How to use this Page

Holidays, Festivals and Celebrations: Memorial Day

By Trudi Strain Trueit; illustrated by Ronnie Rooney

In searching out picture books for Memorial Day, I try to find those that both give a historical background of the day, how it morphed from Decoration Day, following the Civil War to around 1890, when it became known as Memorial Day.

I try to find picture books that spotlight all the components and elements of time honored traditions, celebrations, speeches, places, symbols, and even poetry and songs, that are an integral part of the Memorial Day tribute to those that sacrificed  their lives for our freedoms.

Trudi Strain Trueit has put together a picture book that, I think, collects all these elements for picture book readers’ understanding of Memorial Day. And Ronnie Rooney’s art perfectly complements the narrative, portraying the historical progression of this traditional American holiday.

Though there were some things that I knew of concerning its origins and observations, there were others that were both informative and humbling, when looked at thought the prism of time, which is the true leveler and test of what is enduring in a culture.

There is a quiet question that lingers as you shut the pages of this book. And it is this. What is it that we want our children and future generations to glean from the marking of Memorial Day?

Is it the start of the summer season? Is it barbecues and family gatherings? Is it the word Memorial Day Sale, writ large at malls across America? Or is it something more than all of these put together, though they indeed each have their place in the celebration?

I suppose in some sense, I want to say they are not, and shouldn’t be, the defining reason for the marking of Memorial Day.

In this small, simple, eight chapter book, parents will find a delightful and densely packed picture book with information that will help their child understand the meaning and morphing of Memorial Day, both as it stands today…and how it evolved. A memorial, as the book states is “a lasting tribute.”

                It helps us to remember

                an important person, group

                or event.

They will learn that the day was created, and initially called Decoration Day, where, during the Civil War between the North and South, families found themselves on opposite sides in the war. Father fought against son, and even brother against brother. “In these sad times women in the South began decorating the graves of southern Confederate soldiers with flowers. They decorated the graves of northern Union soldiers, too.”

By 1865 the Civil War ends, with some 600,000 soldiers killed in a war fought on both economic and slavery issues.

1868 finds Union General John Alexander Logan declaring that each May 30th will be a day to remember those who died in the Civil War.

And the first national day of celebration is, as I said, initially termed Decoration Day, and was held at Arlington National Cemetery; a military cemetery in Virginia.

Young readers will hear of Moina Michaels and her desire, following WWl, after hearing the John McCrae poem, “In Flanders Fields,” a determination to make and wear a silk poppy as a symbol for fallen soldiers. It was later expanded to honor all soldiers in the armed forces who died in wartime, and this small idea and enterprise of poppy making and sales has generated over $200 million for veterans groups in the United States and England.

In 1948 she was honored with a stamp by the United States Postal Service.

From the explanation of the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington, to the year 2000’s Congressional creation of a National Moment of Remembrance at 3P.M. on Memorial Day, when all Americans are asked to pause and remember the “nation’s fallen soldiers,” this remembrance continues through both time, and generations of Americans, young and not so young.

Young readers will learn the meaning of the color concept surrounding the American flag, figured so prominently in parades and on porches that day.

Did you know that it is a tradition to lower the American flag to half staff until noon on Memorial Day, as a sign of respect? Here are what the flag’s colors symbolize:

    White stands for purity and innocence

 

     Red stands for valor and hardiness.

 

     Blue stands for vigilance, perseverance

     and justice.

Sidebars on each page of this picture book are filled with quotes from presidents including Lincoln, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as historical figures quoted from General Robert E. Lee, General John A. Logan, and Nathan Hale.

Young readers can read about “Joining in the Spirit of Memorial Day” at the close of the book, suggesting some seven ways to participate in the day, and honor those, including their own relatives, who may have died in the line of duty.

I guess my favorite part is the last chapter; the poems and songs that evoke the essence of Memorial Day. Some I knew,  some I had forgotten or never knew in their completeness.

But “Taps,” with words in their entirety, is featured in the “Song” portion. Played by a single trumpet as the traditional music played at funerals of fallen soldiers, it’s  pureness and poignancy in sound and symbol is what Memorial Day is about.

And here are the words:

Taps

 

Fading light dims the sight,

And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.

From afar drawing nigh comes the night.

Day is done, gone the sun.

From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

 

words and music by Major

General Daniel Butterfield (1831-1901)

*Here is “Taps,” played at Arlington National Cemetery, both in summer, and in a driving snow storm.

Poetry of Earth

Selected and illustrated by Adrienne Adams

Did you know that Earth Day started way back in the 1970’s? For many it marks, as a website quotes, “the birth of the modern environmental movement.”

Way back in 1962, author Rachel Carson began the run up to concern for the environment with her New York Times bestseller, “Silent Spring.” It generated with its sale of 500,000 copies in 24 countries, a call for public awareness of concern for the gradation of the environment and by inference, its impact on public health.

Change is a hard thing to measure and it is usually only measurable AFTER it has occurred.

That is why the picture book’s value in its ability to both entertain and enlighten, is so underrated in some quarters in the sometimes headlong drive to get to the chapter book. So much is missed and discounted in what the picture book has offered in the past and continues to offer in the present. And Ms. Adams’ book is a perfect example.

Adrienne Adams is the winner of two Caldecott Honor books in 1960 and 1962 for “The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up” and “Houses From The Sun”. Both were done with text by Alice E. Goudey.

She is also the illustrator of ALA notable books for her Grimm’s Brothers versions of “The Shoemaker and the Elves, ”Jorinde and Joringel,” and “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen.

In “Poetry of the Earth,” Ms. Adams has chosen thirty-three poems from renowned poets such as Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, Carl Sandburg, William Butler Yeats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, celebrating everything from buffaloes to bats, snails to specks, sandhill cranes to squirrels and tiger lilies to tortoises.

Listen to this small sample from Robert Frost’s, “Dust of Snow”:

                 “The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree”

 

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.”

Young readers, once you get past their understanding of the word, “rued”, will certainly get the visceral feeling of how one single moment can change a day; one small second in time can change a minute from moody to merry. Kids do it all the time; it’s part of being a child!

And its impetus for them can be a poem, a line from a book, a hug, a smile, or a touch of the hand.

Let Earth Day this year, and books that echo both the shelter and nourishment it gives humanity, be the jumping off spot for a teachable moment with young readers. Share books with them that celebrate how wonderful and healing the earth can be; what a sacred space it is, and how much it is in our care.

Below is a link to 50 fun and engaging hands on Earth Day Activities for young ones.

http://tinkerlab.com/fifty-earth-day-activities/

The Longest Night: A Passover Story

By Laurel Snyder and Catia Chien

Please start this book by reading the genesis of it, in the Author’s Note as Laurel Snyder recalls the Seder gatherings of her childhood.

All of the rich traditions of song, the reciting from the Haggadah, and the special foods that are part of the ritual, intermixed with the smells of matzoh ball soup served in a freshly cleaned house, swirl in her recollections of Seder celebrations past. In hearing the story of the Exodus as a child, this hole in the story struck her:

           Yet when we told the story of

           the Exodus – the harrowing tale

           of how the Israelites fled Egypt

           and the only homes they had ever

           known – we didn’t get to hear much

about all the people who ran. The

           story was mostly Moses and

           Pharaoh bargaining for the lives of

           everyone else.

Ms. Snyder, awaiting her serving of soup in that long ago Seder, wondered what it was like to be a child, among those fleeing in a mad rush into the desert, thousands of years ago? What was it like to be a child slave?

And The Longest Night is her answer to that imagined question.

If your child too, has such imaginings during the family gathering and celebration of Passover, perhaps this is a picture book to afford them one person’s imaginative take on what it must have been like, as seen through the eyes of  a young one.

In simple rhyming verse, you meet a young girl with little to separate one day from the next:

            Every morning with the light…

            Came another day like night.

 

            In the heat and blowing sand,

            Each gray dawn my work began…

 

            Spreading mortar thick on stone,

            I built someone else a home.

 

            All around me eyes to ground,

            Other children trudged around.

The familiar story is told through the eyes of a young girl’s life of labor, the plagues that descend on Egypt in stunning succession, while all the while, the young girl’s Aba or father waits:

             Strangely Aba seemed to wait

             Calmly for each harsh new fate,

 

 Sat and whittled in his chair.

I sat too, and said a prayer.

The theme of “waiting” expectantly fills this picture book, and it’s a feeling that young readers may identify with quite easily.

Patience and trust are there also, as sometimes in life, one has to wait in a sort of patient endurance for the tide of life and circumstance to change, as we feel able to be sustained where we are, until the tide literally turns.

Those themes fill The Longest Night as lamb’s blood is unquestioningly smeared above doors, bread is packed in haste, and seas are swept apart to deliver a new path to freedom and a new life:

               Walls of water all around

Made a giant rushing sound.

Change is in the air as the young girl senses they are running from something, yet also, to something new and different.

Pure joy awaits in this something:

             To a sky so wide and free,

             Full of light and room to be.

 

             To an endless sunrise spread

             Pink above us gold and red.

And artist, Catia Chen, has done a fine job in her illustrations of capturing the somber colors that reflect the mood of slavery, through the dogged endurance needed to survive the plagues, to the joyous rosy hues of freedom on the other side of the journey.

The Longest Night is a picture book history lesson of one of the oldest stories of patient endurance and trust, that led to victory.

This dark-night-to-dawn story of a child enmeshed in an historic freedom walk event, is a fine introduction to the Passover journey for a young reader of any faith.

It employs a sort of technique used in Bible Studies, where the reader is encouraged to imagine oneself in the biblical event, then try to sense what the sights, sounds and even smells of the event, might have felt like…to them.

Ms. Snyder has offered this approach to fine effect, so that young readers, having read it, may sit down to their own Seder meal this Passover with a more personal take on events that occurred thousands of years ago, yet may be remembered, after this reading, with a more personal and reflective reverence, today.

Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

By Robert Byrd

If you’ve only thought of Ben Franklin as a bespectacled white-haired colonist, flying a kite with a key attached, then you and your young reader are in for some ride.

But, I must warn you, just as the virtues espoused and exhibited by Ben included patience, you may need a bit of it as you navigate this book.

It’s lengthy and loaded with facts. But do not let its length deter you or young reader. It’s dense and compels you to delve deeper into the depths of Ben Franklin. But I can tell you that his life is presented in such a way that though it may be non-fiction, it is quite the page turner.

In his Author’s Note, Robert Byrd says to his readers:

                  With a figure as famous as

                  Franklin, there is an abundance

                  of information about his life. I

                  wasn’t going to discover any-

                  thing about him that wasn’t

                  already known, so I had to pick

                  and choose what I thought

                  was informative and visually

                  interesting…..I tried to present

                  events in Franklin’s life in the

                  most intriguing, yet respectful

                  way, and also providing excite-

                  ment and graphic variation with

                  each page turn.

Electric Ben is packed with information on Franklin’s hunger for knowledge, and one can feel the excitement as the book delineates and describes the amazing number of hats this man wore in his rich and varied life.

Do not underestimate the worth of the word “packed”, in Robert Byrd’s extraordinary picture book feat in Electric Ben. The art alone is worth the purchase of this picture book.

But, if you have the patience to plumb its depths with your young reader, both of you will come away in awe of this man among men. Are any of his like still around? I wonder.

Robert Byrd has managed to hone from dry historical facts, a Ben Franklin from youth to old age that is real and robust; a flesh and blood person whose authenticity, far-sightedness and insatiable curiosity was very hard to sate. And thank, heavens it wasn’t. For we are the beneficiaries.

You’ll hear of the Leather Apron Men in Boston who were craftsman and:

    Ben would always hold these artisans

    in high regard. They worked hard and

    were very skilled.

Even from the outset, on the front and rear covers of Electric Ben, the reader will find quotes from this innovator with such a keen mind, he was not content to merely grasp  knowledge, but he had a thirst to disseminate it to others.

Perhaps, one might not think sibling rivalry  an essential topic as regards Robert Byrd’s bio on Ben, but it’s there early on…with a brother that happens to be in the same line of work, as a writer and printer.

You can just hear the howls from brother James, eldest of Josiah and Abiah Folger Franklin’s brood of fourteen children.

Ben, as the youngest, was apprenticed to his brother for nine years, at James’ paper called the New England Courant.

It provided Ben writing opportunities as a 16 year-old; some not to older brother’s liking. For he quickly developed a following all his own under the pen name, Silence Dogood.

And James was furious as Silence champions “women’s right to education and criticized everything from bad poetry to Harvard students.” A brotherly brouhaha ensues and Ben leaves with the quote:

             I had already made myself

obnoxious to the governing

party.

Sailing to Philadelphia, brother James saw to it that Ben was “banned in Boston.” And there he thrives. Writing in the Gazette, a paper owned by a friend, it gives Ben a job, but ever a striver, he soon owns the paper.

And this is just the start of a life that included inventions including the lightning rod, Franklin stove, the famous bifocals and the discovery that lightning WAS electricity.

Not satisfied, there is his political participation as one of the Founding Fathers of a new nation and someone that helped write the Declaration of Independence and a framer of the Constitution no less!

Ben was also the United States Ambassador to France with a voracious and consuming knowledge of science, music, mathematics, history and more.

This book prompted me to get a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac, selling at that time, some 10,000 copies a year, equal to perhaps two million today!

Mr. Byrd has even reprinted a page from the 1733 copy. Here are three quotes from it:

           People who are wrapped up in

          themselves make small packages.

 

Fish and visitors stink in three days.

 

          If you would know the value of money

          try to borrow some.

It was printed for some twenty-five years and made Ben rich, and its readers richer still… in knowledge.

I have to find a copy.

In the meantime, please read Electric Ben by Richard Byrd.

It’s electrifying!

Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper

Translated and illustrated by Marcia Brown

Picture book author Tomie de Paola tweaked my memory bank recently with his art-mail on the birthday of Charles Perrault.

Many of you may know the contributions of this author and member of the Academie Francaise. He basically set the stage for the modern telling of fairy tales taken from his retelling of folk tales.

Perhaps the most famous would be “Cendrillon” or Cinderella.

Even the Grimm Brothers got into the act, retelling his tales some 200 years after Charles Perrault lived and wrote.

Remember, too, that the famous Broadway creative team of Rogers and Hammerstein got into the Cinderella act with a musical version in 1957 of this transformative tale based on Perrault’s Cendrillon ou la Petite Pantoufle de verre. Starring Julie Andrews, and seen on TV, it was seen by millions of viewers. Wonder what Monsieur Perrault would have thought of that? And since then, there have been several more recent TV versions in 1963 and 1997.

Perrault’s legacy to the picture book genre, and even derivatively to movies, is huge.

Please share with your children that, perhaps in their innocence, they truly believe that Walt Disney conceived the idea of Cinderella. Monsieur Perrault, were he here, would beg to differ!

Mais non! Please set them straight as you sit and enjoy this wonderful picture book, precipitated by Charles Perrault’s tales.

Which is a convenient circle back to this 1955 Caldecott Award winning picture book classic by Marcia Brown entitled, what else, Cinderella. Her book is a free translation from the French of Charles Perrault’s story of a girl literally confined, at times, to the cinders of a fireplace.

Ms. Brown’s translation misses none of the essentials of this gentleman’s daughter whose second wife is, shall we say, less than generous to our heroine? The new wife’s own two daughters inherit her sour and bitter disposition as well. But Cinderella is goodness itself:

       The husband had a young daughter

       of his own, but she was sweet and

       good. She took after her mother,

       who had been the best in the world.

Alas, as the fairy tale goes, things are not roses and daffodils in this particular blended family! Not one to complain of her treatment to her papa at the hands of her new family members, I wonder that he must have been absent most of the time or near-sighted not to have seen his daughter’s ill treatment! Thank heavens we have many blended families and step moms in particular today, in sharp contradiction to this one:

         She gave her the vilest household

         tasks; it was Cinderella who scoured

         the pots and scrubbed the stairs,

         Cinderella who polished the bed

         chamber of madame and also those

         of her daughters.

And yes, all the glorious transformations are here in softly tinted pastel drawings that make it all the more dreamlike.

A moonlike pumpkin morphs into “a gilded coach of pure gold.” Meandering mice are transformed by Cinderella’s godmother, who just happened to be a fairy as well. In a twinkling they are changed into “dappled greys.” Rats are reimagined into coachmen and lizards are dragooned in a trice, into footmen.

And what might this tale be without a description of the famous ball gown:

         Her fairy godmother had scarcely

         touched Cinderella with her wand

         when her rags changed into a gown

         of gold and silver, embroidered with

         rubies, pearls and diamonds.

With the midnight admonition in her ears, Cinderella is off to the royal ball. And her future life awaits…. with a few bumpy turns in the road before a royal wedding ensues.

But, here’s the loveliest part, to my mind, of Marcia Brown’s classic picture book tale.

Cinderella forgives her stepsisters for their treatment of her, and even, get this, gives them a home in her palace!

And, what is even more generous, on the same day that Cinderella marries the prince, she finds her stepsisters husbands!

And they are married on the same day as Cinderella, to “two great lords of the court.”

Now that is a true princess worthy of emulation, not for mere physical beauty, but for her generosity of spirit and forgiving nature.

Cinderella’s sense of noblesse oblige is off the charts.

And as the New Yorker stated in its review:

       The pages sparkle with Marcia

       Brown’s exquisite artwork and

       lovely colors.

Please allow the magic of Marcia Brown’s Charles Perrault translation of Cinderella, to weave its magic with your young reader.

It will be a vivid literary reminder of what the transformative melding of both outer and inner beauty in a person can do.

Through this Caldecott winner, it allows  young readers to see a huge change wrought first by magic in one life, but beyond that, in the lives of others. And those changes are not brought about by magic, but solely by the simple humanity of Cinderella, and her treatment of those step sisters, lucky enough to be in her sphere of influence. Beautiful!

And, to my mind, that is the real magic of this classic picture book read. It is one not to be missed.

Little Tree

By Loren Long

Loren Long’s Little Tree gave me a great idea for a “two fer” for young readers; back to back readings of two “tree” themed books.

The first is Hans Christian Andersen’s classic, called The Fir Tree, and the second, is Loren Long’s Little Tree.

Both are stories with a surface tale to tell, but with deeper meanings both you and your young reader may want to talk over, or they may simply intuit on their own.

Trees have always appeared to me as symbols of strength, growth and adaptability to change. They go with the flow, so to speak.  Most change with the seasons and take what comes…gently.

These two authors appear to depict opposite ways of a tree looking at adaptability to change. And there are truly wonderful lessons to be learned in both books!

In The Fir Tree, readers meet a small fir tree in a fresh forest awash with stately firs,  towering tall over him. He can’t wait to be as they are. But their fate, and use, is to be chopped down and carted off to be the masts of tall ships.

The sun and wind admonish him to rejoice in his youth, his fresh growth and in the young life in him. Does the tree listen? Nope! He wants more… the next big thing. Perhaps, Mr. Andersen was keying in to the impatience of youth? Can’t you hear those voices?

      I’ll be happy when… I can stay up late…have a two wheeler…have a sleepover… go to the mall or the movies alone… drive a car… go to high school… go to college… live on my own!

Sound familiar, parents? Well, some maybe not quite yet.

Yet, a passing bird tells the fir tree of a glorious future awaiting decorated trees in a households that he has seen.

The tale unfolds of the fir tree experiencing being felled as a Christmas tree, the excitement and moment of splendor on Christmas Eve as candles glow on his branches, and later he is pillaged of the gifts that fill his branches.

He sadly thinks there are more moments such as these to come, as he ponders his future, and unceremoniously stuffed in a garret.

Yet even here, he is hopeful entertaining the passing parades of mice and rats that listen to his retelling of the tale of Humpty Dumpty, he first heard on Christmas Eve.

What’s next? That seems to be his constant topic of conversation, and sadly the reader knows what’s next for all Christmas trees past their expiration dates!

Savor the moment seems to be the message here; revel in it, bathe in its beauty, and do not wish it too soon gone. For it will never come again. How do we teach our children to embrace and value the now? Just maybe with books such as these!

These are pretty sobering thoughts for a picture book, no? But then, the truly great authors both entertain and enlighten.

Loren Long’s Little Tree takes an entirely different tack:

        “Life is perfect just the way it is.”

He loves those leaves that cool him in the summer’s heat, and as the autumn winds ruffle his leaves, and those of the towering trees in the forest that surround him, he will not let go of his browned and dried up leaves.

The other trees surrender effortlessly to the harsher winds of the coming winter that strip the leaves bare. But not Little Tree.

        Then one by one, the trees began to

        drop their leaves. But not Little Tree.

        He just hugged his leaves tighter.

A squirrel, passing doe and red fox query Little Tree as to “What are you doing with your leaves still on you?” His answer is a tighter grip on what he knows. And the pattern continues as the seasons come and go.

All around him, trees of his original height are now burgeoning with new altitudes and lofty with leaves. But not Little Tree. He is safe and …stuck where is in his comfort zone, clinging tighter as successive  season pass.

At last, one winter, with snow falling in buckets, he looks at the trees, bare limbed that were once his size, now dwarfing him. And he gets it and lets go of his leaves.

Loren Long has written a simple parable about a number of things, and perhaps among them are:

         Let nature take its course. She’s a great teacher.

 

         Don’t be afraid of the unknown.

 

         Too much stubbornness stunts growth.

 

         It takes courage to let go of what

         we know.. to find what we need. 

Time, acceptance and love can be the great healers and facilitators of growth in us as well.

Even though Little Tree feels the harshness of winter minus his leaves, over time

            …something happened.

And hopefully, that something will resonate through the growth cycles of young readers in your own life, as it does wonderfully in the life lessons taught by Loren Long’s Little Tree and The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen.

Growing, whether in child or tree, is a journey and a gift. Sometimes we want to stay where we are because it’s safe.

Children need to sense and savor that fully as it fills them with security, to be sure. And maybe it even works for us for a time.

But, we will never know how far we can journey, if we stay where we are.

The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus

By Jen Bryant; illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Here’s a line from J.M. Barrie in his Peter Pan tongue in cheek description of the bane of children everywhere; the pirate, Captain Hook:

     “The man is not wholly evil – He has a Thesaurus in his cabin.”

Okay, so he’s a literate pirate with a taste for words. I’ll give him that much.

For any budding small authors you may know, they may gain much encouragement from the telling of Peter Roget’s life who began his first book at age eight, calling it: Peter. Mark. Roget. His Book.

Here is a picture book that may intrigue many young readers – and parents as well, for the authors have won a well deserved Caldecott Honor Book Award and The Robert Sibert Medal given for its freshness and ability to make the complex available to young minds. Called “a wonder, a marvel, a surprise” of a book, it was awarded the Sibert Medal in 2015 as “the most distinguished informational book published in English in the preceding year.”

Making Roget’s life available to the youngest readers is no mean task, for he started by fashioning lists of Latin words with their meanings written next to the word.

Melissa Sweet has illustrated his initial lists with a charming, and childlike simplicity in mixed media, that brings the word, its meaning and accompanying picture, alive to the reader.

To illustrate the look of his lists, even some of Ms. Bryant’s text is written in rows as in:

                   But

Peter’s

word

lists

were

not

just

scribbles.

Words

Peter

learned

were

powerful

things.

And

when

he

put

them

in

long,

neat

rows,

he

felt

as if

the

world

itself

clicked

into

order.

Just who was Peter Mark Roget, born in 1779, that compiled plethoras of lists from a very early age?

Well, moving often at a very early age made it difficult for young Peter to form friendships. But he did find fast ones – in books!  And those books had plenty of words!

And science books by the Swedish scientist, Linnaeus, were a particular  favorite of the teenage Peter. Linnaeus made lists as Peter did. Peter wandered through London parks compiling lists of all plants and insects.

His mother had just a smidgen, of “worry” over all these lists and wanderings of Peter’s.  But was “worry” the right word? Why not fret, badger, annoy, plague, provoke or even harass? The choices were endless.

Finding the right word was wonderful!

But what if there were a book, Peter imagined, “one book where one could find the best word that really fit.”

Medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland, followed, working later among the factory poor in London, and always, the lists were his passion.

In 1805, came his first big book of word lists called “Collections of English Synonyms Classified and Arranged.”

He was soon lecturing and inventing everything from portable chess sets to a new math tool.

In 1852, he published his “Thesaurus” from a Greek word meaning “treasure house” and quickly sold 1000 copies.

And today, thanks to this young list maker, EVERYONE has the ability to find just the right word and its meaning.

And it has remained in continuous print to this day!

Ms. Bryant’s text, along with Ms. Sweet’s vibrant, mixed media art, together bring Roget’s story of collective lists and their immense subject trove, alive to a young reader’s picture book sensibility.

A Listing of Principal Events at the end of the book, gives a timeline of his other achievements, as well as what was happening concurrently in similar fields of study.

How’s this for fascinating? In 1824, after casually observing the spokes on the wheel of a passing carriage that appear to bend when seen through vertical window blinds, Roget wrote a scientific paper on optical illusion. And THAT is considered to be one of the founding underpinnings of modern cinematography.

Who knew, realized, perceived, sensed, recognized, or noticed any of this? Not I.

I will now; every time I reach for my Thesaurus!

Who Was Johnny Appleseed?

By Joan Holub; illustrated by Anna DeVito

There are many legends and facts surrounding the folk hero named John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed.

My blog was prompted by our apple harvest of Dandee Reds, Macoun, Honey Crisp, Gala, Fuji, Golden and Red Delicious apples.

Was this man called “Johnny Appleseed” a country dreamer that traveled in a burlap sack with a metal mush pot on his head scattering apple seeds willy nilly….or was he a whole lot more than the legend? Young readers will be very interested in a man that had a dream and a practical side that made it happen.

I wanted to delve a bit deeper into the life of this extraordinary man, born in Leominster, Massachusetts, who traveled west with settlers, as far as Indiana. And all the while, he was planting apples and creating orchards with seeds harvested from cider mills. In fact Mr. Chapman was a pretty savvy business man.

Selecting spots for his apple orchards, he fenced them in with wood from fallen trees. Thus deer and other animals were prevented from helping themselves to his trees. And, apparently he came back regularly to check on them to see how they were fairing.

And he was a sort of door to door salesman, selling his seeds and seedlings to settlers that he came upon as he headed west.

Did you know that most of his trees were wild apple trees? Honey crisp and Fuji, that we grow, and are found in local grocery stores, would have been very unlike his wild fruit variety.

Ms. Holub has done a great job of fleshing out the real John Chapman from the storybook legend. And, it seems the reality of his life was as adventurous as the legend.

Reaching into Pennsylvania and on into Ohio, he had, according to Ms. Holub’s book, an uncanny knack of figuring out the next spot that settlers would head…and arriving before them. And he planted his apple trees there.

Stories filled his head and he relayed them to settlers where he was always welcomed for a tale or two. And he always traveled barefoot! Even in the cold of winter, it was said that the skin at the bottom of his feet was so thick that it was said a rattlesnake couldn’t even bite through it. One did though, while he was clearing a new orchard. Unthinking, he killed the snake and it was said he “felt terrible about it” as he loved all living things.

A popular story said he entered a hollow log in winter to find shelter only to find a mother bear and her cubs ensconced. Rather than remove them, he preferred to sleep in the snow, so they could keep warm. Now that is hospitality!

Coffee burlap sacks were his clothing as fashion was not high on his priority list. He was a “good apple”, helping settlers that needed a hand. And did you know that he was a vegetarian? Berries, grain and potatoes cooked in a pot of pure creek water sufficed for a meal. He refused to kill animals.

He hated fighting and instead of fisticuffs, Johnny  would challenge the man to a tree chopping contest. By the time they were done felling the tree, the man was probably too tired to waste much energy on anger.

By the time he died, there were 27 states and John Chapman had planted apple trees in three of them – Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

And apples must have run in the Chapman family’s blood, as his great great great grandparents also grew them in the 1670’s.

If you want to have your young reader enjoy a fully fleshed out portrait of a man in love with nature and the apple; who has books, songs and stories written about him, and even an official Johnny Appleseed Trail in northern Massachusetts, plus a festival in his honor, then “Who Was Johnny Appleseed?” by Joan Holub is a winner.

I was sad to read that many of the trees he planted would be dead now, but seedlings from some of his trees are still growing outside the Johnny Appleseed Museum in Urbana, Ohio.

Sure would like to plant one of those in our orchard!

**********************************************************************************

The entire “Who Is?” and “Who Was?” series is well worth investing in for your young reader. These are chapter books full of facts and fun stories about real people that will both entertain and enlighten. Even parents and grandparents will be charmed by the easy accessibility of information. Listed is a sampling of the more recent names featured in the books:

Bob Dylan

Helen Keller

Barack Obama

Michelle Obama

J.K. Rowling

Steven Spielberg

Bill Gates

Sally Ride

Henry Ford

Rosa Parks

Maurice Sendak

Walt Disney

George Lucas

Steve Jobs

The Beatles

Neil Armstrong

Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

By Eric A. Kimmel; illustrated by Erika Weihs

We live in an Information Age. We are flooded daily with it in emails and Internet access. It fills our minds and days.

But, do we have time to reflect on it? Probably not much.

It is a good thing for children and adults to have time to reflect on what is going on around us. Maybe we need more intervals in the fast forward pace of life to think about our daily lives; primarily, what is important, what is not, to how we live our lives.

In “Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur”, young readers are given three stories that reflect the three concepts surrounding these High Holy Days in the Jewish religion. And the concepts are Prayer, Repentance and Charity.

In a world where any news headline of the day feed our minds with a bit of apprehension about the state of things, the three concepts that are mentioned in the book, are a pretty good place to start reflecting on how we live our lives in relationship with other people.

The book contains three stories of people that model religious concepts, implemented in a real and imperfectly challenging world.

Here are stories of malice overcome, a simple song of praise sung in a field, that has as much sincerity as one said in a holy place of worship, and lastly, a miracle made visible to a couple that perform a simple act of kindness.

As people of the Jewish faith approach these times of reverence and profound reflection with their young ones, perhaps books such as “Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur” may be a fine place to see those religious concepts evidenced in day to day events.

For God can be seen, and even needed, in that day to day hustle and bustle of life, and, in our interactions with each other, felt just as profoundly, as in the Temple or church.

And in the three stories, entitled “The Samovar,” ( one of the oldest and best known stories in Jewish folklore outside the Bible), “The Shepherd” (found in a collection of Jewish legends) and “Rabbi Eleazer and the Beggar,” (originally version found in the Talmud), Eric Kimmel, with art by Erika Weihs, makes the invisible, very visible for young readers.

Mr. Kimmel, in “A Personal Note,” bills himself as a storyteller, as differentiated from a folklorist, who he determines to be a “scholar that strives to be extremely precise about a story’s sources.” Here is his definition of a storyteller:

           “A storyteller, on the other hand,

is an artist, one link in a long chain

of storyteller that goes back before

the beginnings of recorded history.

A storyteller sees stories as living

things, constantly growing and

changing.

Storytellers always add something of

themselves to the stories they tell.

That is their art.”

I hope the storytelling here, adds to the reverence and importance of these High Holy Days.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Liz discusses Fireboat, by Maira Kalman, as a special book to share with a young reader around the topic of September 11.

Growing Up Pedro

By Matt Tavares

Baseball season, and the crack of the bat brings crowds craning their necks to their feet to see how far the ball will go.

But just how how far will it go is always the question? And more than that, just how far did the player have to come, to get where he is?

Matt Tavares has written, illustrated and thrown the perfect game of a picture book, when it comes to telling the sibling story of the Ramirez Brothers, named Ramon and Pedro.

Starting in the Dominican Republic in 1981, with Pedro watching his older and admired brother pitch in fields, it chronicles the patient and persistent climb of these two baseball pitching brothers.

Though the book centers mainly on the achievements of Pedro; a Cy Young Award winner, pitcher at the All-Star game eight times, and pitcher of six no-hit games that sent the Red Sox to the American League Championship Series, it is Ramon that is his guide, and a pitcher in his own right.

Matt Tavares paints a very detailed portrait of a fully focused Pedro who is all seriousness and focus on the field, yet on days when he doesn’t pitch…he isn’t so serious.

One night in order to quell the high spirited talking, laughing, joking and dancing Pedro, his teammates “tape him to a pole in the dugout.”He loved it!

Interesting point though, when I mentioned the book to my husband, he said that Pedro was, as he put it, an “intimidating”pitcher. I took that to mean he might be a wee bit menacing, as his pitches sometimes came a mite close to the batter.

Still, Matt Tavares’picture book had me hooked from the first, and I am not a die hard baseball fan. His full page painting portraying the intensity and concentration on Pedro’s face as he pitches, is just as revealing as the words on this picture book page.

I think young readers, baseball fans or no, will benefit from dreams realized of two brothers named Martinez, that planned of playing together in the major leagues.

And, more than that, they had both the talent and tenacity to make it happen!

Otto the Owl Who Loved Poetry

By Vern Kousky

“To be an individual in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else, is an accomplishment,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. And it’s probably one of the hardest truisms for young ones to learn. 

If they can somehow come to an understanding of it early in their lives, so much the better, or else they might spend a good deal of their young lives unlearning how to be a people pleaser.

This is an example of where a picture book is worth more than a thousand words, explanations, examples or prompts from parents.

In his debut picture book, Vern Kousky introduces young readers to a young owl named Otto who loves odes and other forms of poetry. He adores Keats, Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, with a smattering of Christina Rossetti, Joyce Kilmer and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Instead of hunting, hooting and roosting in the hollows of trees, this owl is declaiming poetry from its branches. He is not in what is considered the normal arc of young owl activity – and he feels it; painfully.

While others of his breed are out roosting, he is reading. And while they are out hunting for prey, he’s out making friends with the prey. Hmmm.

This is not your average owl, and thank goodness he isn’t. He can recite poetry from a branch at night in clear tones that ring out into the night sky:

              “Let us go then, you and I,

             When the evening is spread out

             against the sky……”

Eliot would have reveled to hear this young Otto the owlet speak those words trippingly from his young tongue.

But alas, his peer group is not of the same mind, and takes to calling him, “Blotto the Bard.”

Otto asks the same generally phrased question of the universe that kids have asked since time began, and the torment of teasing arose with it. “Why do all the owls tease me?” What could be wrong with poetry.”

Seeking approval of the peer group? Very bad. Solution? He decides to cut and run. Not a grand idea.

Yet, his rash decision does propel him into a sort of ode to the moon; his first poem! And he finds listeners among the forest folk that pelt him with cries of “More!” “More!”

He comes to the revelatory discovery that poetry is to be shared and enjoyed by the group, and so, when a trio of owls appears, he recites:

                “I’m nobody! Whooo are you?

               Are you nobody, too?……”

And soon this poetry thing is catching on like a woods afire. Another owl recites:

         “Whooo has seen the wind?

         Neither I nor you:

         But when the leaves hang trembling

         The wind is passing through…”

The young owl becomes a trend setter as poetic words fly through the night air when poetry becomes accepted by his former foes, and even, dare I say it, enjoyed!

Mr. Kousky has stumbled upon a sweetly unique tale of how to teach an important lesson to young readers: to remain an individual among ones peers by being an original.

For you see Otto now knows, as we all do, that originals are ALWAYS worth more than a copy!

Instructions

By Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Charles Vess

I’ve heard this book compared to Dr. Seuss’s book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” Tons of this Dr. Seuss title are sold this time of year, I hear, as a traditional gift for grads going into the wide, wide world. It’s a shrinking world and a shape shifting one that the newly minted diploma and degree conferred upon are riding into, after years in the “groves of academe.”

But Neil Gaiman’s small-sized book with the subtitle of “Everything you’ll need to know on the journey” may be small in size, but it’s filled with as terse a wisdom as the Brothers Grimm stories.

With its gorgeous illustrations by Charles Vess of a fairy tale landscape, it opens with the simple request to say “Please”  before you open the latch to the path that beckons. This simple set of directives is so clear, so true, so humanely appealing:

   “If any creature tells you that it hungers,

   feed it.

   If it tells you that it is dirty,

   clean it.

   If it cries to you that it hurts,

   ease its pain.”

 

The puss in boots wanderer is told, when he stands at the top of a deep well, that if he opts to turn back at this critical point, “you can walk back safely; you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.”

He is told that “dragons have one soft spot”, “hearts can be well hidden” and not to lose hope…”what you seek will be found.”

                   “Trust dreams

                   Trust your heart

 

                 and trust your story.”

 

The unassuming advice of “Do not forget your manners”is mixed with much deeper assurances in the suggestion, “Do not look back.”

But the ending is very reminiscent of Dorothy’s journey in “The Wizard of Oz”:

          “When you reach the little house

           the place your journey started,

   you will recognize it, although it will seem

           much smaller than you remember.”

 

 

             “And then go home

             And make a home.

             Or rest.”

 

Neil Gaiman has written a fairy tale for those on a journey this summer, this year, and this lifetime.

Enjoy the book and the ride. Trust yourself in that, as someone wise once said, you can be in the world, what you want to see there.

Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes

illustrated by Quentin Blake

Young kids are somehow or other charmed by the appeal of the yucky. In fact, the yuckier the better. Witness the appeal associated with JK Rowling’s candies that appeared in the Harry Potter series. Remember the ones that surprised “muggles” and wizards alike with their taste when you popped them in your mouth? They were called Bertie’s Botts Every Flavor Bean. Some were, shall we say, revolting. Beans with flavor recalling something emanating from one’s nose was one you could inadvertently come across in the choices, and that is but one with the ick factor that comes to mind. For the sake of delicacy, I shall not go further.

Playful, with just a smattering of the icky might well describe this recipe filled book for hungry kids, taken from titles of foods named in Roald Dahl’s books. I’m willing to bet that readers were just itching to taste some of the deliciously deviant things named in Dahl’s reads.

How about Eatable Marshmallow Pillows and Lickable Wallpaper from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, Stink Bugs’ Eggs, and Mosquitoes’ Toes and Wimpish Roes Most Delicately Fried from “James and the Giant Peach?” And my all time favorite might be The Enormous Crocodile, who, when finished, could well serve as a party centerpiece! Beware the coat hangar inserted to keep him whole!

Bruce Bogtrotter’s Cake from “Matilda” looked yummy and Boggis’s Chicken taken from “Fantastic Mr. Fox” actually looked quite tempting.

When you pair these tempting treats with Quentin Blake’s recognizably iconic Dahl book art style, you may find yourself pulling out the pots and pans with the kids to give these recipes a go.

With more leisure time for fun things ahead this summer, I think it might be a great pairing of the actual shared reading of Roald Dahl’s wondrously witty books, right along with these tempting treats his books evoke.

Don’t be a bit surprised if the first treat the kids ask to make is Stickjaw for Talkative Parents, credited to Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Yum! Always wanted to learn how to make meringues!

Poetry of Earth

Selected and illustrated by Adrienne Adams

Thought I might hit a veritable trifecta here, with one title meeting all three criterion that I was aiming for. Adrienne Adams’ title hits the mark with her glorious picture book aptly fitting in with April’s National Poetry Month, a Way Back Wednesday classic picture book designation AND its subject matter dovetailing with the celebration of Earth Day 2015 on April 22nd. How’s that for a triple threat for young readers in one title?

Did you know that Earth Day started way back in the 1970’s? For many it marks, as a website quotes, “the birth of the modern environmental movement.”

Way back in 1962, author Rachel Carson began the run up to concern for the environment with her New York Times bestseller, “Silent Spring.” It generated with its sale of 500,000 copies in 24 countries, a call for public awareness of concern for the gradation of the environment and by inference, its impact on public health.

Change is a hard thing to measure and it is usually only measurable AFTER it has occurred.

That is why the picture book’s value in its ability to both entertain and enlighten, is so underrated in some quarters in the sometimes headlong drive to get to the chapter book. So much is missed and discounted in what the picture book has offered in the past and continues to offer in the present. And Ms. Adams’ book is a perfect example.

Adrienne Adams is the winner of two Caldecott Honor books in 1960 and 1962 for “The Day We Saw the Sun Come Up” and “Houses From The Sun”. Both were done with text by Alice E. Goudey.

She is also the illustrator of ALA notable books for her Grimm’s Brothers versions of “The Shoemaker and the Elves, ”Jorinde and Joringel,” and “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen.

In “Poetry of the Earth,” Ms. Adams has chosen thirty-three poems from renowned poets such as Robert Frost, Randall Jarrell, Carl Sandburg, William Butler Yeats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, celebrating everything from buffaloes to bats, snails to specks, sandhill cranes to squirrels and tiger lilies to tortoises.

Listen to this small sample from Robert Frost’s, “Dust of Snow”:

                 “The way a crow

                 Shook down on me

                 The dust of snow

                From a hemlock tree”

 

                 Has given my heart

                 A change of mood

                 And saved some part

                 Of a day I had rued.”

Young readers, once you get past their understanding of the word, “rued”, will certainly get the visceral feeling of how one single moment can change a day; one small second in time can change a minute from moody to merry. Kids do it all the time; it’s part of being a child!

And its impetus for them can be a poem, a line from a book, a hug, a smile, or a touch of the hand.

Let Earth Day this year, and books that echo both the shelter and nourishment it gives humanity, be the jumping off spot for a teachable moment with young readers. Share books with them that celebrate how wonderful and healing the earth can be; what a sacred space it is, and how much it is in our care.

Below is a link to 50 fun and engaging hands on Earth Day Activities for young ones.

http://tinkerlab.com/fifty-earth-day-activities/

A Day’s Work

By Eve Bunting; illustrated by Ronald Himler

Maybe you’ve them seen; workers standing in the early morning hours. They gather huddled in groups drinking coffee trying to get warm. And waiting for work.

At a certain hour, trucks and vans pull up and eager workers hop in. Maybe someone needs a laborer or a gardner, bricklayer or some other job – for a day.

You’ve heard the phrase, “A day’s work for a day’s pay”or “It’s all in a day’s work.”

Tens of millions of undocumented immigrants seem to be waiting for just that every day; just a days work.

I’m not going to argue the legalities involved here or the moral imperatives to finding a just and legal solution to this conundrum that has galvanized a nation’s frustration on both sides of the argument for years.

But, that is what I love about picture books. They can bring issues such as immigration to the fore for children with stories accompanied by wonderful art that both prompt questions from readers and also points sometimes, in a direct or indirect way, to simple ways to build character in a child. I venture to say that your young reader may have plenty of questions for you after sharing this book.

Eve Bunting’s picture book, “A Day’s Work” and the earthy artistry of Ronald Himler does just that.  It provides a window on a new elderly, immigrant carpenter turned gardener for a day.

How his abuelo or grandfather, shapes the life of his young grandson, Francisco, through his reaction to the grandson’s telling of a lie in order to get work for his grandfather is revelatory and character building.

Abuelo, newly come to California to live with his daughter speaks no English. His grandson in a generational role reversal acts as interpreter and guide, in the scrambling shape up for jobs.

Hired for a weeding job on a hillside for one day culminates in a misunderstanding of what’s what in the identification of chickweeds versus plants! A botched job results and Mr. Benjamin, the new boss is angry.

But the soft spoken abuelo, a just and honest man realizes his hirer has been fibbed to by Francisco, in his grandson’s eagerness to obtain the $60 daily wage for the two of them. This is unacceptable to abuelo and must be rectified.

As abuelo and Francisco replant the entire bank of flowers, refusing even half the wage until the entire job is completed as promised, a young boy has modeled to him what a man’s word and integrity mean.

It is a question of honor…and honor is rewarded, because in the words of Mr. Benjamin, “The important things your grandfather knows already. And I can teach him gardening.”

Named a Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, it was also named a 1994 Americas Commended Title by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs.

Intergenerational books are some of my favorites. And here in Eve Bunting’s touching tale of old and young learning what’s important from one another, the wisdom of age sometimes trumps the young’s ability to interpret the world.

Was it MLK, Jr. that said something akin to, and I am paraphrasing here, “An education devoid of values is like a ship without a rudder.” Well said.

Francisco has been guided true north by the compass of his abuelo’s conscience and the content of his character. They will both be alright!

Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version

By Philip Pullman

A picture book author friend of mine put me on to this title. I’m pretty excited to share it with all of you parents, grands and just about any one that reads to children.

Just a thumbnail sketch of who the author is might read that Mr. Pullman’s previous “Dark Materials” is a three book trilogy.

The first book was made into a movie in 2007 called “The Golden Compass”with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Did not do so wonderfully well at the box office here, and, in an article I read as I was writing this piece, indicated the less than stellar box office performance was due in part to a reaction from some people’s concerns that it might be anti-Christian in tone or promote atheism to children. That said, here is his book on fairy tales that is great.

Did you know that we celebrated recently the 200th anniversary, of the first volume publishing of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s book called “Children’s and Household Tales?” That event provided the impetus for this book, in fact.

Our imaginations have reveled in these tales for two hundred years. And here, Mr. Pullman takes 50 of his favorites and retells them. One of its highlights are the “Commentaries” he includes at the end of each tale. These are small gems that provide a window into the tales’ sources, their various forms over the years and why their appeal has lasted. Have my own ideas on that topic, too. Fairy tales are not just entertaining. They allow children to confront unconscious fears they cannot name, but only imagine.

Witness the story of “Hansel and Gretel.” Here the fear might be called abandonment or a loss of one’s parents. The tales are both entertaining AND therapeutic in a way!

Mr. Hoffman has included the popular favorites such as “Cinderella”, “Hansel and Gretel”, “Rumpelstiltskin”and “Rapunzel.”

But, I was excited to see some of the lesser known titles that I remember were included in a book with golden imprinting on the front and a red binding that my mom gave us. I still have it and it too had some of the lesser known tales Mr. Hoffman includes here: “Jorinda and Joringel” “The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces”, and “Bearskin.”

The American poet, James Merrill is quoted in the introduction to this book. He discusses two characteristics of the fairy tale: the “serene anonymous voice”that relates the narrative and the collection of stock characters that inhabit the tales.

Perhaps you might try a bit of an experiment with your young readers. I am planning to do the same with my story time 3-5 year olds. Ask them to “imagine” the story! Ask them to picture the setting, characters and action in their minds. Perhaps start off with the shorter tales and move on from there.

I’m convinced young ones need small, continual doses of this kind of reading. Their world is literal and very visual. The technology that floods their days, while admittedly amazing, and a continuing part of the world they will grow up in, may not allow the time or leisure to build the imaginative mind nor their attention span.

This book, I believe, is a way for your child to build BOTH.

And there is an extra bonus here. You, too can be re-enchanted as you read some favorites from your own childhood and discover some new ones from the brothers Grimm.

Do you remember the phrase “spinning a yarn” that refers to telling a story? Well, what miller’s daughter, do you remember, spun straw into gold and was backed into a bargain by a tiny man with a silly name?

Did you know that having a mate that could spin was a much prized skill set in a wife in days gone by? And, if she could spin AND produce gold, so much the better. So, the king in “Rumpelstiltskin”  must have thought he was receiving a very worthy prize by marrying the miller’s daughter, no? Bet HE couldn’t spin worth a dime! Found these pieces of info in the “Commentaries” following each tale.

Spin your own straw into gold by reading the pages of this wonderful book to young readers on these rainy spring afternoons and evenings. Transport both of you to a compelling and pretty complete collection of Jacob and Wilhelm’s tales.

Celebrate their storytelling anniversary that’s lasted 200 years and counting….and still continues!

Who Was Abraham Lincoln?

“Honest Abe,” “The Great Emancipator”, “The Rail-Splitter” or any number of other nicknames are among those given to this 16th president of the United States. They are all part of his amazing story in “Who Was Abraham Lincoln?”, just one volume in the “Who Was…? series. I recommend this series highly if you want your young reader to have more than a thumb nail sketch of Abraham Lincoln.

February 12th was the birthday of this giant in the annals of history that came from poverty, had a year of schooling, was a self taught lawyer, member of Congress from Springfield, Illinois, debating whiz, and President during the wrenching Civil War that divided a country, and sometimes pitted brother against brother.

In eleven chapters, your child AND you will meet this 6’4” man born in Hodgenville, Kentucky that preserved a union and is enshrined in history books, our hearts and his behemoth memorial in Washington, D.C.

Most presidents are achievers, pretty complicated and Lincoln is no exception here. In this illustrated biography, you will read about the man and some facts you may not know that reveal his lighter side. Did you know he was a practical joker? I didn’t. I love the intimate portrait painted of this very human historical giant that suffered from depression.

The book ends with “The Gettysburg Address” (had to memorize that in school – talk about pithy and profound) and a Timeline of events in Lincoln’s life. Additionally, this book gives a side by side Timeline of what was happening in the world at the same time. Did you know that Charles Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe were born in the same year as Lincoln?

With the emergence of Presidents Day, we have begun a tradition of honoring all Presidents on a single day. And so, giants like Abraham Lincoln no longer seem to have the day to themselves. They should, and “Who Was Abraham Lincoln?” and February 12th perfectly combine to do just that for your young reader!

Hey, having trouble getting your boy to read? The “Who Was…?” series introduces people like the famous Lincoln, but also men like Elvis, Harry Houdini, Babe Ruth and Dr. Seuss to them. Great jumpstart series for boys too!      

Different Like Coco

By Elizabeth Matthews

The eyes of the world have been focused on Paris for very tragic reasons in recent weeks. And it may seem frivolous to mention in light of those past events, but this time the eyes of the fashion world will again be focused there as I recently read that Paris Fashion Week is just around the corner. Silly? Haute couture? Meaningless? For some that may be true, but somewhere in the world is a child dreaming of being another Coco Chanel or Hubert Givenchy. They may be saying to themselves, “What will people say?” “What will mom and dad say, if I tell them I am interested in being a DESIGNER?”

Perhaps here’s a picture book to put into the dreaming, designing hands of a young reader, either girl OR boy!

Coco Chanel was an original, holding her own against the wealthier well-bred young girls of the Paris of her time. She thought being different was an advantage in itself.

In a world where being true to who you are can come with a very high price tag, I think it is important to show it can be done without sacrificing your integrity or belief in yourself. That’s a very important message for young women or men to hear when so much of how they define themselves today can come from externals such as clothes, body image, popularity and the number of “Likes” on their Facebook page.

Coco Chanel was an innovator who brought her own brand of style based on an ease, simplicity and practicality. These were things that suited her own sense of style, yet caught the imagination of a generation in what they represented for everyday working woman. And Elizabeth Matthews’ picture book is a tribute to that journey from a rather deprived childhood to the heights of the world of fashion.

And who else but the inimitable Katherine Hepburn could play Coco on Broadway when her life became a musical. Talk about independent women playing independent women!

The inside front and end covers of the picture book are filled with Chanel quotes, such as “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”, and my favorite is “How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.” They add a keen insight into the thinking of this fashionable icon.

When I read this book, I kept remembering a quote I heard that goes something like, “ What would I attempt in life, if I knew I could not fail?” There are no guarantees such as that in real life.

It’s a wonderful thing to put a book in a young child’s hands that shows them that there are people who DO just that, they believe unerringly in themselves, and feel it is worth following the road less traveled.

Have your young reader follow the fashionable dreams of Coco and her Paris fashion life, and let them dream of what is possible.

Hanukkah At Valley Forge

By Stephen Krensky, illustrated by Greg Harlin

With the arrival of the celebration of Hanukkah, I wanted to revisit a special book I have spoken about before; Hanukkah at Valley Forge. In 2007 this book received The Sydney Taylor Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries given in recognition of picture books and also those for teens that authentically reflect the Jewish experience. Here, the book’s vivid watercolor illustrations coupled with Mr. Krensky’s fictionalized retelling of a historically researched anecdote come together for what I think is a powerful picture book.

Stephen Krensky’s book, Hanukkah at Valley Forge, combines history and holiday in an interesting way. The parallels of American and Jewish history intertwine on a bitterly cold winter evening at Valley Forge. Faced with increasing uncertainty and mounting odds, General George Washington meets a Polish immigrant observing the first night of Hanukkah with the lighting of the candles there amidst the fading hope of Washington’s ragtag colonial army.

Common themes of man’s need to hope in the face of increasing despair and the price of liberty’s cause, echo in the meeting of these two men at a pivotal point in our nation’s early history. Some historical accuracy was apparently discovered in the research of the book, and it is left to the reader to wonder if chance meetings sometimes turn the tides of men and war.

Thanksgiving Is a Time of Giving Thanks

Turkey Day is just around the corner and families are already making plans to gather.

Thanksgiving is a time of giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy – our homes, our harvests and the time we spend with our families. In our current culture, that time seems increasingly to be disappearing with the rapidity of cranberry, turkey and stuffing off a Thanksgiving platter.

Many stores today are impinging on that ever closing window of family time, even on traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving. They are opening on Thanksgiving Day itself to get a jump on the traditional kick-off of the holiday shopping season, termed by retailers as “Black Friday.” I often wondered why that particular term was adopted, but I guess it’s because retailers have a grand opportunity to get into “the black” or plus side of the profit ledger on THAT day, if they haven’t been all year. I am certainly NOT against retailers, profits by any means, nor a vigorous economy, but can we hold the cash register “ka ching” till AFTER the turkey has at least cooled?

Stores are starting to try and outdo themselves with earlier and earlier opening times on Thanksgiving Day. Macy’s may have been one of the first to kick it off following its grand daddy of all Thanksgiving Day Parades, with the air barely let out of those lofty balloons of Superman and Snoopy, than the doors of Macy’s swing open at 6pm, two hours earlier than last year, to shoppers jamming their store for bargains!

ToysRUs is opening at 5pm not to be outdone. Best Buy will open also at 6pm on Thanksgiving Day and here’s one I had to blink to believe was true. Kmart shoppers attention: IT will open at 8am! That’s right, they will open in the morning, in case you would like to pop the bird in and then get a little shopping done BEFORE the guests arrive.

Maybe I am sounding just a mite peevish over this, but sometimes BIG changes in a culture happen so gradually, we rarely take issue until it’s a done deal. All right maybe this might be an over reaction on my part, and people should have the right to shop when they want to, even at the cost of family time. BUT, those stores must be staffed with OTHER people that might not have had the option to work on a day they might have preferred to lie on the couch after the turkey, and be lulled with tryptophan from the bird – with a good book. Great idea! and here’s a thought: maybe that shopping time could be better spent reading to a captive audience of small children gathered, and now sated at the feast, that famous six stanza poem by Lydia Maria Child, “Over the River And Through the Wood”. Plus, here are a great selection of others to choose from:

 

The Night Before Thanksgiving – Natasha Wing

In Every Tiny Grain of Sand – Reeve Lindbergh

Balloons Over Broadway – Melissa Sweet

Turkey Riddles – Katy Hall

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie – Alison Jackson

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims – B.G. Hennessy

The First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Book – Lauren Kraus Melmed; illus. Mark Buehner

Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving – Laurie Halse Anderson

The Firefighters’ Thanksgiving – Maribeth Bolts; illus. by Terry Widener

 

And so, as Dickens’ Bob Cratchit intoned to his family on another holiday, “To the founder of the feast!”, and as far as I’m concerned, those founders would probably agree with me, and ask us to put off our shopping for just one more day!!

Mr. Wayne’s Masterpiece

By Patricia Polacco

School is back in session at the same time that one of my favorite picture book authors, Ms. Patricia Polacco, offers her newest picture book and it is reason to celebrate on so many levels.Artistically and narratively, her books are a joy to read. They draw you in immediately and hold you till the end.

Her books speak to children’s vulnerabilities, uncertainties, fears and doubts in a variety of situations. Bullying, disabilities that can hamper learning, shyness, and family problems are but a few of the issues some of her picture books address. I love that she never attempts to sugar coat or gloss over the very real emotions and feelings that children may encounter in any or all of the situations that may come their way. YET, there is always SOMEONE in her picture books that helps the child overcome those feelings and, in the end, conquer what have seemingly been roadblocks to learning AND growth. I am also very gratified to see that in many of her books, that person happens to be a male OR female teacher!

If you read “The Art of Miss Chew”, “Thank you, Mr. Falker”, “Bully” and the above, “Mr. Wayne’s Masterpiece”, Ms. Polacco has mirrored a life changing instance ( in many cases, it may well have been her own), in a child’s life that has paved the way for a more confident, emotionally healthy future adult. More often that not, it was because of the direct and caring words and actions of a teacher that recognIzed a need that had yet to be addressed in a child – and met. They meet it NOT by providing a way out, but by ACCOMPANYING the child THROUGH IT with words of encouragement and sincere belief in the child’s abilities when the child does not possess that courage and belief in themselves as yet. That is one of the reasons why teachers DO effect eternity in that their words echo throughout a child’s life.

Meet Trisha who has a very hard time with public speaking. She halts and hesitates through the reading of book reports to be read aloud in class. Trisha is smart, but lacks confidence in her own abilities. Do you know a Trisha? I have met many in my time in the classroom and it is so heartening to see them blossom through a word, a gesture, or a special note of praise. Sometimes, in a very busy day in a classroom, those are the moments that stand out.

For that is just what Trisha needs, and she gets it from the collaborative efforts of two teachers named Mr. Tranchina and the drama coach, Mr. Wayne, who has just composed a play for a school production.

Mr. Tranchina is the facilitator here in that he recognizes Trisha’s talents as a writer and connects her with the drama teacher. Mr. Wayne, in turn immediately notices her reticence to be front and center, yet sees her talent can be cultivated and nursed “behind the scenes.” Her facility also lies in the arts and painting! Remind you of anyone, yet? It should, to Polacco fans.

The winter play called “Musette in the Garden Snow” involves a girl, her friends and a mysterious garden, and as Trisha half listens backstage, she finds herself mouthing EVERYONE’S LINES, INCLUDING MUSETTE’S!!!

Circumstances find Trisha facing a daunting opportunity to take over the role of Musette with a mixture of trepidation and terror oddly mixed with a talent that will not be denied!

Children may find themselves identifying wholeheartedly with Trisha as she faces her fears and finds herself onstage and in command, and “on fire” as she fully embraces the energy of the performing arts.

I asked my actress daughter to explain to me what it feels like onstage. “Mom, she said, “It’s this energy that you give out to the audience and they pass it back to you. And when it”s working perfectly, it’s an exhilaration akin to hitting the “sweet spot” on a tennis racket.” It’s a volley that just continues throughout the play and it’s a feeling like no other.”

Trisha, thanks to those two teachers – AND a supportive mom, gets her moment to feel it too!

They say in life it’s the things you DON”T do that you regret the most, and in “Mr. Wayne’s Masterpiece”, his creative effort is not merely his play, but the newly confident Trisha, herself.

I count myself so fortunate to have had at least TWO such teachers in MY life! Each time I tell a story to a group of children, I can see their faces in the children’s eyes!!

New Year at the Pier: A Rosh Hashanah Story

By April Halprin Wayland; illustrated by Stephane Jorisch

Our world is indeed a small place and getting smaller by the day. Events that occur a world away affect us here at home. And our children are coming in contact via news availability, in our generation shown only on the 6 o’clock news, but now on iphones and ipads, putting the world and its conflicts at kids’ fingertips.

How can we insulate our children from this? We can’t. BUT, we can make them aware through reading of the multicultural world they will grow up in. They will meet children of differing faiths from their own and it is important at an early age to nurture a growing understanding and respect for these faiths and their accompanying traditions.

The picture book is a perfect place to start this journey as people of the Jewish faith begin the celebration of Rosh Hashanah the evening of Wednesday, September 24th. Enter “New Year at the Pier: A Rosh Hashanah Story.”

In my research for this particular blog, I came across some interesting information as regards the celebration. It is not merely the wishing of Happy New Year as we all do at the turning of the calendar page on December 31. It is the wishing of “L’shanah tovah” or “a good year.” And though happiness is part of the mix, the “good” that can be affected by one person towards another in the new year is the important factor. The “happiness” part is a by product of the doing of good. I like that a lot. In this “me” centered world, it’s an important reminder to our children that the accumulation of things is not at the heart of what makes us human, but our ability to give meaning to the lives we live. And part of that process is to admit our mistakes.

Author April Wayland Halprin has a particular way of observing Rosh Hashanah. Living near the sea, she tosses pieces of bread into the water with each piece representing a “regret” of something done in the year past. It is her way of “letting go” and starting the year freshly. It is the ceremony called Tashlich – naming the things we wish we hadn’t done and apologizing.

Her book opens with young Izzy and Marion writing on pieces of paper the things THEY are sorry for in the past year. While Izzy’s senses are filled with the change of the seasons and the parts he especially loves of Rosh Hashanah – the honey, apples and the sound of the shofar – he remembers the Tashlich ceremony as an equally important part of the celebration.

Kids can follow Rabbi Neil and his group of fellow penitents to the pier to toss their mistakes, symbolized by bread upon the waters.

But Izzy has one mistake he has trouble confronting. It is one he has doubts will be forgiven, as it involves the telling of a friend’s embarrassing secret. Will he be forgiven?

And Izzy has more than one person to ask for pardon as he has lost his mom’s ring, AND there’s that Mrs. Bickerson with her cohort of canines. You get the idea.

Stephane Jorisch”s soft pastel pictures of Izzy et al. make the ceremony of Tashlich a handsomely healing event for the reader.

May this be a truly “good year” for those of the Jewish faith – and for all of us.  

Poem Depot

Aisles of Smiles

Poems and drawings by Douglas Florian

Imagine a supermarket with aisles of poetry. Take a cart and wander up and down 11 aisles of puns, jokes, wit, belly laughs and just rhyming fun for the picture book set – and parents too! Couldn’t let April aka National Poetry Month, close out without a tip of the hat to Douglas Florian’s latest, called Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles.

Poetry, and the idea of it, can set kids running in the opposite direction! Maybe that’s because they haven’t been introduced to the poems that tickle their funny bones first and make them giggle. Time enough for the classic side, as their tastes mature. But for now, kids are masters at enjoying the ridiculous and silly. It’s a shame we adults lose that so quickly under the shoulder of adult responsibilities and the desire to be taken seriously! Serious comes quickly enough, so why not get in touch with your silly side again, and let your kids see someone that both YOU and THEY haven’t seen in a while! And this may just be the book to start you down that road this April. Read the poems aloud and laugh long and lyrically – together. Or maybe if it’s too much of a leap all at once, try a simple chuckle first.

Any actor will tell you it’s much harder to do comedy than it is to do the dramatic. It’s the timing, delivery and the language all intertwined. Mr. Florian has a gift in that regard for the “language of laughter.” And in Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles, his simple pen and ink drawings are the perfect complement to the poetry. He’s smart enough to let the words stand on their own with just the right touch of whimsy in the art to set the poetry off right!

His previous books like Laugh-eteria connect with kids and the funny things that happen in a child’s world. He is the winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins and Claudia Lewis awards. And speaking of Lee Bennett Hopkins, here is a man that has done much to foster the love, laughter and language of poetry in the younger set. If you have a chance, please also take a peek at HIS books too. Lee Bennett Hopkins is “one of America’s most prolific anthologists of poetry for young people”, says Anthony L. Manna in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. Try Days to Celebrate, Give Me Wings, Hand in Hand, I Am the Book, and the devilishly delicious, Nasty Bugs. These are some great compilations to whet the appetite of children for the dense compact language of poetry.

But first, just try a sample from Mr. Florian’s Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles:

                                                         Scared

 

                                         I’m scared of wild animals:

                                       Of lions, tigers, bears.

                                        I’m scared of climbing mountains,

                                       Or falling off of chairs.

                                       I’m mortified of monsters,

                                     Or each and every ghost.

                                     Next Thursday is a science test-

                                      And that scares me the most.

Can YOU relate? I can, and so will your young readers as they wander up and down the aisles of this depot filled with the sometimes silly, scary and searching world of childhood.

You’ll find ME in Aisle 6: Tons of Puns. Love’em and so will you!