Month: August 2009

Papa Is a Pirate

| Tasha

Papa Is a Pirate by Katharina Grossman Hensel

When a little boy wonders what his father did today, he gets a big surprise.  Because his father is claiming that he is a pirate captain.  Could it be?  Yes, he bikes to work, but that’s just until he reaches the harbor and his pirate ship.  He claims wooden legs are “a nuisance” and that Petey the parakeet has the heart of a parrot.  Papa has great tales about his adventures, including sea monsters!  Could it be that he is really telling the truth?  You will just have to read the book and decide for yourself.

Hensel nicely creates a story where you believe one thing and the illustrations show another.  Her prose reads aloud fluidly and is filled with humorous touches.  My favorite is that the pirates make money by putting on pirate shows for cruise ships.  The tone here is light and fun but still filled with adventure and story telling.  Hensel’s illustrations are just as humorous as the text.  From a cross-section of the pirate ship complete with stored birdseed for the parrot to the appeal of a cozy shared hammock chock full of sleeping pirates the illustrations offer a homey and welcoming view of life aboard a pirate ship.

Fresh and friendly, this is a great pirate book for young readers who will end up asking themselves if perhaps their parents are pirates during the day!  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from library copy.

Lesley Blume’s List of Must-Read Children’s Books

| Tasha

With a focus on the classics, Blume (author of Tennyson) has created quite the list of must-read children’s books plus a great interview on NPR.  The list has a few of my personal favorites and others that I agree with, and some that make my head tilt in a questioning way.  Meaning that it is a good list!

Here are my favorites on the list, all of them straight from my own childhood reading:

The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

AND MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE:

Watership Down by Richard Adams

My mother read this aloud to my brothers and me at breakfast.  Twice.  Maybe more.  Bigwig…  Sigh.  I remember us all listening with rapt attention and tears streaming down our faces.  It was truly transporting.  And what a joy to see it on this list.

My Forever Dress

| Tasha

My Forever Dress by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Liz Murphy.

A little girl has a grandmother who is very good at sewing.  Each year, the grandmother makes her a special dress.  The little girl gets to pick the fabric and help in other ways like pressing the pedal on the sewing machine.  The next year, the grandmother and the little girl discuss being more eco-friendly.  So they reuse the dress and add pink leggings to make it more of a smock.  The year after that, the dress is too small to wear any more, so they take it apart and reuse the material.  Adding a knitted cardigan, the dress is once again reinvented.  In the end, there is just no way for her to keep on using the dress, so she gives it to her younger cousin and start again with a new outfit.

This is a great tangible way for children to see greener living at work.  There is no drumming of the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra though it is obviously the theme of the book.  Ziefert never lapses into didacticism, rather letting the story itself make the point. The excitement of the story is seeing each reinvention of the dress as the years pass.  Illustrator Murphy has used collage to great effect here, creating great patterns for the dress, but also throughout the story as wallpaper, tablecloths, and backgrounds.  She has an eye for colors and patterns that really shows here.

A very nice green choice for story times.  For any child who enjoys clothes and fabrics, this is a treat of a book as well.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from library copy.

A Bunch of Board Books!

| Tasha

I find myself with a wonderful tall stack of board books to share!  All of them are just right for babies and toddlers and their format will stand up to the abuse from children that age.

Busy Bear Cubs by John Schindel and Lisa and Mike Husar.

Filled with clear and well-composed photographs of bear cubs of all sorts, this book is a bundle of furry fun.  Each page has a photo of bears in their natural habitat, playing and acting like bears.  There is no personification, just short explanatory lines about what the cubs are doing in the picture.  Great for toddlers, this book would make a great present along with a teddy bear.

Daddy, Papa, and Me by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Carol Thompson

Mommy, Mama, and Me by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Carol Thompson

I was thrilled to find two books that show gay and lesbian parents for such a young age.  I was even happier to find that they are well-written and nicely illustrated.  Both books are about a normal day where parents play, children nap, and the world is a gentle and loving place.  The focus is on family time, being together and happy days.  Appropriate for all families, these books are sure to be happy finds for families using public libraries.

Both books have Google Previews which show the entire book.  Take a look!

Daddy, Papa, and Me Preview

Mommy, Mama and Me Preview

Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin by Tad Hills

The charming pairing of Duck and Goose continues in this latest board book.  In this fall-themed book, Duck and Goose spot Thistle walking past with a pumpkin and decide that they want one too.  The trouble is they don’t know where to find a pumpkin. Could it be in a tree?  Under the water?  Hills characters are just as sweet, silly and adorable as in the previous books.  A real winner of a picture book for fall.

Sun by Natalie Jane Prior and Anna Pignataro

Star by Natalie Jane Prior and Anna Pignataro

A pair of poetic board books, these titles focus on morning and nighttime respectively.  Sun features a repeating format with the phrase “This is where the sun shines…” completed by different animals waking to the new morning.  Star uses the phrase “This is what the star sees…” in a similar manner.  Both books have repetition perfect for young listeners.  They are both wonderful first poem books for babies.  The illustrations by Pignataro are watercolor landscapes.  One awash with the brightness of the morning and the other deepened by evening.

1 2 3: A Child’s First Counting Book by Alison Jay.

When I first saw Jay’s 1 2 3 book in picture book form, I immediately thought that it would be an ideal picture book.  Well,I was right.  The book counts forward to ten and then backward to 1.  It is set in a magical land of fairy tales where you will see beloved characters from many tales.  The illustrations are done in a folk-art style that works very well with the subject matter.  The crackle effect of the pictures adds a great vintage feel as well.  This one is just as much for the parents as the baby.  One you will be willing to read again and again.

All from publishers except the pair of Leslea Newman books which were from the library.

And the Hugo Goes To…

| Tasha

Neil Gaiman! 

Winning for Best Novel – note: not best children’s or YA novel.  Best novel.  Period.

Hurrah!

Going Bovine

| Tasha

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

What a departure from her Gemma Doyle Trilogy!  And what an example of how a skilled author can write just about anything.  Bray displays her wacky sense of humor and love of smart-ass comments with nary a single ribbon, lace or corset in sight. 

The brightest moment in Cameron’s 16-year life was when he jumped off of the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World and almost drowned.  Now he finds out that he has mad cow disease and is going to die.  But perhaps salvation lies with an angel who has ever-changing wings and wants Cam to save the world and also himself, rather than lie in a hospital bed.  Of course, she just might be a figment of his disease-riddled mind.  But when the universe hands you mad-cow you may as well try to save it.  Cam is joined on his quest by Gonzo, a germ-phobic gaming dwarf, and Balder, a god trapped in the body of a lawn gnome.  If you are ready for a surreal, hysterically funny road trip, jump aboard!

This book had me reading passages aloud to share the source of my laughter.  You will not giggle discretely with this novel, instead you will guffaw uncontrollably.  It is truly funny on a gut-twisting level.  At the same time, Bray is not afraid of mixing tragedy and humor, innately understanding that the pairing leads to bigger laughs.  A dark comedy of epic road trip proportions, this is also a novel that is deep, offering insights into life while making you laugh.  Bray has created a truly great character in Cam, a boy who can do nothing right and suddenly has to save the world in order to save himself. 

A surreal rocketing ride of humor, this book is about as far as you can get from Victorian fantasy.  Bray lifts herself to another level of writing, showing that she is unfettered by genre.  Appropriate for 15-18 year olds and any adult who still bears scars from their teen years and needs to laugh about them.

Reviewed from Random House ARC gotten at ALA.

Also reviewed by A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy.

Sopa de Frijoles / Bean Soup

| Tasha

Sopa de frijoles / Bean Soup by Jorge Argueta and Rafael Yockteng

A winner of a bilingual book, this picture book is a poem about making bean soup.  Lovingly filled with great ingredients and metaphors, the poem works well.  It follows a young boy through the steps of making sopa de frijoles, from sorting the beans to chopping onions to peeling garlic, and adding salt.  An adult in near in the illustrations, but the boy does the work himself, adding to the joy of the book.

Without any overly-sweet taste, this book offers a poem for children that is respectful and delightful.  It is distinctly a poem rather than prose chopped into stanzas.  The language alone puts it into that category:

The water boils and sings.

The beans dance

together.

The water has turned brown

the color of Mother Earth.

Your house

smells wonderful

like the earth

after the first

winter rains.

That is just one of many passages that capture a sensory experience with tangible images that children can understand but that also ask children to imagine.

Highly recommended, this book would be ideal for a bilingual story time.  But it is also wonderful in a single language program as well.  Appropriate for ages 4-8.

Reviewed from library copy.

Also reviewed by La Bloga and Poetry for Children.

Break

| Tasha

Break by Hannah Moskowitz

Authored by a senior in high school, this debut novel would make a veteran author proud.  Jonah worries about a lot.  He worries about his parents, worries about the fact his baby brother cries all the time, but most of all he worries about his younger brother, Jessie, who is severe and life-threatening allergies.  After being hurt in a car accident, Jonah has started trying to break every bone in his body to make himself stronger.  He is helped by his best friend, Naomi, who films him breaking his bones.  As Jonah moves deeper and deeper into pain and breaking, the question is who is worrying enough about Jonah to help him.

The characterization here is nicely done, capturing the stress, fear and worry of being a teen as well as the dysfunction of mental illness.  Moskowitz also excels at dialogue, offering very authentic back and forth between the teens.  Jonah is a complex character, struggling with an affliction that he can’t admit to almost anyone and seeing himself though the lens of being normal. It creates a powerful dichotomy. The author also captures Jonah’s mental illness without alienating him from readers.

My only problem with the novel is the ending.  The first three-quarters of the book are taut and fascinating.  In the end, the novel starts to unravel losing its believability in action that never quite reaches a climax worthy of the previous writing.  That said, the book is still worth reading.

Start this book when you have time because it is very hard to put down.  An immersive experience that teens will really respond to, this novel is appropriate for 14-17 year olds.

To the Beach

| Tasha

To the Beach by Thomas Docherty

The great spirit of this book captures the fresh feeling of a boy making his own world out of a rainy day.  Some might think that a rainy day would not let you go to the beach, but that doesn’t slow him down at all.  In fact, the day is even more fun-filled than it may have been without the rain.  He has his swimsuit, goggles, snorkel, bucket, shovel, flippers, and inner tube.  So he takes an airplane, sailboat, truck and camel to reach the sand and the sea.  He plays at the beach and then heads back home.  Taking a tanker, helicopter, bike and tractor.  His next trip?  Perhaps something out of this world?

Each illustrations captures the exuberance of this child’s imagination.  Every new discovery is a joy, each mode of transportation an adventure.  It is impossible to read this book without a grin and chuckle.  The book will work well with small children, because of the ratio of illustration to words.  Sometimes a page has just a few words on it.  And children who enjoy trucks, tractors and other big kinds of transport will find a lot to love here.

A great start to a day of imagination or the end of one, this book is just right for playful 2-4 year olds.

Reviewed from library copy.