Written & illustrated by Tomi Ungerer
Phaidon Press, 2011
$12.95, ages 4-8, 32 pages
Four little pigs brighten the rooms of a cold, dilapidated house with the spirit of Christmas, in this charming reissue of a German classic.
When each of the Mellops brothers surprises their papa with a Christmas tree, they find they've all had the same idea and they burst into tears. Oh no, "what a to-do."
Four trees are just too many. And it wouldn't be fair to pick one brother's tree over another, so Mr. Mellops suggests that the boys look for people in need to give them to.
The problem is everyone they ask already has a tree -- at the orphanage, hospital, prison and military barracks.
Poor Casimir, Isidor, Felix and Ferdinand, they really want to help someone and as the lug their trees back home, their ears wilt with disappointment.
But just as these well-meaning fellows resign to throw away their trees, they see a girl pig quietly sobbing on the sidewalk. Could this be the person they've been looking for?
The girl pig explains that she lives with her ailing grandma, then leads them back to her rickety house.
The mood inside is forlorn. Her grandma lays in bed: her eyes, dark scribbles, her hooves, dangling over the edge of the bed frame. Plaster has peeled off walls exposing brick and a mouse scrambles across a chipped floor board.
In other rooms of the same house, the brothers find an old soldier shivering in a wheelchair next to an empty wood stove, two scared children huddled in a corner, and an old pig grimacing by a photograph of a woman who's no longer with him.
All at once, the boys' heads flood with ideas to cheer up the lodgers in the house. Every room will have a tree, they shout. Then they dash home to gather things sorely needed in each of the four rooms.
Isidor pulls clothes and blankets out of their armoir, Felix hammers open their "people" banks to buy gifts and medicine, Casimir chops wood to heat the rooms and Ferdinand fills a wheelbarrow with food.
Soon the house is happy and warm, and every tree is just where it's needed, cheering at a bedside and brightening rooms. And the Mellops boys? Well they're hear
By:
Aline Pereira,
on 2/13/2012
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PRESS RELEASE:
International Book Giving Day (February 14th)
International Book Giving Day is a day dedicated to getting new, used, and borrowed books in the hands of as many children as possible. Tomi Ungerer, Judy Bloom, Katrina Germein and several other great authors are participating. It would be great to have you participate too!
We hope that we can connect people from around the world via International Book Giving Day’s website, facebook page, flickr group, and work together to focus on a good cause: getting books to kids.
Three simple ways you can celebrate International Book Giving Day:
1. Give a Book to a Friend or Relative.
Is there a child in your life who would enjoy receiving a book on February 14th? In lieu of or in addition to a card or box of chocolates, choose a good book from a bookstore or public library to give to your child, grandchild, friend, or neighbor.
2. Donate a Book.
Wrap up a box of children’s books that your kids have outgrown and get them in the hands of children who could really use a book or two. Donate your books to your local second hand store, library, children’s hospital, or nonprofit organization working to ensure that all kids have access to books.
3. Leave a Book in a Waiting Room or Lobby.
Choose a waiting room where kids are stuck waiting and there are few to no good books available. Purchase a good book, and deposit your book covertly or overtly in your waiting room of choice. The goal here is to spread the love of reading to kids, so choose a fun book, nothing controversial.
Let us know that you are participating, and we will add you to our list of people giving books for International Book Giving Day: http://bookgivingday.blogspot.com/2012/02/were-giving-books-for-international.html
It would be fantastic to have your help with encouraging others to participate – especially others outside of the U.S. and U.K. Please, consider inviting authors, friends, and family in countries around the world to take part in International Book Giving Day.Let’s see how many people we can get to commit to giving a book to a child by February 14th!
Organizers: Amy Broadmoore and Zoe Toft
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TCBR,
on 7/8/2012
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By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: July 8, 2012
Elizabeth Bard
It’s a special treat to have Elizabeth Bard contribute her family’s top five favorites to The Children’s Book Review. An American journalist and author based in France, her first book, Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes has been a New York Times and international bestseller, a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick, and the recipient of the 2010 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best First Cookbook (USA). Bard’s writing on food, art, travel and digital culture has appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Wired, Harper’s Bazaar and The Huffington Post. Thanks to Elizabeth for sharing her thoughtful personal reflections on raising her son abroad with us.
Story time at our house is fun time, bed time, but it is also the site of a good-natured – but genuine – culture war. From the moment I moved to Paris to be with my French husband, I knew our children would be bilingual. As our lives have unfolded here, it’s become clear that most of my son’s childhood will be spent in France, worlds away from Sesame Street, Twinkies and other staples of my American childhood.
Augustin is almost three now. In addition to speaking English with me, and on vacations with his grandparents, books are the most effective tool I have to make sure he becomes – and stays – fluent in English, and is introduced to the different world view that creeps into the stories we choose to tell. There’s a part of all this that is inherently selfish: I want him to love these books because I love them. If he couldn’t – or didn’t want to – read in English, it would be like sewing up half my soul. A piece of his mother, and one of his cultures, would become unknowable to him.
Here are a few of our early and current favorites:
By Amy Krouse Rosenthal
One of Augustin’s very first words was “Poon” – shorthand for his favorite book. Spoon is a wonderful “the grass is always greener” story of a little spoon who thinks his friends, knife, fork and chopsticks have it so much better than him. He never gets to twirl spaghetti. He never gets to cut bread. His mother thoughtfully reminds him that knife can’t swim around in a bowl with the Cheerios, and chopsticks never get to dive into bowl of vanilla ice-cream.
Ages 3-7 | Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children | April 7, 2009
"No one, I dare say, no one was as original."
--Maurice Sendak
"He never lost the feeling of how a child sees the world. And a child's view is not really sentimental."
--Burton Pike, professor of comparative literature at CUNY
"The most famous children's book author you have never heard of."
--Phaidon Press
Who do the above quotes refer to? None other than
Tomi Ungerer, one of my all-time favorite authors. I was an Ungerer fan as a child, poring over my tattered copies of
The Three Robbers and
Emile again and again. As an adult I came across
The Beast of Monsieur Racine and fell in love with this exuberant story about a retired tax collector whose life is changed forever when he finds two young friends where he least expected. Read the book. It's one of my top 10 favorite picture books.
Many of Ungerer's books are now out of print. (One reason he fell out of favor here was his not-so-secret hobby of erotica.) Luckily, Phaidon Press is in the process of reprinting 26 of his titles. The latest is
Otto: The Autobiography of a Teddy Bear. Originally published in German in 1999, the picture book tackles a disturbing subject, World War II. Like all of Ungerer's work, the book doesn't shy away from the gory realities of war and what happens to soldiers and to civilians, children included.
Otto, the teddy bear of the title, tells the story of his life, beginning with his creation in a toy workshop in Germany in the 1930s. Not one to shun unpleasant truths, Otto admits that being stitched together "was quite painful." Given as a birthday present to David, a young Jewish boy, Otto spends blissful day playing with the boy and his best friend, Oskar, who is not Jewish. Then things begin to change. David must wear a yellow star on his jacket. Next he and his family are taken away. In a moving illustration, David hands over Otto to Oskar for safekeeping. Interestingly, Oskar is the one who looks upset and is crying, not David.
During wartime, Oskar's building is bombed and Otto is sent flying. Again, the illustration of the carnage, with the bodies of dead soldiers, is unsparing. He's picked up by an American soldier, thereby saving the soldier's life when a bullet hits them both. (Quibble: Could a stuffed teddy bear be enough of a buffer?) The soldier takes Otto home and gives him to his daughter. Loved again, Otto enjoys being pampered until he's snatched from the girl's arms by "three nasty boys" and finally ends up in a trash can. An old woman rescues him and bring him to an antique shop, where he stays in the window for many years. One rainy night, an old man spots him. Yes, dear reader, it's David, the original owner, who survived the war (although his parents didn't). David takes him home, and the story is written up in the newspaper, which leads to Oskar (another survivor) contacting David, and the three friends are reunited.
Despite the involved plot, the text for
Otto is relatively straightforward, although there are a few vocabulary words to chew over, such as "indelible," "charred rubble," and "mascot." Would a Level 3 reader be able to get through the book by herself. Yes. Should she? No. A trusted adult's presence is strongly recommended, as a child is bound to have many questions. The illustrations, as with all of Ungerer's work, are amazing. Done in soft watercolors, they can be playful (as when David and Oskar dress Otto as a ghost and dangle him in front of a neighbor's window), touching (Oskar saying
|
And June 21 - October 9, see |
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 6/15/2011
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In brief . . .
Yeah. I thought it was an Onion headline too: Werner Herzog reads potty-mouthed bedtime audiobook. I think that’s overseas, though. Here in the U.S. we got someone else.
That’s a good headline. This one’s not bad either: Children’s author ejected from plane for bad language. Strange thing is, it says the fellow in question (a New Yorker) has a book for kids due out this August. Can’t find any evidence of this on Amazon, though. Hmmmmm. Thanks to Jennifer Schultz for the link.
- Author Lisa Yee recently came to town for BEA. While here, she met with a veritable TON of folks, including myself. For an image of me balancing a Peep on my once massive belly, her blog is the place to be.
- I love the Twin Cities, particularly when their schools offer fun free courses for kids on making their own books. Thanks to Monica Edinger for the link!
- Twitter rumor: Due to a recent exchange between Neil Gaiman and Adam Rex, it sure as heck sounds like Rex has illustrated a book by Gaiman with a target audience of 2-year-olds. I am now officially a gossip columnist, am I not?
- I love me those Boogie Woogie kids. Best blog of kids reviewing children’s books out there. Now they’ve done review #100 and they want to accept nominations for their next review. More info here.
Eliot Schrefer is a member of my children’s writing group. Right now he’s penning a really impressive YA novel about bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So how does one research such a book? Go there! Eliot has a great blog up right now that is currently following him on his trip.
- I was intending to go this awesome event fo
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 6/29/2011
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Things that I love: Blogging. My baby girl. Seattle. Two of those three things will be coming together on September 16th and 17th. That’s when the 5th (five already?) annual Kidlitcon will occur! It’s looking like a remarkable line-up as well with special keynote speaker YA author Scott Westerfeld and great presentations, as per usual. Baby girl is keeping me from attending, which is awful. I think I’ll have missed three out of five by this point. That just means you’ll have to go in my stead. For conference information, Kidlitosphere Central has the details.
- Speaking of conferences I could not attend (whip out your world’s smallest violins playing a sad sad song for me), ALA came and went. Between reading Twitter updates of awesome people having post-Caldecott/Newbery Banquet parties until 5 a.m. and knowing that there’s a whole world of ARCs out there that I have not seen, I took comfort in SLJ’s very cool shots of the outfits at the aforementioned banquet. Jim Averbeck, I await your red carpet analysis. Oh, and allow me to extend my hearty thanks to Tomie dePaola for mentioning me as well as a host of other fine librarians in his Wilder acceptance speech. Made me feel quite the top cat it did.
- Artist Adam Rex discusses the “Hogwarts for Illustrators” and gives us a sneak peek at a cover of his due out this coming February.
- There’s more Ungerer in the offering. Tomi Ungerer got covered by the Times the other day with an interesting Q&A. In it, at one point he happens to say, “Look, it’s a fact that the children’s books that withstand the grinding of time all come from authors who did both [writing and illustrating].” J.L. Bell takes that idea and jogs on over to my Top 100 Picture Books Poll where, rightly, he points out the #2 on was old Margaret Wise Brown. He then finds other books that have stood the test of time with authors who do not illustrate. Well played, Bell man.
- Also at The New York Times, editor Pamela Paul shows off the new crop of celebrity picture books. Normally I eschew such fare, but one book in the batch is of particular interest to me. Julianne Moore has penned the third Freckleface Strawberry book called Freckleface Strawberry: Best Friends Forever. I’m rather partial to it, perhaps because of this librarian character that artist LeUyen Pham included in the story:
By: Thao,
on 7/14/2011
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S-N-A-K-E, just saying the word makes my skin crawl. When I was 6, I rushed home from Sunday school with a full bladder. Making a mad dash to the bathroom I was just about to sit down when out of the corner of my eye I spotted something slithering in the tub. My grandfather went [...]
I’m surprised anyone ever chooses to be a superhero. It’s a pretty thankless job most of the time. You go around sacrificing your personal life and relationships for the sake of the public good, and, on pretty regular basis, the community turns against you, even demonizes you, for what you can’t do or be for them. Oh sure, you get super powers, but how can it possibly be worth it? Being different just gets you a one-way ticket to social ostracism, it seems. The book Stranger in a Strange Land (which is not what we read for today, incidentally), is pretty widely known, but mostly for its unconventional treatment of less-than-monogamous sex. I think those who bring only that impression away from the book are missing Robert Heinlein’s more profound message of social commentary. 
Michael Valentine Smith was not like anybody else, but fascinated by what is generally considered mundane. He just wanted to see and experience the simple pleasures of life, and maybe use his gifts to give something back to the human community. If you’ve read the book, you know the thanks he gets for that. And isn’t that sad? It’s just tragic that humanity tends to crush what it doesn’t understand simply to allay the fear the unknown creates. In Tomi Ungerer’s Moon Man, the guy in the green-cheese orb longs for a chance to visit Earth and dance like the people do. When he gets here, the welcome is less than friendly. When will we learn?
http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Man-Tomi-Ungerer/dp/1570982074
http://www.tomiungerer.com/
0 Comments on Fusenews: Look for the Girl with the Caterpillar Tattoo and She’s Gone as of 8/9/2012 11:16:00 PM
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Yay!