Thurs. Non Fiction: Walking With Prehistoric Beasts

BBC released Walking With Dinosaurs back in 1999, using state of the art computer animation and animatronics to create the most realistic screen dinos ever. The program was deservedly popular, and copies of this video abound in local public libraries (at least, here in Rhode Island). In 2001, they followed it up with Walking With Prehistoric Beasts (the English title left out the Prehistoric), which aired on the Discovery Channel. This one isn't as common in local libraries, but it is much much cooler than the dinosaurs! Everyone and their uncle watches dinosaur programs, every kid has read dinosaur books and knows more dinosaur names than many adults (I still know more than my children. I study at night). So dinosaur sminosaur.

Enter a new cast of characters--the Hyaenodon, the Entelodont, the Megatherium, the Andrewsarchus etc. (there's a character gallery up at Discover). They are fierce, amazing, stunning, and fantastically presented (on the left is a Propalaeotherium, one of the gentle herbivore types). This is the sort of video that the parent has to watch at least once, so as to have at least an idea of what the children are talking about.

There are 6 discrete episodes, each a bit less than an hour. The narrative follows your basic nature documentary, but the producers tried to have a story line tying each episode together. Episode 3, for instance, follows first year and a bit of an Indocathere calf. Will it survive the drought? the rainy season? its rejection by its mother after she finds a new mate? (warning: adult themes, although tastefully presented). If anyone wants to know the details of all the episodes, look here.

Of all the many non-fiction videos my children have watched, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts has sparked their imaginations the most. Imaginative play, so we are told, is a good thing. No longer does my three-year old want to eat his ice cream at the table, with a spoon. Instead, the bowl goes on the floor, his face goes on the ice cream. "I'm an Andrewsarchus eating a turtle out of its shell!" He snarls around the house, pretending to be a savage Hyaenodon (shown at right), casting his unfortunate big brother in the role of Prey. "Darling, can't you be a gentle herbivore?" I suggest. "ROAR!" he says.

The only episode I did not embrace wholeheartedly was episode 4, which focused on a group of Australophithecus Afaransis (Lucy's species). I appreciate how difficult it is to make a movie when you aren't sure if your characters are "human" or not. I appreciate the fact that they lived in Africa and probably had darker skin than I do. It wasn't bad anthropology. But it made me uncomfortable.

Finally, here's a link to the BBC page, where you can find more information and good games!

The Little White Horse, soon to be The Moon Princess

I just heard, through Fuse #8, that one of my all time favorite children's books, The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, is going to be made into a children's movie by the director of Bridge to Terebithia (here's the movie's site). I am bravely telling myself this is not a bad thing. More people will now read this beautiful book. But please, to all those who haven't read it, read it before you see the movie. Read an edition with Walter Hodge's illustrations. Let Goudge's words make pictures in your minds. Let her story reach you first (a story that does not have the Fantasy elements the movie sounds like it will have).

The Little White Horse tells of Maria Merryweather, sent to live with her cousin, the lord of Moonacre Manor. The welcome is warm, the house is lovely (Maria's tower room is my favorite fictional bedroom of all time! But the valley of Moonacre is troubled by an ancient feud between the rapscallion poachers known as the Black Men and Maria's family. It's up to Maria to use her powers of deduction and her forthrightness to set the old wrong to rights.

Lots and lots of beautiful description, a fantastical setting where the magical overlaps with the mundane, and warm and glowing characters who come to wonderful life make this one of my favorite books of all time. Based on the illustrations, and the descriptions of clothes and such, it's my impression that this is set in the 19th century--it's certainly a long ago story, which adds to its charm.

It is, I would say, definitely a Girl book. This is mainly because Goudge lavishes so much detail on female clothing (almost no boy appeal, unless you are a boy like the poignant child in Rumer Godden's The Greengage Summer). She also lavishes lots of detail on anything that has color, and anything that is beautiful--seagulls flying inland in the morning, pink geraniums, primroses wet with dew. With a book that is this visual, it seems to me redundant to recreate it in a visual medium.

And then, when you have read The Little White Horse, and want more Goudge, read Linnets and Valerians.

See if you can guess which of these covers is the most recent:


Hint: it has those strange, strange eyes. And why does that poor child have no mouth? (at least, that's what it looked like to me, although after studying it I guess that's a bit of mouth showing over the horse's back). Just for the record, the copy I had was the paperback at the top right.

The Little Broomstick, by Mary Stewart

My library hasn't yet set up a "while you're waiting for Harry" display, but doubtless it will have one at some point. A book that I am going to slip in, if it somehow gets overlooked, is The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart (publishd in 1971), and yes, this is the same Mary Stewart whose romance/adventure novels my mother read and passed on to me, who also wrote the very fine Merlin series that begins with The Crystal Cave). Probably The Little Broomstick will be overlooked; I bought it with Friends of the Library money, and I don't think either of our children's librarians have read it. I'm not sure any patrons have read it either.

This is wrong. When I was 7/8, and read this for the first time, I was stunned--it just knocked the young socks off me. I'm not sure how a grown-up reading it for the first time would feel, but I fell in love (as did several Amazon reviewers, apparently).

Here's the plot: Mary is sent to her Great Aunt's house deep in the English countryside; there are no children her own age, and the only two creatures at all friendly are the gardener and a black cat, Tib. Mary finds a little broomstick, Tib leads her to the rare Fly-by-night flower, and next thing you know, Mary finds herself flying through the sky... and the broomstick lands in the stableyard of a school for witches.

Although Mary is welcomed to the school as a prospective pupil (she did, after all, arrive by broom), it is not a friendly place. Horrible magical experiements are being performed on animals, including Tib's brother Gib. Gib's own owner, a boy named Peter, is deperatly searching for him, and the two children, and Tib, end up rescuing the animals from their cages, and escpaing the evil witches and warlocks in an utterly brilliant chase sequence that is one of my favorite bits of fantasy ever.

This plot outline is just a sketch. Anyone familiar with Mary Stewart (and this is also true of her grown-up romance books, which I have read and re-read myself) knows what a good describer she is. The pictures this book makes in the reader's mind will stay there. It helps that the book is illustrated by Shirley Hughes, who also is a lovely describer (although I always have to go back and look at pictures after I finish, because of reading so fast).

The Little Broomstick, first published in 1972, was re-released in paperback in 1989, and even though it seems to be out of print again, it looks like it's readily available.

Penelope Farmer -- new book on line

If anyone out there is looking for a most excellent time slip story, read Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer, if you haven't already.

SPOILERS! Charlotte wakes up her first morning at boarding school to find that she has slipped back forty years in time, and has taken the place of another girl named Claire. At first, Charlotte and Clare swap places for a day at a time, communicating via a hidden diary (their tribulations are well described--Clare, for instance, is a much better piano player, so poor Charlotte has to spend hours practicing furiously). But then Charlotte finds herself trapped in the past...I have a special fondness for this book, as Clare's little sister, who becomes like a sister to Charlotte as well, is named Emily, just like my little sister.

But the point of this post is that I just discovered that Penelope Farmer has a blog, and on that blog she has a link to a book she has written online! How much work will I get done today????

Earth Day a day late --One Small Square:Backyard + Orange Trail Bingo

Happy belated Earth Day. I would have posted yesterday, but our home computer is a mac., and will not let me post, or edit, or anything useful (is there anyone out there who uses a mac and blogspot together in harmony?).


In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to mention my favorite get outside and appreciate/learn about the earth book--One Small Square: Backyard. It's been around for a while (1993), but it deserves to be a part of every young naturalist's library. What I like about it is that it combines facts with activities (and lovely illustrations). We tend to be somewhat cerebral in our approach to activity books (why why why do I have to read aloud books like Let's Make Space Aliens etc.), so a book like Backyard is a good choice for us. But we did take it out into our own backyard last summer, and a good time was had by all.

Also Earth dayish, and inspired by the posts over at The Miss Rumphius Effect on educational things to do with children outside, I wanted to share my one really original idea (to date, and as far as I know) for a great thing to do while on a nature walk -- Trail Bingo. We live near an Audubon sanctuary, and walk the Orange Trail often in all seasons. So one day we brought with us notebooks and colored pencils, and searched for landmarks/plant and animal species/rock formations/tree formations that we could put into an Orange Trail bingo game. We filled our notebooks with sketches of what we saw --- gap in the wall, twin tree trunk, triangle stone in the path, princess pine, etc etc. Because we had a purpose, we looked at what was around us harder than we ever had before, and because we were drawing what we saw, we looked at things longer. We had fun creating the game cards too--it was good art practice to simplify our images so that they were more or less the same on all the cards on which they appeared.

We never actually played Orange Trail Bingo, but that wasn't really the point. It was enough that we had made our own connections to the trail, and could great our landmarks like friends.

Two concrete poetry books

Sometimes it is much easier to be on the listening end than the reading end (especially if you can't read much yet). The dear boys (6 and 3) listened with rapt attention to the two books of poetry I read them last night, oohing and awing and laughing and pointing out details. My eyes got crosseder and crosseder as I tried to translate the shape-making words into coherency. The two books were



Sidman, Joyce. Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry. Illustrated by Michelle Berg. Houghton Mifflin, 2006





and


J. Patrick Lewis Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape.Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. Simon & Schuster 1998









Both books are concrete poetry--words were used to make the shapes of the things being written about -- in Meow Ruff, for instance, clouds are white puffy word clumps (changing to gray), in Doodle Dandies, a lady walking her dachshund is holding a dachshund shaped word cluster on a leash. The kids eat this up, but it sure is hard on the reader, especially when the words are really close together...Meow Ruff especially took great concentration, so this is a bad bad book for the dim lighting and tired eyes of bedtime unless you have it memorized.

Of the two, I much preferred Meow Ruff, which tells the story of a kitten and dog who meet outside one day. They are enemies at first, but become friends when rain forces them to share the shelter of a picnic table. I like books with a coherent narrative and character development, which this book delivers as much as a picture book in snippets of unrhyming, descriptive verse can. The pictures are charming too. The words were fun to speak out loud -- the paved road, for instance, is "tramped on not lawn much trod bubble gum crack-filled Anthill hard flat welcome mat brick thick oil slick blown sand not land" (total aside--my older boy picked up at school that Queen song that goes "We will we will rock you... " and has been singing it incessantly which effected my reading of this. Sigh). In short, there were many engaging details in both picture and text, and the boys wanted to hear it over again immediately.

They didn't. We turned next to Doodle Dandies. This one was a tad disappointing. The only theme of the verses was that they made shapes (but not all of them were really good independent shapes--sometimes the words were stuck on top of existing pictures). It was somewhat disjointing to bounce from tigers and butterflies to baseballs and synchronized swimmers (although so few children's poems feature synchronized swimmers that perhaps some extra points are warranted). The good poem pictures were diverting (I liked the giraffe with legs made of "s t i l t s", but several left me cold. The illustrations are somewhat scattered as well, with realistic pictures of the natural world next to cartoonish images.

Not a patch on Douglas Florian, I say.

For more Joyce Sidman books of poetry, check out this post at Blue Rose Girls from last November with part 2 here. This was my first book of hers, the only one our library has, but this will change; even after going graphic book shop the Friends have some money left. (The booksales are worth it, I mutter to myself).

Non-fiction dvd of the week: Mystery of the Megaflood

On Thursdays, I present a non-fiction video that my children have enjoyed. Today's is Mystery of the Megaflood, a NOVA program first broadcast in 2005, now available on DVD.

Summary: A vanished glacial lake, huge ice dams breaking up (think Ice Age II, only better), a tortured landscape, and the brave and clever geologists (both male and female, although predominately male) who figure out the clues and solve the Mystery of the Megaflood! This is almost a prefect non-fiction video. There is a lot of dramatic action, but it's geological and doesn't involve people getting hurt. The mystery that the geologists are trying to solve gives a plot-like structure to it, which helps hold the viewer's interest. The images are stupendous:

It's hard to put a bottom line on the age of viewers who would like this; for what it's worth, my six year old loves it. I think it should appeal to any kid who likes rocks!

Note on Gender Issues: I liked it because it showed a brave female geologist rappelling down a cliff. I fret a bit about the predominance of men in non-fiction videos, especially in their role of narrators (leading to the impression that men = the ones who have knowledge, which is not what I want my boys to believe). It is very rare to find a really good sciency video narrated by a woman. The DK folks found a female narrator for their videos about mythological creatures, for instance, but all the science ones are male. So if anyone knows any hard core science videos with female narrators, let me know!

If you'd like to learn more about the geological details, here's the link to PBS.

Reading historical fiction

Last weekend Lecticans posed on her blog the following question--"What is the recipe for good historical fiction?" When I was young, before I discovered fantasy and science fiction, I would have said it was my favorite genre. I adored the books of Rosemary Sutcliffe (still do). Now as an adult I find myself avoiding the books with the little covered wagons on them, because I find them generally boring and annoying, although I still re-read my old favorites.

I think that excellent historical fiction and excellent fantasy share the same key trait--the ability to convey the differences of the time and place and culture (and rules of nature) without stressing over it and making it obvious to the reader. In much the same way that characterization is better when conveyed through the characters' words and actions rather than the narrators', details about what life was life back then should not be set apart as teaching moments within the narrative. I think that when this is done well (as Sutcliffe does it), the reader stops remembering that the book is "historical" and can simply enjoy it for the plot and the characters, and only later realize how much has been learned. Of course, for this to work, the writer also has to make sure that the "history" is accurate, or else the bubble bursts (most of what I know about . For me this also applies to characterization--I liked Catherine, Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman, just fine, but Catherine didn't seem like a product of her time. Ditto the characters in Michelle Magorian's Not a Swan. Another potential problem in historical fiction is writers wanting to write about a historical event, and then creating characters to take part in it. I suspect all the dear america etc etc genre of doing this, and so have avoided them like the plague. I like to think that in the books I love, the author wanted to tell the characters' story, rather than the story of the event.

Besides Sutcliffe, here is a few of my all time favorite historical fiction:
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. How I learned about rev. war Boston
Katherine by Anya Seton. The eponymous Katherine was the mistress of John of Gaunt.
In Spite of all Terror by Hester Burton. The evacuation of London in WW II, Dunkirk.
A Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (a much loved childhood favorite)

Graphic novel advice please!

My librarian just asked me to buy some graphic novels for our collection, because we have only one or two (the first two Babymouse books). She gave me a list that someone had given her, but neither of us has ever read any of them, I feel a bit at a loss. I'd appreciate any recommendations that anyone can give me for books from J to YA that will just fly off the shelves! Thanks.

Poetry Friday: Bugle Song

Here's a poem that I think would make a great picture book (although the words are so visually evocative that maybe it doesn't need images). It is the Bugle Song, from Alfred Tennyson's The Princess (1847).


The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.


Tennyson was apparently a descendant of Edward I (according to Wikipedia), whose castles I posted about yesterday, which ties it all together nicely.

The Poetry Friday roundup today is at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy.

2 non-fiction videos about castles and siege warfare

Last Thursday I decided to review non-fiction videos every week, talking about videos that appealed to my kids and deserve a wider audience. Today's offerings are two videos about castles and siege warfare -- Castle, one of a series based on David Macauley's books, and Medieval Siege, an episode of the Secrets of Lost Empires series produced by NOVA.

I hesitate a smidge to recommend the video Castle, because it is based on Macauley's book of that name, and books are generally to be preferred. However, I find Macauley's books are hard to read out loud, even to interested 4-5 year olds, whereas the videos, which mix live action and animation, are easy for kids that age to watch. They are also very, very good--instructional without being pedantic, engaging without being giddily enthusiastic.

The castle in question was built in Wales in the 13th century by the invading English. Macauley takes the viewer on a tour through real castles, demonstating his impressive understanding of how things were built and his ability to translate this knowledge into terms the rest of us can grasp. The live action shots are interspersed with animated vignettes of the lives and doings of fictional people living in such a castle, bringing, as it were, the ruins to life.

Bringing medieval siege warfare to life is what Medieval Siege is all about--specifically, how do you build a trebuchet (the biggest baddest catapult of all), when you have no plans, no surviving examples, and only a few historical references? How exactly does it work? The Secrets of Lost Empire series takes a problem like this, and puts live experts (and live workers) to work on it. Different experts have different theories, and everyone involved learns by doing--there's a lot of open disagreement shown. The physical labor involved is tremendous--the idea is that everything will be done by hand, with authentic tools. I think this is great stuff for kids to watch, in as much as it teaches that learning involves a lot more than being told things. Medieval Siege is a favorite in our house, because there is a lot of catapult action (it is pretty cool to watch walls getting smashed with giant boulders). I think it is the best one of this series to start with--they run for around 60 minutes and some of them are a bit too slow for kids.

NOVA has lots more information on trebuchets at their website, including a trebuchet game.

Problems with this video:
1. At the end of the video, viewers are sent to the NOVA website for information on how to build their own trebuchet. My boy really really thought he was going to get to build a full size siege engine in our back yard ("Can we build my trebuchet now?" he asked incessantly). However, he and his father did build a model that gave him some pleasure.

2. My boy wanted to dress as a trebuchet for Halloween. He decided his baby brother could be the boulder.

Grandfather's Dance

It was egg hunt day at the library last Saturday, and I hoped to take advantage of the large number of children coming in. So I hauled all the children's books left over from the book sale downstairs, and set up shop. Business was, sadly, slow, so I had time to read a new book-- Grandfather's Dance, the fourth in the series by Patricia MacLachlan that began with Sarah, Plain and Tall. I was very happy to revisit the Witting family again, and to see that all was going well; after the hard times they went through out there on their prairie farm, it is nice to see that a. none of the children have died b. they are prosperous enough to afford a new car without fretting about it.

This book describes a happy time--Anna, the oldest daughter, is getting married; the aunts come from faraway Maine, and little Jack, the youngest of the family, is cute as a button in his love for his grandpa, who is now fully a part of the family after a long period of alienation. But then it gets sad, and I sat next to my boxes of books with tears running down my cheeks, which would have put off my customers had they not been outside egg hunting.

I didn't read any of MacLachlan's books until I was a grown-up--as a child, I had no interest reading about someone described as plain and tall, and nobody urged it on me. I'm not sure what I would have made of this series. As a child, I revelled in the detail of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I think I would have found these books too short and sparse. As an adult, I admire MacLachlan's clean prose, and think these books are beautiful, but I still wish they were longer--this one only lasted me half an hour.

Demon Christmas Mug--the things I do for the library

We had a very nice Easter. It would have been better, however, if a Christmas mug hadn't started playing "Jingle Bells" whenever someone walked into the kitchen. Apart from blatant seasonal inappropriateness, holiday mugs aren't good at making music, and this one is no exception. As one boy said, "We can't live like this."

The mug is one of several bought for next December's library fundraiser, tossed neatly with other mugs and ornaments etc etc in a new home 7 feet up on the topmost shelf of the new kitchen cupboard. I fetched the ladder, and asked my children to jump up and down so that I could hear the mug singing. Sadly, the weight of the ladder is enough (even without me on it) to stabilize the cupboard--the mug did not sing and I could not find it. So for now we are simply leaving the ladder there, perhaps until next Christmas.

An Island Grows, by Lola M. Schafer

An Island Grows by Lola M. Schafer, illustrated by Cathie Flestead (Greenwillow Books 2006)

I picked this up last week in the library's new book section--it seemed to fall nicely into the non-fiction that will appeal to both boys (6 and 3) category, and I liked the cover. It was a good choice.

"Deep, deep beneath the sea" the earth splits apart, and an island begins . The journey from a crack in the ocean floor to a tropical paradise is pleasantly told in rhyming couplets and simple but very satisfying pictures. The text was easy enough for 6 yr old to read, although sometimes rhyme was given more weight than simplicity-"Rocks appear, black and sheer." But heck, sheer is a fine word. My 3 yr old was very taken with the underwater buildup of magma. We all liked the dense page of factual information at the end; I, for instance, was able to share with my co-workers today the fun fact that the earth's plates move at the rate our fingernails grow, which is a lot faster than I would have thought.

The book gets a tad strange when people come into the picture--it appears to be an island of racial utopia, with people of all skin tones living and working side by side. This is lovely, and it looked unremarkable to the children (and of course in an ideal world this scenario should look "normal"). However, one of my main professional interests is the history and archaeology of European colonization, and I was a more than a bit jarred by the happiness of the island's integration into the capitalist world system, and I had to bite back a diatribe. But that aside, it was a very pleasant and instructive read-out-loud experience, and I'll be happy to read it to them again.

P.S. (added 4/15/07) My 3 year old has asked for this book at bedtime every night since we got it out of the library, and I have not particularly minded, which shows how appealing it is!

ee cummings for Poetry Friday

Yesterday I posted a brief review of the video Sea Nasties. After a half hour or so of Leslie Nielsen's dark humor, the video ends on a completely different note, with Nielsen speaking, very movingly, this ee cummings poem:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,

and milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:

and may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Apart from my anxiety about poor molly, I think this is a lovely poem.

I had another Cummings quote in my head --"an instrument to measure Spring with," and looking for that on line I found this genuine article:

A 1613 pocket sundial from the Harvard Collection of Scientific Instruments, featured in the Harvard Magazine March April 2002 issue as part of an enthralling collection of Spring Miscellanies.

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Big A little a today.

Non-Fiction Videos we like: Sea Nasties

In our house, many non-fiction videos are watched (perhaps because the guilt is less extreme when the children are being "educated" by the television). It all started back when 6yrold was a 3 yr old, and I got him an animally National Geographic to watch. From then on there was no looking back. He explored the non-fiction video holdings of our library, developing some odd favorites--"Oh Mama! Let's get out Avalanche, the White Death! And Asteroid, Deadly Impact!" he would plead in his sweet baby voice. (I did draw the line at Killer Bees: When Swarms Attack. We don't live in the shadow of snowy mountains, and asteroid devastation is not that frequent around here either, but we do have bees. I also drew the line at Quicksands: deadly life engulfing pools of horror, or something like that, just because).

So I thought that to add Structure here at my blog, each Thursday I might review one or two non-fiction videos that are perhaps off the beaten child track (the beaten track of children? the child's beaten track?). But to get things started, I picked a video aimed specifically at children--Sea Nasties, a National Geographic video narrated by Leslie Nielsen.

Do you think the seaside is a nice place to take the kids? Wrong! It is full of deadly creatures, such as box jellies, sea snakes, and lion fish, all out to get Nielsen! A friendly mermaid takes Nielsen on tour of these "sea nasties," clarifying the facts (lots of them are darn toxic) and providing a corrective to his wacky hysteria (lots of them aren't all that bad, if you just leave them alone). There is considerable great footage of the nasties, and my kids enjoy the dark humor. At the end of Nielsen's sojurn with the mermaid, he has come to accept that not all dangerous sea creatures are monsters. The video ends with a visit to Sting Ray City, where tourists swim with rays. (Although thinking about it, after what happened to the Crocodile Hunter, I wonder if this still works as a peaceful human/deadly animals happy together scenario). Added bonus: this video is a great source of future cocktail party conversation: "Did you know that the venom of a sea snake is so deadly that one drop can kill 60 elephants?" etc. etc. (or something like that. I haven't watched it enough to keep my venom doses straight). Highly recommended for kids who do not already have Ocean Anxieties!

The Doubtful Guest on Screen

I just read that a movie is being made of Edward Gorey's classic (to mind at least) story "The Doubtful Guest." This is one of E.G.'s most hauntingly lovely (?) works; at least, it was one of my favorites. It is to be a live action movie, which gives me pause...

A link worth linking on

Here's a link to a speech given by author Julius Lester a few days ago. Powerful stuff! (thanks to Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect for steering me to it). It's words like these that make the effort of book sales worthwhile.

The book fairy came!

Yesterday the book fairy, disguised as two guys with a pickup truck, showed up at my library and took all the books left over from the book sale! When I trudged over to the library after work for more unending book moving toil, the room was empty. I was stunned. Even the ex-library health pamphlets from the 1970s were gone (although perhaps those have become collectors' items). So now I have room to start gathering more books, for next time. Only 14000 to go before we can buy solar pannels.

More on ya books for boys

Here's a column by Colleen Mondor reviewing a handful of ya books for boys. Specifically, she was looking for books in which growing from boy to man was a central theme, and she laments the fact that such books are thin on the ground compared to the dazzling displays of similar books for girls.

Now, I am not a boy, and never was, so it may be a tad pointless to say that none of these books appeal to me(with the exception of Time Bomb, by Nigel Hinton, because Danger: UXB was such a great PBS program). Why do so many books about boys have to be about team sports??? Why aren't there more books for boys along the lines of An Abundance of Katherines, featuring the eccentric intelligensia, with only a faint whiff of sport? Are there in fact any teen aged boys who like An Abundance of Katherines, or do they feel cheated?

I am very interested in what teen aged boys want to read, because I buy books for my library. A lot of them are books that the libarians ask me to buy, but I like to shop a bit on my own. It is easy to buy books I want to read myself, but I don't know what special books to get that might interest the one teenaged boy I've seen in our y.a. section. Our librarian has put a bulletin board soliciting suggestions, but none have come. I went to google, and found this article on the subject--a few years old, but interesting none the less, and I've decided that more graphic novels are the way to go.

When my boys are older, unless, god forbid, they have fallen into the pit of reluctant young male readers, I will give them Rosemary Sutcliffe to read--great historical fiction, from Bronze Age England to 18th-century Scotland, featuring a fine array of boys growing into men. There is also violence (wolves, Picts, Romans, Vikings, Saxons, etc, although not all in the same book), young men dealing with physical handicaps, and the development of emotional maturity.

Nobody does heroic, lovable,and believable historic boys growing up better than this author. I will also give them Taran Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander, another great coming of age story that also introduces very nicely the techniques of blacksmithing, weaving, and pottery. And there is my favorite book of 2006, The King of Attolia, which is the third of a series about a teen aged boy growing up, although I am not quite sure what lessons might be drawn from it...

When our first son was born, we were still building the book cases for his room. This were mainly to give me a place to put my own children's books, many of which feature girls. I hope that reading books with a female point of view will help him grow up to be the non-gender-stereotypical male type person (it's too hard to think of my baby as a man) I want him to be. I did draw the line, however, with A Little Princess, which is still in my room. There are limits.