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Today’s Fantastic Fiction for Kids selection comes from Nancy at Bees Knees Reads. Nancy has two girls, aged 4 and 6, and they live in a small town on the coast in northern California.Three years ago she started blogging about picture books with her sister Kim Baise at Bees Knees Reads and around the same time they developed a start-up press, Bees Knees Books to collaborate with author/illustrators and publish picture books. They released two books in 2009: Maybelle, Bunny of the North by Keith Patterson and A Wonderful Week by Marjolein Varekamp. If all this weren’t enough to keep Nancy busy she also runs a bookstore – Coastside Books! I’m sure Nancy has bad days like the rest of us, but her existence sounds quite idyllic to me
Nancy’s theme this week is “shifting perspectives”. Of selecting these books Nancy wrote “Although two of the stories have characters with disabilities (blind and deaf) the stories are really more about looking at the world (or one’s own experience) from a different viewpoint. And I think the story, I Feel A Foot, which is a retelling of a Sufi fable illustrates that theme perhaps most obviously. One of my favorite sayings is, “Don’t believe everything you think!” And these three books playfully challenge the reader to shift her perspective many times.”
The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and illustrated by Rosana Faria.The author and illustrator are from Venezuela and the book was first published in Spanish. It is beautiful in it’s conception and production. The pages are black with embossed illustrations and Braille underneath the lettering so the reader must touch the pages, shifting one’s senses from sight to touch. The narrator is guided by Thomas who is blind and he describes color by how he feels or experiences color. There is a great excerpt and review here. After reading this book together you can ask children to close their eyes and imagine/describe what different colors look like. Is Thomas’ world black or is it rich with color?
The Deaf Mus
3 Comments on Fantastic Fiction for Kids – Shifting Perspectives, last added: 2/18/2010
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These sound like great books! As an activity, how about painting or sculpting with your eyes closed (or blindfolded)? It is such a different feeling to create something based on touch and feel alone.
My daughter just started learning a little sign language at school. She loves talking with her hands and can say I love you (mom, dad, grandpa, grandma). She really caught on quick!
I’ll have to check out that reissue of The Seeing Stick! And I really like the music suggestions especially Beethoven’s later works, when he lost his hearing. I know this was a challenge. Something I like to do with the kids in the car on the way to school is to ask them to name the different instruments they hear in a piece of music. This gives them the awareness of different ways of hearing the music.