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Hypnotize a Tiger: Poems About Just About Everything
By Calef Brown
Christy Ottaviano Books, Henry Holt (an imprint of Macmillan)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9928-7
For ages 9-12

Why do I do this to myself? Let me tell you something about how I review. Board books? Pshaw. I can take one and write a nine-paragraph review parsing precisely why it is that Bizzy Bear’s preferred companions are dogs and bunnies. Nonfiction? Lay it on me. I’ll take infinite pleasure in discussing the difference between informational texts when I was a child (long story short, they sucked) and our current golden age. But there is one book genre that lays me flat. Stops me short. Makes it exceedingly difficult for me to get my head in order. Truly, children’s poetry books are the hardest to review. I don’t know exactly why this is. They are the most unloved of the books for kids. No American Library Association accredited awards are made specifically for them. They get checked out of libraries one month a year (April = National Poetry Month) and then lie forgotten. Yet so many of them are bite-sized wallops of greatness. Hypnotize a Tiger by Calef Brown is one of these chosen few. Not many poetry books for kids sport blurbs from Daniel Pinkwater (who found a soul mate in Brown’s art) to Jack Gantos to The Book of Life director Jorge R. Gutierrez. And few author/illustrators are allowed to go as positively wacky and wild as Brown does here. From tomato ultimatums and loofah tortes to velocipede odes and dodgebull (rather than dodgeball) you honestly never know where the book is going next. And you’re grateful for it.

So if it’s so great (and it is) why is reviewing a book of this sort the devil to do? There are any number of reasons. When reviewing a book with, say, a plot, it’s awfully easy for me to merely recap the plot, dish on the characters, bring up some single strange or scintillating point, then close it all down with a conclusion. Easy peasy. But poetry’s not really like that. There’s no plot to Hypnotize a Tiger. There’s not even a running gag that keeps cropping up throughout the pages. Each poem is its own little world. As a result, I’m stuck generalizing about the poems as a whole. And because we are dealing with 84-85 (depending on how you count) of them in total, I’m probably going to end up saying something about how some of the poems work and others don’t. This is kind of a cheat when you’re reviewing a collection of this sort because almost no children’s poetry book is absolutely perfect (Example A: The fact that Shel Silverstein wrote “Hug-a-War” . . . I rest my case). They will always consist of some verses that work and others that do not. In the end, the best I can hope for when reviewing poetry is to try to find something that makes it different from all the other poetry books published in a given year. Fortunately for me, Mr. Brown is consistently interesting. As Pinkwater said in his blurb, “He is a bulwark against mediocrity.”

I’m very interested in the question of how to get kids around to reading poetry. My own daughter is four at this time and we’ve found that Shel Silverstein’s poetry books make for good bedtime reading (though she’s still thrown off by the occasional grotesquerie). For many children, Silverstein is the gateway drug. But Calef Brown, though he swims in Shel’s surrealism soaked seas, is a different breed entirely from his predecessor. Where Shel went for the easy silly ideas, Brown layers his ridiculousness with a bit of sophistication. Anyone could write a poem about waking up to find a beehive attached to the underside of their chin. It takes a Calef Brown to go one step further and have the unfortunate soul consider the monetary implications. Or to consider the verbal capabilities of Hoboken-based gnomes. So Hypnotize a Tiger becomes a book meant for the kid with a bit of prior poetry knowledge under their belt. You wouldn’t hand this title to a reluctant reader. You’d give it to the kid who’d already devoured all the Silverstein and Prelutsky and came to you asking, “What else you got?” That kid might be ready.

It is useful to note that you need to read this book aloud as well. There should be a warning sticker on the cover that says as much. Not that Brown makes it easy for you. Take the poem “Hugh”, for example. Short and simple it reads, “Meet my Belgian friend / He lives near Bruges, on a farm. / His name is Hugh Jarm.” Then at the bottom one of the tiny interstitial poems reads, “I once had a dream I was visiting Bruges – / snacking on chocolates while riding a luge.” Now the correct pronunciation of “Bruges” isn’t really necessary in the first poem, though it helps. The little tiny poem, however, is interesting because while it works especially well when you pronounce it correctly, you could probably mangle the wordplay easy peasy and still end up with a successful poem. SLJ probably said it best when they mentioned in their review of the book that, “Though there is more than one line that does not roll easily off the tongue and awkward rhymes abound, it is easy to see this clumsiness as part of the spirit of the collection.”

The subtitle of the collection is “Poems About Just About Everything” and that’s a fairly accurate representation. It does not mean, however, that there isn’t an internal logic to what’s being included here. There’s a chapter of animal poems, of people, insects, vehicles, schools, food, and then more esoteric descriptions like “Facts Poetic”, “Word Crashes”, and “Miscellaneous Silliness.” No poem directly applies to another, but they still manage to work together in tandem fairly well.

I don’t think it’s a serious criticism of a book to say that it’s not for all audiences. Calef Brown is an acquired taste. A taste best suited to the cleverest of the youngsters, absolutely, but acquired just the same. Not everyone is drawn to his style, and more fool they. To my mind, there is room enough in this world for any Calef Brown collection you can name. This book doesn’t have the widely popular feel of, say, a We Go Together but nor is the author writing poems simply to hear himself speak. Hypnotize a Tiger is a book built to please fans of creative curated silliness. Don’t know if you’ll like it? There’s only one way to find out. Pick this puppy up and read it to a kid. The book may surprise you (and so might the kid!).

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• A Pond Full of Ink by Annie M.G. Schmidt
• The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask by JonArno Lawson
• Food Hates You, Too and Other Poems by Robert Weinstock

Misc:

• I think this may honestly constitute the greatest class visit of all time.

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My Country, ‘Tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights
By Claire Rudolf Murphy
Illustrated by Bryan Collier
Henry Holt and Company (an imprint of Macmillan)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8226-5
Ages 7 and up
On shelves June 3rd

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked as a children’s librarian. It doesn’t matter how many books for kids you’ve read or how much of your life is dedicated to bringing them to the reading public. What I love so much about my profession is the fact that I can always be surprised. Take My Country, ‘Tis of Thee by Claire Rudolf Murphy as a prime example. I admit that when I glanced at the cover I wasn’t exactly enthralled. After all, this isn’t exactly the first book to give background information on a patriotic song or poem. We’ve seen a slate of books talking about “We Shall Overcome” over the years (one by Debby Levy and one by Stuart Stotts) as well as books on the Pledge of Allegiance or “The New Colossus”. So when I read the title of this book I admit suppressing a bit of an inward groan. Another one? Haven’t we seen enough of these? Well, no. Turns out we haven’t seen enough of them. Or, to be more precise, we haven’t seen enough good ones. What Murphy manages to do here is tie-in a seemingly familiar song to not just the history of America but to the embodiment of Civil Rights in this country itself. So expertly woven together it’ll make your eyes spin, Murphy brings us a meticulously researched, brilliant work of nonfiction elegance. Want to know how to write a picture book work of factual fascinating information for kids? Behold the blueprint right before your eyes.

The press for this book says, “More than any other, one song traces America’s history of patriotism and protest.” More than you ever knew. Originally penned in 1740 as “God Save the King”, the tune was sung by supporters of King George II. It soon proved, however, to be an infinitely flexible kind of song. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s followers sang it in Scotland to new verses and it traveled to America during the French and Indian War. There the colonists began to use it in different ways. The preacher George Whitefield rewrote it to celebrate equality amongst all, the revolutionary colonists to fight the power, the loyalists to celebrate their king, and even a woman in 1795 published a protest verse for women using the song. In each instance of the song’s use, author Claire Rudolf Murphy shows the context of that use and then writes out some of the new verses. Before our eyes it’s adapted to the Northern and Southern causes during The Civil War. It aids labor activists fighting for better pay. Women, Native Americans, and African-Americans adopt it, each to their own cause until, ultimately, we end with Barack Obama as president. Backmatter includes copious Source Notes documenting each instance of the song, as well as a Bibliography and Further Resources that are split between “If You Want to Learn More” and “Musical Links”. There is also sheet music for the song and the lyrics of the four stanzas as we know them today.

There’s always a bit of a thrill in being an adult reading information about history for the first time in a work for kids. I confess readily that I learned a TON from this book. But beyond that, it was the scope of the book that really captured my heart. That it equates patriotism with protest in the same breath is a wonderful move in and of itself. However, part of what I like so much about the book is that it is clear that our work is nowhere close to done. Here is how the book ends: “Now it’s your turn. Write a new verse for a cause you believe in. Help freedom ring.” Right there Murphy is making it clear that for all that the Obama’s inauguration makes for a brilliant capper to her story, it’s not the END of the story. People are still fighting for their rights. There are still causes out there worth protesting. Smart teachers, I hope, will brainstorm with their students the problems still facing equal opportunities in America today and will use this book to give kids a chance to voice their own opinions.

There’s a trend in nonfiction for kids right now that you’ll usually find in science picture books. When it comes to selling books to children, it can be awfully frustrating for an author to have limit their work to a very precise age range or reading level since, inevitably, your readership ages out of your book fairly quickly. The solution? Two types of text in the same book. The author will write a simple sentence on a page and then pair that with a dense paragraph of facts on the other. The advantage of this is that now the book reads aloud well to younger ages while still carrying information for the older kids. Or, put another way, children studying a subject can now get more information out of a single book if they’re interested and can disregard that same information if they’re not. I mention this because the layout of this book looks at first like that’s what Murphy was going for. You’ll have the factual information, followed by the new verses of the song. Then, at the end, in larger type will be a simple sentence. Yet as I read the book it became clear that what Murphy’s actually doing is using the large type sentences to draw connections from one page to another. For example, on the page about women marching for the right to vote, the section ends with the large type sentence, “But the privilege to vote didn’t extend to Native Americans, male or female” (a fact that, I am ashamed to say, I did not know). Turn the page and now we’re reading about the Native American struggles for Civil Rights and after reading the factual information the bolded sentence reads, “Equality did not exist for everyone in America.” Turn the page and there’s Marion Anderson. And it is at this point that Murphy draws her most brilliant connections between the pages. Marion Anderson leads to Martin Luther King listening to her Lincoln Memorial performance on the radio when he is ten, then we turn the page to King proclaiming “My country, ‘tis of thee” in his “I have a dream” speech, which then naturally ties into Aretha Franklin singing the song at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Amazing.

Now I’ve a funny relationship to the art of Bryan Collier. Sometimes I feel like he gives a book his all and comes out swinging as a result. If you’ve ever seen his work on Uptown or Knock Knock or Martin’s Big Words or Dave the Potter then you know what he’s capable of. By the same token, for every Uptown there’s a Lincoln and Douglass where it just doesn’t have that good old-fashioned Collier magic. I worried that maybe My Country, ‘Tis of Thee would fall into that category, particularly after seeing the anemic George Washington awkwardly placed on the book’s cover. As it turns out, that’s probably the weakest image in the book. Go into it and you’ll see that Collier is in fine fettle for the most part. For example, in a section discussing how both the North and the South adopted this song and sang their own verses to it, Collier brilliantly overlays a soldier’s tent against a plantation background. Inside the tent are shots of the battle raging, letters from the soldiers spilling out over the sides like a fabric of their own. Turn the page and now the fields are bare, the Emancipation Proclamation having been declared, and the papers you see floating across the earth and into the sky all begin with “A Proclamation”. This is the kind of attention to detail that gets completely ignored in a work of nonfiction, even when the artist has taken a great deal of care and attention. It took me about five or six reads before I would notice the photographs of kids interspersed with the drawn people. And sure there’s the occasional misstep (the tea dumped by the Bostonians looks a bit more like the wings of birds than something you’d like to consume, and while Collier nails Aretha Franklin better than anyone I’ve ever seen he just can NOT get George Washington quite right) on the whole the book hangs together as well as it does because Collier knows what he’s doing.

I can already tell you that this book will not get the attention it deserves. And what it deserves is a place in every single classroom, library, and bookstore shelf in the nation. Yet this isn’t a work of children’s nonfiction that slots neatly into a pre-made hole. There’s nothing else really like this book out there. That it works as a brilliant piece of nonfiction as well as a smart as all get out piece of history and classroom ideas for teachers is clear. What it has to say about our country and our people and how they’ve fought for their rights should not, under any circumstances, be missed. It’s hard to write patriotic American fare for kids that doesn’t just sound like boosterism. This book manages to pull it off and you feel pretty good after it does. Do not miss it. Don’t.

On shelves June 3rd.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World by Stuart Stotts – A longer book than this one, but it does essentially the same thing in it that Murphy’s doing here.

• We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song by Debby Levy – More of a picture book like this one and nowhere near as well researched, but fun and a good companion in the old history-of-a-song-in-America genre.

• Emma’s Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty by Linda Glaser – Iconic words get their due. Doesn’t trace the poem throughout history necessarily, but it does give us background info we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Interviews:

• Bryan Collier talks about his work and discusses this book a little bit as well with SLJ.

Misc:

• How cool is this?  Murphy has linked to a My Country Tis of Thee Music Project where “Choirs of all ages and abilities are invited to participate in the Music Project by singing and recording their own versions of My Country, Tis of Thee at school and in their communities.”  Want to know more?  Go here and then listen to some of the choirs that are already up for your listening pleasure.

• Murphy answers a couple questions about the book here.

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Peaceful Pieces: Poems and Quilts About Peace
By Anna Grossnickle Hines
Henry Holt (Macmillan)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-8050-899607
Ages 4-8
On shelves now.

Folks will ask for it. Sure they will. You sit at a children’s reference desk in a library long enough and eventually somebody is going to ask you for a book on the topic of “peace”. As a librarian, you’re in a pickle. See, you want to give them what they want, and certainly there is no lack of peace-related books for children out there. But since you’re a librarian you want to get your patrons to best of the best. And to be perfectly frank, I’d say that the bulk of peace books for kids out there are dreck. Goopy, icky, sentimental crud. There are exceptions, of course. Books like The Big Book for Peace for example are pretty good without dipping a toe too often in the tempting waters of didacticism. Poetry exists too but as with most things it’s hard to separate the good from the bad. You get a leg up if the art’s extraordinary, though. Now Anna Grossnickle Hines probably ranks as one of the top (maybe THE top) quilt-based illustrators of children’s books on the North American continent. I regularly use her 1, 2 Buckle My Shoe in my Toddler Storytimes. Her art is delightful but I admit to suppressing a small sigh when I saw that she’d created a book of peace poems. Fortunately I was pleased to discover that quite a few of these are pretty good. The poems are far more touch and go than the art, but all in all the collection is strong. And pretty. Did I mention pretty? Pretty.

“O peace, / why are you such / an infrequent guest?” In twenty-eight poems Anna Grossnickle Hines seeks to answer that very question and to come up with solutions to some close-to-home problems that kids face all the time. Set against a backdrop of handmade quilts of her own making, Hines tackles both the big questions and the small. A boy considers what would happen if he frightened away a deer, while another stands nose to nose with his sister until their anger is forgotten and somebody laughs. One poem shows that if you say “peace” over and over again the word turns your lips into a smile. They discuss the domino effect and the role of fear as it relates to violence. Through it all, the quilts capture these poems and reflect them like cloth prisms. Notes at the end of the book list some Peacemakers of the world (everyone from Jimmy Carter to Dorothy Day, and even a couple kids as well) and a section called “Peaceful Connections” discusses the creator’s quilting process.

Most collections of poetry for kids contain some poems that are top notch and others that are so-so. This is just as true for books of different poets as it is for a single poet writing a bunch of poems. Hines is a good poet, but the collection starts off slowly. The poems “Making an Entrance”, “An Invitation” and “Wher

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I always glance at the copyright page when reading a book -- you know, the part that contains all information like the Library of Congress Cataloging Data, edition and publication date. That part usually is not all that thrilling, but sometimes, SOMETIMES when the author feels particularly creative, the page will contain special little hidden messages. Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld is a perfect example. Here's the illustration description on the copyright page:

"The illustrations are rendered in ink, pastel, colored pencil, and watercolor. The water part of the watercolor was collected in a bucket during a rainstorm, so this book is partially made of clouds. Thank you, clouds."

A cloud book made partially of clouds? A must read!

Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld. Henry Holt / Christy Ottaviano Books (March 2011); ISBN 9780805087765; 40 pages
Book Source: Copy from public library

"Cloudette was a cloud. A very small cloud. Usually, Cloudette didn't mind being smaller than the average cloud. In fact, being small had lots of advantages."

Though Cloudette is content with her small size, she still wishes she could do "big and important" things like the other clouds -- cloud things like watering crops and making rivers flow. She is so small that she fits comfortably in the crook of the crescent-shaped moon and she's especially good at hide and seek, but what she wants most of all is to be able to help out in a big way. She finds out she just needs a little push!

It seems Cloudette isn't the only one that can productively brainstorm and create perfection and happiness. Clever books seem to pour of out Lichtenheld's mind, and we love each one. His books entertain both adult and child alike with witty dialog that accompanies the text, thoughtful word play and neatly drawn illustrations packed with tiny, often humorous details. After the first read, we went back just to make sure we didn't miss anything, like the cow perched on the moon or the "higher-up" that uses alliteration.

Lichtenheld's book got its start in a little way, kind of like Cloudette, with just two little scraps of paper. Cloudette provides a great example for kids and shows how something small can produce big results with the appropriate impetus.

P.S. Don't miss the UPC Code on the back and the rocket reference on the copyright page...the book is full of little surprises (Cloudette included)!

Related Links:
Tom Lichtenheld Website
Where'd That Little Cloud Come From? - MacKids blog
Happy Birthday Author

8 Comments on Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld - Review and Using Rainwater to Paint a Cloud Craft, last added: 6/18/2011

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Two of the books we brought home from our last library visit contain famous works of art. What an excellent opportunity to introduce my children to a few famous artists! This week we talked about Monet, Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, Matisse, Cézanne and more. It was a completely unplanned educational activity.

Have you discovered any other picture books that contain versions of famous works of art?

Bridget's Beret by Tom Lichtenheld. Henry Holt / Christy Ottaviano Books (April 2010); ISBN 9780805087758; 40 pages
Book Source: Copy from local library

"Before Bridget made any kind of art, she'd put on her beret and adjust it just right."

Bridget's favorite pastime is drawing. She has many art supplies, and, most importantly, like all great artists, she owns and wears a beret. Sadly, on a very windy day, her fabulous black beret blows away. Without the special hat for inspiration, Bridget finds herself suffering from -- *gasp* -- artist's block! Thankfully her sister comes to the rescue and helps her remember that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.

Lichtenheld's book overflows with creativity, cuteness and plenty of clever quips and illustrations. My family is a huge fan of Lichtenheld's previous books (Duck! Rabbit! & Shark Vs. Train) and love his entertaining comic illustration style. A talking rabbit is just one of the many funny touches. He manages to craftily work in a few interpretations of famous art into this book. Bridget creates lemonade poster renditions including one of van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and another inspired by "Whistler's Mother."

As soon as I read the inside jacket flap and discovered that this book was about a girl who loves to draw, I knew I wanted to read it with my daughter. Bridget's Beret is the perfect book for budding artists.

The book includes a handy "How to Start Your Art" guide in the back that discusses several famous works of art: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, "Summer" - Mary Cassatt, "Child with a Red Hat" - Paul Cezanne, "Still Life with Peaches and Pears" - Vincent van Gogh, "Bedroom at Arles" - Henri Matisse, "Icarus" - Claude Monet, "Still Life with Sunflowers" - Georgia O'Keeffe, "Above the Clouds I" - Pablo Picasso, "Bull's Head" - Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, "Self Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed" - Georges Seurat, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" - Alfred Sisley, "The Boat in the Flood"

Related Links:
Tom Lichtenheld Website