So, after I posted yesterday, I saw that I had missed 2 very important updates!
1. The new issue of The Edge of the Forest is up! Check it out! Lots of awesome articles, plus 2 reviews by yours truly (My Last Best Friend by Julie Bowe and Reality Leak by Jodi Sensel-- both are great reads!)
2. The new Carnival of Children's Lit is up over at Wizard's Wireless. My contribution is actually my Geek Buffet post about the Xela Awards... check it out!
And now, a review of 2 books off the big scary list! (And a break because they're both Adult Nonfiction)
First up is
Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud Sun Shuyun
This book isn't available in the US, so I had to order it from England after reading her
The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth.
In
Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud, Sun sets out to retrace the journey of Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk who traveled to India at the start of the Tang Dynasty to learn Sanskrit and bring back new sutras to Chinese Buddhists. (His travels being the basis of Chinese classic,
Journey to the West.)
Not a Buddhist herself, Sun is searching for her grandmother's faith, and Xuanzang's. What was his driving force as he faced many perils along his way?
Sun has a magical way of trying history and legend together with her current narrative. It all blends seamlessly and also paints an amazing portrait of the changing face of Modern China.
I highly recommend it, even if you do have to get it from England. Well worth it.
ALSO! How much do I love the fact that she has an Orphan Works notice on her list of illustrations! WONDERFUL!!!!! (sorry, that's the geek in me)
A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry R. Howard Bloch
While this was interesting, as pop history it was ultimately unsatisfying. Bloch spends a lot of time proving minor points (did I really need half a chapter on the longship find of Sutton Hoo?) and leaves some other points hanging.
His premise is that the Bayeux Tapestry was stitched as a way to bring about a new multi-cultural peace and ultimately... I didn't buy it. There are many obvious other explanations to his supporting points that he doesn't address.
For instance, the fact that the tapestry is vague about some of the stickier points of the story (what the contents of the oath Harold swore, who Edward appointed as successor) isn't necessarily "sufficiently undefined as to permis all to identify with their particular point of view" ON PURPOSE. Maybe (a) it was common knowledge-- it's not like there are paragraphs of text here, most of the narration is based on common knowledge (b) Maybe they didn't know. This information doesn't appear in any other source, either. Maybe it was a secret.
But Bloch doesn't address these possible explanations for any of his evidence.
I do like his in-depth art-analysis of the symbolism and origins of various aspects of the tapestry, especially as he does refer to specific panels that are illustrated in the full color insert pages, as well as several other full-color and black-and-white illustrations throughout the text.
And as a minor note, I really didn't like the font. The lower case p has this little bit that extends out and is just visually very distracting.
We have just returned home from a week in London, exploring the city to dropping point! One place we visited was the National Gallery, where we followed the Chinese Zodiac Trail. We knew which animals to look for from retellings of the legendary selection process, such as The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac. While looking at the paintings, we learnt a great deal about the differences and similarities in the symbolism attached to the animals in Chinese and Western cultures; and Little Brother, who is passionate about dragons, was overjoyed to discover that his birth sign, the Snake, is also known as the Little Dragon!
In the gallery shop afterwards, we found a delightful picture-book called Pablo the Artist by Satoshi Kitamura, which is an enigmatic exploration of the artistic process and where inspiration comes from – I agree with The Magic of Books‘ review, where PJ Librarian says “you really aren’t sure at this point if Pablo is dreaming or if these landscape characters are actually real” – it’s one of those books which grows with each re-reading as new details are discovered and absorbed. We especially loved the glimpse of infinity provided at the end, having read The Mouse and His Child so recently, where the picture of the dog carrying a tray with a tin of dog food with the picture of the dog carrying a tray etc. etc. was such a recurrent and pivotal theme.
Not Just for Kids recommends Pablo the Artist and some other picture-books which “introduce young readers to some of the world’s masterpieces”, as does Rhyming Mom.
Narrative forms have the potential to inspire, sustain and heal us, and traditional folktales have a special healing magic for children. Witch and monster stories like Baba Yaga and Heckedy Peg show how to get through the dark woods of life and suggest that there are helpful beings along the way. The Elves and the Shoemaker illustrates the practice of generosity. Talking Eggs, a traditional Louisiana Creole Cinderella tale, demonstrates the eventual triumph of good over evil. In the Uncle Remus stories, underdogs like tar baby and the rabbit outfox the scary fox himself. Native American coyote tales offer tales of connectedness with the natural world. In our stress-filled lives, these stories provide steadying information and wisdom.
For folktales from Asia, search the wealth of the PaperTigers website, or go directly to interviews with authors like Debjani Chatterjee and Demi, who have written stories based on folktales. For faves of Asian kids, here’s a review of a collection of folktale retellings. And for Hispanic folktales, check out Tales Our Arbuelitas Told.
PaperTigers welcomes your feedback about this important form of literature for the child within each of us.
One event I will be missing this year, being on the wrong side of the Atlantic, is the exhibition of Allen Say’s work to celebrate his 70th birthday, which is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art – but if you can get to Amherst, Massachusetts before 28 October, I should imagine it would be well worth doing so. Writer, Lois Lowry certainly recommends it…
We love reading Say’s books together. Particular favorites are Under the Cherry Blossom Tree: An Old Japanese Tale, which appeals especially to 
my younger son’s sense of the absurd; and Kamishibai Man, which has inspired my older son to create his own storyboards. We also read Home of the Brave recently, following the discussions arising from A Place Where Sunflowers Grow. Say’s rich illustrations here and the slightly abstract conveying of the story stretch young children into asking questions… the bedtime storytime can certainly be drawn out beyond the deceptive brevity of the story. As Karen Edmisten says, it is “not a happy book but an excellent one”.
Podcast Just One More Book has reviewed Emma’s Rug and I think they sum up Say’s work as a whole when they say: (more…)
We have just returned home from a few days in Cornwall, very near Lands End, the south-westernmost tip of England. We took with us a favorite book, The Mousehole Cat. It is based on the story of the fisherman Tom Bawcock who risked his life to bring fish back to the village of Mousehole (pronounced ‘Mowzel’ in Cornish) when the fishing boats had all been trapped in the little harbor by a terrible storm. Antonia Barber’s wonderful retelling introduces Tom’s cat, Mowzer, who accompanies him and sings to the Storm Cat to calm him while Tom fishes. Nicola Bayley’s illustrations are simply gorgeous and the words and pictures together make this a book to be brought out again and again.
My boys were both very excited at the prospect of actually visiting Mousehole. We made an expedition of it by walking there along the coast from neighboring Lamorna and we stopped on the way to reread the story. It was a very fitting setting – and we had the pictures fresh in our mind when we arrived in the village to try and pick out the various landmarks, not to mention a very pretty “Mowser’s Cottage”.
These last couple of weeks there has been some bad flooding in parts of the UK and I was very sad to hear from author and publisher Debjani Chatterjee that her independent Sahitya Press has been badly affected, with the loss of their books stored in a community centre in Sheffield. Our thoughts go out to her and her colleagues.
In an interview with PaperTigers a few months ago, Debjani talked about how certain stories crop up in many different traditions: one of these is the Great Flood. There are many versions of Noah’s Ark, which we enjoy reading - but this week was the first time my boys had come across the story outside its biblical context and they were intrigued. We are reading Atticus the Storyteller’s 100 Greek Myths by Lucy Coats and Anthony Lewis, which we all agree is a “superb retelling of the Greek myths for younger children” and “a really lovely book for all the family to share” (Books for Keeps). Like in The Barefoot Book of Knights I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the stories are brought together by a narrator: here it’s Atticus, who is on his way (more…)
I have just received this lovely e-card from Barefoot Books , which I would like to share with you all – it’s based on their recently-published Whole World, which not only celebrates the world we live in but reminds us that we need to look after it - something that Barefoot Books are really focussing on with their new “Go Barefoot, Go Global” emphasis on environmental issues.
As well as family favourites like The Emperor who Hated Yellow, The Gigantic Turnip and The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac, we love Barefoot Books’ anthologies of stories from around the world. Son Number One has taken The Barefoot Book of Knights out of the library on a regular basis over the last three years. I like its format of the traditional tales being woven into the story of a young steward who is learning to be a knight, although it does sometimes mean reading time goes on for much longer than you intended!
Generally, however, these anthologies are great for (more…)
For the last three years, our six-year-old has regaled us with stories about his Dragon House, a mythical universe where anything and everything does happen. The only consistent factor has been that it is only inhabited by dragons and him. 
Therefore, as you can imagine, dragons figure large in our reading and it is a great theme for discovering stories from far away. This week we’ve pulled out Monkey and the Water Dragon, as Son Number One’s school topic at the moment is water… This retelling of an excerpt from the epic journey of Monkey, Pigsy and Tripitaka is written and illustrated by Joanna Troughton, and is one of Puffin’s “Folk Tales of the World” series (I think it’s time these were all pulled together and reprinted as an anthology - hint, hint!). The dragon is actually a baddy who turns out to be a “golden fish” with delusions of grandeur - but that doesn’t seem to bother my two. The dragon roars and the pictures leap from the page. That’s what matters!
Then there are stories like The Day the Dragon Danced, which make my children long to join in a Chinese New Year procession; but we still haven’t read Mei Ming and the Dragon’s Daughter or The Dragon’s Pearl, which are both recommended by Andrea Ross in her Personal View for PaperTigers… (more…)
As a social worker at a family resource center in Mendocino County, California, I have been using folk takes as a means for helping “at risk” children develop resiliency as they navigate some tough life circumstances. We have used some of the stories that Charlotte has listed in a class that we call “Story Play”. We have created an aesthetically inviting, emotionally safe setting where children in groups of about 8, come together to hear stories, dress in costumes and act out the stories. Our acting is more a sense of play rather than performance. The children have also written their own stories. One child, recently returned to his family from foster care, directed his story about a baby bird who is returned to the nest. We also use visual art and crafts as a means of internalizing the stories.
Thanks for this fascinting account, DorothyGayle. There’s a reason that these stories are timeless; they speak to such deep human concerns. It’s great that you’ve found such a creative–and healing–way to share them with children.