The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall

The Storytelling Animal; How Stories Make Us Human
Jonathan Gottschall
ISBN: 9780547391403
Read June 26, 2014
Nonfiction; imagination and story, anthropology, sociology


This is a really good read.  Gottschall pokes at biology, evolution, anthropology, ethnography, and sociology, and even a few dream studies, to give a well-rounded view of this instinct for story and creative play that all humans share.  Excellent read.

American Girl: Isabelle, Designs by Isabelle, To the Stars Isabelle, by Laurence Yep

American Girl's 2014 Doll of the Year is Isabelle, and while I've never owned an American Girl doll (I wish I had that kind of money) I am always very impressed with the books that go along with them.

Isabelle is a ballet dancer living in Washington DC with her older sister (also a ballerina) and her museum-curator/fabric-artist mother and hospital administrator/jazz-musician father.  Despite her skills in costume and fashion design, Isabelle feels like she's shadowed by the dancing talent of her older sister Jade, and also struggles with a classmate who is prickly and meanspirited.

All read June 25, 2014

Isabelle
ISBN: 9781609583712
Introduces the character as she practices for a school recital, performing choreography that is proving difficult to master.

Designs by Isabelle
ISBN: 9781609583729
Chosen as part of the cast of a modern-day Nutcracker, Isabelle helps her older sister adjust to a growth spurt, and uses her design talents to help improve the costumes, but her own part in the show is causing her trouble.

To the Stars, Isabelle
ISBN: 9781609583736
After mastering her role in the Nutcracker, Isabelle is thrilled when her dance idol chooses her as part of a small outreach program to perform in nursing homes and hospitals, but performing in impromptu locations proves to be a challenge, and Isabelle needs her sister Jade's support to feel inspired.

These three are written by the award-winning (and very good) author Laurence Yep, and he does a very good job within the obvious strictures of the extremely socially-conscious American Girl framework.  With him at the helm, obviously-included mentions and characters almost seem like grace-notes, and less like a rigid requirement. Doubtful that younger readers will even notice, making these nearly-seamless inclusions even more important.

The Revenant of Thraxton Hall, Vaughn Entwistle

The Revenant of Thraxton Hall (the Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, book 1)
Vaughn Entwistle
ISBN: 9781250035004
Fantasy of Manners: What if the author of Sherlock Holmes lived in a world where the paranormal really did exist?

I liked this quite a lot, except for a few really minor niggles here and there.  First off, I adore Wilde, and I hope that we get quite a lot of him enjoying his life before everything goes to shit for him (poor guy).  I also like that we get to see a side of Doyle that most people aren't aware of - his worries about his family tendency towards insanity, his grief over his wife, his seething resentment of Sherlock Holmes, and his stubborn determination that he will be remembered for his "serious" writings and his interest in the paranormal.  That last bit is actually the most interesting here, because in Entwistle's world (and I really really hope that's a pseudonym) the paranormal is actually real and can interact violently with the world and with living persons.

The story is pretty simple - a locked-room murder mystery, but with one twist; the murder has to be solved before it happens in order to keep it from happening.  Doyle is a phlegmatic hero (aided immensely by Wilde's antics whenever the action needs a bit of spice) and the cast of characters is suitably eccentric and mysterious.  I feel like this could be an homage to the movie Clue.  The Lady of Thraxton Hall is a psychic medium, and she has forseen her death at a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research (yes, a real thing, both then and now) taking place at her ancestral pile.  The suspects, er, guests, all assembled per vision, poor Doyle has to work out the mystery to save the young Lady's life, aided only by Wilde, his raging libido, and a ghostly, sardonic Sherlock who mocks him in his dreams.

The characterization was a bit slim at times (with a large cast, nearly impossible to avoid) but the main characters and main villains got handled respectably.  I especially appreciated the time spent with George.

Despite knowing that poor Wilde's life is about to go downhill, I'm looking forward to continuing this series.    

The Dolphin Way, Shimi K. Kang, MD

The Dolphin Way
Shimi K. Kang, MD
ISBN: 9780399166044
Nonfiction: Parenting

A backlash against "tiger" parenting, this book mainly rehashes the benefits of authoritative (not authoritarian or permissive) parenting styles by drawing on the playful and communal lives of dolphins.  However, she never seems to get far enough into dolphin biology and behavior to suit me, nor does she really add much to the authoritative viewpoint other than that particular framework.

Lots of "do" and "don't" lists, and the text in those lists is formatted in a strangely unreadable font - very compressed and smaller than the "reading" text.  I suppose it's to make them stand out, but for as long and involved as they are (bullet-points these are most assuredly not) it seems like they could have found a more inviting text to use.

Final personal preference quirk: I really love individual case stories (even when I know they're made up - scuse me, "compiled" from actual cases) and while there were a few sprinkled here and there, the ones that were there were really interesting and compelling - sadly moreso than her directives and musings on dolphins.  I would have liked to see more of the cases used as examples for both good and bad.

 

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 3: Animals

Had an ENORMOUS group this morning for our Family Storytime - lots of toddlers, lots of babies, lots of relatives visiting from out of town.  Excellent group tho, and the stories flowed so well!

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
Peter Brown
ISBN: 9780316200639
Stylized stiff animals and buildings inhabit a faux-victorian world until Mr Tiger loosens up.

Mister Tiger is prim and proper, just like all of his neighbors, in a starched jacket, tophat, and excellent manners.  Until he just gets sick of it, and starts going WILD - walking on all fours, roaring, even going for a skinny-dip in the town square fountain.  His neighbors and friends are scandalized, and suggest that if Mister Tiger wishes to behave wildly, he should do so in the wilderness - which he does, until he gets lonely and heads back home.  Once there he discovers that his wild behaviors have loosened up his neighbors too, and everyone is now just a little bit wild.

Polar Opposites
Erik Brook
ISBN: 9780761456858
Soft-edged pictures carry the background story of two friends packing for a trip to the tropics, while the text busies itself with defining opposites.

I love this story.  Lots of science and lots of solid information packed into a showboat of a story of two good friends who live on opposite poles.  Alex the polar bear and Zina the penguin are opposites in so many ways, and the story lists a great number of them, while the artwork begins with their homes and shows them cleaning, packing, and traveling to the tropics for a vacation together.


The Wide-Mouthed Frog (pop-up version)
Keith Faulkner, illustrated by Jonathan Lambert
ISBN: 9780803718753
A variety of pop-up animals highlight the story of a boastful wide-mouth frog who goes around comparing dinners with everyone.

I love this book so hard, and with a group this big, it was perfect for a SUPER QUICK, super fun ending story.  It's VERY VERY short, but the pop-ups are fun and the kids get a kick out of the ending, especially when the storyteller gets into it and makes funny faces and voices (which I was happy to do today).



For the afternoon, with the older kids, I switched it up with a few longer books that I rarely get the chance to read, even though they are excellent storybooks.

We started again with Mister Tiger (he's one of the featured Summer Reading titles, which is why he gets to go twice) and then moved on to One Cool Friend and then a new one for the blog:

Two Bad Ants
Chris Van Allsburg
ISBN: 9780395486689
Stylized line drawings chronicle the story of two ants who shirk their duties and face a perilous world.

Van Allsburg is a freaking genius, and one of the true sorrows of my professional life is that I work with kids too young to really get his stories, so I can't read them at work as often as I would like.  Something about his approach and his slightly-slanted viewpoint makes me think of Neil Gaiman or Lemony Snicket, or even Saki.  Just delightful, and just a smidge perverse in a lovely subversive way.

Next week we're celebrating our nation's birthday by NOT having any programs, and then after that we're on to dinosaurs!

Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, Misty Copeland (with Charisse Jones)

Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, My Story of Adversity and Grace
Misty Copeland (ghostwriter/assist Charisse Jones)
ISBN: 9781476737980
Read June 22, 2014
Nonfiction: memoir of a modern African American ballerina with the American Ballet Theatre.

Either Misty or Charisse has a very personable "voice" for this memoir of a young girl who discovered her true calling in ballet.  The story flows well, her love of dance and movement is clear, as is her love of her family and friends.  The latter is especially evident in the care taken in describing flawed or abusive relatives.

Not much insight into the world of ballet, but lots of insight into this one woman's life as she grows and matures.

Storytime Potentials: The Invisible Boy, Trudy Ludwig; The Most Magnificent Thing, Ashley Spires

The Invisible Boy
Trudy Ludwig, illustrated by Patrice Barton
ISBN: 9781582464503
Read June 18
Watercolor washes and peculiar animated faces make the one grey "invisible" boy stand out.

I want to like the illustrations in this book, but Barton gives her children, especially the invisible boy, nearly black lips, stretched out in their caricatured heads, and it just gives me the willies.  Other than that, the art is sensitive and painterly, with care taken in physical expressions and posture.  The storyline is equally sensitive, showing an "invisible" boy who is simply overlooked by his classmates, until a new kid comes in and upsets the status quo.



The Most Magnificent Thing
Ashley Spires
ISBN: 9781554537044
Read June 18
A girl inventor and her pug battle through the struggle to get your inventions to "just go right."

This is the perfect book for anyone who has ever tried to create anything ever.  I am serious.  It absolutely nails the frustration of having a perfect vision in your head, and trying so hard to make it real, and failing miserably and continually until you finally get it almost (but never exactly) right.

So perfect.

Blood Red, Mercedes Lackey

Blood Red 
Mercedes Lackey
ISBN: 9780756408978
Read June 18, 2014
Elemental Masters "Series"


Another Elemental Masters book, this one reworking Red Riding Hood, and I like it.  It's a little rough around the edges, but nothing near so irritating as Unnatural Issue was, and a much more original story than Steadfast.  I liked it about as much as I liked Home from the Sea.

I do think the whole "prejudice" character conflict was a bit wedged in there, but that didn't detract from the story too badly.

On the other hand, I'm greatly pleased that we didn't end this with a wedding or romance, which was delightful.

Rosa is an Earth Master, and she was studying with her Grossmutter before a shifter (werewolf) viciously attacked and killed the old lady, and tried to kill Rosa, who defended herself by calling upon the aid of the Earth spirits of the forest.  Now Rosa is a Hunter, and uses her talents to rid forests and villages of vampires, rogue magicians, and werewolves.  A social vacation at a White Lodge is interrupted by a pair of cousins who bring word of an ancient and continuous predation upon a part of Romania, and the trio heads out to investigate what they believe will be a single mad sorcerer.  If only it were so simple.

Dark Lord: The Early Years, and Dark Lord: School's Out. Both by Jamie Thomson

Dark Lord: The Early Years
Jamie Thomson
ISBN: 9780802728494
Re-read June 14, 2014 (originally read Oct 2012)
Juv alternate realms fantasy.

I gave this one a short blurb when I first read it, but I wanted to make sure to include it here as well, because the second book is very dependent on the first for tone and story and set-up.

Our 'hero' wakes on a hot summery day on an asphalt parking lot, bereft of his name, his mighty evil powers, and his hideous fear-inducing form.  He has been alive for centuries, no, millenia, but now his nemesis the Wizard has reduced him to the form and magical abilities (that is, puny and none to speak of) of a small human tween.  Oh the humiliation.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, when he landed, his essence of evil was ejected from him, so now this small child with the mind and memories of a dread Dark Lord has a fighting chance to learn about friendship, loyalty, and compassion.  He'll need all the help he can get from his schoolmates to try and make his way back home again.

Dark Lord: School's Out
Jamie Thomson
ISBN: 9780802735225
Read June 19. 2014
Juv alternate-realms fantasy.

Dirk is stuck on Earth, and Sooz is stuck in the Darklands, and things are looking quite grim indeed.  But Sooz is smart and spunky, and soon has Dirk's armies and lieutenants eating out of the hand of the Moon Queen while she happily tarts the castle up in Goth regalia.  That pesky Wizard won't leave them alone however, and with a White Witch scheming against Dirk on Earth, he may be too distracted to save Sooz from his old mortal foe.  Still, his foster-brother Christopher remains a loyal (sometimes begrudging) ally, and the kids manage to make it back to Earth in time for school to start back up once more.


These are delightful, but be aware, they're published in England, and they have different titles and publication dates from there.  Makes things a little bit confusing.

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 2: Mad Science (special program) & Moon

Our official Summer Reading Program this afternoon is a special event - a performer is coming in and doing a Mad Science Magic Show for us, and that means I'm off the hook for doing that program this week - but I still have to do a Space-themed program for my little ones this morning.  However, we're picking Space up again later in the summer for our make-up week, so I went off on a slight tangent for our little ones today, and we read about the moon today.

Footprints on the Moon
Mark Haddon, illustrated by Christian Birmingham
ISBN: 9780763644406
This book is so pretty.  I think the overall message is a bit sophisticated for this age-group, but they enjoyed the beautiful pointillist paintings, and the surface story is simple enough - a young boy longs for the moon, and even when he grows up, he loves knowing that the footprints on the moon are nearly eternal.
(Side note, the author also wrote the middle-grade/YA book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which also recently got a National Theatre adaptation by Simon Stephens and Marianne Elliot.)

Happy Birthday, Moon
Frank Asch
ISBN: 0689835442
An old but excellent read, and fairly short and straightforward, with simple line and color to balance the richness of the other two.  Bear wants to give the moon a birthday present, so he first tries to figure out when it is and what to give, and then later a mishap occurs, but all is forgiven.  Bonus points for having an echo as a key plot point - I love doing echoes.

Max and the Tag-Along Moon
Floyd Cooper,
ISBN: 9780399233425
Max has to leave his grandpa's house one night, and he already misses him, but grandpa assures him that the moon will always shine for him "on and on" through the night.  And it's true, as Max travels the (very long way) back home, the moon sticks with him all night, until clouds roll in and cover it up.  Max is sad, now missing grandpa AND the moon, but as he settles in to sleep in his bed, the clouds fade away and the moon is still there, reminding Max of his grandfather, and helping him sleep peacefully.  African American family and a lovely lullaby story with exceptionally beautiful painterly illustrations.

The Girl Who Owned A City (Graphic Novel), O.T. Nelson, Dan Jolley, Joelle Jones, Jenn Manley Lee

The Girl Who Owned a City
O.T. Nelson, Dan Jolley, Joelle Jones, Jenn Manley Lee
ISBN: 9780761349037
Read June 13, 2014

I'm about to commit a heresy - I like this version better than the original.  The art is fantastic, the kids are individualized (and ethnically diverse!) the compositions are lovely, and the pared-down bare-bones narrating of the story makes it a lot more taut and compelling than the original story.

Not that I don't like the original, it's just in graphic format, you don't have as much time to think about nitpicky worldbuilding details until after the whole thing is done with, so you enjoy the flow of the story more.

I was equally impressed that despite the tightening of the "script" there was still plenty of room to have Lisa espousing her Randian philosophies, which I don't actually agree with, but are very very important to her motivation and the progression of the storyline.  When I started it, I wondered if they were going to attempt to soften that up, but it's still fully present, which is admirable and classy of them.

Excellent graphic novel, but not for the littlest ones - characters (ie, little kids) get beaten up, shot, and attacked with boiling water, and show graphic (hah) signs of their injuries.

Anna Maria's Gift, Janice Shefelman, illustrated by Robert Papp

Anna Maria's Gift
Janice Shefelman, illustrated by Robert Papp
ISBN: 9780375858819
Read June 13, 2014

Juv-fiction: the musically talented orphan daughter of a famous violin maker moves into the Pieta of Venice to live and study under Don Vivaldi, but a jealous rival steals the violin which was her father's last gift.

Black and white illustrations throughout, and a historical note at the end regarding the orphanages and music schools of Venice.

Super short, super-quick resolution, and I like that all of the characters we meet are essentially good people (even the jealous rival, who is redeemed in the end) and that while the characters are Christians, the story is not overly religious in it's moralizing.

Good choice for serial bedtime reading for little ones.

The Green Book, Jill Paton Walsh

The Green Book
Jill Paton Walsh, illustrated by Lloyd Bloom
ISBN: 0374327785
(Printed 1982)  Juv reader b/w illustrated Sci-Fi: chronicles a small band of colonists settling on a new world of crystalline plants, glowing jellyfish, and red-and-grey moth people.
re-read June 11, 2014

This was one of those books where I saw the cover and the flap and I thought I had read it before, but couldn't remember.  As soon as I started reading I was sure, but still couldn't remember the story.  So I read it again.

Pattie is quite young when her family boards a not-so-large, not-so-new starship with her family, hoping for a new life on a new world which Pattie names Shine, far away from the failed human civilization on Earth.  Each colonist has a short list of what they must bring; clothing, boots, tools, one personal item, and one book.  Pattie misunderstands, and selects a blank journal, a commonplace book, which causes her family much amusement until the colony is settled, secured, and mostly assured of surviving - at which time it is revealed that Pattie has been recording the story of the colony itself.

Details are sparse, and the science is either old-fashioned or inconsistently handwaved; databank tapes have enough power to nearly instantly compute that their colony is devoid of life, but doesn't have enough room for a few text files of Shakespeare.  Stringent weight limits for the colonists, but the ship carries concrete and multiple types of heavy machinery that is intended to only work a single time (why even?).  No room for livestock or pets, but live rabbits and chickens are brought and not treated as pets or even carefully preserved.  Likewise, the logic of the colonists in several instances is a little shaky, and the world, while carefully different in some ways - less gravity, no wind, no rain, no clouds - has treeish trees and grassy grass and lakes of temperate water and a species that is confidently and immediately associated with moths, even up to having fuzzy wings.  

Still, the story is sweet, quick, and at a great level for a serial bedtime read for younger children, or for a first chapter book for a precocious reader.

Other than the handwaving and logic mishaps, the only quibble I have is an odd interlude where the Father essentially bitches about science and technology, and intimates that as soon as we moved to "technology" instead of "tools" we lost something fundamental, and that he was planning to be the most important person in the colony by becoming the "Maker" of these old-fashioned tools.  As a professional, an educator, and someone very much in favor of what science and technology can do for improving life, this left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth - a seed drill is every bit as much "technology" as an MRI machine, and to denounce the latter simply because it relies on a larger and more advanced infrastructure to support it is both short-sighted and very dangerous.  The real confusion here is that the father's job description is not really vital to the story, and neither is the conversation where he espouses these views - it's essentially an aside, but in a short book of 74 pages (with quite a few full-page illustrations) it's an aside that takes up valuable real-estate.  Like the concrete on the spaceship, I'm not quite sure why that made it in.
 

Free-Range Kids, Lenore Skenazy

Free-Range Kids
Lenore Skenazy
ISBN: 9780470471944
re-read June 11, 2014.

I've read this before, but I wanted to revisit the advice - I forgot how funny it was.  She's got that perfect exasperated voice down pat (you can tell she has kids from that tone) and she uses it to skewer our 24-hour newsmedia cycle, and businesses that sell fear, and parents trying to bubble-wrap their kids.

Sadly, 5 years after it was written, I feel like it needs a sequel "No, Seriously, Quit Sheltering Your Kids" because it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

I also forgot that there were a lot of references made to her own mental health and how she's working on being a more relaxed and self-accepting person, which was also a nice surprise to re-encounter this time around.

It's a little thin on actual suggestions, but the overall ideas are solid, and using anecdotes and personal stories provides a nice personal touch.

The Flame in the Mist, Kit Grindstaff

The Flame in the Mist
Kit Grindstaff
ISBN: 9780385742900
middle-grade fantasy: red-haired child escapes her evil ruling family to discover her true heritage, uses light to combat mist and murder.

Immediate Bonus Point Awards: Stand-Alone Fantasy, (Mostly) Competent Female Lead, No Mary Sues, (Almost) No Stupid Love Triangle, and Not-Dead Parents.

I feel like if I had read this when I was much younger - say around the time that I was devouring The Blue Sword, or The Hero and the Crown - I would have been way more excited about this.  As it is, it's very similar to both of those, to my (admittedly fuzzy) memories of Taash and the Jesters, to the spirit of the Bracken Trilogy... I could go on.  I just felt a little like I was riding a sightseeing train around a theme park.  Drive by this thing, drive by that thing, no sharp turns, no sudden drops or corkscrews, just a nice solid ride around the park.

The atmosphere is pretty solid, which is good, considering the conceit of an evil, enveloping, sunlight-blocking Mist, but the habit of inserting important capital letters  (Mist and Marked and Quest), odd portmanteau words (Approjection) and having a quaintly misspelled old book from history filled with anagrams to decipher (despite it being noted that they are quaintly misspelled - really good anagramist, that girl) all irked me personally a bit.  That's just a matter of taste.

On the other hand, I do have some niggles about the actual story and characters.

The ruling family is weak and infighting and decaying, and this is made obvious from the start.  This was probably on purpose to make them seem more an appropriate "challenge rating" for a 13 year old girl, but all it did was make me wonder what would have happened if everyone just moved away or into hiding and simply let the family go on for a few more years until they rotted out from the inside?

While I'm very happy to see the real parents not dead, I'm not so happy with the cloying super happy super supportive super loving family ideal that appears out of nowhere with a person they don't know, and haven't seen for 12 years, and who they've been living in pain and suffering and weakened ability waiting on her to get her act together and rescue not only herself but their Power (again with the capital letters) from the bad guys.  I just didn't buy it, and spent the entire book alternately gagging and waiting for the other shoe to drop.  (It never did - they really were that nice.)

Likewise, a post-climactic scene was resolved way too easily (trying to avoid real spoilers here) with the main characters using reason and appeals to humanity and morality.  Nope.  Especially in that situation, it rang entirely too false and trite and easy, and it soured the entire book up until then, which had been doing fairly well in that department by specifically talking about good and bad actions, and people being more complex than simply good or evil (not that it actually impacted the characterizations of the bad guys, who had at least a couple of solid one-note-villains present, and some late-arriving development for another that again rang pretty hollow.)

Finally, (and this one may also be a matter of taste) I get a little unhappy when our hero gets obsessed or taken over/literally possessed, or driven by dreams of hazy characters from the past who drive the protagonist towards the final confrontation (sometimes against the protagonist's will or personal judgment) who grant the protagonist the power and experience needed to combat evil, and who sometimes literally step into the final fight (either by possession or ghost presence or other methods) to "assist" and end up being the big guns in the fight.  Yes, it's a solid way to reasonably explain how a pre-teen manages to take down the evil empire where no one else could before.  Yes, it has great precedent: Star Wars (Use the Force, Luke!) and even in my previously referenced Damar novels.  I just feel like it takes away the agency and decision-making from the protagonist, and lets them off the hook too easily for the consequences (even the positive ones) of what are arguably NOT their own actions, being that they are under the influence or even outright control of other characters.  It bothers me especially when that protagonist is a girl, and then it gets into even more squicky territory of free will and agency as well as traditions in fantasy of silencing women and of characters getting "used" by more powerful forces.

So those are my really nitpicky irritations.

Despite all my griping, it was a well-paced and well-written stand-alone with a happy ending and a red-headed girl protagonist who is strong and brave and decently competent for her depicted age.
  

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 1: Robots!

Long day of programming for me - it's been since last summer that I had to do more than one program in a day, and I forgot how draining it is to be "on" and "performing" for an audience more than once in a day.

I got my undergrad in theatre, and while I enjoyed playing "bit parts" I always knew that as an introvert, I didn't have the sort of energy that would let me be a performer.  I love the science and the discipline behind acting, but it isn't for me.  Days like this remind me that I made a wise choice to be a tech nerd instead.

So - Robots!

First off was the Family Storytime for the wee ones (ages 0-5)

Clink

Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Matthew Myers
ISBN: 9780061929298 (library binding)
Obvious brushstrokes. lots of detail, bright colors, and an old-timey feel.

Clink is an old-fashioned robot, designed to make toast (he burns it) and to play music.  Sadly, he's a bit out of date, and also has a tendency to lose parts when he's excited.  All of his friends in the robot store are newer than he is, and are quickly bought by excited customers.  Clink gets depressed and lonely because he's not chosen, until a very picky young man comes into the store, looking for the one perfect thing.  

I found Clink specifically because I was looking for robot books, and I really like it.  It's a teensy weensy bit long for my family storytime group, but the story was quirky enough to hold their attention.

Doug, Unplugged
Dan Yaccarino
ISBN: 9780375866432
Yaccarino's trademark color-blocked minimalist expressive spreads.

Hate to say it, since it got so much attention, and everyone loves it so, but I really like Boy + Bot much better.  I'm sort of sad that I didn't go with my first inclination and use it instead, but this one didn't do badly either - I just didn't like it as much.  Doug is a great robot child - his parents plug him into the wall in the morning to download information while they go off to work, and today he's learning about the city.  The info-dump isn't particularly interesting (and it's difficult to read in a storytime situation - very small print, scattered along a busy circuit-board pattern) so Doug is easily distracted by a pigeon, which then prompts him to investigate the city in real life, learning about everything that his infodump failed to inform him about - wet cement, a cool fountain on a warm day, the rush and clatter of subway trains - until he finds a human boy and learns about the best thing of all - play.

Robot Zot
Jon Scieszka, illustrated by David Shannon

ISBN: 9781416963943

No, David!'s illustrator does perfect justice to the oversized ego of our robot protagonist.

Robot Zot is here to destroy!  Except he's smaller than a toaster-oven, and he keeps getting distracted by insulting appliances and having to destroy them.  It may take a while to get to conquering Earth after all.  But he is committed, at least until he discovers the Queen of Earth (a young girl's toy telephone) being assaulted by her evil guards (the girl's dollbabies) and falls in love.  His daring rescue is a beautiful love story.  Don't forget to page through to the very end where a comical coda is taking place in Zot's wake.

With the number of kids and the amount of energy in this particular group, again I was wishing I had a slightly shorter story, but the super-vibrant larger-than-life messy pictures and fun language did their best to keep attention focused.

Then I took a mental health break, a throat lozenge, a lot of caffeine, and got ready for our second installment!

Summer Reading Program (ages 5-12)

Thanks to a nearby child-care facility that just opened for the summer, we had a lovely and attentive group with a wide age-range, and I'm happy to say that the stories, activity, and craft all went over well with everyone (heartfelt thanks to our Children's Department for working out the basic bones of the activity and craft)

We started with Clink again, and then a new longer one for the older kids:

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot
Margaret McNamara, illustrated by Mark Fearing

Tiny green "minion-esque" aliens and an enormous squiggly-lined robot inhabit wispy spacy environments - lots of black skies.

This is a re-telling of The Three Little Pigs, and it's fairly cute.  I will say however, that if I ever meet Ms McNamara, we're going to have words about her naming one of the aliens "Nklxwcyz."  Seriously, that's like Storyteller abuse.  Cute, but not a personal favorite.  I do like the variations on "huff and puff and blow your house down" which artfully manage to reference different spacy housing situations AND have rhyming answers from the aliens that still make sense.  A strange (long) author's note at the end explains how the aliens travel from their home planet of Mercury out through the orbits of the other planets to end up on Neptune at the other end of the Solar System.  

Then we ended the reading bit with Robot Zot again, because I really just adore reading that book.  It's trippy and wild and silly and overdramatic and perfect.

Next week I get a break because we have a guest performer coming (yay!) and then the week after that we're on to Animals!

Tuesday Storytime: (SRP Themed) Science!

It's the first week of June, and that means that Summer Reading is upon us!  We're featuring STEM fields this summer, and I've been having great fun trying to match up younger-age books with our weekly themes.

The themes (and our branch Summer Reading) technically start next week, but I wanted to lead in with a more general overview of science and natural history and technology, so I started a week early.


What Is Science?
Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illustrated by Sachiko Yoshikawa
ISBN: 0805073949
Animated minimalist-featured kids cavort scientifically through a brightly colored world.

I really like this book, and I'm buying it for my own home collection.  It's a delightful rhyming romp through all the "things" that science is: the study of everything from rocks and fossils to tornadoes to space, illustrated with carefree kids looking over a landscape or set-piece that exemplifies the concept.  Really an early literacy nonfiction book instead of a picture book, but the format and style place it firmly into picture book territory, and I'm quite glad to use it here.  My favorite book from this program.


Big & Little
Steve Jenkins
ISBN: 0395726646
Textured-paper collages against white backgrounds, text wraps around animals and is VERY SMALL.

Other than the hardship of reading the tiny little itty bitty curvy text from arms-length while holding the book out for kids to see, this was a great pick.  The kids really loved identifying the animals, and the comparisons were suitably dramatic.  The page of silhouettes on the back was an especial hit, with the relative sizes of several animals compared to the person's size.  I prefer this book to Jenkins' later "Actual Size" for two reasons: first, I like the comparison between pairs of animals of different groups better than a straight presentation of different animals for purposes of storytime, and second, this one doesn't have a fricking giant spider in it.


Tap Tap Bang Bang
Emma Garcia
ISBN: 9781907967672
Vibrant cartoonish tempera-painted tools with googly-eyes perform their tasks without visible human intervention building up to a reveal of the project.

This was my least favorite of the books this time around, but it was the kids' absolute favorite, and it was immediately requested for checkout, so that makes me like it by association.  The tools each have a "sound effect" that I don't feel I did very well, but the kids appreciated.  There were the obvious "zzzz, zzzz for the drill" and "cree craw cree craw" for the saw, but there there's tools like vice-grips and clamps and hot glue guns, all of which also get "sounds" like "grippety grip" which aren't really sound effects, but whatever.  I would also have liked to have more visuals of the item being worked on, to let the kids guess and anticipate the eventual nature of the project revealed at the end.