Picture books for the fall

Where did October go? Somehow the picture books are piling up, so here are a few to start with!
Monsters are big in books for young readers and listeners. Here are two new ones:

Some Monsters are Different by David Milgrim

A book of opposites told from the perspective of silly, colorful monsters.  Beginning with “Some monsters are afraid, some are not…” and continuing, “Some monsters like to play outside, some like it outside.” The tale goes through many ways that monsters are different, but ends with “All monsters are absolutely, positively, completely, perfectly wonderful…just the way the way they are!” A lesson we need to keep on learning every single day.

Monstergarten by Daniel J. Mahoney, pictures by Jef Kaminsky

 

One of my favorite new books is  When it Snows by Richard Collingridge

 

A small boy holding his teddy bear is in for an adventure at the first snow. What starts out as a realistic story about the first snowstorm, turns into a magical walk/ride over the fields and through a forest, ending up at what looks like Santa’s village in the north pole. The look of delight on the boy’s face is pure magic in itself. While the story line is extremely brief, with very few details, the magic of the illustrations reminds me of The Polar Express. Read this one in December!

Another story that appeals to the adult as well as the child is  This Is Our House by Hyewon Yum

The story of a house that is passed from one generation to the next. The grandparents and mom are Korean American and the dad looks to be of Irish heritage. The narrator is a young girl telling about the house where her Mom was born, grew up and went away to college. Then the cycle starts again when her Mom and Dad moved into the same house and began their own family. Refreshing look at a simple story with Asian characters. 

And finally, one for the 2 year old in your heart as well as your home: 

Patch by David Slonim

A young, blond boy narrates this story of his relationship with his dog, Patch. Patch is a mutt who is not very obedient and even pees on the floor. But, the little boy loves him anyway, in spite of his less than stellar doggie performance. For any boy who has loved a dog, this book is a perfect companion. The artwork consists of simple line drawings with dabs of bright watercolors, very eye-catching and appropriate for the topic.

Currently reading

Five books make up my current reading list; rotating these around make an interesting week. In no particular order, I am enjoying:

 

This year's Newbery winner. I had this on my kindle, but had only read a few pages. Then I heard Katherine Applegate talk about the book at the National Book Festival. It is a great book for kids, told from the viewpoint of Ivan, the gorilla. It also speaks to the plight of circus/entertainment animals and how they should be treated. (I recently read  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by  Karen Joy Fowler, a totally different story, but some similar issues with animals that are used in research, particularly chimpanzees.)

 

Zealot got a lot of press when Aslan was interviewed on Fox News and the newswoman was totally rude to him about his credentials and ability to write a book about Jesus. He explains in the beginning that this is an attempt to write about the historical Jesus, not the biblical Jesus. His explanation of Jewish and Palestinian history has been very interesting so far. I am looking forward to see what he has to say about Jesus, the man. 

My mystery fix for the week. Laurie King's books about Sherlock Holmes' much younger wife are great distracting fiction. Mary Russell is undercover with a film crew in Lisbon and Morocco, where they are making a silent film (1920s) about the Pirates of Penzance being taken over by real pirates. Not the best book in this series, but certainly worth reading to keep up with the character. 

After reading A Woman's Education, I am excited to read her book about growing up in Australia and how she ended up getting a PhD at Harvard. What a good writer. I once heard someone say that she wished she could eat the songs that Sting sings. That's how I feel about Conway's writing. They are food for the brain, the soul and would be delicious if we could eat them!

And last but not least: 

Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Danny Danziger

A series of short essays about dozens of MMA employees. I love the enthusiasm they all display from the director to curators to the plumber who takes care of the 70+ toilets located all over the museum. A fun way to lean a little about art and to hear how people ended up doing a job that they love!

 

 

Mystery, anyone?

I have always loved mystery/detective books, probably starting with the Nancy Drew series. I remember bringing stacks of them home from the library with my sister. We would devour them! What a great introduction to the genre. Here are three of my favorite mystery writers today:
Laurie King:
She has some stand alone books, but her main line is a series of books about Mary Russell, a young woman who marries Sherlock Holmes when he is a relatively old man. The books are well-researched and well written in the voice of a woman from the early 20th century who is not easily cowed, even by the great Sherlock! Here is a link to Mary Russell's blog where she talks about her life and her "literary agent" Laurie King: http://maryrussellholmes.com/

Elizabeth George:
An American woman writing detective mysteries about New Scotland Yard? That's our Elizabeth! She carries off the genre of English detective work as if she were a native. Many of you may know these works as Detective Lynley series on PBS, where they do a very good job of conveying the writing that she has done in this genre. In this series, George develops her characters intensely and makes sure that the readers know the relevant background; we see them grow over the years and if you have not read any of these, start at the very beginning! Here is a link to her homepage: http://www.elizabethgeorgeonline.com/

For the last one, I had to almost toss a coin, as there are many that I love, but I finally settled on Julia Spencer Fleming who writes about a female Episcopal priest who serves in a small town in upstate New York and helps the chief of police solve crimes. Clare is not a perfect woman, in spite of being a priest and the series has delved into many current dilemmas, including racial relations and immigration. Here is the link to her home page as well: http://www.juliaspencerfleming.com/

All three of these talented ladies have new books coming out soon, ensuring that I will not run out of reading material anytime in the near future!!

Picture books that sparkle with words!

Here are a few picture books that you will enjoy reading as much as the kids will enjoy listening!

 

Odd Duck by Cecil Castellucci and Sara Varon

A story of friendship in words and pictures about two ducks, both a little odd, who find each other. Along the way, you will learn about stars, constellations, and some wonderful expressions: general malaise, heavy heart, and off key just for starters! Great story and wonderful pictures. 

How to bicycle to the moon to plant sunflowers by Mordicai Gerstein

Did you ever want to travel in space? Here is the book for you. Step by step, how to get to the moon using equipment you will find in your own home or neighborhood, including 238,900 miles of used garden hose. Once you have ridden your bicycle up this garden hose to the moon, wearing a borrowed space suit from NASA, it makes perfect sense to plant sunflowers. Then, when you get home, you can watch their progress to see if they are growing on the moon. Have fun!

Papa’s Mechanical Fish by Candace Fleming, pictures by Boris Kulikov

Set on the shores of Lake Michigan, and based on a real inventor, this tells the story of how apa kept trying until he invented a workable submarine, which the US Navy was not interested in. told from the viewpoint of his oldest daughter, there are some cute touches, like how she keeps giving Papa encouragement and how Mama is always there to quietly pick up the pieces. 

That’s a possibility: a book about what might happen by Bruce Goldstone

Written in simple language, possible, impossible, probable and improbable are all explained with great examples and illustrations. Simple enough at the beginning for very young learners, but increasingly complicated to hold the attention of children up to 4^th or 5^th grade. A great book for homeschoolers, with lots of fun things to try. This is a must for any math teacher.

Claudia Mills

I wish I could write like Claudia Mills. She is the perfect early chapter book writer. Here latest, Kelsey Green, Reading Queen, was about me as a little girl, the girl who would rather read than do anything else, the girl who would hide her book under the edge of the desk so she could read when the teacher was droning on about something else.
Kelsey is a well rounded youngest child who loves to read and is excited when her school has a reading competition. She competes with another excellent reader in her class, the dreaded Simon, who is good at everything and might just be cheating. Over the course of this short story, the reader has a glimpse of Kelsey's life at home, at school and with her friends. She helps a fellow third grader who does not like to read because he can't do it well, she tries to prove Simon is a cheater, but is pleasantly surprised to find that he is not and that he also loved The Secret Garden, and she yells at her family but is quickly forgiven. The perfect book for those early readers. Thanks for writing, Claudia!

 

Check out Claudia's website for a list of her other wonderful books! http://www.claudiamillsauthor.com/

More Poetry for Children

Here are some great books with rhyming and free-verse poetry:

Boom! Boom! Boom! By Jamie Swenson, pictures by David Walker

A thunderstorm and a rhyming counting book, it doesn’t get any better than this! My first choice for reading to my two year old grandson.

Sing, sing a song by Joe Raposo, illustrated by Tom Litchtenheld

Beautifully illustrated with little birdies trying to sing and being inspired to music by a small boy playing a guitar and singing. An afterword from Nick Raposo, the son of the songwriter, tells how the song was written as a song about self-acceptance for Sesame Street. Great rendition of an old favorite!

 

If you want to see a whale by Julie Fogliano, pictures by Erin E. Stead

Written as a free verse poem, this tells you what to do and what to not do if you want to see a whale. Lyrical text and soothing pictures. If you want to read a good book, check this one out. 

 

Pug and Other Animal Poems By Valerie Worth, pictures by Steve Jenkins

Jenkins is known for his realistic pictures of animals and this is no exception. From the dachshund that takes up two pages to the Bengal tiger, the illustrations are both realistic and detailed. The poems are fun to read and would make a good text for teaching free verse poetry. Example: GEESE:  Then they/ Wavered away/ Down the cold/ Sky, with cries/ Like grieving;/ Now, we/ Hear in those/ Same high voices/ Returning, a noisy/ Rejoicing!

Romance for the young and young at heart

Have your read any Rainbow Rowell? She writes romance stories for young adults, but she leaves out the messy stuff, just sweet love, memories and very readable introspection.

In Eleanor and Park, Rowell explores first love, school outcasts, bullying and family violence. She tells her story in two voices with both Eleanor and Park describing the thrill of their first love, and she protects Eleanor from her abusive step-father, providing a way for her to run away. It would be hard not to love this charming story.

 

In Attachments, the characters are a little older, late 20s, and they have typical 20 something issues: finding a job that is inspiring, working on a marriage, first baby, realizing that the love of your life is not the love of your life. Lincoln has a job reading filtered emails at a newspaper office. He has to lay down the law when people use sexual or otherwise inappropriate language. But, he can't bring himself to censer Beth and Jennifer who write pithy emails to each other frequently. As Lincoln comes to know more about their lives, he falls in love with Beth, having never laid eyes on her. 

Keep going Rainbow, I love your work!

 

Graphic Novels for Intermediate and Middle School

Graphic novels for middle and high school are becoming ever more popular. In general, these novels seem to appeal more to boys than to girls and have a great deal of violence within them, as well as a high degree of fantasy. I personally find the graphic novel a little more difficult to read because I have to make myself pay attention to the words as well as the pictures and I am grounded in the genre of words only, making it a little more difficult to attend to the pictures as well.

Here is a sampling of the graphic novels that have been published in the last year. It is not exhaustive by any means, but just shows a little of what is out there. I have read some of these, but others I have simply skimmed to see how the story is told and what the focus of the book is. 

 

Many of  these books are similar to Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Jeff Kinney).  They are a mix of pictures and stories, so not exactly a graphic novel in the sense that they do not look like a “comic.” In this category are the two by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, telling the story of two characters and their adventures. These two have the added feature of being inanely silly, with liberal splashes of puns throughout (ie, the Thirteen Story Treehouse, a play on words from the very start.)Stuck in the Middle of Middle School: A  Novel with Doodles by Karen Young is another example of this, with the added feature of being a facsimile of a diary, very popular with the middle school set. None of these three are books that I would go out of my way to purchase or share with young people.  But, keep reading, the good ones are out there.

Some of the books are told in comic fashion to appeal to younger readers who may not be up to reading a full on novel. Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke is one of these. Zita began her adventures in the first volume. She ended up in outer space because of her own bullying behavior toward one of her friends and now she is stuck and cannot get back to earth. But, at least she is a hero to her fellow space-nuts. Humans, outer space aliens and robots are all represented here and as Zita travels through space, she learns lessons in how to interact and be kind to all of these creatures. Having a young girl as the hero in this series is genius and it has appeal to both genders, showing Zita to be strong and brave and someone who is capable of big mistakes as well. The story told in words and pictures is as strong as Zita and carries the reader easily between planets.

Just as the diary format works for the younger set, the format of a memoir works for the high school readers. Lucy Knisley uses this format extremely well in Relish: My Life in the Kitchen. She draws on a memory from her childhood or adolescence and portrays it in traditional comic book fashion. Each memory is connected to a culinary delight that concludes each section as an illustrated recipe. Anyone with an interest in food or memoir will be delighted with this book.

Totally out of my genre preference are graphic novels telling a story of fantasy, often involving violence and creatures from another time and place. While Zita could be in this category, the lack of violence means she is not in this league. Curses, Foiled Again by Jane Yolen and Broxo by Zack Giallongo are both somewhat gory, one futuristic and one set in the past. Yolen sets the genre on its head by featuring a young woman who is both smarter and stronger than her male counterparts as the lead. Neither of these stories held my interest, largely because they are not the genre I normally choose to read.

And finally, Victory, Resistance book 3 by Carla Jablonski and Leland Pruvis

is historical fiction told through the genre of graphic novel. Set in France in the waning days of World War II, the story of a family with members who react differently to the pressure that the Germans put on many French people. This explores an interesting question: for those who seemed to be collaborating with the enemy, who can know if they were acting complicit in order to get information to share or if they were traitors to their country. In the end, everyone (or almost everyone) claimed their actions were done in some way to help their countrymen. While historical fiction is not my favorite genre, it is much preferred to violent fantasy. I was pulled in by this story and by the overarching question of what is collaboration and what is resistance, as well as how far can the resistance go without exposing innocent countrymen to the ultimate risk. 

For reviews of more graphic novels, check out this great blog where comics and graphic novels are reviewed: http://goodokbad.com/index.php/about/

 

More Picture Books

 

Building our House by Jonathan Bean

The story of how a young family moves to the country and builds their own house. I couldn’t stop thinking of our cousins in Sweden who built their house just a few short years ago. The author states at the end that he based the story on memories and pictures of when his parents built the family home. Who will tell the story of Gunnar and Ann-Helene’s house in Nykvarn? We’ll have to wait and see.

 

The Bear in the Book by Kate Banks, pictures by Georg Hallensleben

Can you say postmodern? While the pictures are inviting and the story is sweetly told, I found this just a little bit weird. A young boy and his mother sit down for a good night story. The mother picks his favorite book, one about a bear, and as she opens the pages, the reader sees the story along with the boy and his mother. On each page, the story progresses and the boy and his mother talk. Some pages show the illustrations from the story book and some show the boy and his mother looking at the book. The bear hibernates and the boy sleeps. The end.

 

Leave Your Sleep, a Collection of Classic Children’s Poetry with music by Natalie Merchant and pictures by Barbara McClintock

(Click on the picture of Merchant to visit her website and see the poems and listen to some of her songs. You'll love them!)

These poems are delightful and the music is enticing. Some poems are familiar, like The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson, and some are less so like The Sleepy Giant by Charles Edward Carryl, about an old giant who used to eat little boys and now regrets it. The poets are all white and almost all male, so perhaps Merchant can be encouraged to find more poems by women or people of color as she certainly will want to do a sequel to this delightful collection!

Picture books for the young and not so young

 

Who has this tail? By Laura Hulbert, illustrated by Erik Brooks

Repetitive language asks “who has this tail?” followed by the animal and what the tail is used for. For example, “A shark uses its tail to push itself through the water.” Throughout the book, no gender pronouns are used, so all the animals could be male or female. The illustrations portray the animals within their natural habitat; from desert to ocean, beauty abounds. Perfect for 2 to 5 year olds who are interested in animals or the kindergarten set who are memorizing books.

 

Frog Song by Brenda Z. Guiberson, illustrated by Gennady Spirin

A short story of 11 frogs around the world, the songs they sing and how they protect their eggs. My favorite was the Darwin’s frong in Chile; the male holds tadpoles in his vocal sacs for seven weeks. “Then he gives a big yawn, and little froglets pop out.” The frogs are drawn realistically and their surroundings are illustrated with flora and fauna from the country being described. This beautiful concept book is finished off with a bibliography as well as several websites where we can find more information about frogs. Excellent for upper elementary children who love to learn about animals.

 

Snowboy 1, 2, 3 by Joe Wahman, illustrated by Wendy Wahman

A counting book for winter, with a slightly off-kilter rhyme. While the pictures and words tell a story, it is hard to follow would take a lot of direction to make sure children are following the story line. Reading it just for the joy of counting and rhyming would be the best option.

 

Trixie Ten by Sarah Massini

Another counting book, with ten brothers and sisters, all drawn with thumbprints. Trixie Ten is tired of her brood of brothers and sisters, all with their disturbing and distinguishing noises: burps, hiccups, sneezes and giggles among them. So she runs away only to discover the world itself is noisy and she is lonely without her siblings.

When they come to find her, she is ready to go home. The story line is more conventional, easy to follow and perfect for family or play groups who might be getting annoyed with one another over silly things.

Why I didn’t like J. K. Rowling’s new book for adults, even though I wanted to love it!

 

Casual Vacancy is set in a small town in the U. K., not too far from London, but far enough to be somewhat isolated. Next to the town of Pagford is a low-rent district called Fields, originally established by the neighboring town, but now somehow the responsibility of the good people of Pagford. And that’s where the first problem comes in: there are no good people of Pagford. Virtually every person portrayed by Rowling in this book has major character flaws, they are mewling and back-biting and drunk and drug addicted; they are mentally ill and physically unappealing and abusive and mean-spirited and vindictive. They are just plain hard to like. Some, very few, might have a few redeeming qualities, but their faults are so loudly portrayed, it was hard to see. And the man who dies in the first chapter was apparently very likeable, but he’s dead. So, just over 500 pages of unlikeable characters and I had to ask myself why did I read the whole thing?

Well, it was by Rowling and I loved Harry Potter and all his sequels. And there were shades of Rowling’s skill throughout the book. She writes well, she draws you into the story, she portrays characters with aplomb, even if those characters are unlikable.

The second reason I did not like this book is the story. These mean, malicious townspeople spend their days trying to get rid of the responsibility of Fields. They do not want the children of Fields to be educated with their children; they do not want the people of Fields to go to the same clinics they go to; they do not want to have to see the detritus of humanity in their backyards and they are not afraid to own up to their betrayal of this humanity.

Not only were there shades of Rowling in the portrayal of the characters, some of whom resembled the most despicable of those found in the Potter books, but her craft was also evident in the multiple storylines and the careful plotting of the story.

While I did not like this book, I still love Rowling as an author and I would probably read most anything she wrote. I would just encourage her to write more fantasy because her view of reality is too scary for me.