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My oldest hit the double digits this Friday, and oh, what celebrating there was!
I was all ready for that. I'd made one cake, bought another, wrapped the presents, gotten the house ready for the onslaught of ten year who would pour into it the next day. We were ready to celebrate.
What I wasn't expecting was the trepidation. Not mine. Hers.
DD: Mama, should I be excited?
Me: (trying to hide surprise) Sure. You're turning ten. That's a big deal.
DD: I don't want to get older.
Me: Why not?
DD: I like being nine. I want to be nine for forever.
Me: Really?
I didn't totally get it. I was one of those kids who was nine going on nineteen. So come Saturday night, I went into the slumber party/night of silly 10 year old fun trying to catch glimpses not only of the allure of kiddom she sees but of its magic.
You know, I must have been blind as a kid. There was a Jupiter Jump, cookie cake, water balloon fights, sleepover with ten girls, movies - The Indian in the Cupboard, Hotel for Dogs, Marley and Me - gummy bears, popcorn, donuts, swinging, and laughing. Oh, was there laughing!
Most of all, there was abandon. Abandon to swim in it all, in the moment, in the fun, the silliness, the excitement, and the total exhaustion.
What was I thinking trying to grow up so fast??
I understand now why she is worried about getting older. Worried about losing that part of childhood and all that goes with it.
She's a smart kid, smarter than her mom. Hopefully, some of adulthood will eventually appeal to her. But after Saturday night, I get why there's no hurry getting there. There's so much to see until then. I'm glad I get to see it with her.
by Sneed B. Collard III, illustrated by Phyllis V. Saroff. Charlesbridge publishing, 2008. (review copy) This is another wonderful nonfiction picture book by the award winning author of Wings, which I reviewed last week. Sneed does a fine job of showing all the ways teeth are important to a variety of earth's creatures. Teeth "slice, stab, crack, grind, mash and munch." Mammals, reptiles,
Illustrated by Josee Masse. Barefoot Books, 2007. (review copy) This delightful picture book is a musical poem spoken from a Caucasian mother to her adopted Chinese daughter. It sings of tender love surrounding the child from birth. Mother love supports this child from both her first, biological mother and her second, adoptive mother. It is truly one of the few books I have found about adoption
by Sneed B. Collard III, illustrated by Robin Brickman. Charlesbridge publishing, 2008. (review copy) This is a well written and gorgeously designed informational text about all sorts of wings. From Galah parrots of Australia and Gambian Epauletted Fruit Bats to Madagascan Sunset Moths the variety and beauty of all sorts of winged creatures are described and illustrated.
Brickman has painted and
Last week at the AASL Reading and the Elementary School Library Media Specialist conference we talked a lot about how to encourage and support classroom reading programs. We shared about our programs, book talks, displays and activities to promote books from our libraries. We talked about No Child Left Behind and how testing was driving so many reading programs and eliminating the necessary time
I've brought a stack of books home from the library for our Kwanzza reading. I'm putting together a suggested reading list for young children; mostly folktales from various African countries and American titles. These aren't stories about Kwanzaa. I haven't found any really good fable or folk tales that center on the particular holiday the way Hannukkah has a rich folklore and Christmas has a
After yesterday's post on gift books I am remembering some of my other favorite Christmas books. I plan to read these to kindergarten through second graders in the library in the coming week:
Tree of Cranes by Allen Say. Houghton Mifflin Co.,1991. I think this is my favorite Say book. He tells us of a time when he was living in Japan as a boy. He disobeyed his mother by playing in the neighbor's
In the December Carnival of Children's Literature, Kelly (Big A little a) is asking for our suggestions for favorite gift books. Here are mine:
One Winter's Night by John Herman, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. Philomel books, 2003. Martha is a cow about to give birth to her first calf. She is out alone at night in the deep cold snow, searching for a safe warm place. The full color
My Jewish friends tell me that Hanukkah is not one of the most important Jewish festivals. It's a minor holiday compared with Rosh Hashanna or Yom Kippor. According to Eric Kimmel, in his introduction to the anthology A Hanukkah Treasury: "There is no special synagogue service for Hanukkah. The holiday is largely celebrated at home. And although Hanukkah certainly is a religious holiday, it is
Native American Poems and Songs of Thanksgiving, told by Joseph Bruchac and pictures by Murv Jacob. This is a joyful collection of praise and thanksgiving songs and prayers from fourteen different Native American cultures. Joseph Bruchac is himself part Native American (Abenaki, from central New York state) and he has made a career of writing and storytelling drawing from a rich heritage. We have
Liz and Bruce have to go to their Dad's Aunts house until they find a house of their own,Liz and Bruce don't like it at all,especially Liz because she had to leave her dog,Bebe,because their Great Aunt Alice is allergic to dogs.After a few days when they were living there a dog wandered into the house during supper and went up into Aunt Alice's sewing closet,after supper Liz told Bruce about what she saw and they went looking for her.They found her in Aunt Alice's sewing closet with three puppies!They gave them some of the leftover meat loaf from that night.they both decided that the next day Liz will say she had a stomach ache and will stay hom so Aunt Alice wont sew because that's Liz's bedroom,and she will take care of the dogs.Then Bruce will go to school and think of a plan.But then more dogs that need to be fed,groomed,walked,and cared for are stepping into their lives!What will they do!?!?
What I like about the story is that I love dogs and I think I would just keep two of the dogs and not keep them around Aunt Alice then give the other dogs to people in my family who could take care of them or just give them to people who could take care of them.This book is kind of like Junie B. Jones books where she would find the dogs and keep them in her room and give the ones she can't fit to her friends and her teacher.This book is a very good book because it explains every thing that is going on very clearly and it gives you the idea of what's going on right away.
by Nikki Grimes, illustrated by Shane Evans. Orchard Books, 2007. We just got this book into our library and it is a charmer. The story is told in poetry, of a cat named Gorilla and two girl friends each named Cecilia. One Cecilia has three brothers and the other (the story's narrator) has none. She begs her mother for a pet and gets a cat; not just any cat but a fierce, independent, clever, "
by Janice N. Harrington, pictures by Shelley Jackson. Melanie Kroupa Books, 2007.
This book is a wonder. Ms. Jackson is a poet, a librarian and a storyteller, and she shines in crafting the music of this story. The word choice is exquisite and the timing is perfect.
The chicken chasing queen is a young girl who lives on a farm and loves to chase Big Mama's chickens. Especially one chicken: "Her
by Janet Halfmann, illustrated by Laurie Allen Klien. Preview it on the Sylvan Dell site here. This story is based on the real life ability of skinks (small blue tailed lizards) to lose their tail in order to escape danger. The sweet little skink in the story is happily sunning on a rock and eating ants when she is attacked by a crow. She loses her tail and makes her get away, leaving the crow to chase her wiggling tail.
Little skink then starts to daydream about what it would be like to have different sorts of tails. A white-tailed dear? A cottontail rabbit? A squirrel, a skunk or a porcupine? She imagines herself with each and then decides they are not quite right a skink like her. Imagine her delight when she notices she has regrown her very own tail!
Buddy adores
this story. He has requested it every night for the past week, ever since our review copy came in the mail. He laughs out loud to see the skink with a skunk, porcupine or owl tail. He pours over the gorgeous, vibrant illustrations, taking in all the carefully drawn details of the variety of animal and plant life of the forest and field. His quick five-year-old eyes immediately noticed the hidden monarch caterpillar on several pages, crowing with delight to see it weave a cocoon and then emerge a beautiful butterfly on the last page.
In the back of the book there are a few
activity pages which we both enjoy. Buddy is learning to match animals with their footprint as well as read a grid and a compass rose from studying the footprint map. He gets pleasure out of matching up the animal tails with the names of the animals and the brief description of how each animals tails serve them. On the Sylvan Dell website I found
additional activities and
links to extend our learning, which I am looking forward to sharing with him.
This is a charming picture book that introduces the lives and habitats of real animals. The large print text, detailed illustrations and extended learning activities will satisfy young children as well as inviting them to continue to explore and expand their understanding of their world.
by Karla Kushin, illustrated by Melissa Iwai. Laura Geringer Books, 2007. This adorable picture book in rhyme is a poem, a song, a philosophical invitation. If you could be green...square...soft...small, what would you be? Each open-ended question takes a childhood characteristic and stretches our expectations to invite imaginative expression. My favorite verse:
If you could be loud
would you be the sound
of thunder at night
or the howl of a hound
as he bays at the moon
or the pound of the sea?
Tell me, proud loud one,
what would you be?"
Iwai's illustrations are full and luscious in soft pastels and vibrant rainbows. From the youngest children learning their color words to older children studying poetry and writing their own additional verses to extend the book, this is a wonderful addition to any collection.
I can see a class of poetry students pulling descriptive words out of a hat and writing poems in this style...
If you could be tall.... round.... a wisp.... winged... invincible...
What would your children write/dream/ wonder?
World Book's Animals of the World. Author: Meish Goldish. World Book, Inc., 2002. We got this one from the library because we have found so many fascinating bugs in the house and garden this summer. This non-fiction series is perfect for preschool and early elementary kids. Large full color photos of up close bugs are balanced with clear, simple, informative text in large type. Each chapter is one page, covering topics such as, "What is a True Bug?", "Where in the World Do True Bugs Live?", and "How is a Stink Bug Put Together?". There is enough factual information to satisfy initial questions and spark discussion with further inquiry, leading readers to want to pursue more research. The chapter titled "How Do Stunk Bugs Defend Themselves?" for example says,
"A stink bug's main weapon of defense is its oder. When in danger, the stink bug releases a stinking liquid from its thorax. A bird or other predator often takes one whiff of the bug's rotten smell and leaves the tiny creature alone!"
We were drawn to this book, as I said, because we see stink bugs in our house and garden. Last fall I was intrigued enough to do an online search to try to identify what was then to us a mysterious bug. I found out that our part of the country is in the midst of an
infestation of these critters. We were encouraged to report sitings, as they are being monitored. There is one thing I still find mysterious: although the bugs we see meet every other descriptive criteria, they do not stink. I have crushed hundreds of them in the past two years and I have never noticed an odor of any sort. I wonder why. Here's a photo of one on my buddleia (look on the green leaf in the foreground):
Buddy and I enjoyed reading all about stink bugs in this World Book title. The series includes forty titles in four sets, covering animals from all around the world. In addition to teaching about bugs I was able to introduce non-fiction text features such as a table of context, index, glossary, fun facts page, list of further resources including books and web sites, and a scientific classification chart. In my library I often find that non-fiction titles are far more sought after than picture books in grades kindergarten through second grade. Children are thirsty for real knowledge and today's informational texts are creative, attractive and expertly crafted. Series such as this one are ideal for young scientists.
by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Selina Young. Puffin Books, 2000.
A woman walks down to the beach with four children and two dogs on a breezy, sunny morning. The story is told in a rocking rhythm and rhyme, making this an excellent choice for a Friday Poetry morning on the edge of summer. The meter of each stanza reminds me of the book
Whiffle Squeak by Caron Lee Cohen, which has been a standing favorite in my house. You just can't help yourself chanting these verses once you get started - the pace carries you along. Listeners tend to jump in on the repeating refrains:
"Bad dogs, bad dogs chase the cat,
Chase the cat, chase the cat.
One dog's thin and the other dog's fat
On a summery Saturday morning.
They chase the boy on the rattly bike,
The rattly bike, the rattly bike.
Chasing things is what dogs like
On a summery Saturday morning."
Those bad dogs just can't help themselves chasing everything that moves, of course, and when a family of geese is roused out of the tall grass the "walk" goes haywire. Hilarity ensues, as we say.
My favorite parts of the book are in the illustrations. Young has drawn watercolor cartoon style pages that completely capture the personalities of each character. The dogs have their tongues hanging out in excitement and somehow even the goose manages to look startled, flustered and then riled. The children are a mixture of ethnicities, which is nice but never mentioned in the text. I like how the brown skinned girl's hair is bouncing around in joyfully free corkscrews.
Mahy is a New Zealander. She was born in Whakatane, the northern island of New Zealand, in 1936. She now lives in Lyttelton on the south island. She has two dogs that look quite a bit like the ones in the illustrations of this book. Her daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters live next door. I bet they walk down to the beach just this way on many a sunny morning. We have the autobiography titled My Mysterious World that Mahy wrote for the "Meet the Author" series done by Richard Owen Publishing in 1995. Our second graders do a unit on author's biographies and hers is a favorite. She describes how she lives in the crater of a million year old volcano which is now Governor's Bay, Lyttelton Harbor. She describes her work day, starting in the dark before dawn, and tells how she finds her stories and works them through many versions of text. She likes to visit schools and draws pictures to answer the letters she receives from children all over the world. She says "mysterious" is one of her favorite words because "it is the word that most truly descibes the world around me.."
Mahy has written
over a hundred books for children of all ages and adults. New Zealand's
Storylines website tells of her awards: "In 1993 Margaret was made a member of the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest honour, which is limited to 20 living persons at any one time. Her entry on the Honours' website states: 'She is regarded as one of the foremost authors of children's literature and is said to be one of the best living authors in the English language'. In 2006 Margaret Mahy received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world's premier prize for children's writing. Often called the Little Nobel, the award is given biennially by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) to honour an author who has made a lasting contribution to international children's literature."
Today's Friday Poetry roundup is at
Big A, little a. Next week it's my turn again!
by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt. Voyager Books Harcourt, Inc., 1994.
This is a lovely book for spring time to read with young children and those just starting to read independently. It is a beautifully illustrated picture book telling the story of a young girl and her father planting a window box garden for her mother's birthday. They live in the city and take the bus home from the grocery store carrying the box filled with flowering plants and supplies. People on the bus smile at them and you can just feel the excitement the young girl is enjoying. She carries the heavy box all the way up the apartment stairs and they spread everything out on newspapers on the floor to assemble the garden. Once it's in the window she contemplates the perspectives from looking out the window high above the street, finding friendly ladybugs among the flowers, to "walkers down below (who) lift their heads and see purple, yellow, red and white; a color jamboree." The story ends with a surprised and delighted mother, a birthday cake and the family snuggled in an embrace looking out the window at the sun setting over their flower garden.
The text is written large and there are plenty of context clues for early readers to use with a predictable, engaging vocabulary. There is a rhythm to the phrasing with plenty of repetition and just the right amount of rhyme. The family is warm and loving and living in a friendly, clean, beautiful city neighborhood. They are African American and their ethnicity adds to the beauty of the story but doesn't define it. I find this book to be a charming celebration and I highly recommend it.
by Jane Kurtz, pictures by Rachel Isadora. Greenwillow Books, 2005.
"In the middle of the night, when the stars are walking, Abena opens her eyes to find a lump beside her in her strange new bed." Abena and her little brother Kofi have moved to America from Ghana, and they each have some fears to overcome. Fortunately Abena knows the stories of Anansi and she tells them to Kofi again, to help them both remember where they came from.
"Anansi was tricky. He was sure he was the wisest person on the whole earth. But sometimes in the small, small night he stayed awake, like you, and worried. He worried about who else was lying awake thinking of tricky things to do. He didn't want anyone to be wiser than he was..."
Abena tells her brother these stories by the light of her flashlight, remembering the moon that shines over her grandmother's house and the fireflies flickering in the night. She can hear the storyteller's call through the village. In the storytelling tradition of her people the storyteller calls the children from around the village by calling out "Anansi is a cheat!" The children run toward the fire, calling "Come and say what you know." She calls again, and they answer and gather around her. At the end of the story Abena repeats the traditional closing phrases, saying "This story I told, if it's nice or if it's not nice, I carry the story to the next teller. Are you asleep yet?" No, Kofi needs another story. Eventually he is tucked back into bed and falls asleep. Abena watches out the window to see the stars, thinking of how they will "keep walking all the way across the sky until her grandmother and cousins halfway across the world will look up and see them, too." She falls asleep comforted.
In the author's note at the back of the book Kurtz tells that a friend of hers from Ghana used to tell these Anansi stories to her children. She learned from him about village life in his childhood home and wove his memories into her story of Abena and his little brother. Kurtz grew up in Ethiopia herself, and has written
22 books for children and adults based largely on her own experiences. She has
a wonderful website full of links, stories, and biographical information. I am going to post more on her in my Friday Poetry post, so I will save the rest of my comments for later.
I am bringing home
In the Small, Small Night to share with my boys this weekend. Buster is coming home from college for the summer, so Buddy is moving back into sharing a room with Punkin. I think this story will resonate with them as they share a room in the small, small summer nights. The illustrations in this book, done by
Rachel Isadora (who also did
At the Crossroads, which I reviewed and loved) are beautiful. The cover image of the two children hugging looks so much like my boys it gives me a warm feeling. As Punkin becomes more verbal and actively interactive they are developing a sweet, competitive, supportive brotherhood that I am enjoying. They fight in the backseat, takes each other's food and toys, and show compassion for each others' boo boos. This book is just right for where we are now!
by Ann Cameron, illustrated by Ann Strugnell. Knopf, 1981.
This time of year we start to get a lot of talk about summer reading lists. What are you recommending? I am gathering my own list of beginning readers, story collections and preschool age story books, thinking ahead to extra time cuddling with my sons and reading the afternoons away. Today I picked up The Stories Julian Tells to peruse while waiting for my next class to come to the library. It's one that causes me to laugh out loud even in the quiet library.
Julian is a boy with a big imagination and a quick wit. His little brother Huey is the perfect foil for all his exploits, and together they get in and out of trouble on every page. When their father makes a special lemon pudding for their mother, saying it will taste like "a whole raft of lemons. It will taste like a night on the sea" Julian and Huey are set to guard it while he takes a nap. It is too good to resist tasting, however, and they boys end up shivering under the bed waiting for him to wake up and discover what happened. Fortunately their father knows just how to encourage them to replenish the supply.
In another chapter their father decides to order a garden catalog and teach them about growing vegetables Julian teaches Huey about the garden cats that come from catalogs. Once again their father is able to bring that around to a clever and satisfying resolution.
These stories are highly recommended by Jim Trelease in his Read Aloud Handbook, and for good reason. They are written on about a second grade level, so if your early elementary child is looking for some good independent summer reading it might work well for that too. There are seven books in the series all about the Bates family and their friends and neighbors. Ann Cameron says,
"I always thought of Julian as Everychild, having experiences that belong to children the world over. Julian, his brother Huey, and his friend Gloria are African-American children, but the text never says so. This book has a richness of language that children love, and its black-and-white drawings--by the artist Ann Strugnell--are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen in a children's book. "
Cameron has a web page with links to her philosophy of literacy and teaching reading, suggestions for teachers and parents, and stories from her own life. She tells about the library in Guatemala that she helped rebuild in the 22 years she lived there. It's really fascinating reading, and filled with lovely pictures.
If you want funny stories about clever, loving, strong children who are full of wonder and delight, check out The Stories Julian Tells.
Somehow growing up I got the feeling that there was something racist, and therefore shameful, about the Brer Rabbit stories. Maybe it was the way black people are portrayed in The Song of the South. Maybe I heard friends scorning the southern black dialect written into the Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris. In any case, I have avoided them for most of my life. What treasures I have been missing!
I have been reading Julius Lester's How Many Spots Does A Leopard Have? to my first graders and we love it. The children are on the edge of their seats. The language is beautiful and clever. Every story sparks discussion.
Since I am looking for a new author study to carry the kindergarten through to the end of the year I decided to look into Lester's Tales of Uncle Remus. I learned from reading Augusta Baker's introduction to The Adventures of Brer Rabbit that the stories had been told to her by her mother, who had heard them from her mother. Ms. Baker is the former Coordinator of Children's Services of the New York Public Library and Storyteller-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina. She says,
"It wasn't until several years later, in college, that I learned about the importance of these stories as true American folklore. Dr. Harold Thompson, a leading American folklorist, gave a lecture on people from the West Coast of Africa who had been captured and sold as slaves. Some were settled in the southern states where they took stories from home about a hare - Wakaima - and adapted them to their new surroundings. Wakaima became Brer Rabbit and the clay man became the Tar Baby."
She says she tried reading Harris' books several times, but never could get past the dialect which was like a foreign language to her.
"Despite the drawbacks in Harris’s text, I still loved the stories and appreciated Brer Rabbit as a cultural hero and a significant part of my heritage. However, I was telling the stories less and less often because of the dialect.... How could I represent our African Background and the relationship between Africa and black America to primary grades? How could I show the fusion of the different African cultures and the cultures existing in American and the West Indies?"
When she first reads Lester's
The Knee-High Man and Other Tales in 1972 she found them to be "black folktales told perfectly." Lester went on to publish four volumes of
Brer Rabbit tales, as well as many other books for children.
Lester gives a history of the Uncle Remus stories in his forward to
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit. He gives the background of the stories coming from West African folktales. He says,
“Uncle Remus became a stereotype, and therefore negative, not because of inaccuracies in Harris’s characterization, but because he was used as a symbol of slavery and a retrospective justification for it… If there is one aspect of the Uncle Remus stories with which one could seriously disagree, it is the social setting in which the tales are told. Uncle Remus, and sometimes other blacks, tell the stories to an audience of one – a little white boy, the son of the plantation owner. While such a setting added to the appeal and accessibility of the tales for whites, it leaves the reader with no sense of the important role the tales played in black life. The telling of black folktales, and indeed tales of all cultures, was a social even bringing together adults and children. That folktales are now considered primarily stories for children is an indication of our society’s spiritual impoverishment. Traditionally, tales were told by adults to adults. If the children were quiet, they might be allowed to listen. Clearly, black folktales were not created and told for the entertainment of little white children, as the Uncle Remus tales would lead one to believe.”
Lester goes on to explain what adaptations he has made in telling the tales, and what important elements he has retained.
To give you a taste of my new found delight here is
a link to some of Lester’s tales online. The first three I read this morning and just about spit my coffee across the library they are so funny. If you haven’t read any of Lester’s folktales you are in for a treat!
I believe a whole new window has opened for me on the folklore of America. I am so delighted to have the summer ahead of me that includes a front porch, lazy afternoons when the baby will be sleeping while the preschooler is in the mood to hear stories, and a bookstore gift certificate that will start me on my plan to acquire a stack of Lester’s Uncle Remus books. All we need is some lemonade and a porch swing…
Kelly, at Big A, little a, asked for suggestions for early readers to give her son for summer reading. A lot of folks commented with their favorites and she said she would publish a pdf tomorrow so we could all print it out. I am looking forward to seeing that!
It got me thinking about working on my list of beginning readers on LibraryThing. I have been meaning to post a link to some book lists here in the sidebar. I love LibraryThing. You can sort your own books by tags, find other people who own the same books, get suggestions for other books in the same genre or author, read and post reviews and chat about just about anything.
I have quite a few beginning readers around my house. Buster, who is nineteen now, enjoyed them when he was in Pre-k through second grade. We spent those summers doing extra reading and writing work together. I taught kindergarten and first grade for many years, and I am a children's librarian now so this level of books is one of my special interests. Now Buddy is starting to read them and I have been buying more. Many of my favorites are quite old, so I am particularly interested in finding new books with diverse ethnicities represented.
If you click this link to my LibraryThing Beginning Readers list you can see our favorites. You can experiment with the different views to see book covers, ISBN and LC numbers, subject headings and my ratings. If you click the column headings you can sort them several ways. I think view E is the best one for printing, but I like view A the best because I love seeing the book covers. If you click a tag you see all the other books I have with that tag. If you click a book title see detailed information about that book. You can also see a list of similar books recommended.
If any of you have a LibraryThing account I would love to add you to my watch list. Or if you have another way of keeping and sharing book lists I'd love to hear about it! So far for me LibraryThing is the easiest, coolest, most versatile way to share lists. What do you think?
by Lucille Clifton, pictures by Brinton Turkle. E.P. Dutton, 1973.
I first discovered this book when Buster was in kindergarten. Two boys about six years old decide to go exploring down their city street to look for evidence of spring. The boys names are King Shabazz and his friend Tony Polito. What wonderful names! The story includes characters of a variety of ethnicities without calling attention to being "multicultural" for any teaching purpose.
They walk down a busy city street full of purposeful people going about daily life. I like how the city is depicted as busy and full of interesting people, tantalizing smells like fresh baked buns and BBQ. It's not a dangerous place, but it's exciting because the boys venture farther from home than they ever have when they cross a big street. They are each determined to show their friend their courage and persistence in looking for signs of spring even though they have insisted that it is all a myth told by grown ups.
King Shabazz's mama has been talking about crops and the teachers have been talking about blue birds. I can just here the boys talking on the stoop:
"King Shabazz decided he had just had enough. He put his jacket on and his shades and went by for Tony Polito.
"Look here, man," King said when they got out to the bottom step,"I'm goin to get me some of this Spring."
"What you mean, man?" Tony asked him.
"Everybody talkin bout Spring comin, and Spring just round the corner. I'm goin to go round there and see what do I see."
As their adventure unfolds, they come to a vacant lot that is empty except for an abandoned car. For these boys it is beautiful and exciting. The hear a whispery sound coming from it and creep up to peek inside. They take courage from each other, although each secretly hopes the other will want to go home instead. Together they tiptoe across the lot.
"When they were halfway to the car, Tony tripped and almost fell. He looked down and saw a patch of little yellow pointy flowers, growing in the middle of short spiky green leaves.
"Man, I think you tripped on these crops!" King laughed.
"They're comin up," Tony shouted. "Man, the corps are comin up!"
Even twenty years after first reading this I crack up every time. The boys are so earnest and full of wonder under their careful bravado. When I first read this story to Buster we were living in the city and found spring just the way these boys do - growing in vacant lots and sidewalk cracks. The joy of sudden color and vibrant new green life is the same wherever you find it, but somehow more startling and precious in an empty lot beside rushing traffic.
When the boys get to the car they find a bird's nest full of sky blue eggs. They whisper in reverent awe over the miracle. Then Tony's older brother shows up looking for him and threatening his mother's punishment for going off on their own. Buster was a bit put off by that bit, as he is young enough to take it literally. I had to explain that "Mom is going to kill you!" was more of a threat than a real prediction. We have read this book together several nights in a row and he is fascinated with the boys and their point of view. The illustrations of city life and the boy's wide eyed faces are touching and engaging.
Clifton and
Turkle have collaborated in a beautiful synchronicity in this little book. It's a treasure.
My oldest hit the double digits this Friday, and oh, what celebrating there was!
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Hi, I found your blog through Anti-Racist Parent (I think) and I'm also a librarian. I enjoy the resource lists that the Seattle Public Library post in their kids section. Although none are identified as Kwanzaa books I thought you might like to peruse their list titled "Doorways to African American Culture & Tradition"http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=audience_children_readinglist&cid=
Oops,The link didn't go through well. Try this one. http://tiny.cc/bVUJCorChildren -> Children's Reading ListsUnder the Elementary Age Group.- Alex
Thanks Alex. I checked out that list and found some gems.
I needed this post before the holidays! Thank you. I will explore these titles.