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Title: The Knowing Book Author: Rebecca Kai Dotlich Illustrator: Matthew Cordell Publisher: Boyds Mills Press, 2016 Themes: Enjoying the journey, discovery, what we can know, what we don’t know Ages: 7-11 Opening: Before you forget …look up. Synopsis: Inspiring and wise, this story begins and ends with the sky that is always above you. In … Continue reading →

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I confess to changing my choice today to Perfect Poetry Book Friday, but with good reason. This book deserves wide promotion and it fits perfectly into the aims of our blogging group to recommend high quality books with pictures for … Continue reading →

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One Day, The End
By Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrated by Fred Koehler
Boyds Mills Press (an imprint of Highlights)
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-62091-451-9
Ages 4-7
On shelves now.

Last evening I was reading Quest by Aaron Becker to my daughter for bedtime. It’s a good book. I’ve read it approximately 20 times by now, so I should know. Anyway, we’re reading the book, which is wordless and requires that the reader really pay attention to the story, and as we start I point out to my daughter some feature at the beginning involving statues. Immediately she countered with a different statue detail at the back of the book that I, though having read this story over and over again, had completely and totally missed. That’s the cool thing about child readers. Not only do they find the details the adults are completely oblivious to, but on top of that they’re coming up with cool narratives and storylines of their own, on spinning off of the ones conceived of by the author/illustrators. So when I see a book like One Day, The End I just wanna put my hands together and applaud. Rebecca Kai Dotlich is a genius (and Fred Koehler ain’t sleeping on the job either). She figured out that for kids a story is just as much a product of the relationship between a child and a book’s pictures as it is between a child and a book’s words. Sometimes more. Sometimes much more. And sometimes they’ll be handed a book like this one that lets them examine and indulge to their heart’s delight.

Do you know how to tell a story? It’s easy! Listen to a couple of these.
“One day… I felt like stomping. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.”
“One day… I lost my dog. I found him.”
“One day… I ran away. I cam home.”
A small girl tells her tales with a minimum of words. Yet hidden in these words, sometimes literally, are epic narratives. The most ordinary of actions can turn into huge adventures. By the end, the girl is writing whole books out of what could normally be seen as mundane everyday actions. Yet two sentences can yield a whole lot of action.

These days the buzzword of the hour appears to be “visual storytelling” or “visual learning”. And why not? We live in a world of constant, perpetual, enticing screens (or “shiny rectangles” as my brother-in-law likes to call them). Graphic novels have achieved a level of respect and quality hitherto unknown in the history of publishing and I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that there are more picture books being published today than ever before. Into this brave new world come the kids, their minds making connections and storylines. They mix reality and fantasy together with aplomb. They give their toys lives and thoughts and feelings. So to see a book that sets them free to give these imaginings a little form and structure? That’s great.

On the most basic level, the book is perfect for class writing prompts. The teacher tells the kids to pick a two-sentence story in the book and expand upon it. It works to a certain extent, but I wonder if in some ways it sort of skips the point of the book itself. One of the many points of One Day, The End is that when it comes to picture books, storytelling can be more than simply whatever it is that the words say. Another point is that you don’t have to be loquacious to tell a story. Two sentences will do. It would be fun to do an exercise with kids where they tell two-sentence stories. Two sentences takes off a lot of pressure. There’s no need to include a rise and fall to the action. Anyone can tell a story (a valuable lesson). This book shows you how.

All that aside, the ending of the book was particularly interesting to me. Picture book authors that can stick the landing (as it were) when they finish their stories are rare birds. Such books don’t necessarily come along every day. That said, the ending of One Day, The End is rather magnificent. The whole book until this point has been showing the reader that in the shortest of stories there can be whole epic narratives. So when our young heroine begins by saying “One Day… I wanted to Write a Book” the accompanying picture shows her at a typewriter (a retro move) imagining a whole host of new situations. Turn the page and the following “So I did” shows a line of thick books, each one with a title that relates to the tiny two sentence stories we witnessed before. The implication at work here for kids is that even in the briefest of moments of our lives, which adults might hurry through or remember in abbreviated ways, there are untold tales just waiting to be told. This book is for the five-year-old burgeoning writer. This character wanted to write a book and did. Who’s to say you couldn’t do the same?

I didn’t recognize Fred Koehler’s style the first time I read through this book. Maybe this is a little more understandable when I mention that he only just debuted this year with his own picture book, How to Cheer Up Dad. That book starred affectionate pachyderms. This one, all too human humans. In order to bring Dotlich’s story to life, Koehler sets the action in a kind of timeless past. Cell phones computers, and even televisions are not in evidence. There’s one sequence when our heroine is playing hide-and-go-seek with her brother and we see a large swath of their home together. It’s rather technologically barren, a fact drilled home later when the typewriter makes its somewhat inexplicable appearance. Fortunately, Koehler has a lot going for him, beyond this attempt at timelessness. The font of the story is practically a tale in and of itself, always shifting and changing to suit the described action. And the layouts! I don’t mind saying that part of the reason this book feels so fresh and interesting and fun has a lot to do with Koehler’s layouts. The words that make up the stories appear as part of the illustrated scenes, sometimes dominating the action and sometimes playing a role in it. For example, the story that begins with “One day… I wanted to be a spy” actually shows the girl peering between the letters of “spy”

I also loved that Koehler wasn’t afraid to reward rereadings. Attentive readers will be able to witness the smaller sub-adventures of a cat, a squirrel, a bird, and a little white dog that appear in the periphery of all the action. Then there are even smaller details that you wouldn’t notice on a first glance. The story, “I went to school. I came home” shows our plucky young gal dilly-dallying on her way to class (following a cat that will come up again in a later tale) only to accidentally leave her books somewhere en route. She runs to her classroom, but sharp-eyed spotters will note her missing backpack. Next thing you know the class is following instructions on doing science experiments and she peers at her neighbor (every kid doing the experiments is looking at their book, save her), and accidentally pours her solution into the wrong beaker. And there are other details about the characters themselves that are worth discovering, like that our storyteller always wears mismatched socks. As for the callbacks, if you pay attention you’ll see that an element that appears in one story (like a rubber boot placed over a flower in the rain) may later crop up again later (that same flower grows out of the boot a little later).

To sum up, why not take a page out of this book?
One day… I read a picture book. It was great.
The End.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• The End by David LaRochelle
• Once Upon a Time, The End by Geoffrey Kloske
• A Book by Mordecai Gerstein

Professional Reviews: Kirkus,

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#16 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2011.



During the Christmas holidays every year, Rebecca Kai Dotlich makes sugar cookies with her grandchildren. I love this photo of her with three-year-old Mia. I wonder what they're talking about as they coax all that butter into submission?

For Mia, this is a relatively new family tradition, but for Rebecca, it's a beautiful extension of what she did for years with her own two children. ("I am no cook -- it is laughable --  but I am a mighty fine baker of homemade cut-out sugar cookies.") All the gold in the world couldn't buy or replace those precious memories of a warm kitchen, comfy aprons, wooden spoons and rolling pins, clouds of flour dusting counter and nose, the tap-splat of sweet creamery butter, and the sweet avalanche of sugar as it spills out of a measuring cup.

When I first invited Rebecca to the Potluck, she immediately thought about her sugar cookies and asked if she should write a poem about them. Of course I was wild about the idea, since cookies are my favorite thing to bake, and I love to hear how they sweeten other people's lives. Lucky for us, Rebecca ended up sending two poems. She explains why:

As I began to write a poem about those cookies, the same cookies I've made every Christmas since my children were small (and now with my grandchildren), I began to write words of a different recipe; ones that included but a dash of a cookie image. And it became very long. Even though much of my heart is stirred into that poem, I also wanted to write the poem I was asked for, so I baked a shorter, smaller poem, focusing strictly on the beauty of the cookie; the visually delicious aspect of them. What else? A cookie haiku.

Stars ON PLATES

     A Cookie Haiku

     by Rebecca Kai Dotlich



Frosted blue, crisp tips

sugared with sprinkle-candies;

sky treats melt in mouth.

Copyright © 2011 Rebecca Kai Dotlich. All rights reserved.

Positively scrumptious! Lovely how Rebecca focuses her poetic lens on her favorite cookie, distilling the essential goodness of the entire plate.

She said I could share the original longer poem if I wanted to. Wanted to?! Are you kidding? I've always believed cooking is an act of love -- a gift of patience, time well spent, a sincere wish to please, a sharing, and that perfect measure of heart mixed in for lasting flavor. I'm so grateful Rebecca baked this one up just for us:


"Morning Star" by geoarts/flickr

THIS MORNING
by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

On this day you would find

a soft package of stars

wrapped in sky, a ribboned tie

made of cloud, and a peace

of joy for your heart,

and they would fit perfectly

in the palm of your

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Sharing the Seasons, one of Lee Bennett Hopkins' several wonderful 2010 anthologies, is a Cybils Finalist and one of my favorite poetry books of the year. It explores all the seasons, and after a cross-country ski outing this morning, I need to share a lovely poem from the Winter section. Winter Home (excerpt) We build our beds inside this barn, with shreds of cloth, old rags, twine. A room where we can winter-dine ...read the full poem in the book:>) --Rebecca Kai Dotlich, all rights reserved

Rebecca's been working in other genres besides poetry lately, so it's a treat to find her sparkling poetry in anthologies.

Irene Latham has the Poetry Friday Roundup. It's always the right season for poetry, so head over and enrich your day!

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BOOK LOVE: This past week, the school where I teach had a book sale and one of the books on the shelves and my wish list was JULIA GILLIAN (and the Quest for Joy) by Alison McGhee.

You know that wonderful feeling when you find a great book and you can’t wait to share it with someone else you know will love it, too? That’s exactly what I felt this weekend: JULIA GILLIAN book love.

I enjoyed every minute of the reading and I know there will soon be more JULIA GILLIAN fans in my classroom.

There are two more books in the series to keep the book love going : JULIA GILLIAN (and the Art of Knowing) and JULIA GILLIAN (and the Dream of the Dog).

POETRY LOVE: Last spring I was able to take a poetry workshop with amazing poet and teacher, Rebecca Kai Dotlich. I’ve long been a fan of Rebecca’s work, but I just discovered Kathi Appelt‘s recent interview with Rebecca about writing, poetry, picture books, and more. Rebecca shares a great poetry writing tip for teachers and Kathi and she talk a bit about BELLA AND BEAN, a beautiful picture about poetry and friendship.

I wrote a brief entry about BELLA AND BEAN earlier this year on ReaderKidZ. Check it out HERE.

Enjoy Kathi Appelt’s video interview : (Don’t you just *love* the background music, “Adieu False Heart”? I sure do!)

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Yesterday's poem featured spiders in a rather unappetizing way. So for today's poem, I've chosen a beautiful spider poem from Sweet Dreams of the Wild: Poems for Bedtime (Wordsong, 1996--illustrated by Katharine Dodge). Rebecca Kai Dotlich is one of my favorite poets--and a lovely person as well, and this book, her first children's poetry book, has her characteristic heart and dynamic, right-there, makes-you-see-hear-feel-it word choices. Here's one I love: Black spider, black spider, where do you sleep? I sleep in a web of knitted threads, woven of silk in a flower bed. On a thin, gauzy sheet I sway in the air, from a lilac bush to the garden chair. I cuddle up tight with sweet dreams of the wild, and THAT'S where I sleep, sleepy child! --Rebecca Kai Dotlich, all rights reserved

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Did you see the lovely essay in the new SCBWI Bulletin by Diane L. Burns about shaking hands with someone who shook the hand of...It reminded me of this wonderful experience I just had of the chain of encouragement and joy poets build.

When I saw poet Tracie Vaughn Zimmer in May, she related the story to me of how nervous she was at her first ALA Poetry Blast, and how Lee Bennett Hopkins sat next to her, holding her hand until it was her turn to read.

I was so jealous.

This past Monday, the day of the ALA Poetry Blast, which I was so looking forward to and yet also nervous about, I met Rebecca Kai Dotlich to hang out and talk for a couple of hours. Rebecca is one of my poetry heroes, and she's close friends with Lee, who's a poetry hero of pretty much every children's poet around.

I was telling her that when I posted something here about hoping I wouldn't faint on stage at the Blast, I got the sweetest email from Lee, saying he wished he were going to be participating in the Blast this year. He would have held my hand and calmed me down. I knew he meant it, since Tracie had told me he did exactly that for her.

Rebecca promised that she would hold my hand that night and try to pass along the reassurance and joy that Lee would pass on if he were there. And she did. That night, as we all gathered in the Chicago Hilton, Rebecca came up and stood with me, holding my hand, offering calmness. I did feel the love of poetry and of poets that filled the whole room--poets and librarians and teachers alike.

Of course, I was still nervous! But it helped. The feeling in the room. The long-distance encouragement of Lee Bennett Hopkins. The close-at-hand reassurance of Rebecca, Joyce Sidman, Marilyn Singer, and the other poets who knew I was slightly terrified. The calm support of my editor smiling in the middle of the room. The excitement of author/librarian Wendie Old (who extended her trip a day just to attend the Blast!) and everyone else in the audience. It all helped.

Now I'll share a poem from each Lee and Rebecca. Thanks, you guys!
 

From Lee's most recent collection, City I Love (Abrams, 2009), here's a poem I love. Kite New kite blue-white flitters twirls tumbles twitters like a young bird in new morning's wide-awake city sky. --Lee Bennett Hopkins, all rights reserved

The feeling I get from "Kite" is like the joy and energy in that room full of poetry lovers! (Sorry the alignment isn't quite right!)

Lemonade Sun is an older collection from Rebecca Kai Dotlich (Wordsong, 2001), but it's lovely and still in print. Rebecca read one of my favorite poems from it at the Blast:

Backyard Bubbles One bubble shimmies from the wand to waltz around the backyard lawn. One fragile globe of soapy skin-- a glimmering of breath within a perfect pearl, I blow again! One more bubble squeezes through, one blushing bead of water-blue; and then another rinsed in pink (shivering with pastel ink) dances on a summer sigh, shimmering with shades of sky, s-l-o-w-l-y slides right out of sight; backyard bubbles taking flight. --Rebecca Kai Dotlich, all rights reserved

What a treat to hear that read by Rebecca, after all the times I've read it aloud myself and savored the lovely words and images.

I felt so lucky to have so much support as I participated in my first Poetry Blast. Thank you!

Becky at Becky's Book Reviews has the wonderful Poetry Friday roundup today. Enjoy!

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My latest article came out last Friday in the Westside Courier, but I can't post the link because the new editor hasn't had a chance to learn how to put the articles online yet! Hopefully soon. I did get some great feedback on it, though. Kristi Scott, the subject, emailed me to say how thrilled she was with it, and several people stopped me at the gym to say how nice it was. That's always pleasant.

Last Saturday, I attended the Indiana SCBWI event in Carmel, Coffee Talk with Lara Anderson. Lara, who sent several years at Curtis Brown, was full of great information. In a relaxed and informal setting, Lara answered questions from the group of attendees. Her mother and successful author Rebecca Kai Dotlich also added her experience on some of the subjects. I received a paid critique from Lara on the first 50 pages of my YA book, and it was well-worth the $40 cost. I did not receive the glowing feedback that I had hoped, but what I did receive was a very detailed critique. She pointed out specific problems and offered suggestions and examples on what to do about them. I feel like she closely read my manuscript and definitely got my money's worth. It's the best critique I've ever received as far as content. Thank you, Lara!! It was also great to meet and see so many of the other IN-SCBWI members!

I sent out a new query this week (to Cricket) but have mostly been doing research on book packagers. It sounds like freelancing for a packager could have some benefits--experience and credentials, not to mention a little bit of money.

I also finished another of Margaret McMullan's Ya books, When I Crossed No-Bob. Just as in Cashay, I really cared for the main character, Addy in this case, and many of the supporting characters. Though a completely different story than Cashay, it was also similar in that she took another story which could have been so depressing and made it heart-warming and not at all depressing. I would recommend to anyone!

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I have to admit I was sad when I heard Rebecca Kai Dotlich's next book was a prose picture book--she's one of my very favorite poets, and I want more, more, more poetry from her! But one read of Bella & Bean (ill. by Aileen Leitjen), and I fell in love. Word-hungry Bella and action-hungry Bean are two mice friends who, despite some tussling, make a great pair. And check out the gorgeous poem that ends this adorable prose picture book: Bella & Bean's Poem One blanket holds two friends calm and cozy at the edge of a pond. The moon looks like a clock in the sky with the big hand on Forever.

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I was so excited to hear from J. Patrick Lewis a few weeks ago. And then I read Elaine Magliaro's fantastic interview with him last week at Wild Rose Reader. I've been behind in my blog reading due to school visits and general life chaos, but I had planned to tell both Elaine and Pat how much I liked the interview (um, can I consider you both told now? just wondering...). Before I had a chance to do that, I had another email in my inbox from Pat, with a poem to share if I liked.

I like!

Everything Is a Poem
 
A garden is a poem
Lined with rows of similes
Like lyrical chrysanthemums
And epic peonies.
 
A spider web’s a poem
Composed upon the air,
Silk-designed and deftly lined
To catch the unaware.  
 
A mirror is a poem
Revealing truths about
The poet, but it often leaves
A shadow of a doubt.
 
A fisherman is one big poem
For fish to contemplate,
But getting bites on lazy lines
Is open to de-bait.
 
A picture is a poem
If it’s painted in disguise
On a canvas of emotion
From a palette of surprise.
 
A rainbow is a poem,
A phenomenon so rare.
It’s not that it is written
But it’s written on the air.
                                                                                               
A firefly’s a poem,
A flashy verse sublime
That’s read by other fireflies
One sparkle at a time. 

A shining star’s a poem
Penned by ghostwriter, the Moon,
Who publishes her verses
In a book called Clair de Lune.
 
A busy bee’s a poem
With nectar that’s so fine
A reader-eater laps up every
Honey of a line.                               

This winding path's a poem                                                       
Meandering through the woods
Of real and imaginary
Wild neighborhoods
That poets like to navigate
In search of either/or—
One thing can mean another: that’s
What metaphors are for.    

---J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved                       
 
Isn't that gorgeous. The spiderweb and picture stanzas are my favorite. "Silk-designed and deftly lined/ To catch the unaware." Perfect! And "On a canvas of emotion/ From a palette of surprise." Wow. Thanks, Pat, for sharing this new poem with us!

I was reading Scien-Trickery: Riddles in Science the other day, his collection of science riddle poems. And, so as not to be a slacker and only share the poem that dropped in my inbox for me, I'm also going to share just a couple of these clever verses with you. If I were a teacher, how I would love to use these with my students. As it is, I'm going to see how my 12- and 15-year-olds fare with them at breakfast!



There's Something in the Water

Six letters in my name--
Though O, you must agree,
Is what I'm usually called--
It's all in my chemistry.

If H is mixed with me,
Every kid understands
Together we wash your face;
Together we wash your hands.

--J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved


The Old Switcheroo

My father's the arc
My mother's the spark.
Wthout them you would
Be left in the dark.

--J. Patrick Lewis, all rights reserved

And the answers are oxygen and electricity. Love these! 




And they put me in mind of another poetry riddle book I love, When Riddles Come Rumbling, by the amazing Rebecca Kai Dotlich, which I gave a brief excerpt from here, when I was part of Wordy Girls.

I hope you enjoy the riddle poems in both of these books, and that you're all having a poetry-filled April!

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Cartoon Surfer Dude

Sketch of a cartoon surfer dude for a batch of characters I am working on for a current project. Original sketch was done in pencil, scanned into and cleaned up in Photoshop using the trusty Wacom graphics tablet.

I was going for the "hang loose" hand gesture, but I think it came out more "call me".

George Coghill • CoghillCartooning.com

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The Pink Panther

The first thing I thought of when I read the "Saturday Morning Cartoons" theme was the Pink Panther. I'm not even sure now if it was actually a Saturday morning cartoon, but I am pretty sure it was…

There were a couple of things that always made the Pink Panther unique to me as a kid: the fact that he never spoke, and the awesome art style. It was so unlike any other cartoon going on at the time. The whole retro look was just super cool to me, so non-Warner Bros., non-Disney, non-Hanna Barbera. It was like it's own little universe.

Sketched this one up, scanned him in and reworked the line art & color in Photoshop. Experimented with the non-black outline, something I always intend to work with but never seem to have the guts to do when it comes down to it.

Went for the old-school Panther from the films (I think he was just in the title sequences?), complete with the kid-friendly cigarette holder and martini glass.

George Coghill • CoghillCartooning.com

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