This is the kind of book that sends librarians over the moon. The precise, poetic language, the creation of an evocative setting, the charmingly detailed black and white illustrations, all work their magic as readers sink into one family's celebration of winter and its number one glory, ice.
The book is composed of a series of vignettes. From the very first ice "that came on the sheep pails in the barn--a skim of ice so thin that it broke when we touched it" to the final "dream ice that came in our sleep," ice serves one primary purpose, to create a surface firm enough for the family and their friends to skate on. And skate they do. On fields, streams, ponds, and their own homemade skating rink, they twirl and dart and glide.
Based on the Obed's memories of growing up on a six-acre farm in Maine, the book has an old-fashioned quality to it, one that McClintock's illustrations reinforce, as do the figure-skating girls and hockey-playing boys.
Twelve Kinds of Ice appears on many folks' best-of-the-year lists and there are whispers that it might be nominated for a Newbery. While I can clearly see its many charms, I haven't quite fallen under the book's spell. It's just too quiet for me. I kept waiting for a nasty spill on the ice to happen. I know, I know, but that's me. Other, less bloodthirsty readers should curl up beside a fire and read this low-key yet ultimately appealing book.
Twelve Kinds of Ice
by Ellen Bryan Obed
illustrations by Barbara McClintock
Houghton Mifflin, 64 pages
Published: 2012
Books that are small enough to slip into stockings and charming enough to belong there! (See Note for Santa at the end of each review.)
Bear Despair (Stories Without Words), by Gaetan Doremus,
Enchanted Lion, $14.95, ages 4 and up, 32 pages, 2012. Never play keep-away from a bear. But if you dare, just beware. He has a big belly and he might stuff you in there -- until he's good and ready to let you out. In this hilarious sixth title in the wordless series, a bear chases down animals who've taken his teddy bear, then swallow them whole when they decide to be mean and toss the toy away.
One night, Bear wakes up to find that Wolf has snatched Teddy right from under his arm. In despair, Bear gives chase, but just as he catches up to Wolf, Wolf snickers and flings poor Teddy up and over the trees. Bear is furious, goes in for a tackle and stuffs Wolf into his mouth. As Wolf howls from inside Bear's belly, Bear races off to find Teddy. There! Teddy's on the ground. Up ahead! But why is Lion grabbing him? Jeering at Bear? Holding Teddy out his reach? Now Lion is running away and Bear is after him. But as Lion reaches a cliff, he hurls Teddy into the air. Bear can't believe his eyes and in a rage, gobbles down Lion. Now, Wolf and Lion are hunkered in Bear's belly, heads in hands, bored stiff.
And Bear? Well, he's spotted Teddy again -- this time, in a mountain-top nest. Hey, what's Bird doing flying away with Teddy? Bear's heart feels like it'll explode and with a roar, he gets back at Bird and swallows her eggs. But revenge isn't sweet for long and with heavy paws, Bear trudges up a hill, plunks down under a rain cloud, and lets out a mournful roar. It helps, though, to vent and soon Bear has perked up, and with arms swaying, resumes his search. As you might guess, Bear doesn't like what he finds: this time it's Elephant who has absconded with Teddy. As Bear tries to tug Teddy free of Elephant's trunk, Elephant growls and tosses Teddy up once more. So of course, Bear eats Elephant. And since he has, Bear's body stretches into an enormous pear shape. But now, Wolf, Lion and Elephant have had time to think and, as it so happens, learn about loving something: As Wolf and Lion kneel on Elephant's back (it's pretty crowded inside Bear's belly), they watch two little birds hatch from the eggs and begin to coo. But will Bear ever recover Teddy? And if he does, will these silly animals ever be free again? A delight from start to finish. Doremus' premise is hysterical and his cross hatch-style illustrations are so expressive, readers may forget there aren't words to go with them. A gem for any a child whose ever loved a stuffed toy.
Best Part: A drawing of Bear pull out all of the animal from his stomach, with each linked to the others by tails, arms or a trunk.
Note for Santa: This book measures 10 1/4 inches by 6 1/8 inches. Pair it with a little purple teddy bear.
Twelve Kinds of Ice, by Ellen Bryan Obed, illustrations by Barbara McClintock,
Houghton Mifflin, $16.99, ages 7 and up, 64 pages. As the air grows crisp and hats and mittens go on, a girl savors each stage of ice that comes to her family's farm and the promise it brings, in this toasty, magical tale. With spare, sweet prose, Obed reminisces about playing on ice as a child and dreaming of it when it was gone.
Obed, who grew up on a six-acre farm in Maine, goes chapter by chapter through each phase of ice that she and her brothers and sister would watch for and describes each of them so tenderly that readers will wish for those memories too. Every stage of ice feels more grand than the last and ultimately leads Obed's family to transform their vegetable garden (with "boards and snow, a garden hose, and hours of work") into a neighborhood skating rink. The book begins with the children watching ice thicken in pails -- from "a skim of ice so thin that it broke when we touched it" to an unbreakable ice that brought them what they were waiting for -- an ice hard enough to skate on. Their first skating ice was always field ice, a short-lived strip of frozen water in a hay field. Then came stream ice, a frozen meander of ice "where the stream smalled to a brook of bent alders." After that was black ice, when their pond was "shocked still by the cold" and for a brief time, the children skated to the middle of it, carved out circles and listened to ice "cracking and groaning as it stretched itself in the cold." Then, it was time to prepare their rink for ice, a cozy family affair of nailing in boards, packing in snow with feet, skis and a toboggan, then spraying the snow with layers of water. When they were done, word would spread through the neighborhood that "Bryan Gardens" was open and boys would leap onto the ice "like steers out of a pen" and girls would glide out and carve figure eights.
But of course, ice doesn't last forever, and as the weather slowly warms, Obed also describes the phases of thawing and how even after winter was gone, she'd continue to skate (in her dreams). Obed's memories are idyllic and contagious in nostalgic way. They have a comforting familiarity, even if readers have never put on skates, made all he richer by McClintock's pen-and-ink drawings. Readers will want to linger on the words and pictures, and may even feel tempted, as I did, to carry the book around with them, as if it were a pocket book of poems.
Note for Santa: This book measures 5 1/2 inches wide by 7 inches long. Pair it with an ice skating ornament made of felt or one made to look like a little winter coat.
The Game Of board book series, by Herve Tullet,
Phaidon, $9.95-$12.95, ages 2 and up, 14 pages, 2012. Known in his native France as the "Prince of Pre-School Books," author-illustrator Tullet is acclaimed for many books that children touch and explore, including last year's gem
Press Here. Here are three of his latest game books:
The Game of Red, Yellow and Blue: Little shapes of blended color go searching for their mums and dads, in this joyful exploration of the color wheel. First, a small purple square calls out to three big squares (Red, Yellow and Blue) and asks which of them are his mother and father. Red and Blue reply, "Red and Blue are the Only Parents for You!," then stretch over the fold and overlap onto the little square as if in a hug. Next it's Green Circle's turn, then Orange Triangle's. Finally, all three complementary colors know where they belong. Now it's time to swirl together and create new (tertiary) colors. It's a rainbow carnival and every color is invited. A charming introduction to color that could also be used to celebrate diversity.
The Game in the Dark: Turn out the lights and follow a rocket ship as it journeys through a glow-in-the-dark galaxy on its way to the moon. For this charming wordless adventure, readers hold their book up to a light to charge up greenish white paint on the cover and pages, then slip into a dark room (or closet) and watch a rocket soar and swerve through space. Little fingers can trace's the rocket's path (a dotted line of paint) around planets, through concentric circles of orbiting satellites, past a five-pointed star, and over a giant planet before its makes a lunar landing. A perfect way to help little ones sleep without a light.
The Game of Sculpture: In this tactile delight, readers unfold accordian-like pages, and use notches, slots, holes and shapes to reconstruct a book into 3-D art. Every page is an art panel, and has unique, ready-made slits (at the top, middle and sides of the page) and holes, and is perforated with assorted shapes for readers to punch out. As readers position the pages in different ways, they insert the triangles, ovals or rectangles into slots to hold the sculpture in place and build their designs. Readers are also encouraged to paint their own shapes (such as an empty toilet paper roll) and work them into their design. Every page is painted in shades of a single pigment and looks as if it were glazed with finger paints. The book unfolds into 16 panels (eight on each side), and has seven parallel folds. An exciting way to encourage creativity.
Note for Santa: Each book measures 5 3/4 inches by 8 1/4 inches. Pair these games with tickets to an art museum.
3D Keepsake Cityscapes and Expanding Pocket Guides (
London, New York, Paris, Washington, D.C., and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art), by Sarah McMenemy,
Candlewick, $8.99, ages 5 and up, 30 pages, 2012. Readers go sight seeing right in the palm of their hands, in these charming little guides to the world's greatest cities and museums. McMenemy's innovative guides are about the size of coasters and open like accordions to reveal about a dozen sights.
The first fold-out gives an overview of the place they're visiting, either a city or museum, while the rest of them feature famous landmarks or exhibits they would see there. Many of these places are architectural -- towers, churches, bridges or sculptures -- and are depicted in water colors in 3-D. Beside each landmark or exhibit is a short description of the sight and the experience of being there: for instance, in the Paris guide, readers are told they ascend the Eiffel Tower through a glass elevator and see a glorious panorama. When guides are stretched to their maximum size, five feet, readers flip them over and continue the tour on the opposite side, with the last two pages reserved for a map of all the places they saw.
Then when not in use, the book is folded up and stored in an illustrated cardboard sleeve. The books have the feel of miniature maps, but are much easier to fold and far more charming. Diminutive, painterly scenes and hand-lettering make them feel artsy and handmade, and give readers a lovely taste for what the world has to offer. Learn more about McMenemy
here.
Note for Santa: Each measures almost 4 inches by 4 inches. Pair a guide with a favorite children's novel set in the same location for a fun gift.
by GraceFamily www.flickr.com
Teaching habitats or teaching Christmas can easily be done with this remarkably clever and cute picture book: Who Would Like a Christmas Tree?
*Picture book for preschoolers through second graders
*Animals on a Christmas Tree Farm as main characters
*Rating: Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? is one of those children’s Christmas books that can actually be used any time of the year, especially during a science unit on teaching habitats or food chains/webs. Cute! Cute! Cute!
Short, short summary: Who would like a Christmas tree in January? What a great question to start off this book that goes through each month of the year, explaining the animals who like to live on a Christmas tree farm until a family comes and cuts down a tree in December. For example, black-capped chickadees like Christmas trees in January because they find their food there and roost in the thick branches. Who would like a Christmas tree in July? Well, the wildflowers do because they like to grow in the same soil as the Christmas trees and some of them like the shade the trees provide. Who would like a Christmas tree in November? Wild turkeys–of course, and I’m sure they’re hoping not to be Thanksgiving dinner. The author includes some notes from an actual Christmas tree farmer at the end of the book for more educational opportunities. At Christmas time, this is a great book for “teaching Christmas” without teaching anything about the holiday that might get some parents upset. Teaching habitats or food webs is a great idea with this book also! Each page provides details and facts about the animal/plant/human and why they like the Christmas tree.
So, what do I do with this book?
1. Make a calendar with the book. The picture for each month would be an illustration of the Christmas tree or Christmas tree farm with the animal/plant/human that would like it for that month. Children can illustrate the calendar, using Anne Hunter’s illustrations as an example. You can laminate these pictures and then put them together with a calendar for each month that you printed from your computer’s word processing program. This is a great activity for preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders who are doing calendar math, learning the order and spelling of the months, and figuring out which months are in which seasons.
2. As mentioned earlier, teaching habitats is super-easy with Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? Once you’ve read this book, your students or children have learned a great deal about a forest/Christmas tree farm. You can then read a book like The Great Kapok Tree, and you can compare and contrast the two books. With The Great Kapok Tree, students are learning about a rainforest habitat, and they are learning the animals, plants, and humans that rely on the tree and make up the habitat around it, just like they are with the Christmas tree book.
3. Since this book has a pattern with repeatable text, children can read along with the book. By looking at the cover, they can also try to predict what animals might like a Christmas tree in a certain month, or they can also predict why. This is a fun read-aloud, and children won’t even realize how much they are learning about an environment!
Each day leading up to Christmas, I'm going to feature a Children's book that I've really enjoyed and would make a great choice to share with your family for the holidays. It may be one I've loved for years or one I've just recently found, but all would be great additions to your Christmas story list. Hopefully you'll find something to enjoy!
I'm combining today's Christmas book with Non-Fiction Monday. Two for one day :)
Jacket description:
"Who would like a Christmas tree? That all depends on when you ask. In January, in February, in March, in April... the black-capped chickadees, the white-tailed deer, and the woodcock come to claim the tree. They want it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for shelter and protection, for a place to start a new family. Can a Christmas tree be all that? Yes, and even more...The year has just begun!"
You'll learn much more about Christmas trees (specifically Balsam firs and Fraser firs) than you ever thought possible with author Ellen Bryan Obed's and illustrator Anne Hunter's book. Though we use Christmas trees only in December, different animals use them all year long for all sorts of important tasks like eating, storing food, and building nests.
We get information not only on trees, but also on the different birds and animals that make use of the trees, such as chickadees, robins, spiders, and foxes. We learn all sorts of facts about these creatures, while celebrating the trees that we love (in December of course!). I think the illustrations were beautiful and really celebrated each season...not just the Christmas season!
A great classroom book to use around this time of year, as a jumping-off point for projects and activities.
Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? : A Tree for All Seasons
Ellen Bryan Obed
32 pages
Non-Fiction
Houghton-Mifflin
9780547046259
September 2009
Review copy received from publisher
To learn more or to purchase, click on the book cover above to link to Amazon. I am an Associate and will receive a tiny commission from your purchase. Thanks!
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that looks great, can't wait to hunt it down... hmm, maybe when it isn't 5 degrees out though!
I so enjoyed this book. Barbara McClintock's illustrations always transport me to that nebulous nostalgic place that we all have in our imaginations, but never actually existed in the real world!