Author: Tasha

Red Truck

| Tasha

Red Truck by Kersten Hamilton, illustrated by Valeria Petrone.

Red Truck is a hard-working tow truck, especially on a rainy, slushy day when the school bus is stuck on a slippery hill.  Red Truck zooms, pulls, and roars its way through the puddles and ice to save the day.

A perfect book for toddlers and young preschoolers, this book reads aloud like a dream.  So many truck books for small children are just a list of parts and noises, but this book has a story, action and will be popular from the moment it gets into children’s hands.  It is the red truck on the cover and the bright vehicles that pop on the grey background that will have small hands reaching for it.  The pictures are very child-friendly and marvelously bold and simple.  Perfection for reading to a large group.

Zooooom over and pick this one out.  It’s a guaranteed hit with the preschool set.  Recommended for ages 2-4.

A Curse Dark as Gold

| Tasha

A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce.

Drawn in immediately by the cover image, I found myself captured by the intricate world I entered and the strength of the characterizations.

Charlotte Miller’s father has just died and she finds herself as a young woman with a younger sister caring for the family’s woolen mill.  Without a male running the business, she fights for respect among the other millers and within the textile industry.  Threatened with ruin when a mortgage on the mill is discovered, she turns to a strange man who simply appears and offers to spin straw into golden thread in return for her deceased mother’s ring.  Charlotte fights to ignore the strangeness of the mill, the string of deaths of boys in her family, and her own growing knowledge that something dark and horrible happened in her family’s past. 

I am often not a fan of retellings of tales like Rumplestiltskin as teen novels, but this one really works, primarily because the setting of a woolen mill is so vibrant and moves the story along a different line.  Bunce has created not only one strong heroine, but the younger sister serves as a foil for Charlotte, allowing readers a second strong female character to enjoy.  But neither girl is a saint.  They both have their own problems, personality quirks, and their own responses to desperate times.  It is their humanity that breathes such life into them.

This book engulfs the reader, spinning such a tale of curses, death, courage, cunning and strength.  Bunce has created one of the best fantasies of the year with her first book.  I look forward to seeing what her next one will bring us.

Highly recommended for lovers of fantasy and dark tales.  Don’t sell this as a retelling of Rumplestiltskin, rather let the cover speak for the treats that await inside.

Stephen King Graphic Novel

| Tasha

NPR has a fairly lengthy piece on the latest installment on the newest Dark Tower graphic novel The Long Road Home.  There are simply gorgeous images from the book on the NPR site, nice and large, bright but dark. 

If you are a King fan, you can also follow links to other conversations with King on NPR. 

Golden Kite Award Winners

| Tasha

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators have announced the winners of the 2007 Golden Kite Awards:

Fiction

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate (on my to-be-read pile)

Nonfiction

Muckrakers by Ann Bausum

Picture Book Text

Pierre in Love by Sara Pennypacker

Picture Book Illustration

Little Night by Yuyi Morales

 

Honor Books:

Fiction

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauran Tarshis (Wonderful!  A great read.)

Nonfiction

1607: A New Look at Jamestown by Karen Lange

Picture Book Text

The End by David LaRochelle (Hurrah!  A wonderful book!)

Picture Book Illustration

Who Put the B in Ballyhoo? by Carlyn Beccia

Harry Potter Movie #8

| Tasha

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the final Harry Potter book will be made into two films.  The first half is due to be released in November 2010 and the second part in May 2011. 

I think this is a great decision and have long wondered why they haven’t done this with other Harry Potter books.  They seem so very condensed in film form and a lot of the extra moments that make Harry Potter so popular are necessarily trimmed.

Monarch and Milkweed

| Tasha

Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost and Leonid Gore.

I know that you probably have read many books about monarchs and have plenty on your library shelves, but you must make room for this one. 

This book about the intertwined lives of monarch butterflies and the milkweed plant is simply marvelous.  It follows the growth of the milkweed plant in spring and the monarchs’ flight northward through to the fall when the monarchs return south and the milkweed pods burst open and the flying seeds emerge.

Both the illustrations and text work in partnership here.  Frost’s words are poetic and simply lovely.  Her vocabulary is very child-friendly, but the result will have children reaching higher to understand the way she frames her thoughts and creates images with words alone.  Adding to the grace and poetry of the book are the illustrations which are at the same time ethereal and yet realistic.  They shine with an inner light and the colors draw readers in.  This is a glorious marriage that creates a book far beyond what either could be alone.

Highly recommended for all libraries and for parents looking for a great nonfiction book that offers amazing writing.  For ages 6-9.

And to Name But Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue

| Tasha

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And to Name But Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue by Laurie Rosenwald

This book offers a vibrant and often silly romp through the colors.  Each page shouts with color, large images and huge fonts.  The artistry here is clear, filled with collages, found objects, drawing, paint and much more.  It invites young readers to head out into their worlds and create their own colorful spaces. 

The text here is filled with fonts, different sizes and colors.  It is as much part of the illustrations as the paint, collages and ink.  It dances, sings and laughs along with the colors and the readers. 

I can see this being very successful in art classes talking about colors.  The audience here is not really preschoolers.  I would use it with slightly older children, say ages 5-8.  They will enjoy the play of the words and the art and will find inspiration here.

Little Boy with a Big Horn

| Tasha

Little Boy with a Big Horn by Jack Bechdolt, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino.

Ollie was learning to play a enormous bass horn.  But no one wants to hear his playing of the only song he knew, “Asleep in the Deep” with its great deep notes.  He tries different places all over town to play, but every time he ends up bothering people.  Finally, he heads to the harbor to play in a little boat, and there he learns that all noises have their usefulness and place.

Yaccarino’s art is wonderful here, vibrating with his signature style and bold colors.  Bechdolt’s words are filled with sounds, music and also colors.  It is a very successful pairing.

Recommended for children age 5-7, this picture book is great fun.

Peanut

| Tasha

Peanut by Linas Alsenas.

Mildred is lonely until one day she finds a stray digging in the garbage.  She tries to give him bones, take him to the dog park, and other things you would do for a dog, but Peanut is different than other dogs.  But Mildred loves him anyway, despite his differences.  When a man from the circus comes to take his lost elephant back from Mildred, she is left alone again.  Until she finds a lost… kitten.

Alsenas’ tone in the text is perfectly pitched, allowing readers and listeners simply ride the gag of the book along to the end.  The art is equally successful, not over-the-top funny but allowing the joke of the book to really shine through. 

Preschoolers adore books where they immediately get the joke and this is one of those.  Read it deadpan and sincerely and you will add to their glee.  Recommended to share with a group of preschoolers, age 4-6.