\*\*\