Trout are Made of Trees

Try saying to your children, "Trout are made of trees." Assuming they know what trout are, they will think you are nuts, which perhaps you are, and they won't be shy about letting you know. But then, in a effort to restore your credibility, read them Trout are Made of Trees, by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Kate Endle (Charlesbridge, 2008, ages 4-7). "See?" you can say at the end. "I was right. You're made of trees too!"


This book tells of the journey from trees to trout, as two kids and their parents explore along a stream bed. The story sways between dreamy undemanding prose--"In fall, trees let go of leaves, which swirl and twirl and slip into streams" -- and crisper statements of fact -- "Bacteria feed on the leaves. Algae grow, softening surfaces." And the leaves are eaten by the shredding creatures, who are eaten who are eaten and so on, till we get to the trout. The result is a challenging book, vocabulary-wise, but the pictures help--in the bacteria section, for example, the kids are shown looking at rotting leaves with a magnifying glass--bacteria and algae must be small. And the impetus of the story carries the reader along, without calling out for much additional parental commentary.*

In short, this is lyrical science--not the non-fiction of straight explanation. The collage illustrations by Kate Engle also tend toward the lyrical as opposed to the science textbook. But collage when done well, as it is here, has a magical realism about it. In much the same way, a complicated story about nature is told in a way that a child can understand.

From my personal experience reading this at home: this isn't perhaps the easiest book to sell to the type of child that demands you read fact heavy books over and over again, but it's probably good for them to see science presented in different ways. And there are two fact heavy pages at the end that were much appreciated. My younger boy found the stream creatures enchanting; we spent a long time admiring the shredding creatures, and the little trout hatchlings.

Charlesbridge has organized a great competition in conjunction with this book. Find out more about Be a Stream Hero by going here and scrolling down till you see it.

Trout are Made of Trees is the first book by April Pulley Sayre that I've read, but Vulture View has been on my To Read list for ages (well, since it was short listed for the Cybils a few weeks ago). And now I'm curious to read Trout, Trout, Trout: a Fish Chant. Here's an interview with her over at A Year of Reading.

Illustrator Kate Endle has been guest blogging at Black eiffel--there are several posts, so keep moving forward in time to read them all, till you get to the contest (!) at the end. And how unselfish it is of me to let others know about it...

*I would like to say that it is nice that the author assumes we know what predators are. Of all the books about predators and prey I've read with my boys, this is the only one I can think of that doesn't stop and define it. But I could be wrong.

(Charlesbridge kindly sent me this review copy)

The January issue of The Edge of the Forest is up! I have a book review in it for the first time--a book I absolutely adore, Very Hairy Bear, by Alice Schertle, illustrated (and very nicely too) by Matt Phelan. My four year old has been quoting it and chuckling to himself ever since we first read it about 6 weeks ago...

Four Fur Feet for Poetry Friday

"Oh, he walked around the world on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet.
And he walked around the world on his four fur feet,
and never made a sound-O."

So begins Four Fur Feet, by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Remy Charlip (1990, Hopscotch Books). The walk around the world take a black pawed creature (the four fur feet are all we ever see) through cities, by rivers filled with boats and streams filled with fish, past a railroad yard, and through a countryside full of all kinds of animals. At last the black beast reaches a meadow, where he lies down to dry his paws (they'd gotten wet crossing the stream).

"And the sun shone down on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet.
And the sun shone down on his four fur feet
and made them feel all warm-O."

As the creature moves around the world, the reader has to move the book around too, until at one point it's upside down. All part of the fun.

To my mind, the illustrations don't invite a great deal of interested looking--they are made of lots of ink lines, sometimes with individual shapes colored in, as on the cover, sometimes just drawn on a solid color background. But since the book itself is (literally) moving, it might be for the best that the pictures aren't such eye-candy that the young read-ee wants to keep the reader's arm from turning.

And it is the words, the swing and rhythm of them (that Margaret Wise Brown at her best has such a good ear for), which make this book great fun. Although it is "four fur feet" that really makes it--this verse dosen't have them, and suffers as a result:

"And as he slept, he dreamed a dream,
dreamed a dream, dreamed a dream.
And as he slept, he dreamed a dream
that all the world was round-O."

This book has practical utility, in that the poem can be adapted to those situations where you are trying to get your four year old child to move. Here's an example from last night:

Oh he walked to his bed on his four fur feet,
his four fur feet, his four fur feet,
Oh he walked to his bed on his four fur feet,
and didn't get up till the morning! (ha ha)

Or you can walk up the stairs, to the car, to the door, etc. It is interesting and effective at the moment (two days after reading), but I'm not sure how long it will last. (Fast forward ten years: Oh he took out the trash on his four fur feet...)

On the right is the 1994 edition of the same story, illustrated by W.H. Marx. I much prefere the earlier one, with its very mysterious creature. Leaving the creature to the imagination of the reader makes it much more interesting. You can draw a set of four fur feet for everyone:



And then they can draw their own creature, like so:


More creaures (including mine) will be added later--I forgot to bring them with me to scan.

And finally, back to the poetry part of it all, there's a lesson plan up on the web here on how to use this book to explain alliteration to young kids.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is here at the Farm School today!

Sweethearts

Sweethearts, by Sara Zarr (Little, Brown and Co. 2008)

Yesterday quite a few folks blogged about the books they couldn’t wait to read, and on several lists was Sara Zarr’s new book, Sweethearts. It wasn’t on mine, because an ARC had arrived at my work address that morning, and I had already started reading it. A bit at lunch, a bit more in the car on the way home, before finally settling down to do some more modeling good reading behavior for my children.



Jenna Vaughn is not real. Sure, she sits at her high school lunch table with nice looking people, including her nice looking boyfriend, and she looks pretty nice herself. But her friends don’t know that inside Jenna is Jennifer Harris. Jennifer, the fat neglected child of a too busy mother, mercilessly taunted by the other kids, a loser, an outcast. Not too lonely, though, because she had Cameron, another outcast, as her faithful comrade.

For a few years they had each other to love. Because of this, Cameron was (almost) surviving his sadistic father, and Jennifer was (almost) surviving the lack of any familial affection. Then Cameron disappeared on Jennifer’s ninth birthday, without saying goodbye. The other kids told Jennifer he’d died. Her mom didn’t deny it. So Jennifer struggled on, with half of herself gone*, till she changed schools, her name, and herself, becoming Jenna. The aching jaws from keeping Jenna’s happy smile on were a small price to pay.

But Cameron returns, and so does Jennifer.

"I ran a paper towel under the faucet and pressed it to my face, looking in the mirror to check the status of the redness of my eyes. Baby. Then a voice from underneath that, one I hadn’t heard before, talked back. You’re not a baby. Babies don’t tear away window screens with their bare hands to save themselves. I closed my eyes, wanting to hear more, trying to block out any image of Jenna Vaughn that obscured my view of Jennifer Harris. But apparently she’d finished talking."

The engrossing story of what happened to Cameron and Jennifer is unfolded slowly in flashbacks, tied in to Jenna’s own remembering of the two children who in her mind had died. Often when I read books about unhappy or abused children, the unhappiness is so much front and center that I find it hard to empathize with the main characters. But because the present time of this book is a time of facing the past and coming back together (Jennifer and Jenna, Cameron and Jenna, Jenna and her mother, Cameron and his siblings), this is not so dark a read as many others on similar themes (although in all honesty the level of abuse here is as nothing compared to some*).

This is a great read, with memorable characters, and a fascinating story. Sara Zarr writes about these two sad children with great compassion and respect--respect in that her characters aren’t given any easy answers. And more to the point, from a reader’s perspective, she doesn’t offer an easy answer to the question that everyone reading this book will still have at the end of it. I guess she is expecting us to be smart enough to figure something out for ourselves. Sigh. I’d rather know.

My only quibble lies with Jenna’s relationships with her high school friends, which felt a bit two-dimensional and not quite convincing. But when you have a main character who knows she isn’t real, I suppose it becomes tricky to create real friendships for her…

*Hence the cover showing a heart with a bite taken out of it
**Touching Snow, by M. Sindy Felin, for instance, or Bad Girls Club, by Judy Gregerson

In the interest of full disclosure: I got my copy of this book from the publisher, along with a small box of candy hearts (thanks), which I also enjoyed very much but which did not at all influence what I just said about the book.

Books I'm looking forward too....

First on my list is Forever Rose, by Hilary Mckay, the most recent book about the Casson family (Saffy's Angel, etc.). It came out in England last fall, but won't be out in the US till this summer. The copy I'm going to be reading is currently in New York, at my sister's house; every time I talk to her I encourage her to come visit, so as to bring it with her. I have also offered to pay for postage.

I am also looking forward to Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin (April 2008), House of Many Ways, by Diana Wynne Jones (June 2008), and Knight Errant, by Patricia McKillip (Sept. 2008) (which shows up on the list of forthcoming books here at locus online). I also am looking forward very much to Megan Whalen Turner's next book, but she hasn't finished it yet. I think that all my life I will be looking forward to her next book, so I hope she outlives me.

I will eagerly pounce on Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape) by Carrie Jones (sequel to Cybils finalist Tips on having a Gay (ex)Boy Friend).

Finally, and most obscurely, I'm looking forward with great anticipation to Kate at Melling, by Margaret Biggs. This is a new book written by the author of a great English girls school series (Melling being the school). The series, originally all published before 1960, has been republished by Girls Gone by Publishers, and the author has written this brand new story!

Colleen at Chasing Ray is kindly rounding up other lists of anticipation!

Amoung the 50 Greatest British Writers...

I recently saw a list in the Times the 50 greatest post-war British writers. There were plenty of usual suspects, but three caught my eye--Philippa Pearce, Alan Garner, and Rosemary Sutcliff. The other children's book author's were Dahl, Lewis, Peake and Rawling, but that was less surprising.

Rosemary Sutcliff is the best writer of juvenile historical fiction that ever was, and I am very happy to see her on this list. Read The Mark of the Horselord. Eagle of the Ninth. Warrior Scarlet. You'll see what I mean. They are great stories, and I learned lots.

In this vein, I am looking forward to reading Good Masters, Sweet Ladies (which won the Newbery a few hours ago), although not the un-read first edition pre-sticker copy I just bought (which will be saved until it's time to pay for the kids to go to college). The illustrations remind me of Walter Hodges, who illustrated quite a few Rosemary Sutcilffs, and who is my favorite illustrator of things medieval. But of course since I did not open my new copy of G.M, S.L., not wanting to damage it, I can't be quite sure...

Learning to read

Over at Jen Robinson's Book Page, there's a great post up on helping kids learn to read--lots of ideas from parents (including moi), teachers, and writers. Another point has just occurred to me, and I think it's important enough that it deserves a post of its own.

So often it seems like reading level is used as a measure in intelligence--"Oh, you're reading War and Peace and you're only 8! How smart you must be!" If you aren't reading "big books" at that age, it might then seem as though you are stupid. My second grader isn't stupid (ask him to explain String Theory, and he'll do fine), but there are many, many kids who are reading books considerably harder than the Magic Treehouse books he's plodding through. So I've made a point of explaining to him that each person's brain develops at its own pace, and in some people, different parts develop faster--some kids talk before they walk, some walk before they talk. I tell him he has a very well-developed math brain, and a great kindness brain (except for whacking his little brother), and tell him that in a few more years, when his brain has developed a bit more, no one will be able to guess that his classmates had ever read harder books than he was reading. I often remind him of what he was reading in past years, so he can fully realize he's making progress. Three December 31sts in a row, he's read A Fly Went By, by Mike McClintock. The first time through, it took three painful days. Next year, 25 minutes, reading out loud. This year, about 20, read to himself. So he can really see he's getting there.

Otherwise, I think it would be so easy for him to just think "I'm a bad reader." A self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

On My Block: Stories and Paintings by 15 Artists

On my Block: Stories and Paintings by Fifteen Artists Edited by Dana Goldberg (2007, Children's Book Press).

This beautiful book was another I won through participating in the blogging about Robert's Snow, and the auctioning of snowflakes created by children's illustrators (the other book was Block Party Today!; perhaps if there had been more books about Blocks I would have won them too...). My copy came from Sara Kahn, one of the many (well, 15) artists featured in this book.

Children's Book Press asked 15 illustrators "to portray, in words and pictures, the places that are most special to them." The result is an eclectic, colorful mix of pictures and stories, that makes for very enjoyable browsing. The reader is taken on a journey around the world--from Mexico, to Cuba, to Iran (to name just three of the fifteen). It is a great showcase of variety (both artistic and cultural), but at the same time it's held together by common themes of nostalgia and love.

This book, for me at least, floats in the world between children's and adult books. My children (4 and 7) enjoyed looking at it, but it's perhaps more a dipping into book for that age than a read through. Adults might get more from it--this would be a great gift for fans of children's book illustration.

There's another review of this up here, at AmoXcalli.

I certainly enjoyed it-- thanks very much, Sara, and thanks for making your beautiful snowflake! To see her snowflake, and read a great interview with her, head over here to Kate Messner's blog.

Cybils YA finalists announced

They're up! Head over here to the Cybils website to see our masterful list of 7 brilliant YA titles...

Block Party Today!

Block Party Today! By Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Stephanie Roth (2004, Random House).

Last fall, many of us were busy promoting Robert's Snow, and the wonderful snowflakes created by children's book illustrators that were auctioned off to raise money for cancer research. As well as donating their time for snowflake making, many of these great illustrators offered prizes to folks reading the snowflake posts. I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Block Party Today! from Stephanie Roth, and now I don't have to worry about reading 123 YA books for the Cybils (see below), I'm happy to have a chance to say Thanks! And what a neat book!

Block Party Today! is about (surprise) a block party, in a multicultural urban place pretty far removed from where my kids live (a New England mill village). They were most interested in the street scenes, the different people, and the whole concept of closing off a street for a party. Roth's illustrations are great-colorful and detailed, interesting without being overwhelming. This is more than just a description of the party, though--Lola is mad at her friends Yasmin and Sue, and plans to stay in her room all day. She can't help but come down to her front steps, and she and Yasmin and Sue forget their quarrel in the fun of fire hydrant play. And the block party ends happily, with friendship triumphant. Just what a block party is supposed to do!

Thanks, Stephanie,for the book, and for making your snowflake (a really charming one, featuring Two Christmas Mice, which you can see here at the blog Writing with a Broken Tusk).

My Cybils work is done

I was up until 2am yesterday, working with my co-committee members to pick our 7 nominations for the Young Adult Cybils Awards. We had 123 books to pick from... They'll be announced tomorrow over at the Cybils website.

Thanks very much to Jackie, of Interactive Reader, who was our fearless leader! And thanks to all the rest of the gang--it was great fun working with you.

And a very big thanks to all the publishers and authors who made copies of their books available to us--they were much appreciated! I've passed most of my copies on to my local library, which will now have the best YA collection in the state of RI.

Finch Goes Wild

Finch Goes Wild, by Janet Gingold (Perfect Paperback, 2007)

Harmon Finch’s life is getting ugly. He’s stopped trying for decent grades at his savage middle school— a place where turning homework in invites violent reprisals from bullies. His doctor tells him that he has to get his weight under control, or else. His mom is driving him mad with her constant fussing. On the plus side, he has a nice dad (and his mother does love him lots), a comfortable house, a good brain and musical talent, and most importantly, a chance to take time away from the chaos of school and find his way into a different kind of “wild.”

Home schooling doesn’t alienate Harmon from his friends, because he has none. But it does give him the opportunity to head out with his dog into the nearby park. He spends more and more of his time there, first as a volunteer for a home schooling assignment, and then because he has been drawn into the world of bird watching. I might be making it sound more facile than the book reads, but in essence Harmon “grows up” as a result of bird watching, and it enables him to start high school a new, more physically fit, more confident person.

Harmon is a very likable character—sincere and well-meaning. He happens to be African-American—a black person who has a supportive, well-off family and who ends the book by going to Cornell. His ethnicity is not an Issue, but does come up casually from time to time (for example, musing about why he is the only black birdwatcher at the Christmas Bird Count). It’s also good to read a book that talks matter of factly about teen weight issues, and about home schooling (which is described in interesting detail). This is a very clean read—not for Harmon the escapades of other fictional youth. Harmon’s story wasn’t one that thrilled me to the core, but I’m glad it ended happily.

Because Harmon is a loner, there is a paucity of supporting cast, and not much dynamic interaction. The only character who appears long enough to have a chance at characterization is his mother; unfortunately, she is pretty much defined solely by her nagging nervousness, and although Harmon is stuck with her almost the whole book, she never becomes a person. Also, the bird watching was at times too meticulously described--people that don't know birds might have trouble staying interested, and people that do know them might find themselves reading these parts of the book rather skimmingly.

But heck. A book about a bird-watching teenager made a nice change—it was good to go off into the wild with Harmon.

Finch Goes Wild was one of the 123 books nominated for the YA category of the Cybils.

Congratulations, Patrick

I am proud as all get out that my dear husband Patrick's entry in Lisa Yee's Second Annual Bodacious Book Contest was judged Honor Title #1.

Here's his entry:

Original title: Now We Are Six
New Title: Now We Are Ticks
Summary: Kafka's Metamorphosis for the younger reader
Judges’ comments: The two books are such polar opposites, and somehow this contestant found a connection. Besides, we both love Kafkaesque tales for children…Louis the Fish, Shoebag, and now, Now We are Ticks.

Of course, this means that his entry beat mine, with ensuing residual bitterness which I am bravely hiding.

Thanks very much Lisa and judges!

More about reading for the Cybils

"Why is my backpack so heavy, Mama?" asked my 7 year old plaintively, as we travelled south for the holidays. Because Mama still had 12 more books to read in the next 5 days. And very excitingly on the personal level, this was the first airplane trip in seven years on which I was able to read a book from cover to cover! (It was In Search of Mockingbird, by Loretta Ellsworth, a very topical book for the reader who is travelling, in as much as it is about a bus journey from Minnesota, or somewhere northish like that, to Alabama).

Now the end of the Cybils is in sight, and there are only four book left on my list of must reads...

Reading YA for the Cybils la la la

Seven more books arrived at my house yesterday, and I am realizing that I am flying to D.C. tomorrow, and they plus a few other piles are going to be going with me unless I read them all tonight although what with packing and taking the cat to the vet and getting the car inspected and buying a few more presents I do not think this will happen.

I had a bad dream last night that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was nominated for the YA Cybils, and I had to read it by Friday. I woke up sweating.

Link to an interview with Carrie Jones

Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend was one of my favorite books this year, so I was happy to learn via this interview with its author, Carrie Jones, that several more books are in the pipeline...including this intriguing one, which has not yet gotten its final title: "After Zara’s dad dies and a strange man keeps appearing around her house, her mother sends her to Maine to live with her grandmother, straight into the territory of a stalking pixie king."

My mind boggles.

There's another great interview with Carrie over at Becky's Book Reviews.

Diana Wynne Jones --a winner!

This oldish news, but still. Diana Wynne Jones, an author I adore, has been given the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement (horray!) and here is a link to her acceptance speech.

Give the Gift of 2007's YA Books

I’ve been busily reading as many of the YA fiction books nominated for the Cybils as I can (up at 5:30am today, 1 ½ books read…). It’s not just reading them, which is fairly straightforward, it’s deciding if they are Good. And one of the factors that constitutes Good in this case is Teen Appeal.

I don’t have any teenagers to buy presents for this Christmas, but I thought that making a list of what books I would give, if I did, might help me sort out how appealing I think some of them are. The list that follows isn't my official Top 10 list, and I have left out a bunch of good books because I think they are simply too depressing to give as happy holiday presents (so although there is one Bad Thing in one of the following books, they are, for the most part, cheerful).

For a Seventh or Eight Grader, boy or girl:

The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt. I laughed and I cried over this one. Boy and teacher start the year out at war with each other (at least in his mind), but after a few escaped rats, a bit of Shakespeare, and some baseball (the Yankees are the team of choice here, so perhaps not the best gift for Red Sox fans), all is well.

Lemonade Mouth, by Mark Peter Hughes. 5 misfit kids form a band and make friends (in that order). It’s told from the perspective of each of the kids (2 boys and 3 girls), hence its cross gender appeal.
My review

For Older Teens

I’m going with the Gendered Recommendation thing here, which I feel ambivalent about, partly because there are fewer “boy” books I’d buy as presents than there are girl books (1 vs 5), and partly because I think girls are expected to read books with boy heroes and accept that as normative, whereas boys are rarely (I think) given books with girl heroes…*

For a teenaged boy:

Peak, by Roland Smith. I think that loosing part of your ear because it has frozen to the outside of a New York skyscraper is a pretty zippy way to begin a book; it goes on to take the hero to the top of Mt. Everest. Good adventure, interesting characters.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is Romantic, and might in general prefer fantasy:

Red Glass, by Laura Resau. I love this magical, beautiful book about a girl’s journey to Mexico and Latin America, where she must find the courage to go on a quest to save the boy she loves. Full of wonderful people and great images, it also provides a perspective on issues of immigration that I think is very valuable.
My review

For a teenaged girl who is smart with a great sense of humor:

Carpe Diem, by Autumn Cornwall. This book takes an uptight, over achieving girl named Vassar Spore and throws her into the jungles of South East Asia with a nutty grandma and a cute Malaysian cowboy wanabe. Lots of fun!
My review

Other books for girls, that are excellent reads but aren’t lending themselves to easy categorization:

Beauty Shop for Rent, by Laura Bowers
Billie Standish Was Here, by Nancy Crocker
Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, by Carrie Jones my review

For just about anyone:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. I have already lent my Cybils review copy to several other adults, which I usually don’t feel compelled to do.

Like I said above, these aren’t necessarily the 2007 YA books I think are the Best, but rather the ones I think make good presents! I’ve also only read about half of the 123 nominated books, so I might add more to this list. Other suggestions (from 2007 only) welcome! But please, none of the dark ones. You can give those for birthdays or something.


*Liz at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy is currently gathering a list of YA boy’s books, which makes up a bit for the fact that I'm only recommending one...

Books are being given away...

Lisa Schroeder is giving away 12 YA books for the 12 days of Christmas-- today is Day Three, so there are still lots left.

And today Jo Knowles is offering a signed copy of Lessons from a Dead Girl...

Good luck to all entrants, but especially to me :)

New Paddington Book

From the BBC Website:

"Paddington, the bear from Peru, will be arrested and interrogated over his immigration status in a book marking his 50th birthday. Paddington Here and Now, due to be published in June 2008, is set around the bear's home at 32 Windsor Gardens, Notting Hill, west London.

It will mark the 50th anniversary of his debut in A Bear Called Paddington.

Author Michael Bond, 83, who lives in London, said while the world had changed Paddington remained the same."