Extreme Animals--The Toughest Creatures on Earth

Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth, by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Neal Layton (2006) is one of the best kid's non-fiction books I've ever read. Heck, even thought it's ostensibly a kid's book, this 61 page fact-filled, well-written, amusingly illustrated book would make a great present for the curious adult.

"We humans are such a bunch of wimps!" the book begins. "We can't stand the cold, we can't stand the heat, we can't live without food, or water, and just a few minutes without air is enough to finish us off." But there are creatures out there much, much tougher--an amazing assortment of living things who survive incredibly hostile environments. Did you know, for example, that polar bear fur is so marvellously effective at keeping warm air in that a heat-seeking mission to find the bears only glimpsed the occasional nose? Or that if you put a sponge in a blender, and then pour the glop back in the ocean, it can reassemble itself back into a living creature?

The explanations for such wondrous phenomena are clear and to the point, with helpful, and funny, illustrations that underline and clarify. Each section is one or two rather densely written pages long, sufficient for explanation, while not to long to be overwhelming. The vocabulary tends toward the accessible Anglo-Saxon, but includes Latinate sciencey words (dormancy, hibernation, etc.) as appropriate, doing the reader the compliment of not explaining them except in a glossary at the back. Despite the relative simplicity of the words, it's not an "Early Reader" in the strict sense, but it makes a great read aloud for younger kids. My 7 year old, 4 year old, their grandmother and I all loved this book.

The winner of the Toughest Creature on Earth competition, by the way, is the tardigrade. They've been heated to 300 F, frozen to -459, been put under pressure six times greater than that at the bottom of the sea, and into pressureless vacuums, they've been zapped with lethal doses of x-rays and poisoned with chemicals. And still they live...

Mystery Manor

I have never read, nor had I even heard of, Mystery Manor, a 1939 children's novel by Mary Evelyn Atkinson, despite my interest in English children's books of this period. Thanks to this post at Oz and Ends, I will look for it next time I'm in England. Very funny!

This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort

This Place I know: Poems of Comfort Edited by Georgia Heard, with 18 illustrations by "renowned picture book artists." (2002)

I picked up, more or less at random, this anthology of poems--the idea of comforting poems appealed during this late August time of endings and transitions (I had my first anxiety dream about starting 2nd grade last night). These poems were gathered with a rather more powerful purpose, however--Georgia Heard chose them for the New York City children who saw the World Trade Center fall. But whether the anxiousness-es or griefs are large or small, the poems in this book can provide a starting place for talk, or simply be a comfort in themselves. These are, incidentally, secular poems; the comfort they offer comes from images of hope and happiness, nature and the love of other people.

All anthologies are someone else's choices (unless you happen to be the editor); some choices are agreeable, some are wonderful surprises, and others fail to move. One poem, new to me, which I loved was The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry. I can't quote the whole thing here because of copyright, but here it is with the middle removed:

"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and children's lives may be...
...I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It is perhaps not surprising that this was my favorite, because of the parental element. Other lovely poems include "Strengthen the Things that Remain" by Nancy Wood, "Dreams," by Langston Hughes, and Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope is the thing with feathers."

Then 18 magnificent illustrators are a bit of a grab bag. I love William Steig's children's books, but the boy in his picture here is the scary type from his New Yorker cartoons. Kevin Hawkes, however, has a lovely picture to go with the Wendall Berry poem.

But who could not like

Trouble, fly
out of our house.
We left the window
open for you.

("Trouble, Fly" by Susan Marie Swanson).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is over at The Book Mine Set today! Enjoy.

Weed it and Reap

I am somewhat addicted to weeding, rising with the larks to pull up crabgrass, finding solace in time alone with the puslane. Now I know why. In the July issue of Discover magazine, I read here that inhaling a bacteria called M. vaccae found in the dirt, could "help elicit a jolly state of mind" (p. 18). In a stress response test, "Control mice swam for an average fo two and a half minutes, while the M. vaccae-injected animals paddled for four." Now I know why I am still paddling...Incidentally, the same issue of Discover has a fascinating computerized map of 18 months of hookups at a mid western high school, perhaps useful to those writing YA novels.

Back to weeding: Here's a Weeding Quiz I compiled a few years ago (for the Girls Own yahoo list) of quotes from children's/girl's books, mostly English, but a few Australian and American, mostly from the early to mid 20th century. Rather an obscure collection of source material, but possibly of some interest. I'll post the answers as an addendum to this post next week.

A Girls Own Weed quiz: please give book, author, and
names of unidentified weeders!

1. They made a start on the brambles, but it was
harder work than they had anticipated. Still, they
cleared a little patch, and Rachel dug up quantities
of thistles. As they pushed the brambles away, they
uncovered more litter and the pile grew higher and
higher.

2. Someone (Mrs Reed, they later discovered) had cut
the grass, but that was all that had been done. Weed
[sic] and flower seedlings fought for space in the
boarders, dandelions flowered along the path, and the
old apple tree, in full blossom, bent even lower over
the garden shed.

3. Dr. Mowbray waged a constant war in the garden
against couch grass, a hardy and abundant weed which
he had inherited, along with the lupins, from old Miss
Russell of Birkenshaw. It grew everywhere, it had
creeping, tenacious roots, and it had proved, so far,
impossible to get rid of. Dr. Mowbray had told Fanny
- who had already known, being at least as skilled a
gardener as he was-that there was no point in pulling
at the grass, which merely snapped off....

4. The knife in his hand was a scythe with which he
was trying to clear a path through the mass of grass
and docks and nettles in which he stood knee deep. N.
held out her hand to him.

5. ...I longed to work quietly in the walled garden.
I weeded the paths and hoed the vegetables; then, as
the morning grew really hot, I crawled under the
asparagus, drawing a big basket after me.

6. It wasn't long before they were tugging at the
long strands of convolvulus that were obliterating
several large shrubs and a hydrangea bush. They
crawled into the undergrowth searching for its roots.
"What you need to do," said D., "is throw the
weeds into a pile and make a compost heap out of
them."
(Hint: D. is a boy)

7. The front lawns were kept cut, and the hedges
trimmed, but out of sight of the house the celandine
reigned supreme; and later on in the year the daisies
flourished, and the dandelions bloomed in golden
slendour.

8. Tommy's six weeks' beans were a failure; for a dry
spell early in the season hurt them, because he gave
them no water; and after that he was so sure that they
could take care of themselves, he let the poor things
struggle with bugs and weeds till they were exhausted,
and died a lingering death.

9. Inspecting the flower-beds, she found dandelions
and groundsel, which she knew weren't proper flowers
for a garden, and she resolved to weed for half an
hour, cut grass for half an hour, and in the remaining
time do odd jobs.

10. Weeds....He knew plenty about them by now. There
was one called purslane, with a lot of fat, pink
tentacles, that grew up overnight in countless
numbers. There was quack grass, coarse and hardy, its
roots stretching under the earth in endless nets.
There were yellow dock, and lamb's quarters, and
velvetleaf...such stubborn boring little enemies.

11. C. kept giving clear and earnest instructions
about digging deep and turning the weeds in 'like me';
that was all right for C. who loved gardening and
really seemed to enjoy making hard work for himself,
but D. decided her style was more to remove the
weeds and smooth the top nicely--like a bed when you
hadn't turned the mattress.

12. "Now take those weeds down to the rubbish heap,
Geordie, and tip them right on. You made a very
pretty little mess on the path there yesterday, and I
can't have Sandy compalining to me every day, you
know."

13. "Why from five o'clock all these boys was doin' a
bit o' weedin in my patch...."

14. She searched about until she found a rather sharp
piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out
the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear
places around them.
"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said...

15. "I couldn't tell the difference between a pea
vine and a weed at the end of a hoe..."

16. "What are these with the thick roots?" she
inquired innocently. "There are lots of them, and they
look so like radishes."

17. ...their legs had already been bound tightly in
long creepers without their noticing.

Cassie Was Here

I was thrilled a little while ago to be the winner of my own signed copy of Cassie Was Here, by Caroline Hickey (2007, 182pp). Thanks Mother Reader, and thanks Ms. Hickey! I read it with great enjoyment, and now, having seen that Kelly over at Big A little a has reviewed it, here are my own thoughts.

Bree is eleven, has just moved to a new neighborhood, is being blamed by her brother for his broken arm, and her mother has (literally) closed herself away (so as to get work done). Sure, she still has her imaginary friend Joey, but still she feels pretty gloomy. Then she meets Cassie--older, tougher, full of zing. Is Cassie a true friend?

The dynamics of friendship are played out, painfully and hopefully, as in real life. But although "friendship" is the main theme of this book, what stuck in my mind was the "when do you have to grow up" theme that's also being explored.

When I was Bree's age, like her, I wanted to play the games of childhood--dollhouses and imaginary friends and such. The summer I was Bree's age, I was happily sewing clothes for my dolls. Then we moved back to the United States, and I started 7th grade. Ack. Almost all the girls were desperate to grow up, and I personally was repulsed by the hairiness of the Bee Gees.

I loved Caroline Hickey's detailed and loving descriptions of the games that Bree and Joey play, but most of all, I was very happy that in the end, she has a real friend, Anna, with whom she can still be a child (thanks to Cassie, who although she has put aside childish things herself, does not despise them).

Little Rabbit Goes to School

We've gotten the second grade class list and the new pencil cases, tomorrow little one eats lunch at pre k for the first time, and bigger one is practicing saying "hello" to his new teacher (Make Eye Contact!). So here's my favorite back to school book, a picture book that we read year round in our house: Little Rabbit Goes to School, by Harry Horse (American edition 2004).

It is Little Rabbit's first day at school! And Charlie Horse, his beloved wooden toy, is going too. Mama does her best, but "No, Mama," says Little Rabbit (I hear that a lot too...). Off go Little Rabbit (very cute in his blue jumpsuit) and Charlie Horse. School is fun, but Charlie Horse keeps getting into trouble. He wants to gallop, he wants to dance, and he jumps in the class cake batter! The worst comes on the nature walk, when Charlie Horse leads Little Rabbit away from the group, and they are lost. They are soon found again, but that night, Little Rabbit tells Mama that the next day Charlie Horse can stay home-- "He's too naughty for school."

It is a clever, sweet and funny book, perfect for any Mother or Father who's a bit worried about the First Day. And the children will like it too, and perhaps decide not to take their own Charlie Horse equivalent to school. Even though my little one's dragon, Red Fire Flyer, still goes, he's learned he has to sleep in the cubbie during the day.

There are three other Little Rabbit books--Little Rabbit Lost, Little Rabbit Runaway, and Little Rabbit's New Baby. They are all lovely.

For Poetry Friday --a poetry full speach by Ursula Le Guin

"The bringing of light
is no simple matter.
The offering of flowers
is a work of generations."

Ursula Le Guin, from The Vigil for Ben Linder, here on her website.

At the end of my sophomore year in college, I missed the commencement address--I had put off packing too long. So from my tower room, I heard vague noises from the gathered crowds, but not a word spoken by Ursula Le Guin. They were good words, too, as I discovered recently via Google, and full of poetry (and poems, mostly by other people). The words were about words, and talking, and creating relationships and being in the world, all things that Le Guin excels at.

I have two boys. I read to them and talk to them; I want them to talk to me. So I found this bit of Le Guin's speech rather thought provoking:

"People crave objectivity because to be subjective is to be embodied, to be a body, vulnerable, violable. Men especially aren't used to that; they're trained not to offer but to attack. It's often easier for women to trust one another, to try to speak our experience in our own language, the language we talk to each other in, the mother tongue; so we empower each other.

But you and I have learned to use the mother tongue only at home or safe among friends, and many men learn not to speak it at all. They're taught that there's no safe place for them. From adolescence on, they talk a kind of degraded version of the father tongue with each other - sports scores, job technicalities, sex technicalities, and TV politics. At home, to women and children talking the mother tongue, they respond with a grunt and turn on the ball game. They have let themselves be silenced and dimly they know it, and so resent speakers of the mother tongue; women babble, gabble all the time.... Can't listen to that stuff.

NB: The men that I know well enough to talk to are not like the stereotypes here, so I take this with a grain of salt.

But still, reading out loud to my sons, I wonder what they are hearing. So many books about people busily doing things...you can't really ask, after reading "Go, Dog, Go," a question like "how did that make you feel?" (I generally ask, once we get the party scene, "Which dog would you like to be?" And anyway, "how did that make you feel" is such a forced question that the whole communication experience becomes moot).

Reading poetry is a much more relaxing way to offer children a nice subjective experience. I have been amazed at the pure emotional, subjective reactions poems elicit from my kids (although thinking about it, their response is often couched in un-woman-tongue: "Read it Again" they say. Or "I don't like it." Or still more disturbingly, "I don't get it," as if meaning was a possession. But their little faces are just full of flickering expressions, and they aren't running away or hitting each other). Words whose meanings must surely be unclear to them still have meanings when taken together.

In a book where all is clear, it is the words that have power--the dogs are going, and no subjecive feelings can stop them. But in the poems that I think of as "really good", the reader or listener has a voice too. So I try to read them poetry, although it is hard, especially these days while we are painting the living room and the house falls into disaster around it ("how does this mess make you feel, children?").

Here is part of another of the poems Le Guin quotes:

The Blanket Around Her

maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as
the blue sky
hanging in turquoise from her neck

It was written by Joy Harjo of the Creek people, and was published in: That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women, ed. Rayna Green (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 127.

The Poetry Friday roundup is hosted today by Kelly Fineman, here today!

Hill's End -- My favorite Australian Book

Colleen Mondor, at Chasing Ray, initiated a group blog trip to Australia. In honor of this, here is one of my Australian favorites.

Hill's End, by Ivan Southall (1962)

One of the best books in the "children surviving great personal hardship in the face of catastrophe with no grownup to help" genre is Hill's End, by Ivan Southall. In a small and incredibly isolated Australian logging town, a group of children and their school teacher set off into the hills to look for rock paintings. All the town's other residents, except for the logging foreman, leave town for the annual regional picnic, miles away. A storm like no other they have seen strikes, the teacher is badly injured, and the children come down from the hills to find their town is ruined--almost all the houses destroyed, the water polluted, beloved pets dead, and an enraged and injured bull loose in the streets. They cannot count on their parents coming back anytime soon--they know the road is almost certainly impassible, and the bridges down. When they find the body of the mill foreman, they know that there is no one to count on but themselves.

The story of their survival is not just the details of what they ate and drank (although I found this part very interesting); it is an extraordinarily thoughtful portrait of each child's reactions and realizations about themselves and each other. There are both girls and boys, and both genders are given chances to be smart and brave, as well as chances to fail.

Even though it was written a while ago, it doesn't seem dated. This is also a useful book geography-wise, in as much as some of us have trouble remember that Australia has forests as well as the Outback. Another favorite Australian author of mine who demonstrates this even more vividly is Nan Chauncy, who set many of her books (Tiger in the Bush, World's End Was Home) in deep forests of Tasmania, shown below, being logged.

Sadly, Hill's End is out of print right now. It was widely distributed in the US, however, and might still be in libraries.

Southall has won the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year in 1966, 1968, 1971 and 1976, Picture book of the Year in 1969, the Carnegie Medal (UK) in 1972 and the Australian National Book Award for The Long Night Watch in 1983.

If anyone likes this genre, here's a list of other titles I just found, many of which I know and love (The Silver Sword, anyone?).

Mythopoeic Awards

The winners of the Mythopoeic Awards have been announced, and I was pleased Patricia McKillip's most recent novel, Solstice Wood, won the award for adult literature. This is not because I think S.W. is so stunningly great, although I liked it just fine, but because I have been vaguely worrying that maybe her fantasy books aren't selling all that well and the chances for getting a new book in her Cygnet series are getting slimmer. Not that I have any clue how her books are selling, but I do so want a new Cygnet book.

This is Mckillip's third win - the others were Something Rich and Strange and Ombria in Shadow . She has made the final list for Best Novel a staggering eleven times.

I have never heard of the winner of the award for children's literature -- Catherine Fisher's Corbenic (Greenwillow), because I wasn't reading blogs when it was published. Here's one of the blog reactions from back then: Gail Gauthier's, at Original Content. It looks most excellent.



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Deputy Dorkface -- How Stinkville Got Cleaned Up

Deputy Dorkface -- How Stinkville Got Cleaned Up. Kevin D. Janison (Author), Eldon Doty (Illustrator) (32 pages, August 2007). Taylor and Colin, out for a ride one day in the Mojave Desert, come upon a strange sight -- the sinkometer of the small town of Stinkville. Undeterred by the day's stink reading (off the charts), the kids ride into town, a town where no one has bathed for weeks and weeks (possibly longer). The reader learns the awful story behind the stink of the townsfolk in a flashback; Taylor and Colin simply see the present situation--that Deputy Dorkface, about to throw them in jail for trespassing, needs a bath. Through brute force, they force him into the water, the other townsfolk jump in too, and Stinkville is clean again.

It's supposedly for ages 9-12, but I think it works better as a read aloud for the 5-7/8 crowd, or as a step up from an Early Reader. The illustrations are cartoonish, the humor is basically the one stinky situation (plus the name "Deputy Dorkface," which seems to amuse the young) and the plot has to be taken with a few grains of salt. It's not to my taste, but I've read it three times this week to my 7 year old.

Being part of a family seems to entail reading books that don't personally appeal. At my husband's enthusiastic urging (before he became my husband), I read The Ragged Trousered Phillanthropists (painfully), only to find out he'd never read it himself. And yesterday I was returning books to the library, including two Captain Underpants books. "Oh," said our children's librarian, "You're letting your son read those?" "Reading them to him." I said ruefully. "Good for you," she said, being a strong suscriber to the let them read anything as long as they are reading school of thought. For me,Deputy Dorkface falls into this catagory.

I got my copy from the publisher (Stephens Press); I'll be passing it on to the library, so that it can be enjoyed by other children...

Wild About Books

Wild About Books (by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown) came out in 2004 to rave reviews. I read it for the first time last week, and was very taken by it myself. A book mobile arrives at the zoo, and next thing the reader knows, "In a flash, every beast in the zoo was stampeding To learn all about this new something called reading." It was a pleasure to read out loud--as the example shows, Judy Sierra knows how to write lines that scan, in a Seuss-ian way. Not only do the animals learn to read, they learn to write their own books. I especially enjoyed the bug written haiku, accompanied by scathing scorpion reviews--

"Roll a ball of dung--
Any kind of poo will do--
Baby beetle bed."

"Stinks."

My husband was inspired to write his own contribution to this review:

"Anapestic tetrameter's surely not easy
the first line is simple, the second a queasy
grasping at any syllable in sight
and jamming it in but not getting it right"

Judy Sierra gets it right, so you hardly notice it's there."

He did have two quibbles:

"I do think she risks leaving other hippo would-be authors in tears by raising unrealistic expectations about first-time publishing." (The hippo wins the Zoolitzer Prize).

And in reference to the clever and amusing insertion of actual books and authors into the rhymes, he writes:

"There should be some marine mammals, then she could rhyme "fin" with "LeGuin" and point the kids in the right direction." (Hear,hear, I say. Anyone else looking forward with great happiness to Powers, coming this September?)

Wild About Books is brightly illustrated by Marc Brown. He's not my personal favorite (I like my animals a tad more realistic than his colorful caricatures), but his creatures rollick along nicely with the text. According to the Random House teachers catalogue, his illustrations "reflect the naïve spirit of folk art at its best." Hmph. Sounds, perhaps, a tad patronizing...And what the heck does it mean anyway.

Poetry Friday: A Kick In The Head

It's so great to enthuse about a book, with absolutely no reservations at all. A Kick in the Head (2005), a volume of poems selected by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka, is such a book. But this is not just a collection of charming and diverting poems by various skilled authors, charmingly and divertingly illustrated (although it is that). This book is "An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms." Examples of 29 different forms of verse are presented, with the poems in largish type and the explanation of the form in very small parent-reading-size type.

For example, here's a Riddle Poem:

The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space,
The beginning of every end,
The end of every place. (annon.)

And Janeczko notes: "A riddle poem indirectly describes a person, place, thing, or idea. The reader must try to figure out the subject of the riddle. A riddle poem can be any length and usually has a rhyme scheme of abcb or aabb" (page 33)

In the introduction, Janeczko says that "knowing the rules makes poetry - like sports - more fun." It's his hope that knowing the rules will make the "game" of poetry more fun.

I'm not the first to fall for this book. It's won awards, gotten glowing awards, etc. etc. Deservedly so. This book is certainly educational--it's the best guide to poetic forms I've ever read (I can't actually remember reading any others, but there you go). I had never, for instance, heard of a senryu before (a haiku about human nature). But it is also simply a fun book to read to your kids, hoping, perhaps, that they will want to play too.

A Kick in the Head is recommended for children 9-12, but heck. Everyone likes to read fun poetry, and figuring out (and bending) the Rules makes poetry even more engaging.

The poetry friday roundup is at The Miss Rumpheus Effect today!

Book Lovers -- Unite To Bring Back Surface Mail!

As you may or may not know, the US Postal Service no longer offers international surface mail. This means that it is no longer practical to send anything heavy (like books) overseas-- no sending books (or other humanitarian items like blankets and clothes) to developing countries, no international students being able to send their books home, no books as presents for friends and family overseas, and a hardship to folks selling books.

Please sign this petition, and pass it on!

thanks.

Spoilers! Rowling answers questions

JK Rowling has told what happens to the main characters --the full transcript of her recent session answering fan's questions is up on Mugglenet

I am pleased with Luna's future--she becomes a famous wizarding naturalist who eventually marries the grandson of Newt Scamander, author of 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.'"

I couldn't see her ending up with Dean, despite their brief hand holding.

But Harry as Head of a Ministry Department seems a bit silly. He has no administrative talents at all, and should be a field worker. Although he is good (as the leader of the DA), at gathering people together to work for a common goal, so maybe it will work...

Linking to "Mythic Fiction for Young Adult Readers"

Following a link over at Chicken Spaghetti today, I found myself at the blog for the Endicott Studio, looking around with great interest. As well as the blog, there is an online Journal of Mythic Arts, the summer edition of which is now online. From the blog: this issue is "focused this time on mythic fiction for Young Adult readers. What's special about this issue is that it contains thirteen short stories, rather than our usual two or three, along with our regular mix of nonfiction, art, and poetry." Read more about it here (the blog) or go straight to the journal where you can read new stories by Holly Black, Gwenda Bond, and many others.

Since everyone is saying that Harry Potter has made fantasy the hot book genre for the young etc etc, I find it a little dispiriting that the lovingly selected cluster of such books displayed in advance of HP 7 at my library didn't get checked out in meaningful numbers (2 books is not meaningful, especially since I took one of them). However, ever the optimist I have changed the sign from "While you're waiting for Harry, check these out!" to "Now that you've read Harry..."

In fairness to the patrons of my library--they had already checked out many of the books I had planned to put in the display. The Dark is Rising seems to be going out like hot cakes; likewise the Charlie Bone series by Jenny Nimo. But why will no one check out The Game (Diana Wynne Jones) or The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner) or The Safe Keeper's Secret (Sharon Shinn)?

What character from The Thief are you?

I just found out that I'm the Queen of Eddis...here's the quiz. If you haven't read The Thief and it's two sequels, by Megan Whalen Turner, you should. Especially if you are looking for Post Harry reading. I lovingly put these books out in my library's "while you're waiting for Harry" display...no one has checked them out. So I will change the sign to "now that you've read Harry" and leave the books there until they are gone. Or until Management forces me to reshelve them.

July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature

The curtain's gone up on the July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature --The Play's the Thing hosted by Saints and Spinners. It is a stunning collection of the cream of kid lit blog posts from the past month--check it out!

New Ballet Shoes movie on its way

A new movie is being made of Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild, due to start production in August. They are apparently having trouble casting it --here's an article explaining the difficulty. Ballet Shoes is one of the books from my childhood I read ad nauseam-- it's the tale of three sisters at a stage school in pre-WWII London. Along with White Boots (aka Skating Shoes) and Curtain's Up (aka Theatre Shoes), it's my favorite Streatfeild, so I hope they are kind to it. The BBC did a version in 1975 (shown at left), but I've never seen it.

When I lived in England a while ago, I was staggered to realize how many books she had written that are not readily available over here. Here's a full list of her books.

Wiggle and Waggle--the Play's the Thing

Last week I reviewed Wiggle and Waggle by Caroline Arnold, illustrated by Mary Peterson (2007, Charlesbridge, 48 pp, ages 4-8). In a nutshell, this is a picture book/early reader that tells of the simple doings/diggings of two worms (the eponymous Wiggle and Waggle), in 5 well-illustrated chapters. Here's the full review.

I have now read this book 16 times to my 4 year old. We have also stagged a Wiggle and Waggle puppet show.

Wiggle and Waggle makes a darn good puppet show for the very young. This occurred to me the first time I read it; I then found out that Charlesbridge had the same idea here at their Wiggle and Waggle activities page.

For one thing, it is very easy and fun to make worm puppets out of construction paper glued to popsicle sticks. Wiggle and Waggle are more "earth toned" than most new construction paper, but we have so many old old old pieces around that have faded that we were able to find colors that worked. But for those who want the real Wiggle and Waggle, not home-made approximations, Charlesbridge has cut-outable pictures.

There are only two characters, which cuts down on the chaos factor considerably. Wiggle and Waggle sing, and, speaking from experience, the Wiggle and Waggle song is easily memorized (there's a tune provided online, but I find it easier just to fit the words to whatever tune comes into my head). The plots of the Wiggle and Waggle stories are very simple (and plot takes a backseat to performance anyway, in a show like this. We did a lot of singing the Wiggle and Waggle song, less re-enactment of the story lines). And finally, after hearing the book over 20 times in a week (16 + however many times my husband has read it), there is a good chance that both child and adult will have memorized the dialogue (or you can just sing).

I am tempted to make more worms (so easy to do)--Squiggle and Squaggle (not in the book) can come over to play. I am also tempted to add zing to our show by making alternate W. and W.'s --Full Tummied version, for after the picnic, and Muddy version.

Or perhaps we can just go visit the compost pile, and find some worms to train for the live action version, and I can write about it as a submission to the Learning in the Great Outdoors blog carnival.

I'm submitting this one to The Play's the Thing, the July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature, over at Saints and Spinners.

There's a Book Quiz going around, which I found at Becky's Book Reviews. I hate this cover. I don't mind being The Hobbit, but why do I have to be this hobbit?

You're The Hobbit!

by J.R.R. Tolkien

All you wanted was a nice cup of tea when some haggard crazy old man
came into your life and told you it was time to do something with yourself. Now you're
all conflicted about whether to stick with your stay-at-home lifestyle or follow this
crazy person into the wild. While you're very short and a little furry, you seem to be
surrounded by an even greater quantity of short folks lately. Try not to lose your ring,
but keep its value in perspective!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Or take the Country quiz. I am France. I don't know what to say about that. And no, the quiz didn't ask my opinion of George Bush.

Next I took the university quiz:

You're the University of California, Irvine!

Your surroundings have always been spoiled and privileged to
the point of being removed from reality. At the same time, you can be
surprisingly down-to-earth and aren't even above the consumption of insects.
Despite being quite young, you have established yourself as one of the better
researchers in your field. You love the strange phonetics of the word
"zot".


Take the University Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I don't actually think "zot" has strange phonetics.

Stranger in a Strange Land--American girls at English Schools

I stopped over at Shen's Blog this morning, and I predict that I might be visiting again many times in the next few weeks, to check in on their "Crossing Cultural Borders" series (logo on right). It looks great!

This week's topic is "Stranger in a Strange Land: Americans Traveling to Other Cultures:

Since it’s summer and the perfect time to travel, we’re kicking off our Crossing Cultural Borders series with stories about American children and teens physically crossing the borders into other countries and experiencing other cultures."

When I was a little girl, I found myself starting first grade at the Oporto British School. Standing outside the door of my new classroom, a strange adult pushed me in the direction of a larger child, saying, "You stand with her. She's American too." And bang, it hit me that I was "the other" and at an even more basic level that "others" existed (well, not quite in those words). I had never before thought of myself as "American" in opposition to anything else.

In English school stories, Americans at English schools have generally been caricatures. Zerelda Brass, for instance, shows up in Third Year at Mallory Towers (Enid Blyton, 1948, but still in print), wearing (brace yourself) Lipstick! She is flamboyant, annoys the English girls with her accent (which is totally unfair), and generally has trouble with the role of rule-abiding English school girl. For more on Zerelda, look here . Enid Blyton sure has no qualms about pigeonholing girls from different countries--Americans, although bumbtuous, are at least good-hearted, whereas the unfortunate French are doomed--no sense of honour. I started reading Enid Blyton while I was at the Oporto British School, and found Zerelda so fantastical as to be meaningless. But by that time I had picked up, without conscious effort, a more or less posh British accent myself, while still inwardly sneering at the pronunciations of certain words such as squirrel (which of course has only one syllable).

An outstanding book about an American girl at an English boarding school is Back Home, by Michelle Magorian (1984). Virgina was evacuated to America at the beginning of WW II; now the war is over, she returns to her family in England. 12 year old Rusty, as Virginia was called by her American family, isn't "English" anymore, and Magorian does a superb job showing all the jarring, dislocating little things that make two cultures different from each other, even when the language spoken looks the same on paper. For instance, the simple act of saying "hi," without waiting to be spoken too, raises the hackles of the English girls. Rusty's experience at boarding school is horrific. Used to the freedom of her life in America (which seems like a cliche, but reading American vs English girls stories indicates pretty clearly that there is a lot of truth in it), Rusty cannot cope with the regimented, rule-bound institution in which she is trapped.

More recently, Libby Koponen wrote Blow Out the Moon (2004), based on her own experiences of moving to England at a young age, and going off to boarding school at age 8. She too expresses very well how totally foreign a child can feel that first day of school. At the day school she went to initially, the fact of her American-ness never went away; hence her enrollment at what turned out to be an idyllic sounding boarding school. Libby Koponen has a great web site, with lots of pictures!

I've always felt that England should feel less foreign than it does--after all, we read a lot of the same children's books...But because of the shared culture and language, the little things that are different are more startling than the large differences encountered in places where differences are more expected.

If anyone has other examples of American girls at English schools, please share them!

For Poetry Friday- Talking like the Rain, and a long day without water

In preparation for Poetry Friday, I checked out an anthology of poems for children--Talking Like the Rain, a Read-to-me Book of Poems (selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, illustrated by Jane Dyer, 1992, Little Brown). My six year old is a big fan of my blog, and I thought he might enjoy helping me pick this week's poem. We browsed through the anthology, dipping into poems almost at random. This book offers a mix of older authors (Christina Rosetti, RL Stevenson), and many 20th century poets of whom I know little, and includes a number of anonymous playground type songs, which is always fun. The water color illustrations are enjoyable without being intrusive.

So there we were, browsing, when I was startled to come across this poem, by Joan Aiken, called "John's Song."

It's a long walk in the dark
on the blind side of the moon
and it's a long day without water
when the river's gone
and it's hard listening to no voice
when you're all alone

so take a hundred lighted candles with you
when you walk on the moon
and quickly quickly tie a knot in the river
before the water's gone
and listen for my voice, if for no other
when you're all alone

"That was great." said my son, very seriously. I like it too.

I was surprised at this poem's appearance in this anthology because I knew it before, from Aiken's short story "A Long Day Without Water." It is a very sad story, and not being one to linger over sad bits, I never fully appreciated this song as a "poem." Checking my copy of the story (which appears in A Harp of Fishbones and Other Stories, 1972), I see to my even greater surprise that the second verse isn't in the story. Where did the missing verse come from?

The Kennedys say the poem is from Not What You Expected, another short story collection (1974), where the same story appears. Perhaps Aiken added the second verse then. Taking the question up with google, I found that she wrote quite a bit of poetry, so possibly I will be posting more from her on future Fridays.

Talking Like the Rain got its name from a quote taken from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, and printed at the beginning of the book:

One evening out in the maize field, where we had been harvesting maize, breaking off the cobs and throwing them on to the ox-carts, to amuse myself, I spoke to the field labourers, who were mostly quite young, in Swahili verse. There was no sense in the verse, it was made for the sake of the rhyme...
It caught the interest of the boys, they formed a ring around me. They...waited eagerly for the rhyme, and laughed at it when it came. I tried to make them themselves find the rhyme, and finish the poem when I had begun it, but they could not, or would not, do that, and turned away their heads. As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: "Speak again. Speak like rain." Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcome."

I am longing for rain right now myself.

The Poetry Friday Round Up is at Chicken Spaghetti today!

Ralph Masiello's Dragon Drawing Book

Sadly, all the pictures I drew myself that went with this post vanished into the inter-ether. As I threw away my drawings and deleted them from my computer, there isn't much I can do about it.



I believe firmly that a few gentle tips can make a huge difference to a beginning artist. For instance, when I was little, my mother drew an endless succession of paper doll princesses for me to color, all with their arms stuck out at 45 degree angles. Being a good, docile child, I thought this was how the human form should be drawn until I was 14/15, when finally someone asked, "why do all your people have their arms sticking out at 45 degree angles?" It was incredibly liberating to move arms around. Likewise, when I was nine I was given "How to draw horses." Almost immediately, my horse's rear legs went from this to this. Definite progress, although more is needed-- my horses to this day are all standing still and looking left.

On occasion I draw dragons for my boys to color (strangely they don't want princess paper dolls). I have lots of stuffed models to copy, but I feel tremendously inadequate when I attempt the writhing, horn-festooned dragons of high fantasy. So I approached Ralph Masiello's Dragon Drawing Book (2007, Charlesbridge) in a hopeful spirit. (Masiello is also the illustrator of Jerry Pallotta's alphabet books, which are being requested incessantly these days at my house. Despite this, until I read the fly leaf I didn't have a clue who Masiello was. Other households must pay more attention to the names of illustrators...He has also done bug, dinosaur, and ocean drawing books, which makes sense, as each of these topics has its alphabet book).

The Dragon Drawing Book is lovely to look at. Masiello includes colorful finished dragons of his own, and very nice they are. I also liked the Useful Map showing where all the dragons he draws can be found--these are not just your common garden European dragon, but rather Dragons of Many Lands. I for one am greatful for every opportunity to promote geography and multi-cultural appreciation.

Masiello's approach is to go line by line, until suddenly you've drawn the lines and have the dragon. This is in marked contrast to the "find the geometric shapes" approach I've seen in other drawing books, where you block the figure out and then add detail and erase. Presumably the user of this book could sketch the basic shape on their own, and then add the clear lines Masiello suggests. In my "after" picture, I didn't do this, but perhaps should have.

Even though my kids are too young to do the drawings as outlined, they liked leafing through the book, and perhaps it will inspire them. My six year old ranks himself 3rd in his class at Dragon Drawing, and, not that I'm competitive on my children's behalf or anything, tied for best would also be nice. Especially since only three of them draw dragons.

Here is my Before picture:
This is "Raineater." He looks like a stuffed animal because he is.

Here is my After picture, drawn quite quickly in pen with no erasing:

I ran into two specific problems. For each drawing, Masiello provides lines to copy. In the beginning, it is not at all clear what the line is supposed to be, and so what seems like a small difference between your version and his can end up being more problematic than it might seem. That's why my tail is so scrawny--I thought it was ok to end it early, not realizing it was supposed to continue. I should have studied the final product, sketched it a bit, gotten some idea of what I was trying to draw.

My other problem is that I am really bad at repeating abstract patterns, which is why the scaly part down the tummy gets pretty out of focus on mine, and which is also why I chose not to include scales. However, I think, if I practiced, I could draw pretty good copies of his dragons, and then I would have a repertoire of 11 cool dragons.

Would I, at that point, be a better "dragon draw-er?" I think yes--I already feel a bit more ready to tackle wing structure. A book like this is perhaps the drawing equivalent of learning to dance by standing on someone else's feet--by copying their steps/lines, you get a feel for how things should go.

Charlesbridge is holding a really cool dragon drawing competition in honor of this book --see here; sadly, I'm too old.

NB: I received my copy of this book from the publisher.

Wiggle and Waggle

Wiggle and Waggle by Caroline Arnold, illustrated by Mary Peterson (2007, Charlesbridge, 48 pp, ages 4-8)

Wiggle and Waggle tells of the simple doings/diggings of two worms (the eponymous Wiggle and Waggle), in 5 well-illustrated chapters. This book works very well both as a read-aloud and as an early reader. I tried it on my children (4 and 6) last night as both, with great success. Of course, its worth as an early reader was perhaps compromised by the fact that I had to read it out loud three times at the request of the 4 year old before the 6 year old got a chance to try.

The doings of the worms are simple--they work in the garden (dig dig dig), go on a picnic, go swimming, and dig some more. As an adult forced to re-read ad nausem, I would have liked a bit more--the worms are not as well characterized as Frog and Toad, for example, and their adventures not as compelling. But according to my children, this book was just as good if not better.

Caroline Arnold has written more than 130 children's books, mainly non-fiction, so it's not surprising that this book also includes an information page about worms at the end. I appreciated this, although I am not sure that my life is better for knowing that there are earthworms that grow to be 22 feet long. That's too long.

The illustrations are simple, with touches of whimsical detail -- after eating their picnic, for instance, the worms have round little tummies, which delighted my youngest. It is a tricky thing, I imagine, to illustrate an early reader--one doesn't want illustrations that distract too much from the text, but they still should be interesting. I think Peterson does a fine job striking that balance. The book itself is very handsome. Even thought the words themselves are simple, and the chapters short, the hardcover edition I have looks much more like a Real Book than most early readers, which is all to the good.

I am doing my best to ensure that my children like worms. We go to the compost pile to look for "wormies" -- "Oh wormy-squirmy! wormy-squirmy! how sweet!" says 4 year old; but sadly, my 6 year old has been affected by peer pressure, and has been known to say "gross." So I was glad to bring home this pro-worm book (joining the ranks of Diary of A Worm, and Richard Scarry's books about Lowly).*

"This book should be called Cute Wormies," said my 4 year old, a pretty good summation of this charming, but not particularly deep (dig related pun) book.

From Arnold's website, here's the story of how Wiggle and Waggle came to be written, here's a link to an activities page, and finally, here's a link to a Wiggle and Waggle YouTube video.

*Lowly Worm is still my favorite fictional worm, even though I didn't get the pun until I was about 25. Sigh.

NB: I was given my copy by the publisher.

Reading YA and (oh the shame of it) J books as an adult

I was recently interviewed by my town's newspaper for an article about the Friends of the Library. As I had expected, I was asked what I myself read, and even though I am Not Ashamed of reading below my age, it still made me squirm a bit to confess (as if it were a guilty secret) that I get my books out of the children's and ya sections. I am not, however, alone--witness this recent article in the Chicago Tribune. There's also an interesting discussion about this going on at a blog I just found -- Dear Author. (There are also a lot of Sharon Shinn posts, including a lengthy interview that I hope to go back and find the time to read. I am very fond of Sharon Shinn's trilogy that began with Safe Keeper's Secret--I bought them for the library and no one has read them! Wah!)

For fans of Rosemary Sutcliff & books about King Arthur

Rosemary Sutcliff is my favorite writer of historical fiction; her books about Roman Britain are unparalleled.* However, I never read Sword at Sunset, one of her few "adult" books, mainly because it wasn't in my part of the library with her other books. The other reason is that it is about King Arthur, and about the same time I was devouring Sutcliff, I was also devouring Mary Stewart's Arthur books (The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, the other two not yet having been published). Stewart's version of Arthur seemed so right to me that I wasn't able to stomach the thought of any other, and to this day I avoid Arthur books.

However, today I stumbled upon this interview with Sutcliff from 1986, and I may well go out looking for Sword at Sunset. The interview was one of a series by Raymond H. Thompson, gathered together as TALIESIN'S SUCCESSORS: INTERVIEWS WITH AUTHORS OF MODERN ARTHURIAN LITERATURE. Check out the table of contents: lots of good stuff besides Sutcliff.

*I've now given her a label of her very own...

JK Rowlings on BBC last friday --More Death!!!

From a friend in England (perhaps old news but new to me):

JKR was on a BBC chat show on Friday and she said that while finishing the book, she killed off two characters who hadn't originally been slated to die. But she made it clear that they weren't the ONLY two characters who die: 'It's a bloodbath.' she said firmly 'well, not a bloodbath, but more than two die.'

So at least three. But please, not Luna.

Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart

There are some books that I have been putting off reading out loud to my children, because I am scared they won't like them and will never try to read them again. It's a delicate balance, because of course one wants to read them good books; just not the really beloved books from one's own childhood. Not quite yet.

One such book that I'm not reading out loud is Ludo and the Star Horse, by Mary Stewart, illustrated by Gino D'Achille (1974, reprinted in 2001). One snowy winter night in Bavaria, around 150 years ago, a young peasant boy named Ludo is left at home by his parents to look after the animals while they go down into the valley. He hears the stable door bang, and running to look, sees Renti, the old work horse, disappearing into the blizzard. Following after, Ludo finds himself falling through the snow into a cave that is the beginning of a magical journey through the signs of the zodiac.

The cave is the home of the Archer, Sagittarius. He tells Ludo that old Renti had deliberately left the stable, to seek the chariot of the sun and become a star horse. Before the sun passes through the 12 Houses of the Zodiac, Renti must catch up with it, or fail. Ludo, keeping faith with his old friend, sets off. Each House has its own guardian, not all of whom are friendly. Sneered at by Capricorn, helped by Aquarius, almost eaten by Pisces, Ludo and Renti press on, until at last they come to the house of the Scorpion. With the deadly tail of the Scorpion hanging over his head, and the Sun's chariot about to depart, Ludo must make a final choice for himself and his beloved horse.

A written description of the plot doesn't do justice the beauty of the book. This is the type of story that will make pictures in your mind that will last forever (as well as being illustrated with very engaging pictures of its own). It is also a book about growing up, and learning to trust yourself. At the book's beginning, Ludo is pretty sure he doesn't amount to much; by the end, he knows his own worth, and the value of having a dream.

A caveat: some people I know don't like this book because of its negative portrayal of their own sign of the zodiac. Gemini (twin bullying thugs), Cancer (murderous), and Pisces (also murderous) come off the worst, so be warned. But even though Capricorn is not entirely admirable, I still love this book!

A World of Wonders by J. Patrick Lewis

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis,illustrated by Alison Jay (2002, 40 pages, ages 4-8)

"Travel by boat or by car or by plane
To visit East Africa, Singapore, Spain.
Go by yourself or invite a good friend,
But traveling by poem is what I recommend!"

And indeed these poems take the reader around the world, exploring far off places and the people that explored them, offering helpful mnemonics (I especially appreciated the one about latitude and longitude -- "lines of latitude have a flatitude" and geographical readers.

I really wanted to love this book. It is absolutely lovely to look at--Jay's illustrations, in antique mappy tones, with the crazing of old oil paintings, are things of beauty. The educational content is great. But sadly, the poems themselves didn't quite sing for me; the majority felt rather forced.

One of the more engaging poems was Knockabout and Knockaboom, which the author tells us is set in the Mohave Desert, Southwestern United States (and I did like this sort of informative detail very much). Here's the first verse:

"The wind that whistles desert songs
By spinning tops of sand
Leaves behind a silent sea
Of dune-upon-dune land."

For what it's worth, my six year old said he liked all the poems. And probably this book will appeal greatly to all kids who consider themselves "sciency."

The Poetry Friday round up is at the Farm School today!

Welcome to Zanzibar Road, by Niki Daly

Welcome to Zanzibar Road, by Niki Daly. Clarion Books, 2006.

"One hot day in Africa, Mama Jumbo was walking down Zanzibar Road. "What a nice place to live," she thought." So begins Niki Daly's utterly charming tale of an elephant who settles down on a bright and bustling African street, builds a house, and adopts a young chicken (which sounds strange, but is rather sweet). The five chapters take Mama Jumbo from her entry into town to a happy ending of family and community.

When Mama Jumbo starts to build her house, all the neighbors come to help. The house was soon built, and a number sign (Seven Up) was found for it. But Mama Jumbo was lonely. She visits all the neighbors, a colorful group of African animals, looking for a house mate, but to no avail. Then she sees little Chico, a chicken, who "looked and smelled as if he needed someone to look after him." Soon Chico is clean and snuggled and loved. Chapter Three--"Where's Little Chico?" is the most amusing. When Mama Jumbo wakes up, she can't find Chico! The observant child will find him immediately--on Mama's head! Mama visits all the neighbors, giving us a tour of town--the grocery store, the bookmobile, Baba Jive the crocodile's music club--but no Little Chico! "Just wait until I find him," says Mama. "I'll pull his tail for making me worry so." But when Juju the Monkey tells Mama Chico's up on her head, she is so happy that instead of pulling his tail, she hugs him tight (been there, done that). In Chapter Four, "A Shadow on the Wall" (which, if this were a Victorian girl's book, would suggest that Little Chico were about to get TB, but of course it's not), a new cactus casts a monstrous shadow. Little Chico is scared, but Mama puts her hat on it, so now the shadow looks like her, and all is well. And finally the book concludes with a birthday party for Chico, and all the friends from Zanzibar road come to the party.

This is a marvelous book. It is marvelous at a surface level--fun story, fun pictures. At a deeper level, it gives children a wonderful picture of what it means to be a happy family and part of a community, even if you aren't born part of one. And on a final level, I really liked this book for its portrayal of an African community, a portrayal at once realistic and idealized. Finally, on a completely practical level, this is a great "easy reader" -- perhaps a quarter step up from Frog and Toad.

Poetry Friday: Three Books of Space Poems for Children

I recently won a copy of Douglas Florian's new book Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings (thanks Anne at Book Buds!). Like all the Florian books I've read, the poems are fun, the colors bright, and the book is enjoyable.

Another book of space poems for the same age group is Blast Off: Poems About Space (I Can Read). Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (1995), this is a collection of poems by various authors. The School Library Journal, in their review of this book at Amazon, is rather dismissive of the poems. But heck. Kids (I find, based on a sample size of 1) get such a charge out of POETRY, and being able to read it themselves. My sample also likes things that come in short bites, so poems work well. So what if, in a book like this, the rhymes are obvious. At least the rhymes here actually all work, and aren't forced annoyances, as they are in some more critically claimed children's poetry books. (Same goes for Florian's poems--they work well as early readers, with some help, and he knows how to rhyme).

Anyway, here's my favorite poem (which is vocabulary-wise perhaps the hardest in the book):

Blast Off! by Joanne Oppenheim

Wheelless
wingless
weightless
unknown roads in space await us.

All the poems in this book are available on line at this site

For older kids/grownups, a very funny book of space poems is The Space Child's Mother Goose, by Frederick Winson, illustrated by Marian Perry (1956, reprinted 2001). My mother handed it to me when I was 11 or so; I was much amused, and it educated me--this poem, for instance, added "postulate" to my vocabulary:

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

Which seems, according to google, to have stuck in the heads of many other folks as well! (My mother, incidentally, continues to be a proselytizer for this book. A few years ago she met husband and wife physicists Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge and ended up sending them a copy, which they greatly enjoyed).

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Shaken & Stirred today! Enjoy!

The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett

There are some books that I find good -- the books I read in one tremendous gallop, that leave me dazed and red eyed, and then come back to haunt me as I pull up crabgrass. The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett (US 2006) was one such book.

It tells the story of two French girls who find a blind English soldier in the woods above their farm. He is trying to go home again, to see his dying brother, and because, as is gradually revealed, the war (WWI) has become something he can no longer be a part of, and he has deserted. He draws the girls to him with his small silver donkey (a good luck charm given as a parting gift by his brother), and with the stories he tells, and they visit him daily, keeping him alive while his sight returns. The stories are not of his own experience fighting in the war, but are about donkeys--the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem, the donkey who asked the sky for rain in an Indian legend, a donkey who carried wounded soldiers down to the beach at Gallipoli, and the finding of the silver donkey itself. The girls, knowing they have no way to see the soldier safely across the English Channel, bring their older brother to meet him. He in turn brings a still older friend, who, although a victim of polio, can still sail a boat and become a hero of this small story.

I use the word small on purpose--it is not an epic tale of the horrors of violent war. The book focuses on a small place, a small event in the larger picture, on small, ordinary people. There is no padding in this story; every word and scene seems cleanly and purposefully chosen, which gives the story great intensity and immediacy. The stories told by the solider deliberately break this feeling. I'm not a great fan of interjected stories in general, because I resent having the narrative flow broken, and also because I feel challenged by them. The author must have put them in for Deep Reasons, I think, and will I be clever enough to figure out what they were?

But I liked these stories very much as separate entities--they would make lovely stand-alone read alouds, except for the fact that they made me cry. I am not sure I've figured out the Point of the stories, if indeed a single Point exists. It's tied in to the nature of donkeys, the silver donkey of the title, and the Soldier (donkey-like in what he bore during his time at the front, but ultimately not so when he deserts). At any event, it's great food for thought, but makes the book perhaps less likely to hold the interest of children who have other things to do with their lives than pull up crabgrass. I think this book also might work better for readers who already know about the horrors of WWI. From the beginning I knew what the soldier was escaping from, whereas the book only tells about it toward the end.

My only regret about this book is not a fault, exactly, but a personal preference. I really liked the younger sister, Coco--she reminded me very much of Hilary McKay's style of character. Here's an example:

"Coco, however, was enjoying being mortally sad. She wandered down the lane sobbing woefully. She didn't dab away the tears that cascaded down her cheeks. "Lieutenant, Lieutenant!" she wailed. "Why - why - why?"

She supposed that anyone who saw her, a lonesome child staggering, weeping along a lane, could not help but be touched by the poignancy."

I would have liked more Coco.

The Silver Donkey sounds like an animal story, and there's nothing on the cover boards (there was no dust jacket) to suggest what it's about. The picture on the back of a sort of fay looking guy holding a small donkey made it look like a fantasy. It's lack of dust jacket drew me toward it--it is a beautiful dark green, with silver embossing, making it look old and precious. It is a lovely book to hold and read- the words are clear and far apart on the page, with pencil illustrations by Don Powers.

The book, published in Australia, won that county's top prizes: the 2005 Courier Mail award for young readers and the 2005 CBC Book of the Year award for young readers. Despite this, I find it a little bizarre that it has been made into an apparently successful musical.

Here's a link to a nice interview with Sonya Harnett over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

More about children's books in Iran

Poking around further in the Internet, I found a really neat site that gives news about book publishing, selling, and literacy in Iran. Two things that caught my eye:

1. Publishers and book sellers in Iran don't have to pay tax this year.

2. The Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults is planning a Satire Contest: "The first satire festival organised by branches of Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (KANOON) will be held in Tehran province. Iranian children and young adults who have just learned to write satire will take part in the festival on May 25th, 2007. They will compete in the fields of poetry and story writing in the festival which will also be attended by renowned Iranian satirists. A total of 11 selected participants will be awarded prizes in the Closing Ceremony. Selected entries for the competition were chosen from among 45 works submitted by children and young adults. (May 2007, Leili Hayeri Yazdi, APPREB correspondent)."

What an appealing thought (seriously). Such a change from the cloying sweetness that one sees so often in children's books and writing here (with many exceptions, of course, for instance the Children's Books that Never Were Series at Saints and Spinners. I am just feeling cranky because my son has to read Rainbow Fish for second grade and do a Friendship Project based on it).

Iranian picture books at the International Children's Library

I found a new site this morning-- the International Children's Library, where I spent more time than I probably should have browsing through the pages of beautiful, strange, disturbing, and intriguing (in various degrees) of children's picture books published recently around the world. The mission of the ICL is to make books available in digital form in all the languages in which they were written, the idea being that children learn to read best in their mother tongue. The website seems to have last been updated in 2006, but it is still a treasure trove of multicultural reading potential. Or at least picture browsing, for foreign language impaired folks like myself.

A few days ago I posted about the US government's massive export of translated English language books into Arabic speaking countries, and so I looked to see what books Islamic countries are publishing themselves. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Abraham, by Mostafa Rahmandoust, illustrated by Hafez Miraftabi (1383).

I think this one looks especially gorgeous: Autumnals, by Mostafa Rahmandoust illustrated by Bahram Khaef (1380). It's a collection of poems. I wish I could read it.

The Adventure of Ahmad and the Clock by Feresteh Ta'erpoor, illustrated by Mehrnoush Ma'soumian (1365).

None of these show up on Amazon, so I'm assuming they haven't been published in English. A great pity, because what better way to appreciate/get to know/wonder at/be puzzled by other cultures than to read their own stories?

Coincidently, there's a discussion of multi-cultural children's books over at Chicken Spaghetti going on right now...

Poetry Friday-Tortoise Family Connections, Owen and Mzee

I was captivated by the story of the orphaned hippo Owen and his tortoise friend Mzee, as described in Owen & Mzee: The True Story Of A Remarkable Friendship (Isabella Hatkoff et al., 2006). In January, Scholastic published a sequel: Owen & Mzee: Language Of Friendship Isabella Hatkoff with Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumb, illustrated by Peter Greste, which I read for the first time a few hours ago. The pictures are even more charming, the story of the communication and affection between hippo and tortoise even more astounding.

The book avoids cloying sentimentality by putting the future of this unusual friendship into question. Owen is still a baby hippo, but as he grows, the risk that he will hurt Mzee unintentionally grows as well. Mzee's shell already has an old injury from being knocked over by a hippo, and the animals' caretakers know that the day may come when they have to put the safety of Mzee before his relationship with Owen. Then Cleo is introduced--she is a 13 year old female hippo, who may win Owen's friendship, even his heart. Will Owen be able to be a hippo, instead of a tortoise? And what will become of Mzee?

Not being one to hang needlessly on cliffs, I did a google search and found a blog written by Stephen Tuei, Owen and Mzee's keeper (that old link wasn't working any more; here's a new link). So now I know what happened, and it is a little sad.

The picture above, showing Owen, Mzee, and another tortoise friend Toto, is from Tuei's blog, where there are lots more great pictures.

On a related note, I also learned that Scholastic has donated 1000 Owen and Mzee books to Kenyan schools. Good for them! They also donate part of the profit from the books to help support the wildlife park.

And to tie it in to Poetry Friday, here's a quote from Tortoise Family Connections, by D.H. Lawrence; the whole poem can be found here.

Father and mother,

And three little brothers,

And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,

Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.

Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,

Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.

Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless

Little tortoise.

Row on then, small pebble,

Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,

Young gaiety.

Does he look for a companion?
No, no, don't think it.

He doesn't know he is alone;

Isolation is his birthright,

This atom.

Indeed, it's easy to comprehend a hippo loving a tortoise, but the idea of a tortoise "loving" a hippo is hard to fathom.

A large piece of yesterday's Hilary McKay post got lost...

Annoyingly, a piece of the post I wrote yesterday about Hilary Mckay got lost, which is why things were muddled toward the end. So here it is:

Warning: Don't buy the slim paperback Rose's Flying Feeling, published in 2005 for World Book Day. I did, in bulk so as to get it cheaply, thinking that I could easily dispose of the extra copies to friends and on ebay. I was crushed when I opened it and found it was simply the beginning of Caddy Ever After. And once I knew that, I couldn't in conscience sell it on Ebay without saying that, so the whole thing was a fiasco and if anyone wants a copy at cost ($1.00) or 17 of them for a book discussion group or something, let me know...

Hilary McKay- Forever Rose! plus book shopping

Forever Rose, the fifth and apparently last book in Hilary McKay's series about the Casson family, will be released in the UK on September 20, and in Canada November 1. But sadly, not until next spring here in the US. There's a great interview with McKay up at Bookshelves of Doom.

I especially liked the list of the books she'd enjoyed as a child, because it was almost exactly what I would pick myself. It reminds me of the bit in Henrietta's House, aka The Blue Hills, by Elizabeth Goudge (1942) where Henrietta is taken to a book store and told to pick the books that every girl should own their own copy of, money being no object. She finds herself the owner of the books in the end, but it is the picking out, not the having, that always appealed to me most. That's why I'm president of the FOL--it gives purpose and pleasure to second hand book shopping. I almost never find anything I want for myself anymore (there are few early to mid 20th-century English school stories available here in New England), so it is nice to have a reason to buy books.

Back to Hilary McKay--I have very much enjoyed buying McKay's books for my library. In fact, we were possibly the first library in the US to have Permanet Rose, because I went to England to buy it.