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I hated growing up. And that time - just before the world turned upside down - when I was still a child but I felt it all leaking away - I fought that time with every sobbing breath. It took me a while to realize that you don't just -
poof! - grow up. It happens bit by bit. I didn't like learning about adulthood's inevitability. (There are those who think I fight it still.)
In Tricia Springstubb's
Moonpenny Island, Flor and Sylvie are perfect friends. This is a good thing. They are the only 11-year-olds on Moonpenny Island. But the end of summer brings enormous changes. Sylvie leaves to go to school on the mainland and Flor is alone. Flor's older sister, perfect Cecelia, has started acting strangely. And her parents, well, they should not be acting that way at all.
On a small island, it can be easy to put people in slots. Flor must open her eyes. She needs to see people as more than just labels. Ceclia is not "perfect". Perry is more than just the "bad boy". Joe Hawkes is not "trash". And her best, best BEST friend, does not have to stay the same always.
A young visitor to the island - a paleontologist's daughter - a family crisis, and her own impetus nature force Flor to truly see her island, and her family, for the first time.
Good book. Read it.
Similarly, Latino authors likely know a lot more about Anglos than Anglos do about us. This regularly plays out in some Latino literature's Anglo characters. This brings to mind growing up in San Antonio decades ago, and how Anglos gradually worked their way into my life. Although mine is no template for the "Chicano lifestyle," here's how it taught me the first things I learned about Anglos.
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| A highway like this "improved" my 1st neighborhood |
Given the decrepitude of ageing, I don't remember most of the names, but the first one was a neighborhood kid my age, maybe five. He came over regularly and taught me that playing "cowboys and Indians" was fun. Ignorant of the fact that I was part "Indian," we'd ride around the dirt yard on our stick horses, shooting at each other, falling down, and getting dirty. I sort of remember sometimes getting to be the cowboy. He taught me that some Anglos would play with me.
The next ones were female teachers, first through third grade. They were mostly nice, even if I don't remember what I learned from them. Before entering first grade, mi 'amá had already taught me to read, so I assume I picked up whatever math and writing I was supposed to learn because I kept passing to the next grade. The teachers taught me that teachers were Anglo women.
Two incidents in elementary school stick out in my mind. The first was halfway through first grade. Our teacher announced that three of us were being skipped into higher grades. This one poor white boy who could've been twelve years old--the biggest, burliest kid--was being "skipped" to third grade, which was probably still less than age-appropriate for him. I remember thinking the teacher just wanted him gone from her room. From him I learned there were Anglos were much less intelligent than me, even if they were bigger, older and meaner.
Then our teacher announced that two of us--I think the other one was named Judy--were skipping into second grade. That meant something to other kids, my parents, relatives, and the teacher, but I don't remember being impressed by this, since I didn't know what it meant.
Judy gave me another memory, of dancing. During one of those school activities everyone had to participate in, maybe May Day. Out on the playground, we were all paired up and for some reason, nerd-brain, skinny, too-tall, blond Judy got paired up with the shortest kid--a "Mexican" as we called ourselves--who was me. I faked it, going around in circles, thinking I it was supposed to be having fun. Though, not as much fun as getting to be the cowboy. From Judy, I learned Anglo girls would at times be willing to hold my hand, at least in public.
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| San Anto was the military's playground |
Next came my uncle Jack, a military-lifer who later married my mother's sister. He was real white, tall and big, loud and always made his presence known. Whenever the couple came by our house was a treat, probably because their income was higher than most of the family. Before they had any of their own kids, Uncle Jack would take me out while he courted my aunt. The best time was a zoo visit where I got to eat lots of junk because he could afford it. He taught me the military had it much better than most people, though maybe his Anglo-ness had something to do with his good fortune.
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| Projects like where we lived |
About my age, Mary B. didn't teach me as much as I'd have liked. In the federal projects where we lived, her family was one of the few Anglo families around. She had an older sister who was a template for juvenile delinquency, and sort of respected by all the younger kids. Whenever they let her out of juvey or prison, she'd visit with her latest tattooed boyfriend who also looked like he was on parole. They taught me there were tough, young Anglos in the world, whenever they were let out.
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| Marie B's were shorter than this |
Mary B. could've been my first love, or at least experience, except that never happened. She was hotter than her older sister and usually wore shorts that couldn't have been cut any shorter. Neighborhood culture dictated she was unapproachable because she was white, something I didn't understand. For my only teen birthday party I can remember, I invited her and, chingau, she showed up. I danced with her at least once and that was as close to heaven or to Mary B.'s shorts that I ever got. Like Judy, she taught me Anglo girls would dance with you in public, but that my life experiences might be limited to that.
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| like the coach who "taught" me |
There were so few Anglo kids in my junior high (middle) school, none of them would've stuck out. The gym coach, however, taught me corporal punishment and how much it hurt. I got busted doing some regular-Mexican-kid obscenity to another Mexican kid, in jest. But it wasn't funny to the teacher establishment. The board the coach used on the two of us--the "victim" of my jest was deemed guilty as me--taught me to never get caught again. That's how I learned that an Anglo's "paddle" could hit as hard as my pinchefather's leather belt.
My mother snuck me into another school district so I've get a college-prep education. Thomas Jefferson was heavily Anglo, from higher incomes and taller parents, and being the shortest kid from being skipped a grade became a bigger joke; most of the kids were a foot taller than me. I learned they were much more silent around me and resembled actors on TV or commercials, with nicer clothes, make-up and styles of strutting that showed they were better than other humans.
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| Real pic of my high school |
I had some great Anglo teachers, especially in the sciences, possibly why I later imagined studying to become a physicist. I don't remember facing prejudice from the teachers, but that might've been due to my I.Q., more than anything else.
My French teacher came straight out of an 18th century novel. She exuded European style and aloofness that I'd never seen in any "Mexican." Despite being ignored by most of the Anglo student body, I'd come to understand it wasn't that hard to get good grades, especially A's. There was only one student better than me in French class, and her grandmother was French-born.
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| Everybody knew your grades |
Each grading period, we'd go up to the blackboard and write down every one of our grades that the French teacher dictated to us, and then figure out our average. As a private joke, through three years of French, I made it a point to totally fail one test. So, I'd stand at the board, copying down A after A, but always with one F. It was obvious what I'd done. Funny thing is, no student, much less the teacher, was ever impressed by this. It took me years to understand how difficult it was for old or young Anglos to admit when a Mexican could do better than them. And how much they didn't like being involved in my sarcasm.
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| I could write a book: How Chess Can Pay for Your Lunch |
The only friends I had in high school were other nerds, the straight-As, headed-to-Harvard kids who sat together before school playing chess or sat at the lunch table playing chess. No other club, except for science clubs, would have them as members. I was comfortable among them, especially since the only way I ever had money to buy a Coke or breakfast was from beating them at chess.
One of them--name withheld--was as fat as Fat Albert and became my best friend. With coke-bottle lenses, he was definitely smarter than me, possibly the smartest kid in the school of a thousand. Midway through, he spent a summer losing weight, getting contact lenses, and returned as New Hunk on campus, and was admitted into the exclusive club for the richest, cool Anglos. He still came around us, and I learned that if you were Anglo, you could change your outside appearance and improve your status in society.
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| Berkeley radicalism my best friend's parents saved him from |
After we graduated, that best friend and I played tennis for the summer, until we got into a fight over a racquet, and he disappeared. I don't remember why we got in the fight, whose "fault" it was. He taught me I could have Anglo best friends, at least for a stretch. He also taught me that Anglos were sometimes smarter than me, were able to raise their societal standing, and could be accepted to schools like Univ. of Berkeley.
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| last time I returned to San Anto, for my novel |
When his parents refused to let him go to that college, because of the student radicalism of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, he taught me Anglos could be more fragile than me, who'd only be accepted to UT. His suicide wasn't the last thing I learned about Anglos, but it's enough, for now.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano fabulist-mextasy author Rudy Ch. Garcia, striving to put on paper some of the things I learned about Anglos. And others. And some things I never learned.
By:
[email protected],
on 10/26/2014
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It would not have surprised me if this had won this year’s Man Booker Prize. My heart was supporting Richard Flanagan’s magnificent The Narrow Road To The Deep North but I had a feeling this was going to get the nod. In the end it didn’t win but it would have been a deserving winner […]
By:
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on 8/25/2014
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Past The Shallows was an exceptional novel and Favel Parrett has out done herself with her new book. When The Night Comes is a story of growing up, both as a child and as an adult. It is about journeys into the great unknowns. And that anything in life is possible. The story alternates between two points of view; […]
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By: Zoe,
on 7/9/2014
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A rich and warm-hearted coming-of-age tale, Head over Heart is an impressive and important debut novel from Colette Victor.
An adolescent girl is smitten with a boy in her class. But she fears her family would disapprove of her spending time with him. How can she balance her wishes with those of her family? How does she work out what she really feels, when whatever course of action she takes may make someone unhappy?
Victor’s novel is finely told, with an eye for emotional complexity, but what makes it stand out for me is how very relevant it is today in Britain with all this talk of “British values”; the heroine in this story (which made me cry quietly as I reached the final pages) is a Muslim girl, trying to work out some of the issues any teenager might face to do with friendship, love, lust and just who they see themselves as, who they want to be, but she is having to do this at the same time as trying to find a comfortable place between or across two apparently very different cultures.
Ideas of what is right or wrong, what is appropriate or not are thoughtfully explored. There are no easy answers, but there’s lots of respect and understanding, quietly woven into the pages. Whilst it is brilliant to see some publishing diversity (how many other novels for young teenagers can you think of with a Muslim main character?), I firmly believe this is story relevant to any adolescent (and indeed any parent of young people just entering that crazy time of their lives when hormones run riot), whatever their cultural or religious background.
If you enjoyed Anne Booth‘s Girl with a White Dog I’m confident you will love this book, which also explores how life in Britain today is incredibly enriched by the many cultures that find a home here. Pertinent, moving, and at times challenging Head over Heart is a book which makes the world a little better for enabling us to walk in each others shoes and understand our neighbours and ourselves a little more.
Perhaps the last comments of my review should go to a friend of mine: I lent my copy of Head over Heart to a Muslim friend who first warned me that it might take her ages to read the book. Within pretty much 48 hours she was back: “I couldn’t put down the book!” “Her writing is so beautiful.” “I would definitely give my daughter this.”. She also talked about how for her as a parent who didn’t grow up in the UK (but in Pakistan) it was very interesting and helpful to think about the differences between her own childhood and that of her UK born children.
Authors write outside their experience all the time but I still felt it would be interesting to hear what Colette Victor had to say about the experience – she was born in South Africa and now lives in Belgium. Here’s what she had to say to me:
“The magic of being a writer is being able to leave your own predictable and familiar existence to temporarily take up residence inside another person’s skin, a different set of circumstances, a new world all together. If the only viewpoint I was supposed to write from was that of a white, middle-aged South African woman living in Europe, I doubt I’d be doing any writing at all. I certainly wouldn’t have any readers.
So why did I feel I had the authority to write from the perspective of a Muslim teenage girl living in Europe? Well, it all boils down to my job, really. I live and work as a community worker in an ex-mining city in Belgium with a large immigrant population. I’ve worked with many different groups of people over the years – children, senior citizens, ex-convicts, job seekers, resident groups and mothers. Many of the young people and mothers I work with are of either Turkish or Moroccan origin – their families came out here over fifty years ago to work in the mines. I’ve heard countless personal stories, been inside scores of homes and spent hours in the company of young Muslim girls and their mums. I also spent a lot of time interviewing some of these girls to find out their viewpoint on various issues and, I can tell you, they’re as vast and varied as any other group of women.
One of the reasons I set out to write Head over heart was because there are so many misconceptions surrounding the headscarf. People often see it as a symbol of female oppression. Through my work I’ve met many proud, strong women who choose to wear a headscarf as a symbol of their identity, despite the opinions for or against it. I know married women, widows, single mums and emancipated university students who wear a headscarf because that’s who they are and not because there’s a man standing in the wings demanding it. On the flip side, I also know many women who would seem Westernised and wear Western clothing but live an existence of subjugation and submissiveness behind the scenes. I know Belgian women, Christian women and atheists – some lead proud, strong lives, some live in fear and submission. Ultimately it’s about looking further than cultural accessories and seeing the person underneath.
My daughter, Stella, who’s about the same age as Zeyneb, had a Muslim best friend for all her nursery and primary school years. The two girls were always together, doing homework, dressing up, sleeping over at each other’s houses. As my daughter’s friend got older and her body started changing, she often expressed concern about the fact that soon her carefree childhood would be behind her and she’d have to make the choice of wearing a headscarf or not. This is what got me thinking about all the cultural pressures at play in making such a decision and this is what I explored through Zeyneb’s eyes in Head over heart.”
My thanks go to Colette Victor for her thoughts on this. And thank you – this has been a long post, but I really think this book deserves the time and space I’ve devoted to it dtoday for it is an excellent, thoughtful, and highly relevant début.
By: Zoe,
on 5/4/2014
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Jackie at a recent book signing.
Last month
Jackie Morris‘ haunting book
The Ice Bear was released in a new paperback edition. To celebrate this I asked Jackie to share a little of the background to this bewitching story, to share some the book’s secrets.
If you’ve already got a copy of the book you might want to have it to hand whilst you read what she reveals, so you can go back and look at the images with fresh eyes. And if you haven’t already found a place in your home for this piece of art between two covers, … well perhaps this post ought to come with a warning notice. There’s magic in and on the pages of The Ice Bear. Prepare to be charmed and enchanted.
“The Ice Bear began with an image in my mind’s eye. It was an image of a child, kneeling. Around the child there were bears, so that the child looked like the centre of a daisy and the bears were the petals. My job was to work out how to get the child there, and probably more important, how to get him out again. This is what books are about for me, asking and answering questions, and in the process discovering more questions.
The Ice Bear began with a friend, pregnant with her first child. Something went wrong. The baby stopped moving, at full term. He died. She had to deliver a stillborn child. A tragedy for her and the child and her husband. The way people reacted to this was a shock to me. Quick, rush over it, brush over it, hide it under business, do anything but face the pain. (Not Sophie and Jon. They couldn’t rush over it, hide it, they had to face it.) I wanted to do a book about a lost child, about loosing a child. This was a thread that wove into the book. Though few would know if I didn’t say and the book is dedicated to Rhoderic, and Sophie and Jon and also to Katie and Thomas who were born by the time the book came out.
Some of Jackie’s first sketches for The Ice Bear
The Ice Bear began with a wish to do a book about polar bears, and to weave into it transformation and a legend, of the trickster and the shaman.
The Ice Bear began when the flight of a raven began to stitch together ideas with its patterned flight in the Pembrokeshire sky, because all books are like rivers, fed by streams of ideas, coming together.
The book is part of a series of books I have written about animals, each with a cover that is a portrait of the animal, staring out from the book. The covers are strong, almost iconic, and the books are often given shelf space so that the whole cover is seen, rather than being placed spine out on a shelf. I am told by bookshops who put the in the window that they work like a charm to bring people in to the shop, and one shop in Edinburgh said that people often missed their bus as they crossed the road to get a better look at the Snow Leopard when that was in the window. There’s something about eyes looking straight at you that still holds a primitive magic over the wild parts of the human consciousness. When I paint an animal in this way I am not searching for the humanity in the animal. I am searching for the soul, the spirit of the creature.
Some of Jackie’s covers, including her forthcoming ‘Something About a Bear’
Having ‘begun’ with an image the story then builds into a balance of words and images. Picture books are meant to be read aloud. The language needs to taste good in the ear, to look right where it sits on the page. A picture book is like a theatre, each page a stage set for that part of the story and in designing each page I often include parts of the stories that are only in the pictures. Once open I try to keep the words inside the pictures. I want the book to become a world where the pictures and the words tell the story. The composition is thought out right to the corners and often the corners and edges are where the main focus of the story is. (You can see this best in the picture where the child finds his mother bear. The image dominated the page but in the top right hand corner there is the figure of the father, charging in).
I paint on smooth paper, arches hot pressed, beginning with pale washes and then building and building with layers and then smaller details. The paints that I use are Winsor and Newton Artist Quality watercolours, usually tubes, and I use ceramic palettes. I know these colours quite well now after 25 years of working with them. I know when to run wet into wet and how much water to use. Now I use sable brushes. They carry the paint so well and a brush like a series 7, no. 4 will allow a wide wash but also can pull the finest line when handled right. And in the same way that writing is like finding the answers to a series of questions, so too is painting. I am constantly asking myself questions, about composition and colour and line and finding the answers is what makes the book.
In The Ice Bear the mother and the father each have a totem animal. The mother’s is the Arctic fox, and often when it seems that the child is alone on the ice you can see the fox is there somewhere, watching. The father’s is the owl, a fierce sky hunter. The boy’s is the bear and always will be. And raven, the trickster, a character who is perhaps a force for good, perhaps bad. He steals the bear child, but takes him to the hunter and his wife who have longed for a child. And when it is time he leads him back across the ice and joins the bear people with the human people forever. So is she good, or bad?
During the telling of a tale things can change. When I originally wrote The Ice Bear the raven lured the child out over the ice with small shards of sea glass. But I had wanted the book to be set long before glass was invented. The child becomes the first shaman, a bridge between humanity and the bear people. It was a time when there were no borders and people wondered the land without any border controls. There was no concept of ownership of land. The very idea would have seemed ridiculous. And so I looked for something else, something more timeless and lit upon the idea of amber. Amber is natural, not a manufactured thing. And I have a necklace of amber beads that if taken apart by a mischievous raven would look just like the broken amber heart in the snow.
Jackie’s amber necklace
The Ice Bear has been published now in many languages, French, Spanish, Catalan, Danish, Swedish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese. This is one of the things I love about working with books. Words found on a hill top in Wales can travel the world. I also love the democracy of books. Paintings in a gallery are expensive and usually bought to be hung in one home. Books can be bought, translated, and borrowed from libraries. They can be shared.”
My thanks go to Jackie for so generously sharing some of the stories behind The Ice Bear.
The House of the Golden Dreams (an art gallery featuring Jackie’s work): https://www.facebook.com/TheHouseofGoldenDreams
Jackie on Twitter: @JackieMorrisArt
Jackie’s blog: http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/
By: Mark Myers,
on 4/29/2014
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My girls have grown accustomed to it, but their friends constantly remark on my maturity level, which isn’t high. My personal favorite was a comment from a friend of the eldest, who said, “Your dad is like, 7!” Very true. So with all of the time we are spending at the hospital now, I have developed a list of things my childish mind WANTS to do.
1. Every day we walk past a sleep study area to get to our room. I yearn to yell, beat on the walls, and bang pots and pans to wake everyone up.
2. My daughter has a bright-red diode sometimes hooked to her finger that measures her blood oxygen level. I am literally dying to turn the lights off and stick it in my nose and play Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She has told me in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable and her word is law right now.
3. I want to drape a stethoscope around my neck and diagnose someone. I don’t really want to barge into a room and play doctor. I just want to find someone, take their vital signs, and prescribe rest and that they lose five pounds before I ask for my co-pay.
4. There are so many things to ride around her that it is killing me. With the wide halls and automatic doors, an epic race seems in order. I picture it a little bit like Mario Kart.
5. I want to run out of our room and yell something like, “Code Blue! Stat!” I don’t know what would happen, but everyone seems to fly into a dither on TV.
6. Get a lab coat and join the doctors on their rounds. I could be some travelling expert from Albania and mutter things that make no sense when it is my turn to examine the patient.
I haven’t done any of these things yet. Every time I get a 7 year-old notion, my 46 year-old mind overrules it. Thus far. While this wonderful place heals the sick, there is no hope of them helping me, the incurably immature.
Photo credit: By Alex Proimos (Flickr: The Stethoscope) & H. D. Girdwood
By:
Sue Morris,
on 4/15/2014
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.
Two Hands to Love You
by Diane Adams & Paige Keiser, illustrator
Chronicle Books 2014
978-0-8118-7797-8
Age 4 to 8 36 pages
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“With two loving hands, an adoring mother cradles her baby after bath time and a devoted father introduces his toddler to the wonders of he world. Sister, brother, grandma, and grandpa all can’t wait to share what they love best about the world with their newest family member. And when it is time to step ot into the world, this caring family is right there alongside. In simple, heartfelt language, this soothing picture book for the very young will tug at the heartstrings and remind us all of the caring hands that helped us along our way.”
Opening
“When the world is a strange place, unfamiliar and new,
my two hands will hold you, will carry you through.”
The Story
In a nutshell, the story is about a couple who begin a family and the paths they take with their children as they grow and become a family of five—plus two involved grandparents. The first baby is gently cared for, everything new for everyone, not just the baby. As he grows, mom plays outside with her toddler, pulling him in a wagon after an afternoon bath in the sun.
Dad takes over, playing airplane with his son, then cradles the new baby and pledges his love. The first-born cares for the second-born, a girl as curious as her brother. Then the third arrives and the three kids guide and love each other.
Grandparents read to their grandson and blow bubbles for this newest child. The joys of childhood and a mother who races to her crying child. This all is part of this family of five, who love each other.
Review
My loyal readers know what I will write in this space and it will not be that I hated this book. The story is composed of fragments of time, caught like photographs. A mother holds her first-born close, never wanting to let go, but she does. With dad, the toddler continues to grow and this happy family of three thrives. Then enters child number two, a girl. It is daddy’s turn to hold the baby close, his little girl. The images that accompany each frame of time softly plays the scene out for us.
Using watercolors and ink, the artist catches these tender moments, making them precious and tenderer, if that is even possible. Her images could tell this story without the text, which is what a good illustrated picture book should do—words for adults and kids, images for little ones, not yet a reader. I tended to pick up this book and turn its pages carefully, feeling the fragility of family, and the joys of one so close.
Children have real childhoods, playing with each other, guiding each other. Along the way, various hands help the children to grow: mom, dad, grandma and grandpa, and many more not shown.The sweetness is palatable. Two Hands to Love You may well have you thinking about your own little ones, whether they are still little or grown and on their own, maybe starting families. Alternatively, of your own childhood and what that meant to you.
I love the rhyming text. The words fit together perfectly, meaning I did not immediately recognize the rhyme, just the smooth flow of words that belonged together in that precise order. I think this story can help others remember what a family needs to be—a shelter in the storm and a place to learn and grow without ridicule and maybe a little rhyme.
I love the inherent gentleness the illustrations give us. I love the extended family all involved in raising a child. I guess I simply love Two Hands to Love You, which is an ideal baby shower gift. This is also an, “Oh, my, gosh, you’re pregnant” gift. New parents will cherish Two Hands to Love You. It would be the couple’s first, How to Raise Baby book.
For children Two Hands to Love You reinforces that parents will always be there for them, no matter the distance. That home is a shelter from the storm. A place to recharge before heading back into the world. Children want to know their parents will also be there for them. That message rings loudly through the tender pages of Two Hands to Love You.
TWO HANDS TO LOVE YOU. Text copyright © 2014 by Diane Adams. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Paige Keiser. Reproduce by permission of the publisher, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA.
To learn more about Two Hands to Love You, click HERE.
Make Two Hands to Love You yours by going to Amazon—B&N—Chronicle Books—or your local bookstore.
Meet the author, Diane Adams at her website: http://www.dianeadams.net/
Meet the illustrator, Paige Keiser at her website: http://www.paigekeiser.com/
Find other incredible books at the Chronicle Books website: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/
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Also by Paige Keiser
The Little Green Pea
One Night In Bethlehem
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. I Love My Hat (October 2014)
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NEW from Chronicle Books
I Didn’t Do My Homework Because . . .
Peek-a Zoo
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Today is National Library Workers Day
Be extras nice to those who staff your library!
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Two Little Birds
by Mary Newell DePalma
Eerdmans BfYR 2/14/2014
978-0-8028-5421-6
Age 4 to 8 32 pages
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“Each little bird has a part in nature’s grand scheme: the earth tilts, the seasons change, and songbirds arrive in new places just as insects hatch, fruits ripen, and flowers bloom. In this story, two plucky young birds launch into their first journey, which proves to be full of challenge, peril, and wonder.”
Opening
“After much effort . . . two little birds emerge from their eggs.”
The Story
Two little birds enter the world and learn to do what little birds like them have always been doing: they eat, they play, and they grew up. Then, seeing a flock of birds heading south, the birds decide to join the journey. They flew farther than they ever had. Home was getting farther away and then a thunderstorm struck. The two little birds tumbled and lost their way. The flock is gone. The two little birds need to find their way to the flock or to home. Can they find their way?
Review
A simple story of nature that is more complex than one might think. The birds leave at night, when all songbirds leave for the migration south. The little birds want to go. Something in them must say it is time. They go, but find the flying is harder than they have ever done, but that they are stronger than they thought. The story of Two Little Birds is about two little song birds, yet, kids can find ways to relate to the little birds. It is time to change schools. The family has moved, or it is time for high school. The child’s confidence is less than normal. The situation is new and they wonder if they can make it in this new place, but then, they find that with a little hard work they can make it, just like the little birds. Relating this story to sports is far easier. A new team, will the child make it? A little harder to play at the newer level, but with some extra effort, a bit more hustle, and keeping their eye on the ball, the child fits in just fine, just like the little birds fit into their society.
The story is also cute, one that young children will enjoy. The birds flew and flew and then tumbled. How many times do young kids tumble? Children will relate to the little birds, who muster on until they found their way, just like children bounce up and keep on going. [Not like an energizer bunny, but the analogy works.] Two Little Birds will make a very good story time or bedtime story, and is perfect for the kindergarten or preschool class.
The illustrations are wonderful. Mostly in blues and pastels, the author/illustrator used a mixed-media collage, which is most evident in the first and second spreads, where the birds lay upon the nest in their eggs or just hatched from them. Knowing this is a collage makes it easier to find those layers, such as the map of South Carolina as the birds tumble from the sky, thanks to lightning and thunder booms. Knowing the artist’s process, methods, or materials makes the illustrations more interesting.
Young children will love the two little birds, who are unnamed—at least until the first reading. I imagine kids will have those two birds named in no time. The beautiful books will catch your eye with these two newborn birds leaving the nest. You can read Two Little Birds multiple times without any loss of enthusiasm, perfect for parents with young children who become hooked on one book for an undetermined amount of time. I hear that includes most every child, so it is a good thing the story is interesting and a nice read aloud.
After Two Little Birds, Ms. DePalma writes a little on the migration of songbirds. She explains that songbirds, orioles in particular, migrate at night from the north to the Yucatan Peninsula, which includes an 18-hour nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico. It is no wonder the two little birds became so tired. Your child and you do not need to make this flight to enjoy the migration. Simply read Two Little Birds.
TWO LITTLE BIRDS. Text and illustrations copyright © 2014 by Mary Newell DePalma. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI.
Learn more about Two Little Birds HERE.
Get your copy of Two Little Birds at Amazon—B&N—Eerdmans BfYR—your local bookstore.
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Meet Mary Newell DePalma at her website: http://www.marynewelldepalma.com/
Find more books that are fascinating at Eerdmans BfYR website: http://www.eerdmans.com/YoungReaders/Default.aspx
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers is an imprint of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
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Also by Mary Newell DePalma
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Great Aunt Lola is about to die. At least ten year-old Stephen thinks she could because she’s that old, and grumpy. And Stephen, labouring under a self and parent imposed ‘shy label’, is more than a little scared of her. He simply wants to flee, but is stuck in Aunt Lola’s house for the next three weeks until she turns eighty, or dies.
They say the simple things in life are the best, but could friendship with his elderly aunt be that easy and straightforward? Award-winning author Bill Condon convinces me it can.
Condon’s latest ‘tween’ novel, The Simple Things is for bridging the generation gap, what styling gel is for rampant adolescent hair-dos; maybe not 100% essential but essentially 100% worth the effort.
Actually, it was no effort at all to immerse myself into this heart-warming tale about letting go, facing personal doubts and overcoming uncomfortable situations. It’s a story about an only child who does what his parents tell him to do, is scared of climbing trees and doesn’t seem surrounded by an ocean of friends.
Blue, Stephen’s dog back home, is the one he misses most during his enforced exile at Aunt Lola’s place. However, he soon meets Lola’s neighbour and past flame, Norm, and Norm’s granddaughter, Allie. With their help, Stephen is able to confront a few of his short comings. He also embarks on a small sojourn of self-discovery as he learns about the simple things in life – like fishing, cricket, climbing trees and death. All this explicably pulls him closer to Aunt Lola. They form a prickly alliance, each benefitting from the other until finally they are forced to admit a deep and special friendship.
The Simple Things is ‘smiley face perfect’ (re; the wet cement moment page 127). Condon writes with unaffected adroitness, delivering this story with equal measures of gentle humour and poignancy, and just enough secrecy to entice readers to want to find out what really lurks behind Aunt Lola’s tough-guy bravado.
Condon’s characters are bright, sharply drawn individuals with enough depth to make us laugh and cry, minus the melancholy. I found Stephen’s charismatic, larrikin father and sarcasm-welding Allie most endearing along with our hesitant hero’s comical boyish charm.
The Simple Things is one of those easy to read, easy to enjoy books, so I suspect it was not that simple to write. But I for one am grateful Condon persevered as Stephen did with his aunt, for it simplifies the complexities of a young person’s relationship with themselves and their aging relative with composite grace and humour, allowing young male and female readers to value and cherish their own relatives all the better.
See why here.
Allen & Unwin February 2014
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Bianca Schulze,
on 3/13/2014
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Enter to win a set of all three books in Julie Sternberg's Eleanor series.
Giveaway begins March 13, 2014, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends April 12, 2014, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
School is back in full swing now, and I’ve returned to my storytelling sessions at J’s school on a Friday afternoon, where I get to read stories and play and craft in what is termed “Golden Time”. It’s a brilliant way to round off the week (definitely much better than the Triple Latin I once had), and it means I’m always on the lookout for picture books which not only lend themselves to creative play, but which also work exceptionally well as class read-alouds.
Big! by Tim Hopgood struck me as one such book the moment I first read it. And given that it is all about growing up, and thinking about being bigger, it was a natural choice for the start of the school year, where all the children have moved up a class and are enjoying being that much “bigger” than they were last year.
What does it mean to be big? And when, exactly, do you become big? Such existential questions are really quite important in young kids’ lives: When will they be big enough to play on your phone? When will they be big enough to have a new bike? When will they be big enough to stay up as late as their older brother or sister? Certainly, J – being the youngest in our home – asks these sorts of questions very often indeed, and finds it very frustrating that she is not yet as big as she would like to be.
And so it was no surprise that she lapped up Hopgood’s observant and giggle-inducing take on being big. Being big partly depends on what you compare it with. Compare yourself to a piece of popcorn and you’re massive! And compare your big sister with a bear, and even she will appear to be tiny 
Image: Tim Hopgood. Used with permission.
Hopgood effectively cobines lots of bold blocks of solid colour (there are no white pages anywhere) with visual texture, and draws his questioning boy with such apparent simplicity that it could have been drawn by a child (think Charlie and Lola, and you’ll have the right sort of idea); all this adds further appeal for young readers and listeners. Use of a variety of font sizes lends the book to very expressive reading-aloud – great for groups, but also for young children reading this to themselves.
Full of reassurance about one of life’s BIGGEST questions, Tim Hopgood has created another hit I can warmly recommend.
To go along with reading Big! all the kids in my group at school got to make their own growth chart, using paper measuring tapes stuck onto long lengths of fax paper (used for its convenient width). We talked about tall things which we might draw onto our charts (giraffes, beanstalks, blocks of flats and so on) and then the kids had free rein to decorate their charts how they saw fit. Here are my girls creating their own charts at home:
At school there were two other activities kids could choose to take part in; building the tallest tower they could out of a variety of building blocks, and measuring each other with popcorn (mirroring a suggestion in Hopgood’s book).
I taped a large sheet on the floor of the classroom and kids worked in pairs, whilst one lay down and the other lined up popcorn to see how many pieces of popcorn high they were. This was an incredibly popular activity (especially when I lay down and the kids got to measure me), and was worth every bit of the rather large amount of mess it made!
Whilst making our growth charts at home we listened to:
I’m Changing by Ella Jenkins (and also the Big Bigger Biggest song on the same album).
What’s the Big Idea? by Scribblemonster, all about being creative.
It’s A Big World by Renee & Jeremy – a soothing, very lovely lullaby, and good to cool down with after headbanging along to Scribblemonster.
Other activities which would work well alongside reading Big! include:
Making telescopic toys which grow bigger and bigger! Here’s a great tutorial from Mr Printables. I considered adapting this for class use (using cardboard rolls from inside loo rolls and till receipt rolls for the paper, but the project requires some careful precision which would work fine at home, but would be a challenge in a class of 30 5 year olds I decided.)
Growing giant flowers and plants. At home, or in school, you could have a competition to see who can grow the biggest pumpkin / marrow / sunflower (the seeds of which are all easy for little hands to manage). Or for something which isn’t so season dependent, you could just grow beans in a cup and see which grows the tallest in a set amount of time.
Reading The Growing Story by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and Big by Coleen Paratore, illustrated by Clare Fennell (here’s the review of the latter which alerted me to this alternative take on what it means to be “big”). Indeed, these are the books I used in school alongside Tim Hopgood’s lovely book.
Do you have a favourite book about growing up?
If you’d like to make growth charts with your class at school, I do have some spare paper tapes (150cm long, marked in both inches and cm); I’d be happy to post them to you (anywhere in the world), with the proviso that they’re for group use (I don’t want to post fewer than 20 in a go, because they are very difficult to pack!). Let me know, and the first 3 people to contact me will get the tapes!
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Big! from the author.
By: Alan Dapré,
on 6/28/2013
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My daughter left the Village Nursery school today. Really left it. After a hectic morning of bouncing on an inflatable castle, eating party food and singing songs. (Yesterday she spent ages carefully covering her black plimsols with glitter to ensure … Continue reading →
By:
Jean M. Malone,
on 5/18/2013
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Last weekend was my alma mater’s high school graduation. A thrilling, momentous (and gorgeous) day! It made me think back to my own graduation and the fact that what scared me at 18 scares me still: moving forward into the unknown. In fact, if I could go back and give myself advice it would probably be this: The future is scary. It never stops being scary. Get used to it. And don’t be scared.
Don’t get me wrong, I was excited to leave high school, to venture out of state to college, to make new friends and take classes towards two majors I was passionate about (screenwriting! creative writing! so much writing!). But I was also terrified. My high school was a cocoon of all that was familiar and comfortable and good. Not that every day was bliss. There were fights and tears and stress. But what I realized on graduation night was that I wasn’t ready to leave. I’m never ready to leave: not school, not a party, not vacation. I’m not ready to leave for work in the morning, and I’m not ready to leave work in the afternoon. And I’m NEVER ready to go to bed at night, no matter how tired I feel.
I spent much of the summer before college doing what I loved: reading–and finally there was no required reading. Free to read what I wanted, I think I read nothing but Orson Scott Card. I’m not going to get political here because this was during an innocent time before the internet gobbled me whole, so these books were merely the words on the page and what I brought to them.
I remember it so clearly. I was sitting on the deck at my parents’ house, feeling sorry for myself because in a few months time I would be far away from the beautiful rolling hills, when I came to one specific passage.
Alvin grimaced at him. ‘Taleswapper, I’m not ready to leave home yet.’
‘Maybe folks have to leave home before they’re ready, or they never get ready at all.”
I stopped and read it again. Because although I had not named it out loud, that was me. I was Alvin. And Taleswapper’s words were exactly what I needed to hear: it’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to not feel ready. Because if you wait to feel ready, then you’ll be waiting forever. Sometimes you have to jump out of the plane and trust that your parachute will open.*
*(Please note, I have never been sky diving, but I know someone who has, so that’s almost the same thing, right?)
It’s funny to think back to that day, because it it planted a seed which has motivated me many times since. Not always, of course. Sometimes I still chicken out. But sometimes when anxiety refuses to release its stranglehold: a new relationship, a new job, a new adventure–I find myself thinking back to those wise words, and I realize that I will be okay, because I’m always okay.
And if Orson Scott Card is not your bent, a good friend of mine recently gave me a new mantra, one that she repeats to her daughter whenever she is scared worried. “You are BRAVE. You are STRONG. You are WONDERFUL. And YOU will be fine.” What better words could you ever need?
There are so many things I could have missed out on, if I gave into fear:
So do you embrace the future at full tilt? Or are you worry-wart* like me?
*(Officially diagnosed by my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Burton. Thanks for that.)
What gets you through the scary times?
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5 Stars All By Myself! Emile Jadoul Eerdmans Books for Y.R. 978-08028-5411-7 26 pages, ages 3+ 140 miles north of my home is a publisher with some fantastic books. I try to bring them to you every chance I get, and today is one of those times. I am so happy to bring you All [...]
You may have heard of Tintin because a movie starring him came out recently, but I know Tintin from his comics. Tintin comics are the best. Tintin is the reason I have always wanted to be a reporter. I don't actually know what a reporter is, but if Tintin is any indication, it's the best job in the world. In his comics, Tintin gets to travel the world, fly airplanes, fight drug-runners, overthrow governments, solve mysteries and in one very weird adventure, meet up with aliens.
My local library had about half of the 23 Tintin books and I checked them out in an endlessly repeating loop. I have large chunks of The Shooting Star impressed onto my brain. Unfortunately, the library didn't seem to take my suggestion (which I helpfully wrote down and shoved in their suggestion box) to buy “MORE TINTIN,” leaving me no choice but to ask for all the Tintin books I didn't have for Christmas. (The Library did take my suggestion to buy “MORE HORSE BOOKS” and “MORE NANCY DREW,” so I can't be too mad at them.)
Asking for Tintin books for Christmas was a desperate move. Christmas is for getting toys! Books and clothing are down at the weak end of the gifts spectrum. Once my dad returned home from a trip and brought me a book as a present. I was outraged. A book? What was this nonsense! The book ended up being a comic book version of The Black Stallion and I read it until it fell apart and it was THE BEST BOOK EVER. (Besides Tintin.)
So I asked for all the Tintin books I didn't have for Christmas. King Ottokar's Sceptre. Flight 714. The Calculus Affair.
Christmas came, and my parents got me all those Tintins and more. My brothers and I read them until the spines broke and the pages fell out and I memorized practically every line. I don't remember many of the toys I got at Christmas, but I remember the year I got the Tintin books.
I never ended up becoming a reporter like Tintin, but I make comics for a living, so it's pretty close. I get to draw people going on adventures, running through forests, fighting zombies, being stalked by ghosts ... I think Tintin would be proud.
- Faith Erin Hicks' first book, Friends With Boys, is on sale 02/28!
When you were growing up did you have a special place where all of your dreams seemed possible? Sue and Ron, our college friends, just came to visit from Florida. Sue, who had lived in Brighton, had one request — a tour of her old neighborhood. As we approached an old stone bridge, fireworks erupted in her mind as she recalled playing under that bridge...
For the rest of the story, go here:
http://www.consideration.org/sottile/about-me/sandlot.html
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By: Read Now Sleep Later,
on 3/8/2011
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ISBN 10/13: 0385736622 / 9780385736626
I turn you over once again to KimberlyBuggie, who is saving my life, one review at a time. If you want the blurb, click on the cover image above.
Kimberly's review: Growing up, I was a big fan of Louis Sachar. The Boy Who Lost His Face, There's A Boy In The Girl's Bathroom and all the stories from Wayside School.
Years later, (many, but I won't say how many), I'm happy to find that Mr. Sachar has still kept his sense of humor, good writing and sharp observations.
I'm not going to lie. The Cardturner does have A LOT of information about the game of bridge, which some may find boring. I don't know how to play bridge, nor do I have any interest in learning. And for all that information, it really is just a vehicle used to move the story. Sachar does a fun trick where he'll show you a whale, you'll have to read it to find out why, and what follows is a particularly long scene about bridge. At the end, he'll summarize it for you. (Thank you for realizing that I do not necessarily want to learn how to play bridge.)
But the story is about a boy and his search for his own identity. About his Uncle, a loner and a mysterious figure who may have more in common with him than he thought.
The story is filled with wonderful characters. (Toni, Gloria, and of course Lester) And while it's not a page turner, a thriller, a stay up late all night--it is a charming story about finding some friends, interests and yourself, in unexpected places.
Just ONE example of why English is SO difficult to learn . . . . . Think about it. The author is unknown... Read until the end.....you'll laugh.... This two-letter word in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word
is 'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
It's easy to understand
No matter what our kids and the new generation think about us, WE ARE AWESOME!!! OUR Lives areLIVING PROOF !!! ToThose of Us Born 1925 - 1970 Atthe end of this email is a quote of the month by Jay Leno.. If you don't readanything else, please read what he said.
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Recently the New York Times published a major story featuring Jeffrey Arnett’s research on “emerging adulthood,” his term for the age period from 18 to 29. The article received tremendous attention (boosting it to the position of top emailed story) and Arnett was soon asked to appear on the Today Show, among other major media outlets around the world. In the original post below, he expands on the ideas previously presented and responds to stereotypes about emerging adults.
By Jeffrey Arnett
How do you know when you’ve reached adulthood? This is one of the first questions I asked when I began my research on people in their twenties, and it remains among the most fascinating to me. I expected that people would mostly respond in terms of the traditional transition events that take place for most people in the 18-29 age period: moving out of parents’ household, finishing education, marriage, and parenthood. To my surprise, none of these transition events turned out to hold much importance as markers of adulthood. In fact, finishing education, marriage, and having at least one child have consistently ended up near the bottom in importance in the many surveys that I and others have done in the United States and around the world over the past decade.
Consistently, across countries, ethnic groups, gender, and social classes, the “Big Three” criteria for reaching adulthood are these: 1) Accept responsibility for yourself, 2) Make independent decisions, 3) Become financially independent.
What the Big Three have in common is that they all denote self-sufficiency. For emerging adults, adulthood means learning to stand on your own as a self-sufficient person. Only when you have attained self-sufficiency are you ready to take on the obligations of marriage and parenthood. Because the Big Three all occur gradually rather than as one-time events, most emerging adults feel in-between until at least their mid-twenties, on the way to adulthood but not there yet.
There are negative stereotypes that have sprung up with regard to emerging adults: that they are lazy, spoiled, selfish, and never want to grow up. These stereotypes are common and extremely unfair. Lazy? Have you noticed lately who is pouring your coffee, working the retail counter, mowing the lawns? It’s mostly emerging adults who are doing the crummy, low-paying, no-benefits jobs older adults try to avoid. Emerging adults often hold one or more of these jobs and combining them with going to school as they try to work their way up to something better. Spoiled and selfish? Who is it that is applying in record numbers to Teach for America, Americorps, and the Peace Corps, among other volunteer organizations? Not their Baby-Boomer critics, but emerging adults. Never want to grow up? By age 30 most people are married, have at least one child, and are committed to a stable career path. Why begrudge them the freedom of their twenties to try to make the best possible adult lives for themselves, and to have fun and adventures that they will not be able to have later?
Whatever older adults think of it, emerging adulthood is here to stay as a stage of the life course. Instead of tearing them down, as parents and as a society we should be building them up and giving them the support they need to enjoy their twenties and have a successful entry into the responsibilities of adult life.
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at
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Exhibit A: One of the more annoying adverts I've seen on buses in the Bristol area was paid for by my own university. A few years ago, they tried to attract students with the slogan "Real life starts here!" The implication, I suppose, being that childhood is merely a kind of marking time, a training on the (literal) nursery slopes for real - that is, adult - life.
Exhibit B: an official sign spotted recently affixed to a local lamppost: "Do not feed the seagulls. They annoy people and children."
As a children's writer, what is one to make of it all? That children are but half-formed adults, and childhood meaningful only in so far as it points the way to better things ahead? What could be more calculated to make one march down the street shouting "Children are human beings too!"? This attitude affects children's writers as well, who are notoriously grouchy at being asked when they are going to start writing "real" books - that is, books for real people - that is, for adults.
Prompted by all this, I've been thinking about the ways children's books portray the transition from childhood to adulthood, and I've come up with one of my trademark taxonomies:
1) Avoid it! This subdivides into two categories:
a) The School of Death. From Helen Burns to Leslie Burke, there are heroes and heroines (the latter rather more than the former) who have cheated adulthood by dying before it could get its clammy grey hands on them.
b) Supernatural Solutions. Peter Pan is the obvious example here. But of course, he is a slightly tragic figure, who can stay a child only at the cost of forgetting people and events, and by being excluded for ever from the embrace of a mother. I might mention Pippi Longstocking, too, who at the end of Pippi in the South Seas gives herself, Tommy and Annika a pill that should keep them children for ever. Alas, for jaded adult readers this is clearly a case of whistling to keep her spirits up. The book closes with Pippi blowing out the single candle that sits on the table before her, and we all know what that means.
2) Accept it as a painful necessity.
I remember all the first-day-of-school photos I took of the kids. I remember the time I took a picture of Mx blowing a bubble for the very first time. The look in her eye. Today, Joe and I took pictures of her before her very first day of work, her first job out of college. She actually got the job offer before she finished her last year and since it's her dream job, she went for it. Turns out she'll be able to finish her degree online. It will be a mountain of work, but if anyone can do it, Mx can. We're so proud of her. Last night she said something so sweet. I guess I'm grown up now. And it was such a sweet moment. Hard to describe, really. A moment of becoming and of leaving behind. A moment of awareness and playfulness and everything all wrapped up into one. I love this picture of her, all grown up. As if we ever, really are:)
 All Grown Up When did you feel all grown up; and if you’ve never felt that way, what does growing up mean to you?
Behind the question
     
"What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." ~Eleanor Powell Today my oldest grandson attended his Senior Ball. A little more than five years ago we didn't know if he was going to live or die. He was dying of a disease that destroyed his liver. Miracle of miracles, he was given a liver transplant and survived the operation, and got better and better, day by day. He spent a lot of time in the hospital before and after the transplant, but the operation was certainly worth it.
He was given the gift of life by a stranger. It was this last thing this stranger did on Earth. So, it was an amazing gift. After that, my wife and I signed up to be organ donors. It's a worthy cause. You should consider doing it if you are not already signed up as donor. Perhaps, you can help a young man or woman make it to their Senior Ball. What a blessing that would be!
My grandson has a wonderful, loving personality. I am sure he will make the Earth a better place as an adult. He is already doing that by working part-time in an animal hospital. He's giving back on a regular schedule. It might become his career.
He's using his gift of life, which he has been given twice, to give back to God four-legged creatures. And I am very proud of him.
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This looks amazing – and I’m so delighted that you mentioned ‘Girl with a White Dog’ in the post about it – as I was just thinking ‘wow – this looks like the sort of book I’d love’ when you mentioned mine! I really like the interview you gave too – those are just the sort of questions I would have wanted to ask the author. This looks like a brilliant book.
Thanks Anne, I do hope you can find a copy as I think you would really enjoy it.
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