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Silly Goose’s BIG Story

by Keiko Kasza

            I’m always looking for great read aloud; books that cry out to be read in your favorite “Snuggery” with an arm around a child and characters that lend themselves to a variety of voices parents can mimic and kids will love. Well, in Silly Goose’s BIG Story, I’ve discovered a great summer read AND read aloud. Goose has a definite flair for storytelling and holding his friends Squirrel, Porcupine and Beaver enthrall. (I can just hear parents inventing voices for this trio).

            Big problem though, Goose is always the hero of his stories, with his friends as the minor cast of characters. Eventually resentments build. Can this be the end of the friendship? Goose finds himself alone and in trouble with a goose-hungry wolf and, of course, no friends in sight. Can Goose survive alone and friendless? Will Goose’s storytelling capabilities hold up with his quick thinking imaginative tale told to the wolf of the horrible “WEM”, (Wolf Eating Monster to the unenlightened) summoned ultimately to save the quick thinking Goose?

   But is this wily wolf so easily deceived? Will he see through Goose’s storytelling deception? Wait! What if there really is a WEM, called forth by the creative powers of Goose’s storytelling imagination? Or is it the power of friendship that makes the WEM appear? Kids will relate to this story of someone in their crowd who always wants to be “it.” But the larger lesson in this free wheeling romp is that when it comes to crunch time, buddies band together for the sake of friendship and baddies bolt. Lesson: Hold onto the friends you have and forgive them their temporary flights of ego.

Holidays, Festivals and Celebrations: Memorial Day

By Trudi Strain Trueit; illustrated by Ronnie Rooney

In searching out picture books for Memorial Day, I try to find those that both give a historical background of the day, how it morphed from Decoration Day, following the Civil War to around 1890, when it became known as Memorial Day.

I try to find picture books that spotlight all the components and elements of time honored traditions, celebrations, speeches, places, symbols, and even poetry and songs, that are an integral part of the Memorial Day tribute to those that sacrificed  their lives for our freedoms.

Trudi Strain Trueit has put together a picture book that, I think, collects all these elements for picture book readers’ understanding of Memorial Day. And Ronnie Rooney’s art perfectly complements the narrative, portraying the historical progression of this traditional American holiday.

Though there were some things that I knew of concerning its origins and observations, there were others that were both informative and humbling, when looked at thought the prism of time, which is the true leveler and test of what is enduring in a culture.

There is a quiet question that lingers as you shut the pages of this book. And it is this. What is it that we want our children and future generations to glean from the marking of Memorial Day?

Is it the start of the summer season? Is it barbecues and family gatherings? Is it the word Memorial Day Sale, writ large at malls across America? Or is it something more than all of these put together, though they indeed each have their place in the celebration?

I suppose in some sense, I want to say they are not, and shouldn’t be, the defining reason for the marking of Memorial Day.

In this small, simple, eight chapter book, parents will find a delightful and densely packed picture book with information that will help their child understand the meaning and morphing of Memorial Day, both as it stands today…and how it evolved. A memorial, as the book states is “a lasting tribute.”

                It helps us to remember

                an important person, group

                or event.

They will learn that the day was created, and initially called Decoration Day, where, during the Civil War between the North and South, families found themselves on opposite sides in the war. Father fought against son, and even brother against brother. “In these sad times women in the South began decorating the graves of southern Confederate soldiers with flowers. They decorated the graves of northern Union soldiers, too.”

By 1865 the Civil War ends, with some 600,000 soldiers killed in a war fought on both economic and slavery issues.

1868 finds Union General John Alexander Logan declaring that each May 30th will be a day to remember those who died in the Civil War.

And the first national day of celebration is, as I said, initially termed Decoration Day, and was held at Arlington National Cemetery; a military cemetery in Virginia.

Young readers will hear of Moina Michaels and her desire, following WWl, after hearing the John McCrae poem, “In Flanders Fields,” a determination to make and wear a silk poppy as a symbol for fallen soldiers. It was later expanded to honor all soldiers in the armed forces who died in wartime, and this small idea and enterprise of poppy making and sales has generated over $200 million for veterans groups in the United States and England.

In 1948 she was honored with a stamp by the United States Postal Service.

From the explanation of the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington, to the year 2000’s Congressional creation of a National Moment of Remembrance at 3P.M. on Memorial Day, when all Americans are asked to pause and remember the “nation’s fallen soldiers,” this remembrance continues through both time, and generations of Americans, young and not so young.

Young readers will learn the meaning of the color concept surrounding the American flag, figured so prominently in parades and on porches that day.

Did you know that it is a tradition to lower the American flag to half staff until noon on Memorial Day, as a sign of respect? Here are what the flag’s colors symbolize:

    White stands for purity and innocence

 

     Red stands for valor and hardiness.

 

     Blue stands for vigilance, perseverance

     and justice.

Sidebars on each page of this picture book are filled with quotes from presidents including Lincoln, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as historical figures quoted from General Robert E. Lee, General John A. Logan, and Nathan Hale.

Young readers can read about “Joining in the Spirit of Memorial Day” at the close of the book, suggesting some seven ways to participate in the day, and honor those, including their own relatives, who may have died in the line of duty.

I guess my favorite part is the last chapter; the poems and songs that evoke the essence of Memorial Day. Some I knew,  some I had forgotten or never knew in their completeness.

But “Taps,” with words in their entirety, is featured in the “Song” portion. Played by a single trumpet as the traditional music played at funerals of fallen soldiers, it’s  pureness and poignancy in sound and symbol is what Memorial Day is about.

And here are the words:

Taps

 

Fading light dims the sight,

And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.

From afar drawing nigh comes the night.

Day is done, gone the sun.

From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

 

words and music by Major

General Daniel Butterfield (1831-1901)

*Here is “Taps,” played at Arlington National Cemetery, both in summer, and in a driving snow storm.

Bill Mauldin:  Everyman Cartoonist and Enlistee in World War ll

This Memorial Day you may be wondering why I am shining The Snuggery spotlight on a particular enlistee named Bill Mauldin from World War ll. There were millions of men that enlisted and served.

But this particular one is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist who was honored with a United States postage stamp issued in 2010 depicting this baby faced GI right alongside his two famous cartoon creations, named “Willie and Joe.”

Even the Commander of the European Theater of Operations during WW ll, one General Dwight D. Eisenhower was a big fan, though another famous general named Patton, wanted to tone down the grittiness and accuracy of Mauldin’s praiseworthy portrayal of men at war.

Eisenhower won that debate, of course, with the terse words, “Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants.”

With the cartoons that appeared in the military magazine called “Stars and Stripes,” Mauldin, a young cartoonist, showed his two cartoon buddies, named Willie and Joe, amid the muddy weariness and casual heroics that were part of the reality of the everyday infantryman’s life in WW ll.

And the GI’s loved both the cartoons, and the artist because he was one of them. He was an enlisted man just like they were, showing, through his cartoons, their lives on the front lines of battle.

As I mentioned, Maudlin got literal flack from General Patton who wanted the celebration of the average GI Joe toned down, with less laughs in Maudlin’s cartoons that were pointedly directed, at times, at the cost of the officers in charge.

No go, said General Eisenhower, as I referenced above, with his famous quote on the subject.

This Memorial Day, please have a look at the black and white drawings that lifted the lives of men on the front lines via a cartoonist named Bill Mauldin.

Take a look at this cartoonist whose face appeared on the cover of Time magazine in July, 1961, while his cartoon character of Willie made the cover of the same magazine in a June 1945 issue.

Other iconic renderings of Bill Mauldin include his depiction of Lincoln’s figure at the Lincoln Memorial, bent over with head in hands, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Please allow your child a peek into a cartoon world like no other; the world of former GI, Bill Mauldin.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

I hope we continue to see such cartoon lampooning of figures in our culture, both military and civilian, that perhaps need a poke or two with the pen of someone with the equal honesty of a cartoonist like Bill Maudlin.

And along with those pokes, may we see an equal and honest bit of honor, in cartoon form, to the men and women in the front lines who around the world both stand and serve in defense of our country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czkFi_wLMR0

Poetry of Earth

Selected and illustrated by Adrienne Adams

Did you know that Earth Day started way back in the 1970’s? For many it marks, as a website quotes, “the birth of the modern environmental movement.”

Way back in 1962, author Rachel Carson began the run up to concern for the environment with her New York Times bestseller, “Silent Spring.” It generated with its sale of 500,000 copies in 24 countries, a call for public awareness of concern for the gradation of the environment and by inference, its impact on public health.

Change is a hard thing to measure and it is usually only measurable AFTER it has occurred.

That is why the picture book’s value in its ability to both entertain and enlighten, is so underrated in some quarters in the sometimes headlong drive to get to the chapter book. So much is missed and discounted in what the picture book has offered in the past and continues to offer in the present. And Ms. Adams’ book is a perfect example.

Adrienne Adams is the winner of two Caldecott Honor books in 1960 and 1962 for “The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up” and “Houses From The Sun”. Both were done with text by Alice E. Goudey.

She is also the illustrator of ALA notable books for her Grimm’s Brothers versions of “The Shoemaker and the Elves, ”Jorinde and Joringel,” and “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen.

In “Poetry of the Earth,” Ms. Adams has chosen thirty-three poems from renowned poets such as Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, Carl Sandburg, William Butler Yeats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, celebrating everything from buffaloes to bats, snails to specks, sandhill cranes to squirrels and tiger lilies to tortoises.

Listen to this small sample from Robert Frost’s, “Dust of Snow”:

                 “The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree”

 

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.”

Young readers, once you get past their understanding of the word, “rued”, will certainly get the visceral feeling of how one single moment can change a day; one small second in time can change a minute from moody to merry. Kids do it all the time; it’s part of being a child!

And its impetus for them can be a poem, a line from a book, a hug, a smile, or a touch of the hand.

Let Earth Day this year, and books that echo both the shelter and nourishment it gives humanity, be the jumping off spot for a teachable moment with young readers. Share books with them that celebrate how wonderful and healing the earth can be; what a sacred space it is, and how much it is in our care.

Below is a link to 50 fun and engaging hands on Earth Day Activities for young ones.

http://tinkerlab.com/fifty-earth-day-activities/

The Longest Night: A Passover Story

By Laurel Snyder and Catia Chien

Please start this book by reading the genesis of it, in the Author’s Note as Laurel Snyder recalls the Seder gatherings of her childhood.

All of the rich traditions of song, the reciting from the Haggadah, and the special foods that are part of the ritual, intermixed with the smells of matzoh ball soup served in a freshly cleaned house, swirl in her recollections of Seder celebrations past. In hearing the story of the Exodus as a child, this hole in the story struck her:

           Yet when we told the story of

           the Exodus – the harrowing tale

           of how the Israelites fled Egypt

           and the only homes they had ever

           known – we didn’t get to hear much

about all the people who ran. The

           story was mostly Moses and

           Pharaoh bargaining for the lives of

           everyone else.

Ms. Snyder, awaiting her serving of soup in that long ago Seder, wondered what it was like to be a child, among those fleeing in a mad rush into the desert, thousands of years ago? What was it like to be a child slave?

And The Longest Night is her answer to that imagined question.

If your child too, has such imaginings during the family gathering and celebration of Passover, perhaps this is a picture book to afford them one person’s imaginative take on what it must have been like, as seen through the eyes of  a young one.

In simple rhyming verse, you meet a young girl with little to separate one day from the next:

            Every morning with the light…

            Came another day like night.

 

            In the heat and blowing sand,

            Each gray dawn my work began…

 

            Spreading mortar thick on stone,

            I built someone else a home.

 

            All around me eyes to ground,

            Other children trudged around.

The familiar story is told through the eyes of a young girl’s life of labor, the plagues that descend on Egypt in stunning succession, while all the while, the young girl’s Aba or father waits:

             Strangely Aba seemed to wait

             Calmly for each harsh new fate,

 

 Sat and whittled in his chair.

I sat too, and said a prayer.

The theme of “waiting” expectantly fills this picture book, and it’s a feeling that young readers may identify with quite easily.

Patience and trust are there also, as sometimes in life, one has to wait in a sort of patient endurance for the tide of life and circumstance to change, as we feel able to be sustained where we are, until the tide literally turns.

Those themes fill The Longest Night as lamb’s blood is unquestioningly smeared above doors, bread is packed in haste, and seas are swept apart to deliver a new path to freedom and a new life:

               Walls of water all around

Made a giant rushing sound.

Change is in the air as the young girl senses they are running from something, yet also, to something new and different.

Pure joy awaits in this something:

             To a sky so wide and free,

             Full of light and room to be.

 

             To an endless sunrise spread

             Pink above us gold and red.

And artist, Catia Chen, has done a fine job in her illustrations of capturing the somber colors that reflect the mood of slavery, through the dogged endurance needed to survive the plagues, to the joyous rosy hues of freedom on the other side of the journey.

The Longest Night is a picture book history lesson of one of the oldest stories of patient endurance and trust, that led to victory.

This dark-night-to-dawn story of a child enmeshed in an historic freedom walk event, is a fine introduction to the Passover journey for a young reader of any faith.

It employs a sort of technique used in Bible Studies, where the reader is encouraged to imagine oneself in the biblical event, then try to sense what the sights, sounds and even smells of the event, might have felt like…to them.

Ms. Snyder has offered this approach to fine effect, so that young readers, having read it, may sit down to their own Seder meal this Passover with a more personal take on events that occurred thousands of years ago, yet may be remembered, after this reading, with a more personal and reflective reverence, today.

Daniel Finds a Poem

by Micha Archer

Let’s face it; poetry is a bit intimidating or at the very least, seen as highbrow, and inaccessible to most people.

With April ushering in the freshness of spring, and also bearing the title of National Poetry Month, I try at The Snuggery, to feature books for young readers that may just dissuade parents and kids from that concept of poetry as something far from the everyday, totally musty, and far from modern.

That is so untrue; it is in the everyday; both yours and mine, and it is our observations, feelings and take on that everyday that makes poetry come alive. And it’s in the very uniqueness of each person’s view of the life and lines in a poem, that its true rich and varied humanity emerges for all to enjoy.

Remember the tale of “The Blind Men and the Elephant?”

Each blind man endeavors to find out what the reality of an elephant was.

One felt the trunk, and said an elephant was a tree branch, another felt the tail, and calls an elephant like a rope, still another felt the ear and deemed the elephant, a fan. One more touches only the leg, and calls the elephant a pillar.

Well, poetry to me is much like that story. No one person searching for the truth of the elephant has the market cornered on it, if it is viewed from one singular perspective.

It is only within the collective of the feelings and observations of all individual experiences, that the wholeness of the reality of the elephant begins to take shape.

And so it is with the beauty of a poem.

Meet young Daniel, who is asking pretty much the same question about the definition of poetry, as he sees a sign in an urban park that lists:

                 Poetry in the

                     Park

                    Sunday

                       at

                  6 o’clock

“What is poetry?”, Daniel says.

Nature is such a wonderful  teacher for so many things in life, that it’s not so surprising that he starts his questioning about poetry with the park’s wildlife inhabitants.

In sequence, he queries a spider who says:

            To me, poetry is when morning

             dew glistens.

A squirrel has a different perspective on poetry:

              Poetry is when crisp leaves

              crunch.

My own favorite is the chipmunk that gives Daniel’s question a thoughtful Hmmm, and then offers his own take:

           Poetry is a home with many

           windows in an old stone wall.

And so it goes, from frogs to turtles, from crickets to a wise old owl at dusk, who sets young Daniel to thinking poetic thoughts at the close of day, as she hoots:

Oh, Poetry! Poetry is bright stars

in the beaches, moonlight on the grass,

and silent wings to take me wherever I go.

Sunday dawns bright as a button, and Daniel finds that he has a poem to contribute to the announced “Poetry in the Park.”

His recitation is a beautiful one, put together and gleaned from all the perspectives that he has seen and heard through observations shared from his park poets, and those he has taken in with own eyes, and also those seen through theirs.

And, as he stops to see a sunset reflected in a pond, he immediately intuits what he has been seeking, as relates to poetry.

            “That looks like poetry to me”

             “To me too,” says Dragonfly

Micha Archer, teacher and mother of two, has fashioned here, a special book on poetry that not only makes the subject of poetry accessible to children, but uses the artistic technique of color-filled collage illustrations so wonderfully done as to reflect the innocence and vibrant freshness of childhood discovery and brings it all winningly alive to the reader.

If poetry can be described as a collection of words that express an emotion or an idea, then the picture book called “Daniel Finds a Poem” by Micha Archer is worth the seeking and finding of a poem that is not merely Daniel’s.

Perhaps, more importantly, it’s the finding of a special picture book providing the first steps towards the start of a hunt for your young reader’s own world of poetry, just waiting to be discovered in their own backyard.

It Could Always Be Worse

Margot Zemach

I have a framed sampler at home that shows freshly laundered clothes, snapping in the breeze on a clothesline; something that is just about as classic as the book I am about to reintroduce.

And the embroidery in the framed piece has a saying that reads:

If all our troubles were hung on a line;

 

You would take yours.

 

And I would take mine.

Every time I look at it, I’m reminded of how often I’ve caviled and kvetched about certain circumstances in which I find myself. And, I imagine no one else’s can possibly compare…or be worse.

Margot Zemach’s 1978 Caldecott Honor designated book, taken from a Yiddish folk tale, hits the mark when it comes to appreciating the fact that “things could always be worse.”

Margot, along with husband, Harve, also won the Caldecott Medal in 1974 for Duffy and the Devil: A Cornish Tale.”

Additionally, she was United States nominee in 1980 and 1988 for the prestigious international Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s literature.

At her passing, she was lauded by picture book titans with these words:

                Margot not only revivified

                the American picture book,

                but was one of the very few

                who helped elevate it to an

                art form.

Maurice Sendak

 

 

                 I consider her the consummate

                 illustrator for children’s literature.

                 There’s no doubt her work will

                 endure.

William Steig

All the more reason to read Margot Zemach’s work.

Most of us have a bit of the “carper” in us, at any given time. It’s a very human trait to complain about what is, and oh, how we wish things could be different…better, and then, we would be supremely happy!

Here, in It Could Always Be Worse, Margot Zemach’s picture book is about a Jewish nuclear family on a learning curve of life, and the wise Rabbi that tenders advice in this perceived crisis of crowding.

Listening most patiently to this Tevye-look alike owner’s complaints, the Rabbi innocently offers a continuing and confounding set of suggestions and solutions on remedies to alleviate the noisy home situation.

The farmer follows the Rabbi’s admonitions to the letter, and dutifully, but with fear, the farmer adds a proliferating series of his barnyard animals to their hut home.

The family and farmer quickly find that “crowded” is a very relative term, especially when it involves the add on of this many   animals, that add immeasurably to the family’s previously limited perception of what a “crowded” house truly feels, looks and smells like.

Admittedly, at the outset, it is a man, his wife, his mother and six children; all living in one room. Things are a tad tight.

 

The hut was full of crying and quarreling.

But, can this Rabbi, to whom the man flees for comfort and advice, ease this seemingly untenable and uncomfortable situation?

Maybe.

But, it’s not the original situation that he suggests altering by deleting tenants. No. He suggests additions, instead. From a nearby shed, he suggests one by one, successive add ons of chickens, a goose, a rooster, a goat, and a cow to their hut homestead.

Can this possibly calm the human storm!

Of course not. It merely adds to the general cacophony of the crowded hut.

BUT, the wise rabbi can, and does provide, perspective as to what degrees “crowded” and “quarreling” really look, feel, and sound like.

The actual noise level of man and animal existing day-to-day, in a one-room hut is off the charts! And Margot Zemach’s illustrations brings its rambunctious reality of the constant motion of a herded household, alive for the young reader.

Not until things reach critical mass, and the reverse occurs in the way of removal of the amended animal guests, does the formerly quarrelsome, quartered family find a perfectly peaceable kingdom… by comparison to what had been… literally…animal house.

Margot Zemach’s watercolored drawings are humanity in the throes of comic crisis…all bodies in daily routine, trying to find surcease and a place of peace, in a one hut circus of cowering and crying kids and adults, along with a host of animated animals doing their thing, too. Her art, depicting the final scenes of man and mammal coexisting in one room, is riot run amok.

Hilariously human is Zemach’s artful take on the Rabbi’s solution for the age-old problem of crowding.

Absent the animals, the original household,  numbering nine, is now heavenly… and peace reigns:

                That night the poor man

                and all his family slept

                peacefully. There was no

                crowing, no clucking, no

                honking. There was plenty

                of room to breathe…

And, perhaps with it, my sampler’s simple lesson is learned by farmer and family?

                 “Holy Rabbi,” he cried, “you

                 have made life sweet for me.

                 With just my family in the hut,

                 it’s so quiet, so roomy, so

                 peaceful….What a pleasure!”

It’s a not-to-be-missed picture book lesson for young readers by the incomparable storyteller and artist, Margot Zemach, that less is definitely more…if only we realize what we have…from the outset.

A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

by Nancy Willard

I would like to kick off April, and its designation as National Poetry Month, with a great lead in poetic picture book for young readers. Here’s one that, in 1981, simultaneously won the coveted Newbery Award and had Caldecott Honor designation as well.

It’s pretty unusual, since it happens quite rarely. But it has happened again!

Not again until 2016, has it reoccurred to show how really rare such occurrences are in the world of picture books.

But, Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena, had the same effect on the ALSC some 35 years later, winning both the 2016 Newbery Award, plus the additional coup of Caldecott Honor Book Award designation.

Last Stop on Market Street is a book that teaches young readers a transformative wisdom, handed down by a grandmother to her young grandson.

And that insight is to see and hear the world with the heart, rather than merely the eye; to celebrate what we have rather than what we lack; to allow all of our senses to drink in the sights and sounds that may appear, to the youthful, unpracticed eye, a bit of a ho hum, but not so….if one has the practiced eye of the wisdom of age.  

It’s a book of generational generosity of spirit, both shared and learned, and it is quite something.

Now, let us return to the Blake book by Nancy Willard, who from her youth was a William Blake devotee. In fact, while writing this very book of poems, she built a six-foot model of the inn described and decorated it with…”moons, suns, stars and prints of Blake’s paintings. It’s said the model, with its residents, stands in her living room.

To add to the delight of this picture book are its artists; the husband/wife team of collaborative artists, Alice and Martin Provensen. How wonderful are these two artists? They’ve been on the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book List some nine times!

If your child is unfamiliar with poetry in general, and William Blake, specifically, here is a great book to begin the introductions.

Enter an under the weather seven year old, asking her sitter, a Miss Pratt, for a story with “lions and tigers.” The perfect Blake poem is quoted:

                    The Tyger

 

 Tyger, Tyger burning bright

     In the forest of the night,

     What immortal hand or eye

     Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

And, marvelously some two days later, a book arrives in the post entitled, ‘Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, with a note from the deceased author, that reads:

          Poetry is the best medicine.

          Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

                                           yrs,

                                                William Blake

Suspicion hovers over Miss Pratt as the sender, but it is denied.

Delving into the book, a young reader is enmeshed in a fifteen poem journey to the inn of Blake that involves a highly imaginative cast of characters, including Blake himself. They are, variously, to name but three, the Rabbit, King of the Cats and The Man in the Marmalade Hat!

I can think of no better journey to the land of poetry, and the prize winning art that accompanies it, than to journey with Nancy Willard and the Provensens in “A Visit to William Blake’s Inn.”

It’s a visit that stays with you more than a chocolate set out on an inn’s pillow as you turn in for the night.

And it’s a lot richer!

The Big Snow

By Berta and Elmer Hader

By all accounts, we have dodged “The Big Snow” of this 1949 Caldecott Award winning title, as spring descended on us March 21, 2016.

But, it’s a classic picture book read that is as fresh as newly fallen snow, either in 1949 or 2016. And for that reason, it’s worth sharing with your young readers, snuggled up in a cozy nook, just as the avians and animals are in this winter picture book classic.

Urbanization can sometimes lead us further from a view of nature and the life lessons it imparts, as the seasons cycle through their sequences.

But, thank goodness, young readers have Berta and Elmer Hader’s book written and illustrated to allow young readers a front row seat, urban or rural, at the prep done by animals for the advent of winter, and with it…the first big snow.

Guided by instinct and intuition, geese fly south, thickened coats grace white-tail deer and Mrs. Cottontail and her rabbit brood, along with raccoons and chipmunks are laying in supplies for the “long winter nap.” Even the skunk family takes refuge in its den before the flakes fall thick and fast, covering their habitats, that mere months ago were green with leaves. The “fat groundhog” too, has grown his new furry covering that he wears in his burrow, napping till spring that avoids the inconvenience of foraging for food. Smart!

What about the birds like the red breasted and brown male and female cardinals? Do they go south? You’d have to listen in and learn whether they do.

For it’s the chatty back and forth companionable conversations that fly among the woodland folk, that seems so natural to a reader’s ear, as the blue jay queries a cardinal couple as to their winter plans to become “Snowbirds,” as it were?

          “No, indeed,” replied the cardinals.

          We can find plenty to eat here. We

          like winter”

Song sparrows and robins are like minded with the former feasting on meadow grass seed as well as birches and ash trees.

Robins, too, plan to stick it out.

Lots of woodsy types, like the ring-necked pheasants, crows, not to mention squirrels gathering acorns on the fly, begin to naturally hunker down as winter waits in the wings.

Leave it to the wise old owl to be the harbinger of The Big Snow.

            …Then the night after Christmas

            there was a rainbow around the

            moon…The wise owls knew what

            that meant. A rainbow around the

            moon meant more snow. MUCH

            MORE.

Soon the countryside is blanketed with thick, white flakes falling fast.

Kids will love the “little old man” shoveling a path out of his stonehouse.

                He was followed by a little

                old woman dressed all in

                green. She scattered seeds,

                and nuts, and breadcrumbs,

                to right and to left.

                The cry of the blue jays echoed

                over the hillside. “Food, food,

                food,” they cried again and

                again.”

Not over quite yet, as a 1949 version of Punxsutawney Phil declares The Big Snow is not quite at an end, as he sees his shadow on February 2nd, and opines:

                  “Oh-Oh, I know what that

                  means,” he said. There will

                  be six more weeks of winter.”

                  And he hurries back to his den

                  sleep until spring.”

Spring does come at last, but the ‘little old man and the little old woman put out food for them until the warm spring came.”

What a wonderful classic picture book to introduce that genre to young  readers.

The alternating gray pencil sketches of animals in their winter habitats, alternating with other denizens fairly popping out of the Haders’ occasional color suffused pages, are a treat.

Match this with the plus of informational facts interwoven with a wonderful narrative, and young readers receive an animal shared sense of getting through the daily hardships of a prolonged winter season. No wonder it won the Caldecott in 1949!

And it’s as fresh today as it was then.

The Big Snow is a great classic picture book, beautifully done with both realistic animal wintry scenes, coupled with a gentle modeling to young readers that both man and mammal are in this world – together.

Don’t save this one for a snowy day!

It’s a great read fair weather or fowl…er foul!

Toys for Tots

When I read a recent article by author,  Naomi Schaefer Riley, on new toys for 2016  featured at the Toy Fair at the Javits Center in New York, this blog and, of course, accompanying picture books that it prompted, popped into my head.

Ms. Riley, aside from this article, by the way, has written in her recent books some very interesting observations about the current culture, and its effect on children growing up in it. I recommend them as a read.

The title of the blog “Toys for Tots” is a bit ironic in that it also happens to be the name for a notable foundation of the same name begun in 1947. It seems Marine reservist Major Bill Hendrick’s wife wanted to donate a homemade Raggedy Ann doll to a needy child, but could find no organization to help her. And the result was Toys for Tots.

It located bins outside Warner movie theaters and collected 5,000 toys! It was such a success that celebrity support came on board in the person of none other than Walt Disney himself who designed its early red toy train logo. If you look at the picture at the top, you’ll see some of the earliest toys that kids donated or received.

They were probably dolls, trucks, games and the like. Have toys changed that much as vehicles for pure imaginative play since 1947? They sure have.

Circling back to the 2016 Toy Fair, I wonder what Walt Disney and his team of imagineers would think of some of the featured toys at the Javits Center.

Imagination and play, which is the true work of “childhood,” is not high on the list in some of its featured “players”.

Take for instance the newer version of the time honored game of Monopoly. The cover letters jump off the box: Monopoly: Ultimate Banking; Own It All.

It’s been reinvented for the 21st century child. No longer do kids have the onerous task of counting out dollars. Kids now get an ATM card!

Seriously. It allows your child the supreme convenience of swiping their card to save the bother and learning the facility of a little computation and calculation of the 10% that the player owes the bank when mortgaging a property. Now, it allows then to “scan property cards and get the answer the easy way.” Sound familiar?

Did you know that American kids rank 27th in the world in math? Maybe it would make more sense to allow them the practice of counting instead of swiping.

Remember Barbie and her Dreamhouse? I have to be a bit truthful here. We were never a fan of the Barbie craze, nor were my girls. They were more into Strawberry Shortcake and her Berry Happy Home. That would have been, as I recall, a large  cottage with sweeping gables that my husband groaned and sweated over  constructing in the wee small hours of a Christmas Eve.

But the pretend play that emanated from the imaginings of “what if Strawberry Shortcake….were wonderful.

Barbie’s new house, unveiled at the Toy Fair on the other hand, is “Wi-Fi enabled, connects with an app and features voice recognition software, so kids can talk directly to the house….you make verbal requests such as telling the home to give Barbie a ride in the elevator, asking it to turn on the oven to get breakfast started  and getting the mood set for a party complete with flashing lights and spinning chandelier. Oh, I forgot, the stairs turn into a slide.

What happened to pretend?

Here’s something I found pretty stunning. A director of an Early Childhood program in New Jersey bought a set of colorful rings for her granddaughter. They actually came with a set of instructions!

What is the point of all this? Imaginative play is a natural and essential part of childhood.

In fact, as I paraphrased before, I believe it was the inimitable Fred Rogers of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood who coined the phrase, “Play is really the work of childhood”.

Creativity comes out of the childhood world of imagined play and pretending. Not only does it provide a type of autonomy for endless possibilities in play, it is also a comforting place to be with a learning curve attached.

And, that same creativity, I believe, is also derived from reading picture books that depict characters and events that allow a child’s imagination to create its own scenarios wherein they are the driving force, not the toy manufacturer.

Toys and books that allow kids to innovate, imagine and pretend are the ones parents might want to think about purchasing to nourish the minds and hearts of children and grandchildren when they are young and formative.

I think probably many Baby Boomer grandparents are already pretty much on board with this kind of hands on creative play as Boomers are the generation of play things such as coloring books, (they are making a resurgence among those same adults as a …relaxation technique), paper dolls, scissors, pasting and cutting out, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets, Silly Putty plus board games such as Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Parcheesi, and of course, the real Monopoly where you actually counted the money out and gave change.

It’s an interesting posit to wonder with each succeeding generation of toys that do everything for kids, such as the current version of Monopoly that short circuits the making of change and the counting process, is it too far a reach to assume that each generation of children then recedes further and further from using their imagination and insists on being entertained instead of doing the entertaining and imagining by themselves?

And, here are just some picture books that may be jumping off spots for featuring and modeling imaginative play while reading to, and with, a child:

   One Morning in Maine – Robert McCloskey (Caldecott Honor Book)

 

 King Jack and the Dragon – Peter Bently and Helen Oxenbury

 

The Ladybug Girl series – David Soman and Jacky Davis

 

Three Bears in a Boat – David Soman

 

Miss Maple’s Seeds – words and pictures by Eliza Wheeler

Then, just step back, as you watch, listen and let them enjoy their own imaginative play that can produce and provide hours of entertainment for them. Toys don’t have to do the work of childhood.

Toys and picture books are just along for the ride as facilitators for kids’ own imaginative adventures that thrive when  allowed to kick start the imagination!

Wonder what kinds of toys and picture books George Lucas played with and read?

I’ll just bet they allowed him to do a heck of a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to the pleasure of imagining!

Just can’t imagine where all that led!

A Tale for Easter

By Tasha Tudor

Softly tinted trademark drawings, enhanced by a dreamlike quality, are the hallmarks of this classic 1941 Tasha Tudor tale of a young girl’s run up to Easter.

Ms. Tudor, known for her pastels celebrating the joys of her rural childhood, beginning with her 1938 Pumpkin Moonshine, with its family-centered celebrations, and the winning of two Caldecott Honor book designations for Mother Goose  in 1945 and 1 is One in 1956, continues here, with family-centered freshness in A Tale for Easter.

Ms. Tudor spent her life as an artist celebrating the wildlife, landscape and traditions of her own childhood.

And through her ninety some books, she has shared it with generations of readers that perhaps, by osmosis, long to soak in a  simpler time and place that this artist captures with both sweetness and an unashamed sentiment.

In A Tale for Easter, amid a pastoral setting, young readers may peek at a tousle-haired young lady’s gently soothing interactions with nearby chickens that are given a special request for the day before Easter:

              On Saturday, you go and ask

              the chickens to lay you

              plenty of Easter eggs.

And there are hints of traditions that are part of the preparation for Easter that signals its nearness:

              It is only when Good Friday

              comes, and you have hot cross

              buns for tea, that you know for

              certain Easter will be the day after 

              tomorrow.

There is a childlike happiness and quiet calm in this young lady’s unfettered and innocent view of the burgeoning new life that surrounds author, Tasha Tudor’s look here at spring, and the holy day ahead.  

My very favorite part is the dreamlike sequence in which the young girl has the “loveliest of dreams,” with a wee fawn conveying her lightly on a springtime journey, taking in looks at leaping lambs, restful rabbits, gamboling ducks, and a host of tinted yellow, spring blossoming flowers.

If this was indeed what Tasha Tudor’s rural New Hampshire childhood was like in 1941, perhaps we need to allow our own children an imaginative picture book look back to a simpler time when the arrival of spring, its celebrations of new life abounding in nature, and the family traditions surrounding the observing of holy days, may be looked at again with the fresh eyes of a new generation of readers.

It’s a classic Easter read not to be missed.

The Night Before Easter

By Natasha Wing; illustrated by Kathy Couri

  ’Twas the night before Easter, just before dawn

  not a creature was stirring out on the lawn

    Our baskets were set on the table with care,

  in hopes that the Easter Bunny soon would be there…

Eves of holidays are usually fraught with excitement, expectation and little sleep for kids or parents.

It’s the waiting, the wondering, the watching and the wishful thinking of what the dawn will bring.

And with Easter, it’s the arrival of the Easter Bunny with his Willy Wonka-like treasure trove of brimming baskets filled with sweets, such as the traditional jelly beans, marshmallow chicks, dyed eggs and, of course, the centerpiece chocolate rabbit.

Natasha Wing’s “Night Before” books are a fun rhyming read to the familiar cadence of “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore. It takes young readers on a prequel of the events that will envelop them come Easter morning.

Here, farm kids along with night capped raccoons, frogs, red foxes, lady bugs and a mouse or two, are all asleep, awaiting the arrival of the Easter Bunny when:

         Then out in the barn

       the hens made such a clatter,

         I sprang from my bed

       to see what was the matter.

The matter is the “…big fuzzy rabbit with a crook in his ear.” And, this yearly Easter delivery bunny has a yellow chick ( if I may clarify; a baby chicken) in tow, that assists this hare with a flair for conveying confectionary delights:

          His soft fur was spotless

          from his head to his toe;

         his vest was all checkered;

         his tie in a bow.

That’s exactly how I had him pegged in my imagination when I was young; nattily dressed for his annual foray with “…his tail like cotton; his nose like a berry.”

Looks like a raspberry to me!

And not to be outdone by “chocolates and striped lollipops, the Easter Bunny has one last egg treasure hunt drop off delivery before he hops away:

             He carefully hid them

             on couches and chairs,

             the mantel, the bookshelf,

             and under the stairs.

Plus, the Easter Bunny even leaves a parting note for young readers, different from the called out refrain of Saint Nicholas, as this hare in a tear, hippity hops on to his next delivery:

           Happy Easter to all –

           and to all a great day!

Kathy Couri’s inviting depiction of a farm with red barn, replete with a cozy, comfy, and Victorian pastel cottage, complete with fish scale accents, can be seen on the cusp of spring’s most famous harbinger since the groundhog!

It’s the perfect invitational abode for a visit from the Easter Bunny.

And, Natasha Wing’s The Night Before Easter is the perfect pre bedtime read to calm kids, awaiting his arrival!

The Egg Tree

By Katherine Milhous

This classic Easter tale and winner of the Caldecott Award for best picture book in 1951, still holds up over time.

This charming tale of the emergence of a Pennsylvania Dutch Easter tradition, its retelling on a Red Hill Pennsylvania farm, and the beginnings of a family tradition spreading from a small table top tree filled with decorated eggs, to one that might have rivaled the size of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, will have your young ones saying, “Can we do that at our house?”

That’s just what happened to my now grown  girls after we read this, oh some thirty years back.

They clamored for the egg tree, post read, and it initially started as a small one tucked in a corner of the dining room with decorated eggs and beribboned in yellow, pink and lavender.

Now, it has morphed into egg filled quince branches  with gently pale pink flowers that time their bloom just in time for Easter.

The painted egg scenes in our collection have grown exponentially, and those eggs are quite the stand alone memory book, when surveyed as a whole on the branches.

And, it all started with a picture book called The Egg Tree by Katherine Milhous,  chronicling the Easter visit of young Katy  Carl and cousins, visiting their grandma’s country farm.

Kids will cotton to the idea of spreading flower petals on the lawn to attract the Easter Bunny, who happens to wander by as a real life hare, so the grand egg hunt can commence.

And, as always, with young ones, it’s a mad rush to see who can gather the most eggs. And, they are consumable ones.

Young Katy, with nary an egg in her grasp, wanders up to the attic in search of secreted ones, and there, in a lined hat is a collection of colored and painted eggs that almost rival in numbers, Carl’s swiftly scavenged collection.

And, with Katy’s discovery, grandma is happy to introduce a new generation to the art of painted eggs designs, that find their way on Easter morning, to decorations on a small tree’s branches.

Katherine Milhous has suffused her art here with softer shades of brown, blue, orange and yellow, as grandma introduces the children to the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch symbols used on the eggs, such as The Bright Morning Star, The Deer on the Mountain, The Cooing Dove, The Pomegranate, and picture book’s grandly glorious cover picture that is The Horn Blowing Rooster.

The borders that surround Ms. Milhous’s narrative are artistically Pennsylvania Dutch in feel as well.

And, most young readers will surely identify with young Katy who falls behind in the egg gathering competition count at the hunt’s outset as she is outpaced by Carl.

Yet, she gains a far more wonderful accolade from her grandma as Katy’s discovery of the stored away and painted attic eggs are a reminder of a treasured tradition that winds up jump starting it anew for another generation of children when her grandma comments:

     Katy may not have found the most

     eggs; she found the most beautiful

     eggs.

The pace and pulse of The Egg Tree is just far enough out of the frenetic feed of today’s kids, as to make it a soothing and satisfying read. The egg decorating commences with each child contributing their own artistic coloration and art to the eggs that fill the tree’s branches.

And, I love the grandmother’s gentle reminder after the initial egg decorating on Easter is complete. The rest is held in abeyance till the morrow with the simple declarative lines that say what is beautifully inferred with her “no work” dictum:

           Today we celebrate Easter.

Please let your young readers begin their own Easter egg tree tradition with the reading of this classic Caldecott winner.

But, don’t be surprised if your small table top tree continues to morph over the years into a tree where, as in the book, neighbors pop in to see and contribute to its decor.

Traditions, like those begun and enhanced by the reading of The Egg Tree, are what bind faith and family together even in 2016, some sixty-six years after its publication!

And, classic picture books and traditions they engender through continued readings, do stand up to the test of time, and perhaps they number among those many wonderful small things that kids may come to count on in times of unsettled uncertainty in the world of childhood.

Traditions are things that remain the same, providing continuity amid the changing landscape of life, and are predictably comforting to young readers, even when they are something so small, or big, as an egg tree.

The Egg Tree, in both book and branch form, lives and… thrives!

Easter

By Jan Pienkowski

This 1989 Easter picture book classic is a perfect fit for families that would like the opportunity to share with their young readers, the events of Holy Week, beginning with the procession on Palm Sunday, through the successive solemn events that unfold, with their culmination in the joy of Easter Sunday.

Taken from the King James version of the Bible, Jan Pienkowski,  an emigre from the ravages of World War II in Poland, resided variously in Bavaria and Italy before coming to England, where his artistic skills at Kings College, Cambridge, emerged.

He is twice a recipient of the coveted Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration.

In Easter, Jan uses his keen insights culled from a lifetime of observing humanity, and  hones his craft into his own visual viewpoint of this remarkable and classically unique take on a religious weeklong journey at the heart of Christianity.

And, Jan has as his instrument of telling, his trade mark black silhouetted figures outlining with their depth of profound poignancy and passion, a breathtaking look at the powerful pull of the journey taking the Christ from the hosannas of Palm Sunday, through seeming defeat and death, to glorious resurrection on Easter morning.

The praise heaped on this book from newspaper reviews to publishing critiques is uniformly high.

Here are but a few:

             A memorable, dramatic, reverent

             presentation.

                                Kirkus starred review

 

 

             The glory of the presentation is

             matched by the exquisite illus-

             trations.

                               The Baltimore Sun

 

             

             This is a masterful ode to a biblical

             story, and will give readers of any

             age a cornucopia of images to pore

             over and think about.

  

                                  Publishers Weekly

 

          

           

             Dazzling beauty and poignant

             emotion suffuse these illustrations,

             which give an intensely personal

             interpretation of the King James

             Version of the Easter Gospels.

 

                               School Library Journal

                               starred review

Jan Pienkowski, with his ability to tell stories through his own unique artistry, is a gift that both picture book readers and other admirers, have come to linger over and love.

Please enjoy this classic holiday picture book that bears sharing with a young reader, if you are looking for one allowing children, guided by their families, to share in the journey of Holy Week.

Petook : An Easter Story

By Caryll Houselander; illustrated by Tomie de Paola

I recently stumbled upon this Easter book from 1988, and recognizing the author as Caryll Houselander, spiritual author, counselor, and artist, I was doubly surprised to see its illustrator was none other than  renowned author/illustrator, Tomie dePaola.

For parents and grands looking to introduce the “new life” Christian story of the resurrection, minus some of the details that young readers may not be ready to hear, this is a book that handles it well.

Listen to Tomie’s note at the book’s rear:

                 We chose Petook because

                 of its Easter message of birth,

                 rebirth, and resurrection.

                 Petook’s joy at the emergence of

                 new life from the egg certainly

                 echoes the  joy of Christ’s

                 emergence from the tomb.

                 It also breathes new life into

                 the age-old symbol of the Easter

                 egg, helping the reader become

                 aware that it is more than just

  the tasty chocolate treat that we

 associate with Easter today.

                 Without symbols such as this,

                 Christianity becomes pale.

 

Tomie de Paola

August 15, 1987

Meet Petook, a proud and happy father of a brood of twelve newly hatched chicks in a vineyard. New mom, Martha, is just as proud:

            As for his wife Martha, the brown-

           speckled hen, plain and homely soul

           though she was, she had become all

           grand and important.

Amid all this joy and celebration, a stranger enters the vineyard. There are the clear impressions of a child’s feet coming from the road to Jerusalem. Petook’s fatherly concerns are evident:

              I am sure that they were a

              boy’s footsteps and boys are

              sometimes careless, even when

              they’re not cruel. He might tread

              on one of the chicks.

Trodden and crushed fruit in the vineyard confirms the intruder.

But, Petook need not have worried about this young visitor.

He displays gentle wonder at the sight of Martha gathering the chicks under her wings.

                His hands, which were thin

                and golden-colored, were

                spread out like protecting

                wings over Martha. His lips

                were slightly parted, his eyes

                shining. So rapt was he that

                Petook thought, “It must be

                the first time that he has seen

                a hen gathering her chickens.”

Instinctively, Petook knows that someone and something amazing visited the vineyard, and he reacts in typical rooster fashion:

                  Petook preened himself.

                  He strutted up and down,

                  and round and round. He

                  noticed every detail of the

                  day, just as people notice

                  every detail of a picture if

                  it is rare and lovely and one

                  which may not be seen again.

                  …Suddenly for sheer joy,

                  Petook lifted his head and

                  crowed.

Years pass and Petook is now quite old, and yet he is aware of something in the air on a particular day that is an unease, and in the distance is the hill of Calvary where …the three tall trunks always stood. Only when someone was to die were they there.

Ms. Houslander’s picture book does not belabor the death of the now grown young visitor of the vineyard from years before, as it is seen by Petook distantly.

His reaction is one of sadness, yet expectant hope at the new batch of chicks that wife, Martha, is about to hatch.

New life emerges from an egg for Petook and Martha on Easter morning, just as it does from another place of resurrection, seen in the distance, simultaneous to the hatchling’s arrival:

                 Petook threw back his head

                and crowed and crowed and

                crowed. His red comb burned

                in glory, the white feathers in

                his plumage dazzled in the light,

                the new chicken danced at his

                feet. He crowed again and again.

 

                     It was Easter Morning.

For young parents attempting to emphasize the holyday aspects of the celebration of Easter, here is a thoughtful picture book  allowing young readers a view of the miracle of resurrection through their faith beliefs, yet it is also mirrored and played out simultaneously in the relatable miracle of nature, providing the continuance and hope of new life.   

St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning

By Eve Bunting; illustrations by Jan Brett

Tell me how can you go wrong in your search for a St. Patrick’s Day story if it is written by an Irish lass named Eve Bunting, author of more than 200 children’s books, and illustrated in the 1980’s by the iconic, but early and undiscovered, Jan Brett? Answer: You can’t, but I do have some other books up my Aran sweater sleeve in another post to come. 

“School Library Journal” deemed it, in its review, “…. one of very few good St. Patrick’s Day stories. ”Now, I don’t know if I really concur with that narrow an assessment, but it certainly is one I would choose to say, “Top o’the mornin” with on the grand day. My reason would be that young readers will more than likely identify with the youthful Jamie.

But there are a trove of others that I could also recommend and will.

Jan Brett’s drawings are full of richly detailed illustrations, dotted with lush emerald green, golds and yellows that tell an                                                                                                                                                                              Irish tale of young Jamie on a St. Patrick’s Day morn. His wish? Simply to march with his family in the parade to Acorn Hill with flags flying, along with everyone else.

Alas, he is told he is too YOUNG!

But the juvenile Jamie and his dog Nell will not hear nay for an answer, nor will they be denied parade participation.

Instead, they commence a march all their own in the early morning light as the villagers lie abed. With his flute as accompaniment, to the very tipppity top of Acorn Hill they go.

It sort of put me in mind of a miniature reenactment, if you will, of the scene in the film, “Rocky”, as the fighter climbed those multiple sets of steps in Philly, with his arms thrust heavenward at the top.

Jamie’s own triumphal shout of “And a happy St. Pat’s to you, sun” is no less exuberant, sweet and satisfying as he reaches his own goal – the top of Acorn Hill!

Any child that has ever been told, “You’re too small to do that,” will crow with delight and identification, as you relate the triumph of young Jamie and his one man parade kick off and return. He may not be stepping off down Fifth Avenue in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s no less a triumph for this small, Irish lad and his majority of one; two if you count Nell.

‘Tis a grand tale, tis! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORoN2nnYHY0

More Irish Tales and Stories

If you’re searching for some tales on St. Patrick himself, who by the by was NOT Irish, but British, look no further than that sweet leprechaun Tomie de Paola, and his picture book, “Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland.” It’s a wonderful collection of stories of a saint that returned to the land of his Irish kidnappers – to convert them. Talk about forgiveness during the Lenten season!

And Tomie also has a slew of books that define the Irish picture book folk tale, namely “Fin M’coul: The Giant of Knockmany Hill”, “Jamie O’Rourke and the Giant Potato” and “Jamie O’Rourke and the Pookah.” Any of these are as grand as a fine Irish mist to charm your young reader.

The Quiltmaker’s Gift

By Jeff Brumbeau; pictures by Gail de Marcken

I have a friend who is a tenacious and prolific quilt maker. Makes them with both her time and talent – she then gives them away to those she loves – and to those she feels may need one.

Having been the recipient of some of her work, I thought immediately of her as I read “The Quiltmaker’s Gift.” For that is truly what they are; gifts from the heart and hand in every stitch, every pattern, every blending and choice of color, my friend, weaves love and a part of herself into her quilts.

They are all gift; freely given and gratefully received.

Which brings us to another quiltmaker in the picture book called, The Quiltmaker’s Gift.

It won the children’s Book Sense Book of the Year Award in 2000. The award, inaugurated at BookExpo America 2000, features winners in both adult and children’s books, representing combined national and local staff picks of booksellers’ favorites from more than 1200 independent bookstores.

It is a modern fable, more than appropriate for our time, when the getting of things may seem paramount, and giving, can sometimes take a back seat.

The beauty woven in this tousled white-haired quiltmaker’s quilts, is quite something to behold, and they also, like my friend’s, are given freely to those in need of a touch of the beautiful in their lives. Her woven colors are nature come alive:

The blues seem to come from the

deepest part of the ocean, the whites from the northernmost snows, the greens and

purples from the abundant wildflowers the

reds, oranges, and pinks from the most

wonderful sunsets.

And the craft she fashions from her magical fingers are not for purchase. These quilts are solely for the poor, though many line up at her door to purchase one. They are, by reputation and observation, the most wonderful in the world. And they are all giveaways:

  I give my quilts to those

     who are poor or homeless,

           she told all who knocked at her

          door. They are not for the rich.

Meet the king in his palace consumed with “consumerism,” as it were. He has  storehouses of treasures and trinkets, yet no thought of sharing the riches he has. And he has the temerity to issue a decree that he receive two birthday gifts a year from his subjects.

Problem: the quiltmaker has gifted him with nary a one, much less two!

Word reaches him of her social faux pas, and the one thing he does not possess, he believes, will make him the happiest of men.

And, of course, that would be the one thing he cannot have – one of the quiltmaker’s creations.

But she is not above deal-making with the king. If he gives away what he has, then there is a chance for a quilt in his future, as in:

          Make presents of everything

          you own, she said, and then I’ll

          make a quilt for you.

Artist Gail de Marcken allows both you and your young reader to take a wondrous walk through the king’s treasure trove of:

Things that shimmered and glittered and glowed.

Things whimsical and practical.

Things mysterious and magical.

So many things that the king kept a list

of all the lists of things he owned.

It’s nigh on to impossible for him to let go of any of it; let alone all of it.

Yet, the quiltmaker is a tenacious sort and she bargains that, as the ruler lets go of one thing, she will add one thing to his quilt. Sounds reasonable. After all, this king is on a learning curve.

Not used to being refused a request, he tries strong arm tactics through solitary confinement of the quiltmaker that finds her confined with bears as bedmates in caves, and isolation with solitary sparrows on lonely Elba’s of the king’s making.

Even here, she wins the hearts of her fellows, easing their discomfort with magical fashionings from what’s at hand.

The king relents, finally, from sheer frustration and tries it her way.

And the great giveaway commences.

It is transformative for both king and reader to see the change that comes from seeing the sheer delight on the faces of subjects that receive velvet coats, carousels, waltzing Siamese cats and more.

And with each giveaway, his quilt, as promised, begins  to take shape. But that is not all that is taking shape here.

Not content with the nearby poor, the king travels to places continents away to gift them with his treasures.

Just poring over the delicious double page  27 squares of art, depicting his foreign lands’ largesse, is a gift in itself by artist Gail de Marcken, who makes his wealth, and its sharing, come to life.

Does he return rich? No! Does he, himself, become the poor to whom he displayed hauteur, yet ultimately heaps on help? Yes!

Does he receive the most beautiful of quilts? You bet.

Yet, in his poverty, he has one more gift to endow to the quilt maker; his throne hoisted down from a “rickety rundown wagon.”

It’s just the thing for sitting while sewing.

Can you believe it?

These two form a partnership; she sews and he searches out the deserving recipients of her quilts.

I do have to say that I do have one reserve or caveat on the subtler message of this book.

While its philosophy at heart is very admirable, what happens when the king has nothing more to give away, because he himself is poor; admittedly happy, but very poor? Is destitution the sole solution to income inequality? Can he help the poor by his own pure happiness, if he has nothing left to regenerate his ability to give away to the poor, other than by becoming one of them?

Certainly I am not advocating for the famous Gordon Gekko quote in the movie, “Wall Street”, that “Greed is good”. But there is something else this picture book caused me to ponder, and, perhaps, even young readers as well.

Is a world where everyone is poor an ideal to be sought? And here’s another thought: even the rich may be in need of one of the  quilts freely given, for those rich people dismissed at her door, may be in spiritual or emotional need, though not in terms of dollars and things.

Their need may not show on the outside as much as the lack of goods, but may be every bit as real. But then, we humans do tend to judge by appearances. Hmmm.

Still, I think there is merit in the fable feel and flavor of the thoughts in this book.

And the thought is this: next time your kids ask to go to the mall for one more thing they want, but don’t need, maybe a reading of “The Quiltmaker’s Gift” is the picture book to make them more aware of things in worlds beyond their own realm, and maybe, the impetus for a small way to start to change them.

Pest in Show: The Buzz of Broadway

Music and lyrics by Victoria Jamieson

Meet a picture book that’s a literal production! And, it has narrative to be sure; but it’s in the guise of a sort of Judy Garland/Gene Kelly, “Let’s put on a Show” themed storyline.

And what do all musicals have? Why, songs of course. And, as in all musicals, it has conflict before the show opens and drama both back stage and on stage.

And here, in Pest in Show, there’s sibling rivalry afoot from the footlights as Ladybug, a diva, if ever there was one, wants a solo star turn.

The “fly in her ointment” is literally her  brother named, of course…Fly! Flies are known to be, well, pests, and the sibling known as Fly, in Pest in Show has honed his character to a fair thee well. It’s a role he was made for, and one his sister abhors!

Young readers may easily identify with either the much longed for solo role diva, or the younger one that’s always trying to literally get into the act here.

When you are the writer, producer, director AND star of your own vehicle, Ladybug naturally wants the full glare of the white hot spotlight on her alone; while Fly is anxious for a stage debut in sis’s production.

I can tell you there’s a lot of begging, bugging and wheedling on Fly’s part to well, get a part in this show of shows. He sees it as his breakout role.

Told to stay put, Fly is sticking like the veritable paper named after him. And by Act 2, when perspective hits such as “The Real Spiders” hummed to the “every kid knows it” tune of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” the one-ups-manship of these two insects kicks into high wire gear.

Act 3 sees Ladybug atop a cake singing a song named for her alone and has all the style of a Busby Berkley extravaganza with insects on each of the tiers of the cake. She’s the icing on the cake until…disaster ensues with Fly doing his own star turn on an empty hollow garbage drum he’s conveniently emptied on sis’s cake!

Super Fly is doing his own gig and drum solo to the tune of “Popeye the Sailor Man”

Can these two insects ever intersect in a show peacefully?

It takes a Finale with an all-bug dance-off. Victoria Jamieson shows young readers a  shimmying, wing flapping, foot stomping, wiggling, squiggling competition between a host of jumping and jiving insects joining in with Ladybug and Fly to see who wins.

Does exhaustion ensue? Will they be booed off the stage?

Or are two bugs better than one with a star and her more than willing co-star, named Fly?

Roger Fleabert gave it a “Six Thumbs Up!”

And if you hear your kids singing the songs, why not teach them to do Chubby Checker’s “The Fly.” It’s a kick!

Here’s how to do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8XBsNa8EwQ

The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters

By Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Remember cursive, longhand or Palmer method handwriting? Probably many of my readers were taught this method in elementary school. With the emphasis on keyboarding, this form of writing is falling by the wayside. What would John Hancock say?

His name was written large purposefully on the Declaration of Independence so King George, as Mr. Hancock tells it, could read the signature without his spectacles!

And speaking of that, could many children read the Declaration of Independence, written in cursive, as many elementary students today can neither read nor write cursively?

But that’s a post for another day.

I can vividly recall the graceful sweep of a favorite teacher’s longhand letters being written on the blackboard, as we eleven year-olds busily attempted to copy the same style in our black and white marbled notebooks.

My 6th grade teacher was writing the words to a stirring Irish ballad called “The Minstrel Boy” as a cultural pre-St. Patrick’s Day cultural lesson. I can still recall the look of the letters and the words.

And this teacher still writes handwritten notes to me. And the notes and the sentiments are very inspiring. It reinforces to me that some things in life are constant and comforting.

So it is also with the daily delivery of mail. What is that phrase? How does it go?

           Neither snow nor rain nor heat

           nor gloom of night stays these

           couriers from the swift completion

           of their appointed rounds.

These words are an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City. That’s about as close to an official creed as it gets for the United States Postal Service.

And Janet and Allan Ahlberg have a classic read that would make the postal service couriers proud.

Featuring one of their own as the deliverer of letters, their picture book has quite the literary bent, as it includes missives from and to some pretty famous picture book characters.

And what makes this book even more appealing is the inclusion of the actual letters! And they’re not just printed on a page. They’re in an actual envelope that can be opened, and the letter’s contents  read to and by young readers – with peeking allowed!

For instance, there is an apology letter from that blond house intruder, Goldilocks, as she attempts to make nice, via a note to The Three Bears. Please pardon the spelling and punctuation blips. She tries.

            I am very sorry indeed that I

            cam into your house and ate

           Baby Bear’s porij. Mommy says

           I am a bad girl I hardly eat any porij

           when she cooks it she says Daddy

           says he will mend the littel chair.

Hansel and Gretel’s witch receives a full page ad from the Hobgoblin Supplies Ltd. They sure do stand behind their products:

            Everything for the modern witch.

            Delivered to your door or den.

            Covens provided for.

I love the offered “cup and sorcerer tea service” that washes itself and the “easy-clean non-stick cauldron set” advert with free recipe for toad in the hole!

Wonder if it’s anything like egg in a hole? The giant in Jack and the Beanstalk and the Wolf in Grandma’s clothing in Little Red Riding Hood, are sent letters, though some are a bit threatening with a tone of legalese, as in the following to the wolf:

            We are writing to you on behalf

            of our client, Miss Riding-Hood,

            concerning her grandma. Miss Hood

            tells us that you are presently

            occupying her grandma’s cottage

            and wearing her grandma’s clothes

            without this lady’s permission.

Young readers will have fun opening and reading the letters.

My favorite letter is addressed in a lovely longhand in gracefully looped letters to:

               H.R.H Cinderella

               The Palace

               Half Kingdom Road

Inside the envelope is a note to the newly married royal couple, touting the recent publication from The Piper Press and Peter Piper himself of… “a little book for young readers in celebration of your marriage to H.R.H. Prince Charming.”

Included in the envelope is a small version of Cinderella’s storybook change from parlor maid to princess!

And, if you enjoy this picture book, try The Jolly Christmas Postman from this best selling husband/wife team of author/illustrators named Janet and Allan Ahlberg.

And, did you know there’s another classic fairy tale favorite by these favorites of mine? Only it’s in “I spy” mode, and titled “Each Peach, Pear, Plum.”

Young readers will have fun locating fairy tale folk such as Tom Thumb and that famous trio of bruins.  It’s sure to please.

But for now, this classic picture book first issued in 1986 has my stamp of approval all over it!

Olympig!: The Triumphant Story of an Underdog!

By Victoria Jamieson

After Super Bowl 50, there were floods of sports’ analysts, as well as fans, commenting in the media, concerning the post game interview conduct of losing quarterback, Carolina Panthers, Cam Newton.

Never having played on a professional sports team that reaches the zenith of competing for football’s ultimate victory, and with it, the coveted Lombardi Trophy, it’s hard for me to gauge the depth of Cam Newton’s feelings at the loss of it.

But, I do think there were many young readers watching that interview, and I have to wonder what they took away from it.

Let’s face it; today many of the role models for youth are primarily rock stars and sports figures.

Vince Lombardi, famed football coach, for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named, is credited with the famous saying:

            Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only

 thing.

Sounds like Cam Newton’s less than stellar behavior and sulky demeanor was then justified? Maybe not. Because what Coach Lombardi meant by that quote, he later clarified, was the following: that each and every time that you compete, you give 100% effort each and every time you do. And that if you do that, then there is nothing that you need be ashamed of, as you exit the field.

Maybe someone should have reminded Cam Newton of that Lombardi philosophy after his interview, so he could have amended his demeanor just a bit.

I found a picture book by Victoria Jamieson that you may want to read to young competitors before they next stroll out on a field, dive into a swim lane, or skate onto an ice rink in competition.

It’s called Olympig!

This porcine performer, named Boomer, has been training his entire life “for one moment: the chance to win Gold at the Animal Olympic Games.”

And, he has the added burden of being the first pig to compete in the Animal Olympics. That’s a pretty heavy weight for any ham’s hocks to handle.

With a special costume knitted by mom, and his practice schedule priming him for a win, this is one self-assured swine:

            “Oh, I’m sure I will win!” said

            Boomer. “If you practice and try your

            best, you can do anything.

Olympic glory fills his dreams the night before and with these words echoing in his pointed ears, he enters the competitive arena:

              Hard work and practice

              make an Olympic champion.

Boomer is a mere sprint away from realizing his dream, as he lines up with cheetahs, panthers, tigers, zebras and other faster-than-fast types. Uh, Boomer, can we talk?

He is waving at the crowd when reality hits him. The race is over and he has barely started as he’s covered in the dust of his competitors, zooming to the finish line ahead of him.

        Boomer took the loss pretty well.

“Well” is not a pretty sight as Boomer collapses in a heap of heaving tears.

Oh well! Not to be deterred by a camera close-up from a sports analyst that queries to his face:

             Do you think this was all a

             big mistake? asked Mr. Hamstring

Mistake? Hey, that’s the key word Boomer settles on. It’s all some huge mistake. Cheering up and on to the next event …and the next…and the next…all with the same result.

Boomer is not taking this well at all. He’s in high dudgeon, with cries of:

             Lawsuit, buddy!

             This is an outrage!

             You cheated!

             You like them better me!

Are you blind?

 I demand a recount!

In the white hot media spotlight, Boomer’s mom remains proud of her son’s efforts, and reaffirms her love, despite his abysmal behavior, post loss.

May I just comment as an observer, that cannonball into the pool at the dive competition was not your proudest moment, young Boomer.

But wait, there is ONE more event to go; the gymnastics Grand Finale.

Is there hope?

Tangling, tumbling and toppling over mats and beam boards, this pig is trying his darndest to bring home Olympic Animal Gold and glory.

But that final swoop into the Olympic flame,  landing on the analyst, Mr. Hamstring, clinches Boomer’s place in Olympic history as the lowest scorer…ever!

Think this bit of media menacing news can keep Boomer down as he is asked by Mr. Hamstring for his final words to the viewers at home?

Mic in hoof, he does have words for those at home:

           Well, Hammy, maybe I didn’t win

           a gold medal today, said Boomer,

           but I realized something very

           important. I realized …today has

           been terrific practice for the WINTER

OLYMPICS!

Sometimes kids…and adults… have to learn how to lose gracefully…as well as win  laurels and laudatory cries from congratulatory crowds and the press.

Victoria Jamieson has created a character   parents and young readers may recognize as they filter their way through the local organized sports culture of their young ones.

It can sometimes overemphasize competition as a end in itself, and that anything less than a win, teaches these young athletes nothing.

Ever hear of a high school football coach named Bob Ladouceur?

His little known De La Salle Spartan team from Concord, California, had an unbelievable 12-year, 151 game winning streak that ended at a game with the scoreboard showing 39-20.

The movie’s impact is felt not only in how the team handles both unparalleled  success, but how it navigates failure.

Bob Ladouceur’s head and heart is consumed in the film with not merely molding players for a team; he is shaping future fathers, entrepreneurs, CEO’s and just solid character in young men who need to learn not just plays from a playbook for a football game, but how to do broken field running in a game called life!

His team’s experience is played out in a great 2014 movie called, “When the Game Stands Tall” staring actor, Jim Caviezel. Listen to these quotes of Coach Ladouceur:

        It’s not how hard you fall.

        It’s how you get up.

 

 Failure is never final.

It’s a great movie that models behaviors for kids that last a lifetime of overcoming not winning every time out. And hey, that would be…life!  

Character is shaped sometimes in defeat as well as in victory, and I would not count out Boomer…or Cam Newton!

Colors for Zena

By Monica Wellington

Monica Wellington, who teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, knows a thing or two about appreciating and identifying colors. And she has created a colorful picture book friend named Zena, to help young readers do the same, in Colors for Zena.

For those of a certain age, you may remember the color blocked squares in a chart on the wall at school, with the identifying word writ large above or below the splash of color.

Ms. Wellington’s Zena is on an adventure in the real world, capturing color visually in all  she sees around her on a rambling roadside tour.

Starting at home with the “absence of color,” in a black and white house and clad in the same tones of clothing, Zena is out the door with her pooch to find colors, as she calls:

         Where did all the colors go?

Ms. Wellington has picked things that kids might come in contact with in their everyday world. My one quarrel might be not the ubiquitous yellow school bus that all kids will easily recognize, but that not all small hamlets might have yellow taxis tooling around town.

But, the bright yellow orb of a sun and the yellow flowers blooming away in The Sunny Flower Shop more than make up for this!

Red fire trucks race down the road with lights flashing, and an orange maned lion joins Zena on her romp as she insists on more colors.

It’s a clever introduction for young readers that teaches the blending of colors to make new ones via Zena’s link up with the lion:

        “I am yellow and red mixed together,”

roars the lion.     

Blue skies and streams cross paths with Zena and her ever changing hat color as she comes in contact with the color palette including green that croaks via a jumping frog that ribbits:

  I am blue and green mixed together,

 croaks the frog.

Ms, Wellington has fashioned a walk with Zena for young readers that introduces the basic colors, then blends of the original red, yellow and blue.

My favorite blend is the purple dragon that announces:

      “I am a red and blue mixed together,”

rumbles the dragon.

Zena’s rainbow colored hat atop her head, greets her new friends at a paint party making a “beautiful picture with all the colors in the world.”

Anything is possible in Zena’s color-filled world. And, snuggled at the end of the day with the collaborative and newly painted picture on her bedroom wall, she is joined for a colorful cuddle by all her painter partners: her own black and white dog, green frog, orange lion, and purple dragon.

Zena even gets to wear a crown to bed fashioned of all the colors she’s met and painted.

If you have a young one at home that craves color and wants a picture tutorial on the same, a walk with “Colors for Zena” may just enliven both your worlds the next time the two of you are out for a stroll.

*And speaking of color, please check out this song called, “Think Pink,” sung by a force of nature and pure talent, named Kay Thompson. It’s from the Fred Astaire/Audrey Hepburn musical called “Funny Face.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbxXA70gvrA

Always Remember

By Cece Meng; illustrated by Jago

Nature is a great instructor on how to navigate life. There are things you can control and things you can’t. And, sometimes you have to know when to let go, and what to accept, as it is.

We spend a life gathering in and accumulating, yet perhaps we need to focus more on the ability to let go.

Everything and everyone that touches us leaves an imprint and a memory.

And those memories are the things that last.

How to explain to young readers about the letting go in death that may touch their lives? The picture book can be a wonderful primer here.

I remember a priest friend of mine saying, “So long as a person’s name is spoken, they will be remembered and never forgotten.”

I found that profound.

So when I chanced on Always Remember, that quote struck home again, for this picture book evokes that very feeling and theme.

Cece Meng’s picture book touches on the passing briefly of Old Turtle. I say briefly, because it is not the passing that is the focus of the book, though there is sadness among his friends at his loss.

But the focus is definitely on the gifts of friendship and fraternal fatherliness that he left in his wake. Each of his sea friends in turn recalls an intervention or kind deed that allowed them to grow and thrive.

Young turtles recall swimming lessons, a hump-backed whale remembers the pleasant companionable Old Turtle swimming side by side with him, sea otters reconnect with moments shared with someone that loved to dive and play with them, dolphins dove with Old Turtle as they together probed the darker and deeper waters in the ocean, and a small storm tossed star fish remembers Old Turtle’s efforts to find and bring her home.

My particular favorite is the memory of the manatee:

                 When Old Turtle found a

                 manatee tangled in a fishing

                 net, he snipped and pulled

                 and would not stop until the

                 manatee was free.

                 The manatee told the story to

                 his children, and they told the

                 story to their children.

 

                 Old Turtle would never be

forgotten.

And it is in this role that we play in each others lives as teachers, friends, explorers, and simple sharers of moments of fun, that we create a kind of eternity for a person.

  He showed kindness and strength

  And he made his world a better place.

  When he was done, the ocean took him back.

  But what he left behind was only the be-

  ginning.

Cece Meng has given young readers a pretty profound look at loss, unafraid to look at it, yet allowing kids to focus more on a person’s legacy, in who they were, how they touched us, and what they can take forward into their lives from other lives shared with them.

Jago’s complementary images of the ocean depth in muted colors, of the ocean creatures and occasional bursts of contrasting light, set a mood and tone that is respectful and ruminative for the reader.

Loss, be it pet or person, touches kids soon or late.

But, isn’t it pretty wonderful that there are picture books to read with them as they experience it, that lets them know that others feel as they do and that people do live on – as long as their deeds and gifts to us, live in memory and in us.

Remember to speak their names…often.

Three Bears in a Boat

By David Soman

Three seems to be the magic number for bears when it comes to adventure, whether it involves a gal named Goldilocks, a famous home intruder, or here, in David Soman’s salty sea tale of losing and finding.

Famous for their New York Times Bestseller picture books, he and Jacky Davis conceived the wildly successful Ladybug Girl picture book heroine.

But here, in Three Bears in a Boat, is an adventure piloted by Mr. Soman solo, and it steers true north to a great story featuring  some pretty young winsome and wooly bears that model “bear behaviors” that both kids and parents may pretty quickly recognize as very human.

Think mischief while Mama bear is away. Think broken treasured blue seashell. Think young bears ruminating… How do we get out of this without Mama Bear finding out?

And Mr. Soman has found the formula for a fascinating bear sea saga that comes full circle… back home. The stops along the way are the best part in any story, and the stops here are magical.

The imaginative folk that the salty bears at sea meet and greet are funny, fierce and founts of wisdom.

Be you bruin or human, when in a pickle, it’s always a pretty good idea to consult an adult. And they do. My favorite is the sage and seafaring pipe smoking, tattooed bear:

              A ways over yonder, he told

              them, is an island shaped like

              a lumpy hat. On that island, there

              may be a seashell, a beautiful

              blue one. It could be underwater,

              or in the tallest tree, or on the very

              top of the mountain. It might even

              be hidden in a cave. I’m not dead

              certain, but, if you look in the right

              place, I reckon you’ll find it.

When word and image are matched seamlessly in a picture book, it sort of reminds me of a casting director in a movie that we love, picking just the exact character actor to play a pivotal part in a movie that you love. For if that piece were missing, we’d see the whole in a completely different light.

Just as in the classic Wizard of Oz, how often do our young Dorothys of the world wander far, only to realize that what they flee from, and its importance in their lives, can only be felt, dealt with, and recognized when they face it head on.

It’s nearness is closer than they may imagine.

And so it is with the three bears and their finding of the replacement blue seashell.

Confession they say is good for the soul, and owning up to what we’ve done, and the realization that our actions do have consequences beyond ourselves is a good lesson for young readers that David Soman has fashioned with both charm and clarity.

The bears’ realization that the shortest way home is to tell the truth… about who you are and what you’ve done is a fine conscience soother and learning curve for young readers…via three bruins on a quest for a blue seashell that lies on their own shore.

Home is the place where they have to take you in.

And that is always the best part of any story with a hug and forgiveness as its ending.