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Monday kicks off this year’s Children’s Book Week, May 12 to 18, 2014.

“Children’s Book Week is the annual celebration of books for young people and the joy of reading. Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Every year, commemorative events are held nationwide at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes — wherever young readers and books connect! Children’s Book Week is administered by Every Child a Reader, a 501(c)(3) literacy organization dedicated to instilling a lifelong love of reading in children. The Children’s Book Council, the national non-profit trade association for children’s book publishers, is an anchor sponsor.”

In conjunction with the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop 2014, hosted by Youth Literature Reviews and Mother Daughter [and Son] Book Reviews, Kid Lit Reviews is once again celebrating children’s books and the reading of children’s books. The Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop 2014, features links to giveaways for fabulous children/teen’s books, gift cards, cash, and other prizes. What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week? Enter for these prizes using the linky at the end of this post. It can also be found on both host sites.

Just like last year, KLR has some terrific giveaways, one for each day, but you don’t have to wait to find out what they are.

• From FarFaria – A 3-month subscription to this online library of children’s books.
• From Scarletta Kids: The Monster Needs His Sleep by Paul Czajak, illustrated by Wendy Grieb
• From Chronicle Books:  Lately Lily, the Adventures of a Traveling Girl by Micah Player
• From Capstone Books:  TBA
• From Scarletta Junior Readers: The Shark Whisperer by Dr. Ellen Prager, illustrations by Antonio Javier Caparo
• From Kid Lit Reviews:  A Special Prize Pack – who knows what it could be?

How do You Win a Prize?

Each day a Rafflecopter Entry System will be on the post. There you can “earn” entries by following the directions at each level. Some levels will be worth more entries than others will. A few entries will be daily, while others are a one-time deal. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received by Sunday, May 18, at midnight EST. Only one prize per entrant.

Each day, an additional entry can earn by leaving a comment below that day’s post. All comments must be posted by Sunday the 18th at midnight, EST to count as an entry. See below for Special Entries. Only one comment per post equals an entry, but additional comments are always welcome.

*** Special Entries ***

For every Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop 2014 blog site you visit and comment on, you will also earn you one entry per day. In the comment area below the KLR post of that day, leave the website name and the Blog Hop # for verification. This is a MUST! (this does not count as an entry comment on KLR). Sites and numbers can be found at:

Youth Literature Reviews: http://youthlitreviews.com and Mother Daughter & Son Book Reviews http://motherdaughterbookreviews.com, or use the Linky Tool:  Click here to view the complete list of participating bloggers and authors.

Children’s Book Week is more than our Giveaway Hop. That is our way of expressing our interest in kid’s books, our desire that every child learn to read and enjoy reading, and our gratitude to be involved as authors, illustrators, reviewers, readers, and parents. To help the Hop have a great week, please tweet about it and your activities for Children’s Book Week using the hashtag #KidLitGH
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Important

• Open only to those living in the United States.
• Kids may enter but if they win, a parent or guardian must accept the prize.
• Winners will be notified by email and have 48 hours to verify their information.
• Unclaimed prizes will be re-drawn from non-winning entries until a winner is established.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

Goodnight Football (Sport Illustrated Kids)

by Michael Dahl & Christina Forshay, illustrator

Picture Window Books                 8/01//2014

an imprint of Capstone Young Readers & Capstone Books

978-1-62370-106-2

Age 4 to 7   32 pages

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“From the opening kickoff to the final whistle, Goodnight Football brings the excitement of a football game to the youngest fan. Rhyming text and vibrant illustrations capture the love of the game through a child’s eyes and celebrates the combination of football, friendship, and family.”

 Opening

“It’s the end of the week,

it’s the best of all sights—

beneath the night sky

lies a field of bright lights!”

The Story Game

Tonight the home team Grizzlies are playing the Thunderbirds. The crowd bundles up to stay warm as they cheer on their team. It’s the first down of the game and Grizzlies quarterback, number 10, takes the snap, then takes a seat. He’s sacked! In the huddle, what will the Grizzlies do next? Number 10 throws the football long. A Grizzly player zips ahead of a thunderbird, passing by the tackle attempt, reaches up for the ball, and catches it—in the end zone! TOUCHDOWN GRIZZLIES! Through four quarters the teams race up and down the field, play after play, score after score. The final seconds tick off the clock as a Grizzly player dodges the last Thunderbird, running the ball run into the end zone for a touchdown and the game. It’s a Grizzly win for the hometown fans!

Happy Grizzly fans empty out of the field. The family of four walk past the field. The coaches are shaking hands, the players are saying ‘good game’ to their opponents, and the band says goodnight to the cheerleaders. The little boy waves goodnight to number 10, who smiles and waves back. The family heads home, but not before saying goodnight, and there are many goodnights to say. At the concession stand for one last order, the young boy waves goodnight to a new friend. Then it is off to the tour bus for the ride home, but not before waving goodnight to the Grizzly mascot, a giant orange bear! Then it is, “Goodnight goal posts” and “Goodnight moon.” Finally, home, it is past time for bed. The young boy has but two goodnights left. “Goodnight Mom. Goodnight Dad.” Then he drifts off to sleep, snuggling his football, dreaming of the next game, and making the winning touchdown.

Review

Goodnight Football is the second bedtime sports adventure for young children from Sports Illustrated Kids. The first was Goodnight Baseball (review here). With Goodnight Football, the series has become multicultural. The African-American family is young with a small boy and girl. The boy is thrilled to be at the game. He waves to players, and smiles throughout the entire book, until bedtime when the yawns start in. I like that this is not the typical Caucasian family, as seen on the majority of kids’ books. The young boy is the one who says goodnight to everyone and everything. The game has exciting moments, nothing bad to sour the evening game. The home team is once again the winner and they probably will always win.

The cutest spread is the final one, with the young boy tucked into bed, eyes closed, snuggling his football. Having a younger brother who was football crazy at a young age I know the ending is realistic. Girls snuggle teddy bears; boys snuggle footballs and baseball gloves.

The colorful illustrations in Goodnight Football capture the game realistically. One spread in particular is the best. On the right side, the Grizzlies are in a huddle and the illustrator has you on the ground, looking up at the faces in the huddle. What is the play? That huddle is simply a nice image. On the left side, the sacked quarterback gets help rising to his feet. Just as these players do, the quarterback extends one hand to the player helping him up, who grabs the hand with both of his. The realistic image is terrific, but that is not why I love it so much. If you zoom into the middle of the image, right to the locked hands, you will see white hands helping up a black hand. I love the symbolism, which is why it is the best page in the book.

As with Goodnight Baseball, young boys, who will want dad to read the story at bedtime, will love Goodnight Football. The book introduces young kids to the game of football, gets them to notice the world around them, and make new friends. I love these sports books for the youngest boys. They are the ones who usually don’t get to play the game, but now they have something all their own. The story is an easy read, making it possible to read the story every night and not become annoyed with the book. Goodnight Football is a wonderful bedtime story for young boys, but some girls will love this story as well. Goodnight Football makes the perfect gift for young football fans.

GOODNIGHT FOOTBALL. Text copyright © 2014 by Michael Dahl. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Christina Forshay. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Capstone Young Readers, North Mankato, MN.

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Learn more about Goodnight Football HERE.

Pre-Order Goodnight Football at Amazon—B&N—Book Depository—Capstone Books—your local bookstore.

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Meet the author, Michael Dahl, at his website:   http://www.michaeldahlwrites.com/

Meet the illustrator, Christina Forshay, at her website:    http://www.christinaforshay.com/

Find more books at the Capstone Young Readers website:    http://www.capstoneyoungreaders.com/

SI KIDS is a trademark of Time, Inc.       http://www.sikids.com/

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Also by Michael Dahl & Christina Forshay

Goodnight Baseball (Sports Illustrated Kids)

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Also by Michael Dahl

Book That Ate My Brother

In One Ear, Out the Other

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Also by Christina Forshay

The Really Groovy Story of the Tortoise and the Hare

Moxie

 

I'm reading Elephant Rocks, by Kay Ryan, U.S. Poet Laurete. It's my first exposure to her, and I love her! The way she says so much in so few words. I love turning each page and seeing that small block of text there against the white space. It feels like a poem I have time for, a bite (byte?) of information I can take in and absorb, perhap even remember (not memorize, but just remember the key elements and images).

Anyway, I'm sharing one poem that I read last week that resonated for two reasons.

Dew

As neatly as peas
in their green canoe,
as discretely as beads
strung in a row,
sit drops of dew
along a blade of grass.
But unnattached and,
subject to their weight,
they slip if they accumulate.
Down the green tongue
out of the morning sun
into the general damp,
they're gone.

--Kay Ryan, all rights reserved
 
Hear the poem read here on Writer's Almanac (though they misprint the word in the third line as "discreetly").

Anyway, when I read this, I laughed in recognition. My haiku in Flashy, Clashy, and Oh So Splashy, uses that same peapod/canoe comparison:

Garden Canoes

Slender green canoes

carry summer to your mouth—

Sweet glossy round peas

--Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

  

Last week, I received the author copies to the last book out of my set of 6 Capstone poetry books! 

I think this was the third book I wrote in the series, and it presented a little bit of a special challenge. Because the theme of the book was color, I wasn't quite sure whether the poems needed to each be about a color, or whether color could just figure prominently in the poem in some way, even if it wasn't the actual topic.

My editor, Jenny Marks, and I talked about this a little bit, and it turned out the poems didn't all have to be about the color. Which was good. I was thinking that the same approach would get a little old in 14-16 poems!

The photos Jenny sent me were amazing! So many bold, terrific images with attention-getting colors. I actually had a fairly easy time working on this set, once we confirmed that the poems didn't have to all describe or define colors and once I saw the fabulous images. In fact, I wrote about 20 poems to turn in, which was more than I needed to write.

Jenny provided her usual insight into changes that would make the poems stronger, and I revised. The whole process was incredibly smooth.

The only poems I really struggled with were the white and black ones. In a white poem I wrote, I was trying to refer to white light being composed of all the colors of the spectrum, but both I and the editor wondered if it could be wrongly interpreted to feel like it had a superior tone to it. And I didn't want that.

And for the black poem, I initially had night sky images, and I just couldn't get past the cliches. When Jenny sent me some black jaguar images, I wrote a poem I loved. Unfortunately, it didn't get used!

Here are a few poems from the book. Please note: These are NOT the images from the book. They're just to give you an idea of what the poems are describing.



This Is the Brown

This is the brown
of my tight-braided hair
This is the brown
of my old teddy bear

This is the brown
of the field where I spend
day after day
with my best-brown friend


OK, for this one you just have to imagine a picture of a big pig with a blue ribbon on her!

A Blue-Ribbon Gal

This pig is a beauty, you see that it’s true,
Clippety-cloppety, troppety-slop.
As gentle and light as the morning’s first dew,
Slippety-stroppety, flippety-clop.

I noticed her first at a pig beauty show
Oinkety-boinkety, shuffley-huff.
She twirled a baton and she sang like a pro
Oinkety-ploinkety, truffley-stuff.

She’s graceful and smooth for a pig of her size
Squealety-mealety, chunkety-shove
She won a blue ribbon! She won the big prize!
Wheelety-flop, I’m in piggety love.

It's a really silly poem, fairly unlike what I usually write. Jenny said it was a huge hit, a favorite of the group that was reviewing the poems. Figures:>)





Orange You Jealous of My Color?

I’m flashy
and clashy
and beautifully
splashy
and everyone notices me!

I’m bright
and unwhite,
quite a dazzling
sight—
I certainly hope you agree!


The title for that one, of course, came from the knock-knock joke: 

Knock knock
Who's there?
Banana
Banana who?
(repeat the above until the other person is ready to smack you, and then...)
Knock knock
Who's there?
Orange
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

I just realized I shared all rhyming poems, but this collection does have examples of haiku, acrostic, cinquain, and free verse, too. When I do a two-day school visit at the beginning of April, this is one of the two books I'll be sharing heavily with the K-3 classes.

This moment, it happens to every writer... the split-second gasp of recognition and frustration, the sudden discovery of a book they wish they could have written.

Or--more than that--the discovery of a book they think they *might* have written eventually. If they pushed themselves to the limit... and of course, if someone else hadn't beaten them to the punch.

Well, this week I found such a book. A picture book by David LaRochelle, illustrated by Richard Egielski, The End. I wish I had thought of this!!!

Why?

No-- I don't love this book because the pictures are vivid and funny (a little bit Sendak even). Or because it's a fairy tale of sorts. Or because the economy of words is pretty amazing.

I love it because LaRochelle has invented something that feels new to me. A new form.

"The End" is a book you read backwards. Duh. So obviously, it begins with "The End". And then each subsequent page contains the "cause" for the action on the previous page. In this manner, it leads readers back to the "beginning".

Like so:

“And they all lived happily ever after. They lived happily ever after because…”

How incredible is that? Simple and brilliant at once. A backwards book.

Especially brilliant because this is JUST how writers work a lot of the time, backwards. Asking themselves "Why?" before turning the page At each moment of decision or action, writers have to determine what the compulsion for the next page is. If they're worth their salt.

So here we have a book that teaches kids how to become storytellers, how to understand momentum and compulsion. How things can seem inventive and bizarre (gigantic tomatoes and big bowls of lemonade and floods of bunnies and flaming knights) without seeming arbitrary.

Because the seemingly bizarre details are connected by the all-important question "Why?"

Of course, adult writers have given us backwards books, but I don't think anyone has ever done it with pictures, have they?

Ach! Darn! I want to have written this book! But I didn't.

Sigh.