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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Megan Halsey, Most Recent at Top [Help]
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1. Review of the Day – A Toucan Can: Can You? by Danny Adlerman and Friends

ToucanCanA Toucan Can, Can You?
By Danny Adlerman
Illustrated by Lindsay Barrett George, Megan Halsey, Ashley Wolff, Demi, Ralph Masiello, Wendy Anderson Halperin, Kevin Kammeraad, Pat Cummings, Dar (Hosta), Leeza Hernandez, Christee Curran-Bauer, Kim Adlerman, and Symone Banks
Music by Jim Babjak
The Kids at Our House Children’s Books
$19.95
ISBN: 9781942390008
Ages 3-6
On shelves now

Under normal circumstances I don’t review sequels. I just don’t, really. Sequels, generally speaking, require at least a rudimentary knowledge of the preceding book. If I have to spend half a review catching a reader up on the book that came before the book that I’m actually reviewing, that’s just a waste of everyone’s time. Better to skip sequels entirely, and I include chapter book sequels, YA sequels, middle grade sequels, nonfiction sequels, graphic novel sequels, and easy book sequels in that generalization. I would even include picture book sequels, but here I pause for a moment. Because once in a while a picture book sequel will outshine the original. Such is the case with Danny Adlerman’s audibly catchy and visually eclectic A Toucan Can, Can You? A storyteller’s (and song-and-dance parent’s) dream, the book is is a sequel to the book How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck but comes into its own as a writing assignment for some, a storytime to others, and a darn good book for everybody else.

Many of us are at least passingly familiar with that old poem, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” But why stop with the woodchuck? What other compound words can you break up in amusing ways? And so we are sucked into a delightful world of teaspoons spooning tea, spaceships shipping space, and ice cream screaming “ice!” Each one of these catchy little poems (which are set to music on the accompanying CD) is paired with art from an impressive illustrator. Part collaboration and part exercise in audible frivolity, Danny Adlerman’s little book packs a great big punch.

For a group collaboration to work in a picture book there needs to be a reason for it to even exist. Which is to say, why have different people do different pieces of art for the same book? To best justify bringing these artists together you need a strong hook. And brother, I can’t think of a stronger hook then a catchy little rhyme, turned into a song, and given some clever additional rhymes to go along with it. Let’s hear it for the public domain! It’s little wonder that the customary “Note to Parents and Teachers” found in books of this sort appears at the beginning of the book rather than the end. In it, mention is made of the fact that the accompanying CD has both music with the lyrics and music without the lyrics, allowing kids to make up their own rhymes. I can attest as someone who did storytimes for toddlers and preschoolers for years that music can often be a librarian’s best friend. Particularly if it has a nice little book to show off as well. So for the storytimes for younger children, go with the words. And for the older kids? I think a writing assignment is waiting in the wings.

I was quite taken with the rhymes that already exist in this book, though. In fact, my favorite (language-wise) might have to be “How much bow could a bow tie tie if a bow tie could tae bo?” if only because “tae bo” makes shockingly few cameos in picture books these days. Finding the perfect collaboration between word and text can be difficult but occasionally the book hits gold. One example would be on the rhyme “How much ham could a hamster stir if a hamster could stir ham?” Artist Leeza Hernandez comes up with a rough riding hamster in cowboy gear astride an energetic hog. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Obviously the problem with any group collaboration is that some pieces are going to be stronger than others. But I have to admit that when I looked at that line-up I was a bit floored. In an impressive mix of established artists and new up-and-comers, Adlerman pairs his illustrators alongside rhymes that best show off their talents. Demi, for example, with her meticulous details and intricate style, is perfectly suited to honeycombs, honey, and the thin veins in the wing of a honeybee, holding a comb aloft. Meanwhile Wendy Anderson Halperin tackles the line “How much paint could a paintbrush brush” by rendering a variety of famous works, from Magritte to Diego Rivera in her two-page spread. Mind you, some artists are more sophisticated than others, and the switch between styles threatens to give one a bit of whiplash in the process. Generally speaking, however, it’s lovely. And I must confess that it was only on my fourth or fifth reading that I realized that the lovely scene illustrated by newcomer Symone Banks at the end of the book is dotted with animals done by the other artists, hidden in the details.

I don’t have to do storytimes anymore. In my current job my contact with kids is fairly minimal. But I have a two-year-old and a five-year-old at home and that means all my performance skills are on call whenever those two are around. I admit it. I need help. And books like A Toucan Can: Can You? can be lifesavers to parents like myself. If we had our way there would be a book-of-the-week club out there that personally delivered song-based picture books to our door. Heck, it should be a book-of-the-DAY club. I mean, let’s be honest. Raise a glass then and toast to Danny Adlerman and his fabulous friends. Long may their snowshoes shoo, their jellyfish fish, and their rockhoppers hop hop hop.

On shelves now.

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Source: Galley sent from author for review.

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2. Review of the Day: Cousins of Clouds by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems
By Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-618-90349-8
Ages 4-9
On shelves now

“Do you have any elephant books?” This is an easy one. The children’s librarian doesn’t have to think too hard about it. Just walk on over to the right section of the non-fiction, find the correct Dewey Decimal number, grab the books, and there you go. Happy kid. Happy librarian. Of course it’s not always that easy. Recently, and this is actually true, I’ve been encountering kids who want picture books about elephants. So my library whipped up an Elephant Picture Book List that includes all the great elephant related stories (Babar, Ella, Horton, Elephant and Piggie, you name it). It wasn’t until I got my digits on Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s latest book of poems Cousins of Clouds, though, that I realized that there’s a middle ground between these pachyderm-related sections. I mean, what if you have a kid that wants a picture book about elephants but also wants some facts along the way? Whither goes the librarian? Cousins of Clouds is sort of a little nonfiction/poetry godsend then. Chock full of interesting elephant facts as well as cool poems, the book bridges the gap between fiction and nonfiction beautifully.

It’s hard to wrap your head around an elephant, let alone your arms. Here we have creatures weighing between 6,000 and 16,000 pounds. Animals that sometimes starve in the streets of cities and sometimes visit the bones of their deceased. In twenty-five poems of varying lengths Tracie Vaughn Zimmer takes us into the world of the elephant. You’ll see them walking down streets with cars and appearing on art from a variety of countries. You’ll see how they care for their young or are incorporated into the body of Ganesh. Accompanying each poem is a small factual message that gives additional information about the elephants being discussed. The end of the book also contains a list of recommended books “For further elephant reading” if kids are interested in knowing more about these majestic, gigantic animals.

There is a trend these days to integrate different subject areas in schools and textbooks so that kids can see how everything is connected. So, for example, a fifth grader might be encouraged to read about the history of the Dust Bowl, read the novel 0 Comments on Review of the Day: Cousins of Clouds by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer as of 1/1/1900

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3. Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems

By Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages

You may be fond of elephants, but after reading this beguiling book of poetry, you'll wish you could save every one.

Zimmer's words and Halsey and Addy's pictures bring elephants into greater focus and heighten our respect for them, in a whimsical, if at times sobering tribute to the world's largest land mammal.

Every two-page spread combines meticulously worded poems and soft, winsome collages, along with torn-edged notes expounding upon the topic of a poem.

In one spread, the profile of a sweet-eyed elephant spans the fold of two pages, its appendages painted to resemble objects they're similar to.

Ears look like "tattered sails," the tail swishes like a "tapered rope" with a "fancy tassel," a sturdy hind leg becomes a Grecian pillar and another is inset with a slipper to suggest lightness of foot.

Though Zimmer never comes out and appeals for help saving elephants, she deepens our understanding of these sapient creatures and asks us to contemplate how humans affect their lives.

In doing so, she skillfully involves us in their plight and makes us feel protective of them.

The title poem, also the first in the book, shows elephants as proud creatures and hints that elephants in their service to humans, though dutiful, yearn to be set free.

Set over a sky of flying elephants, the poem describes a mythical time when elephants had wings and ruled the sky, then fell from grace for thinking themselves too great.

One day a prophet came to share with elephants all that he knew. But as they flew into an elm to listen, the elephants began quarreling over who had a better view of the prophet, and as they jostled around, the tree splintered and crashed to the ground.

The prophet, the only creature on the ground not crushed, was so enraged and disillusioned by their behavior, that he invoked a curse

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