Month: November 2014

This Week’s Tweets, Pins & Tumbls

| Tasha

Here are the links I shared on my Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr accounts this week that I think are cool:

Gorgeous books that celebrate the fun and beauty of fall! #kidslit #fall #reading

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

12 Picture Books 4 to 8 Year Olds Should Read | Still Advocating http://buff.ly/1EpOL5e #kidlit

BBC News – Quentin Blake: We need more disabled children in picture books http://buff.ly/1GM3ifE #kidlit

Brian Selznick Inks Deal For ‘The Marvels’ – GalleyCat http://buff.ly/1wXZ8wT #kidlit

Five questions for Sharon G. Flake http://buff.ly/1xfVO1I #kidlit

Middle-grade mirth – The Horn Book http://buff.ly/1GPkMHV #kidlit

Native American Heritage Month: 10 Children’s Books By Native Writers « the open book http://buff.ly/1zk0PEe #kidlit

Who are the best quirky heroines in children’s books? | The Guardian http://buff.ly/1szsw7p #kidlit

Why Picture Books Are Important by Chris Barton http://buff.ly/10z7Gxc #kidlit

LIBRARIES

Libraries and Buy It Now: A Difficult Decision? | American Libraries Magazine http://buff.ly/1wQpPDJ #ebooks #libraries

One Man’s Diary of a Month-Long Library Closure – BOOK RIOT http://buff.ly/1B39M9A #libraries

READING

New study reveals why it’s impossible to put down a Harry Potter book – ScienceAlert http://buff.ly/1tU0xCa #reading

Reading children’s books has changed my life http://buff.ly/1ExzIbP #kidlit #reading

TECHNOLOGY

Comcast agrees with Obama on net neutrality, except for the legal bit – GigaOM http://buff.ly/1Eujw96 #internet #netneutrality

Dear Senator Ted Cruz, I’m going to explain to you how Net Neutrality ACTUALLY works – The Oatmeal http://buff.ly/1EC7D2V #internet

Present Shock | Dark Rye http://buff.ly/10GI7KN – Using technology to set ourselves free rather than it using us #socialmedia #technology

TEEN READS

Authors of young adult fiction say pitching the content right is a balancing act http://buff.ly/1yjraRG #yalit

Meg Wolitzer: Why are teenage girls drawn to books about mental instability? | The Guardian http://buff.ly/10E6BEs #yalit

YALLFest: Q&A with Rita Williams-Garcia | Charleston City Paper http://buff.ly/1osBfvz #kidlit

Review: Pack of Dorks by Beth Vrabel

| Tasha

pack of dorks

Pack of Dorks by Beth Vrabel

Lucy just knows that this is the biggest recess of her life, because at recess she will kiss Tom and cement herself as a popular fourth grader along with her best friend Becky.  But after the kiss happens, all she has is a ring that turns her finger green and a sinking feeling about what just happened.  Soon after the kiss, Lucy’s baby sister is born.  Her parents are shocked to have a baby with Downs Syndrome and are caught up in coping with the surprise.  That leaves Lucy alone to cope with the sudden turn of events at school where over the course of a few days she goes from being cool and popular to being one of the lamest kids in the class.  Becky calls Lucy at night to tell her all of the mean things that the other kids are saying about her, claiming that she is still Lucy’s friend but can’t be her friend at school anymore.  In the meantime, Lucy starts to make friends with some of the other kids in her class.  She does a project on wolves with Sam, a very quiet boy who is bullied by the same kids.  Out of that project and her growing group of outcast friends, Lucy decides that the only solution for them is to become their own pack.

Vrabel captures elementary school perfectly with its confusing social pressures that keep people conforming to the norm.  She manages to keep everything at just the right level, never becoming melodramatic about the situation.  At the same time, it is clear how devastating the bullying is to Lucy.  While she has a supportive family, they are distracted by the new baby and rightly so.  Her new little sister helps be a guide for Lucy forward, and is a very smart addition to the story, allowing Lucy her growth and also serving as an example of someone who will also need their own pack to support her.

Lucy is a character who becomes more likeable as the book progresses.  At first with her quests for popularity and kisses, Lucy is shallow but after she becomes shunned by the popular crowd she immediately reveals how smart and strong she actually is.  Vrabel’s brilliant combination of wolf packs and middle school bullies adds strength to the entire novel.

A smart book on bullies, differences and disabilities, this novel is one that will make a great read aloud for elementary classes.  Appropriate for ages 8-11.

Reviewed from library copy.

2014 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize Winner

| Tasha

The Dark Wild

Publisher’s Weekly has the news that Piers Torday has won the 2014 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for the second book in The Last Wild trilogy: The Dark Wild. 

The Guardian Prize is a UK children’s book prize.  The Dark Wild will be published in the US in January 2015.

Review: Buried Sunlight by Molly Bang

| Tasha

buried sunlight

Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed the Earth by Molly Bang & Penny Chisholm

Everything needs energy in order to grow and we also need energy to run machines.  This energy comes from the sun though it may be stored as fossil fuels underground.  The fossil fuels have stored that energy inside them and it is released when they are burned.  This book looks at how sunlight energy is stored in fossil fuels, explaining photosynthesis and the balance of oxygen on the planet.  It speaks to the way that oxygen was first released to the atmosphere and the millions of years that it took to create fossil fuels.  The book then informs readers about the impact of carbon dioxide on the planet and the resulting climate change.  In the end, the book lets readers know that the choice for the future of the planet is theirs.

Bang worked with Chisholm, an award-winning MIT professor on the information in the book.  Told from the point of view of the sun, the book takes a clear and scientific tone throughout, enhanced by the more personal point of view.  The information is compellingly presented and interesting.  The final pages of the book offer even more details about the fossil fuel process for those looking for more in-depth information.

Bang’s illustrations capture the information of graphs along with an artistic feel.  She manages to keep it scientific but also speak to the wonder of the process and the beauty of the captured sunlight energy. 

This fourth book in their Sunlight series continues the combination of science, beauty and natural wonder.  Appropriate for ages 5-9.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: Wall by Tom Clohosy Cole

| Tasha

wall

Wall by Tom Clohosy Cole

When the Berlin Wall was built, a boy was separated from his father who was on the other side.  His mother told him that his father was in a place where life was better.  They were not allowed to leave their side of Berlin.  The boy dreamed of his father coming and rescuing them, but he knew that was unlikely to happen.  So he started to plan ways to get past the wall himself.  Other people tried to get past the wall, many of them died in their attempts.  But it was worth the risk to see his father once again, so the boy started digging out in the woods near the wall.  When the tunnel was ready, the boy led his family to it, but along the way they were stopped by a soldier.  Would this be the end of their brave journey to reunite their family?

Cole captures the separation and division caused by the Berlin Wall.  He also clearly shows the fierce drive of a family to reunite and be together once again.  Told in very simple sentences, the book relies on its fine artwork to carry the story.  It is the art that conveys the danger, the deaths and the risks that people took to see loved ones again or to attain freedom. 

The art here is exceptional.  Cole uses lighting on his pages to show the hope of the West versus the darkness and gray of the other side of the wall.  The illustrations are atmospheric and dramatic.  They convey the feeling of isolation and the fear. 

A strong picture book about the Berlin Wall and the power of family and hope.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

| Tasha

phoebe and her unicorn

Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

When Phoebe skipped a rock (four times!) across a pond, she accidentally hit a unicorn in the nose, distracting the unicorn from gazing at her amazing reflection.  The unicorn was bound to offer Phoebe a wish and though Phoebe tried to wish for more wishes and things like that, she wasn’t allowed to.  So Phoebe wished that the unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, be her best friend.  The two become inseparable, much to Heavenly Nostrils’ dismay at first.  Soon they truly became the best of friends, dealing with bullies in unexpected ways, having slumber parties, and playing games together. 

This friendship between a girl and a unicorn is filled with great humor, including lots of biting sarcasm which helps offset the cuteness factor.  It is not the traditional unicorn and girl relationship either, both of them have unique personalities and sometimes they just don’t get along.  It’s those moments of reality that keeps the relationship honest and makes this a graphic novel to celebrate.

Simpson’s illustrations have strong ties to Calvin & Hobbes.  Readers will immediately find themselves right at home in the world she creates, one where unicorns are real but sheltered by a Shield of Boringness that keeps others from realizing how special the unicorn is.  These plot devices are brilliant and funny.

I brought this book home and my 17 year old immediately rejoiced since she reads the comic online.  So you will have fans in your library for this book already.  Get it on the shelves for kids and into the hands of adults who will also enjoy it immensely.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from library copy.

Review: Fox’s Garden by Princesse Camcam

| Tasha

foxs garden

Fox’s Garden by Princesse Camcam

Gorgeously illustrated, this wordless picture book invites readers into a snowy world.  A fox finds her way into a village, warm lit against the cold snow that is falling.  She is shooed away by several people but discovers an open greenhouse.  A little boy sees her enter and brings her a basket of food.  Now there is a fox with four baby foxes nursing.  Soon after, the mother fox leads her kits to the boy’s room where they plant flowers from the greenhouse into his rug which he discovers in the morning.  The five foxes disappear back into the woods.

Done in cut-paper illustrations, the images have a beautiful 3-D quality to them.  You want to stroke the page and think that you will be able to lift flaps, so strong are the images. Against the white and gray snow and woods, the characters pop.  The fox gloriously orange in the snow and the little boy wearing red. 

Camcam lights her paper work beautifully as well, almost as if it were a stage.  She conveys the welcoming warmth of the light in the village, the yellow of the windows lit against the storm.  More subtly, she plays with shadows and underlighting in specific scenes, showing the cold and the night clearly.

This is a haunting picture book, done with an immense delicacy and skill.  Simply beautiful.  Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Enchanted Lion Books.

Review: Iridescence of Birds by Patricia MacLachlan

| Tasha

iridescence of birds

The Iridescence of Birds: A Book about Henri Matisse by Patricia MacLachlan, illustrations by Hadley Hooper

Henri Matisse grew up in a town in northern France that was cold, gray and dreary.  But his mother filled their world with color with the plates that she painted with nature scenes.  She also let Henri mix the paint colors.  He was also the person who arranged the fruit and flowers that they bought in the market, on the blue and white tablecloth.  Red rugs adorned the walls of their house, filling it with color too and making the whole world turn red.  Henri also raised pigeons with their iridescent feathers.  And all of these elements of his childhood came together in his work as an adult, reflecting the color that one can see in the dreariest of towns.

MacLachlan has written this picture book in an unusual second person, inviting the reader to feel the environment just as Matisse himself did as a child.  The slow reveal of the richness of his childhood at home plays beautifully against the original gray and dullness of the outside.  It is as if he was given another world to grow up in, one of colors and delight.  Though when readers really look at it, it is about small things, tiny touches, being surrounded by paint, and of course the brilliance of pigeons too.

The illustrations by Hooper are rich and saturated with color.  Done in a combination of relief printmaking and digital formats, the book has a grounding in the solidity of printmaking that gives it texture and a feeling of tradition.  Playing against that is the modern lightness of the little boy, surrounded by the color and delight of his home.  It’s an exquisite pairing.

Rich, detailed and delightful, this picture book biography of the inspiration that Matisse found in his childhood home is sure to invite young readers to find their own sources of inspiration around them.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Roaring Brook Press.

Review: Give and Take by Chris Raschka

| Tasha

give and take

Give and Take by Chris Raschka

A farmer who grows apples discovers a strange little man out in his orchard just as his apples are ready to pick.  The little man is named Take and he encourages the farmer to listen to him so that he can have a fine life.  Though the farmer already has a fine life, Take promises to make it better.  So the farmer goes through his day taking everything.  He takes all of his neighbors pumpkins when she offers him some.  He takes her advice to make pumpkin soup, and he takes a long hike.  Left wishing he had some apples to eat, he kicks out Take the next morning.  Then when he visits his orchard that morning, he meets another little man named Give.  Give promises to make his life sweeter, so once again the farmer tries.  He gives everything away, including his apples and all of his opinions.  He is left hungry another night and kicks Give out.  But in the morning, he discovers the two little men fighting with one another.  Can a farmer outwit these two battling forces?

Raschka has written this picture book with the tone of a fable.  Readers will immediately see Take as a selfish force and then think that Give is the angelic voice.  But Raschka’s take is more nuanced than that, showing the harm in being too giving with everything in your life and how it can turn toxic and harmful too.  He then goes about having his farmer propose a balance of giving and taking in life.  The result is a book that has balance, a folkloric rhythm and tone, and is a great read aloud and opportunity for discussion.

Raschka’s illustrations are his trademark flowing and free style.  He uses watercolors contained with thick black lines.  The bright red of the farmer’s nose and the apples pop on the page along with the pink pig and the orange pumpkins.  As always, his book is art, changing with each turn of the page as the story is told.

Perfect for discussions about balance, generosity and greed, this picture book is a great balance of art and folklore itself.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum.