Juvenile Fiction/Graphic Novel: Rise of the Robot Army, Robert Venditti & Dusty Higgins

Rise of the Robot Army (Book 2 in the Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape series)

Robert Venditti, illustrated by Dusty Higgins 

ISBN: 9781481405577

Miles gets addicted to the power of the cape and the kick of doing good, and gets kidnapped by a crazy guy with a robot army.

These are fun because they're set in Atlanta, they're prose novels for the most part, but switch into graphic novel format when the character of the Golden Cape is active, and because the author is trying very hard to purposefully subvert the tropes of a superhero narrative and show how hard it is for a normal person to always do what's right and what's best, when they're just normal people faced with powerful temptations.

Supporting Cast: A+. Miles' dad, poor guy. I just want to buy him a drink. At least he's got a girlfriend now. Doctor is cool but needs a bit more characterization. New girl is hella interesting and I hope she's permanent and not treated poorly by the author.  

Plot: A.  Emotional arc is dead-on and perfect for the age-group (honestly, it's perfect for most people all their lives, when you really look at it) and the physical plot/perilous situation is 1) creepy as heck, 2) very nicely built on the first book, 3) subverts superhero-story tropes where people have obvious names to show they're bad-guys or good-guys without actually making the storyline ANY LESS CREEPY (well-done, that is), and 4) is solved relatively rationally and by the characters making informed and purposeful choices instead of getting deus-ex-machina'd (although I do think perhaps dad had a bit of a mild ret-con to his character so that Miles doesn't get murdered at the end of the book).

Fun, silly, engaging, thoughtful, and peopled with fun and interesting characters that are tropey without being any less interesting and individual. I'm really impressed, and really enjoying this series. 

Tuesday Storytime: Christmas

Holidays are always so interesting.  On the one hand, it makes things easier for selection, because there's your topic hanging RIGHT THERE.  On the other hand, it limits choices because now the selection criteria include topical limitations; at least Christmas books aren't as universally unfortunate as the Thanksgiving ones are.  On the third hand (running out of hands here) celebrating (or just acknowledging major religious/cultural holidays can be a bit fraught, because there are often not enough quality resources available to do a storytime about other cultural holidays - I feel like I should be more pro-active about finding those, but this is only one of several hats I wear.  On the fourth hand, getting back to celebrating holidays, especially with Christmas, I feel like there's a distinct possibility that caregivers are just the tiniest bit sick of it all, and would be thrilled to have something else to talk about with their toddlers for an hour or so.  On the fifth hand, I do have a whole lot of parents who are either temporarily in the states or are freshly immigrated, and so there is a whole cultural phenomenon they're actively trying to figure out.

I overthink things sometimes.  

Three lovely Christmas books.

Christmas in the Country

Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Diane Goode 

ISBN: 0439073340

Narrator remembers a long-ago Christmas with her grandparents.  Less country and more old-fashioned.

Likes: narrator lives with grandparents, Christmas is shown as secular (trees and Santa and presents) and religious (two different church services), and it deals with the END of Christmas and the associated rituals that make the post-event process go smoothly (taking out the tree, putting away ornaments, a special snack).

Dislikes: no PoC, slightly too long for my wiggle-worms today, and the illustrations aren't my favorites - very cartoony and loose.  

Christmas Wombat

Jackie French, illustrated by Bruce Whatley

ISBN: 9780547868721

Australians celebrate Christmas too, and so does this very greedy wombat.

Very few words here, and sequential illustrations.  I narrated a bit more than the actual text, and asked leading questions as the book progressed, and the caregivers got a kick out of the humor, and the kids were impressed at the sheer number of carrots eaten by this roly-poly furball.  Short and funny - a perfect fit.

A Short History of Christmas

Sally Lee, with Gail Saunders-Smith (consulting editor)

ISBN: 9781491460955

A bit scattershot, but very basic and clearly laid out description of Christmas themes and traditions.

This is my second Christmas reading this book (I discovered it a bit over a year ago and was delighted with it) and while I'm still very pleased with it, I will say that the ending is a BIT sharp.  I would have liked to see more time spent on modern traditions and approaches to Christmas (we only get a single spread before it turns abruptly to the glossary).  The only other quibble I have is that the language presents the existence of Mary and Joseph and the timing of Jesus' birth as historical facts, when it could very easily have been phrased to indicate that this is considered truth for Christians, and not necessarily by others with different belief systems. The scattershot approach isn't actually a negative for me, considering the attention spans of my little ones, and the one-topic-per-spread approach means that they constantly have something new and interesting to re-engage with.  (And engage they did - lots of audience participating on this book as they showed off all that they knew about Christmas and Saint Nicholas and traditions.     

Nonfiction: The Harvey House Cookbook, George H. Foster, Peter C. Weiglin

The Harvey House Cookbook: Memories of Dining along the Santa Fe Railroad
George H. Foster & Peter C. Weiglin
ISBN: 1563520338
A combination capsule-history and cookbook, with facts and recipes from Harvey House rail stops.
Read Fall 2016

I think I would have enjoyed the book a bit more if it were simply a history of the Harvey Houses, but I do think people will be interested in the recipes.  I would have rather seen more of the menus and the organizational documents (if any of them survive) but I know I'm a bit weird compared to most people.

The only thing that really bugged me about this book was the layout: each very short nonfiction section was sandwiched in between the larger chapters of recipes, and thus it was hard to create any sort of narrative momentum.  It made the history sections seem disjointed and fragmentary, which, when dealing with a portion of history that has perhaps not been recorded as well as it might have been, isn't really the optimal impression to leave.

Other than that, the nonfiction information presented was clear, chronological, decently-organized, and topical.  I think the recipes either seem painfully normal, or strangely dated, but as I don't cook, I have no basis for informing whether they're good or useful for modern cooks.

An interesting donation that showed up at random and fulfilled a passive sort of interest I've had for a while in the concept of the Harvey Girls, so I was very glad to see it.

Tuesday Storytime: Winter Snows

And finally caught up to this week!  We have had persistent rumors of snow this weekend, so I felt that was the best time to start my snowy series of reads.  I'll do a bit of Christmas intermission, and then pick the snow-and-cold theme back up in January.

Blizzard

John Rocco

ISBN: 9781423178651

Rocco engagingly recounts and illustrates his adventures in the New England blizzard of 1978,

This book is a lovely slice of Americana.  Rocco's character is thrilled at first as the giant storm shuts everything down under a thick blanket of snow, but after five days, facing the dire straits of cocoa made with WATER, he undertakes a perilous voyage that only he is qualified to complete (because he's the only one small enough to use tennis rackets for snowshoes and not sink into the chest-high powdery snow).  He sets off with good intentions, a grocery list, and a set of neighbors to check in on, and eventually (a four-page-fold-out-spread later) he makes it to the store to collect the necessary provisions.  A cute story of unexpected snow and sweet innocent playful fun.

Mimi and Bear in the Snow

Janee Trasler

ISBN: 9780374300937

Relatively new, and absolutely adorable.  Mimi Bunny loses Bear while playing in the snow, and the next morning finds everything melted away.

Bear does everything with Mimi.  Ice-skating, building snow hats, building snow monsters... but then Bear disappears, and he doesn't even re-appear by bedtime!  Something has gone wrong, but when Mimi retraces her steps the next morning, all the snow is gone too!  Will she be able to find Bear?  I like this story because the concept of snowfall that vanishes totally by the next morning isn't one that you see in a lot of children's books, but it's the reality for most of us down here.

Polar Bear Night

Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Stephen Savage

ISBN: 9780439495240

Absolutely stunning illustrations elevate this slight story about a polar bear venturing out into the starry, snowy, night alone.

Sweet, lyrical, short, simple.  If it weren't for those amazing lush thick spreads, I don't think I'd be excited to read this as often as I am.  The polar bear cub is sweet and the story is cute, but it really is the illustrations that keep this one moving along.  It is different enough from most other picture book illustration styles that the adults and the kids just can't stop staring at it.  Really a knockout visual treat.

 

Tuesday Storytime: Nighttime Noises

I'd been holding on to Bear Feels Scared since October when I didn't manage to fit it into the Halloween roster, so I snagged a couple of other "scary nighttime" books to offer a creepy-but-reassuring night-time themed storytime.

Creatures of the Night
Stephen Brooks, illustrated by Rodger Wilson
ISBN:  9780976901716
A catalog of the various animals that live nocturnally, with very little plotline.

I started out on this one because it's a straight call-and-response with the kids.  I flip the pages and they tell me what animal that is, and they all feel very competent and smart and adult.  The animals are a straightforward bunch, and the artwork isn't much past competent, but it flows smoothly and reads easily.  If it werent for bookending the scary part, I would have put this one in the middle because of the length and speed of reading.

Bear Feels Scared
Karma Wilson, illustrated by Jane Chapman
ISBN:  9780689859861
Bear stays out a bit late as a storm blows in, and gets disoriented and scared in the dark.  Friends rush to help out.

This one spends most of the time on the bear's big feelings of being scared and lost and worried, interspersed with bear's animal friends searching.  The comforting ending is a bit pat and quick, but no-one cried on me, which is what I worried about.

The Night World
Mordecai Gerstein
ISBN: 9780316188227
A boy is wakened by his cat and they venture through the dark of pre-dawn outside to see animals and plants in a strange new way.

This is a beautiful book and I really wish it didn't start off with practically three spreads of wordlessness.  That's just a rough hurdle for a storytime book, and while the payoff of the book is worth it, it does make for a challenge to the storyteller.  The boy and the cat wander through a confusing-dark house, where familiar objects seem odd and out of place, into a dark yard where plants and flowers are strange without color from the sunlight.  The animals begin to get excited about an upcoming event, and when the nighttime animals begin to leave, the astute reader realizes the sun is rising, as the skyline changes from blackness to greys to beautiful sunrise colors and sky blue.  Very pretty, and strangely-powerfully done considering the slim concept.

Tuesday Storytime: Road Work

Ok, the dinosaurs aren't building a road, exactly, but all the same equipment is in play, and I can't help it: DINOSAURS using giant earthmovers! It's close enough.

Dinosaur Dig!
Penny Dale
ISBN: 9780763658717
A varied crew of dinosaurs (pre-feathered, sadly) work with a varied set of earthmoving equipment on a mystery structure.

Our endpapers give us a nice listing and illustrative catalog of our dinos and our machines, and the story inside is quick and rhythmic, with lots of onomatopoiea and big construction noises as the dinos work tirelessly on their strange wavy, undulating concrete pit in the ground.

Easy Street
Rita Gray, illustrated by (model-maker and diorama-creator) Mary Bono
ISBN: 9780525476573
Adorable chubby diverse road-worker dolls inhabit a layered diorama "slice of street."

I think this book would never have impressed me as much as it does if it weren't for the illustrations.  Those dioramas are simply amazing, and the textures involved in the creation of the in-progress street and background layers are simply unbelievable.  I love looking at it.  I really wish I could have access to the original: lots of those layers look like they're made from sandpaper and I would LOVE to have that textural grounding available to the kids as well.  Anyway, the rhyming is short and direct, very repetitive, and covers the basics in workmanlike language.

Work, Dogs, Work: A Highway Tail
James Horvath
ISBN: 9780062189707
Horvath's crew of worker dogs tackles a highway construction job in this cute rhyming tail-er, tale.

This book is probably way too close in content to Easy Street to really do together, but I'm calling it purposeful repetition to build conceptual awareness, and running with it.  These lanky energetic dogs are building the world's most complicated highway, with bridges, overpasses, tunnels, and quagmires to overcome before they connect the city to the ultimate destination: the beach.

Tuesday Storytime: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving books are unusually tragic, and really unsuitable as a whole for storytimes for younger kids.  This lack really makes it hard to find a trio that doesn't have something smarmy or treacly, just because that's leagues better than the alternatives.  I wasn't unhappy with my choices here, but I do wish I had more quality to select from.

I Go With My Family to Grandma's
Riki Levinson, illustrated by Diane Goode
ISBN: 9780525442615
Several branches of a big-city family converges on the grandparent's place for a family photo.

An old but sweet book from Levinson, with exceptional old-timey documentary-style artwork by Goode.  A cumulative/repetitive book: each branch of the family has a different color, travels via a different type of conveyance, and comes from a different borough of New York to Grandma Central, where they all meet and mingle before everyone's together for a great big family portrait.  The familiar family get-together balances the utterly unfamiliar cityscapes and transit modes to make it just the right amount of different but understandable.

Thanksgiving Cats
Jean Marzollo, illustrated by Hans Wilhelm
ISBN: 9780606172820
Adorable cats in mid-1990s style "scholastic book art" run through a cutesy rhyme.

Ok, I know this is trite and cutesy, but it was either these cats or one of the dozens of insufferable "Thanks for Thanksgiving" style books where the whole thing is simply a very slightly disguised (or not at all disguised) prayer of thanks.  No thank you.  Cats it is then.  There are Thanksgiving Cats and Thanksgiving Kittens, and the Cats do farming and kitchen work (there are visually-gendered cats doing both farming and kitchen tasks, which I heartily approve) and the Kittens play, perform a simple task, or simply get in the way.  The only weird thing is "apple pie with cheese" which I can't figure out if it's merely inserted to scan the necessary rhyme, or if that's actually a thing.  

Duck for Turkey Day
Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Kathryn Mitter
ISBN: 9780807517345
Tuyet is disturbed by her family's chosen "Turkey Day" tradition when it doesn't match up.

A lovely book covering cultural differences, adapting traditions to fit your own family needs, and the really intense and often overlooked desires of all children to simply fit in and be "just like teacher" or "just like everyone else."  Tuyet's family maybe could be a bit more understanding and explain things, instead of letting her teacher do all the heavy lifting, but it is what it is.  The schoolroom is purposefully diverse, but it gets the point across neatly.

Tuesday Storytime: November Days

It finally is starting to feel like fall outside, so I picked a quick trio of seasonal books for this week.

Hibernation Station
Michelle Meadows, illustrated by Kurt Cyrus
ISBN: 9781416937883
A crew of bear "conductors" sorts out the "passengers" in the hollow log "train" they all hibernate around.

The concept is a bit hokey on initial presentation, thus the liberal use of quotation marks: I know it sounds corny, you guys.  But the illustrations are fantastic, the story is solid, and the cadence and rhymes are delightful to speak.  We've got all sorts of hibernating animals boarding the hollow log train into winterland, and the bear conductors are clambering all over trying to get everyone into their jammies and settled down, but NOTHING is going right.  The log's sprung a leak, bunkmakes are snoring, and someone's afraid of the dark.  A quick re-arrange to dry rumpled fur, switch roommates around, and soothe fears makes everything peaceful again, just in time for the pyjama-clad conductors to drift off themselves as the winter snow piles up against the solid log.


Listen to the Rain
Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by John Archambault
ISBN: 9780805006827
A soft whispery onomatopoeic breathy book.

I don't use this book often, but I think about it quite a lot, and I really adore the language and the whispery calm unhurried nature of it.  I do think it's probably not entirely suited for storytimes, but kids are going to have to learn to appreciate (or at least suffer politely through) quieter books and less-interactive books, and less visually-aggressive books, and this is a beautiful and almost musical example to practice on.


In November
Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Jill Kastner
ISBN: 978015201768
A beautiful lyrical narrative that segues easily from nature to community Thanksgiving.

Rylant is so talented at her narratives.  Every year when I look at this book, I wonder how she goes from unabashedly nature-centric in the impact of the changing of the seasons, to a close-up examination of the communal and comforting underpinnings of most families' celebrations of Thanksgiving.

Tuesday Storytime: Election Day

Presented after the fact without commentary.

Grace for President
Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by LeUyen Pham
ISBN: 9781423139997

We Came to America
Faith Ringgold
ISBN: 9780517709474

Monster Needs Your Vote
Paul Czajak, illustrated by Wendy Grieb
ISBN: 9781938063633

Special Program Review: School Tour: Community Helpers

We had a school tour scheduled for this fall that asked at the last minute for a dedicated storytime with the theme of "Community Helpers" and I came up with a small program for them with some books we had on-hand.  This is my regular reminder to be grateful for a library system that keeps the branch locations well-stocked with new and updated children's nonfiction and picture books that can be used (by patrons or staff) on a moment's notice.

All of these were EXCELLENT books, and I was so proud of our library selectors that I could just swoop in and grab them immediately when they were needed.

Officer Buckle and Gloria
Peggy Rathmann
ISBN: 9780399226168

Show Me Community Helpers: My First Picture Encyclopedia
Clint Edwards
ISBN: 9781620659182

Helpers in My Community
Bobbie Kalman
ISBN: 9780778794882

Whose Hands Are These? A Community Helper Guessing Book
Miranda Paul, illustrated by Luciana Powell
ISBN: 9781467752145   

Special Program Review: Agricultural Nonfiction

This fall, I teamed up with a local historic agricultural museum to work with their volunteers to create a STEAM*-based reading program for kids in K4-3rd grade, to introduce them to basic concepts in natural history, agricultural and farm life, and animal husbandry.  We had three programs over the course of the fall, and focused on different topical themes each time.

*Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math

In October we covered harvest and orchards/farm-keeping with "Apples and Pumpkins."
In November we moved on to discussing farm chores and the water cycle with "Pumping Water."
In December we finished with a discussion of farm animals and winter changes "Chickens and Changes."

I'm not going to offer reviews of all of these, but I will specify whether I used them as display/take-home/reference materials (we made bookmarks with the titles listed for the kids to guide later check-outs at the library for further interest or research) or actually read them during the program.  Like my storytime, I tried to present at least three books during each program, and managed to get four read each time, which was gratifying.  

Reading List and Program Books for "Apples and Pumpkins"

During the program, I read the following:
Apple Farmer Annie, by Monica Wellington
Strega Nona's Harvest, by Tomie dePaola
Pumpkin Cat, by Anne Mortimer
Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie, by Jill Esbaum.

On display, in addition to those books, I had the following:
Picking Apples and Pumpkins, by Hutchings
Apples and Pumpkins, by Rockwell
The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall
Apple, by McClure
Pumpkins, by Jacqueline Farmer

Reading List and Program Books for "Pumping Water"

During the program, I read the following: 

It's Fall, by Linda Glaser

The Leaves on the Trees, Thom Wiley

Pilgrim Children Had Many Chores, Lem-Tardif

All the Water in the World, by George Ella Lyon

On display, in addition to those books, I had the following: 

The Water Cycle, by Purslow

How Did That Get to My House? Water, by Masters

How Things Work in the Yard, by Ernst

Historic Communities: Tools and Gadgets, by Kalman

Awesome Autumn, by Bruce Goldstone

Farming, by Gail Gibbons

Tap the Magic Tree, by Matheson

Reading List and Program books for "Chickens and Changes"

Pumpkin Jack, by Will Hubbell

A Chicken Followed Me Home, by Robin Page

Big Red Barn, by Margaret Wise Brown

On the Farm, a book of poems, by David Elliot

On display, in addition to those books, I had the following:

Working Animals: Farming, by Martin

Hello, Harvest Moon, by Ralph Fletcher

A Chicken's Life, by Nancy Dickmann

Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert

Fall Leaves, by Loretta Holland

While I'm not going to give specific reviews for all these (mainly because I'm still trying desperately to catch up from all the fall books I have to cover) I do want to give specific recommendations for a few of them:

Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie is a delightful nonfiction that would be perfect for a storytime program.  It's clear, beautifully photographed, and short enough for the youngest audiences.  Please use more nonfiction in storytimes and programs: it's really good quality now, and it really begs to be used and brought to caregivers' attentions.

Tap the Magic Tree didn't make the cut as one of the books that I read, because we wanted to focus more on actual naturalist and reality-based representations of nature, but it's a really lovely interactive book in the same vein as the equally delightful but more abstract Press Here, by Herve Tullet.  I really enjoy reading this type of book with a small audience or even one-on-one, and watching the child really feel like they're influencing the outcomes of the page-turns.

Pumpkin Jack is one of the best stories about the circle of death and life that I have ever found, and I will recommend it until I am dead myself.  It's simple, it's sweet without being treacly or maudlin, and it's beautifully illustrated.



 

Tuesday Storytime: Halloween Cats

I really love cats, and when I found that I had enough books (pulled to find a suitable candidate for the Edgar Allen Poe storytime) I decided that even though it was the day after Halloween, I'd do one last Halloween storytime featuring the best of the bunch.

I Am a Witch's Cat
Harriet Muncaster
ISBN: 9780062229144
Adorable girl-child in a cat costume in spreads of miniature-created doll-house like environments.

The setting and storyline seem very British to me, but that just adds to the charm.  A delightfully precocious narrator "witch cat" girl explains seriously why her mother is a witch, because of all the (totally mundane) activities that the girl has imagined into a more interesting reality.  The story progresses beautifully through mom's coven meeting (book club or coffee klatch) until the end, where we see mom soaring off on a broomstick.  Maybe the little girl was right after all?  DELIGHTFUL.

Black Cat Creeping
Teddy Slater, illustrated by Aaron Boyd
ISBN: 9781402719790
Cute little black kitten has no home, but he follows his nose (and some trick-or-treaters) and finds the best treat of all at the end of the road.

I love stories where sweet cute little animals get adopted at the end, but this is where I feel obligated to issue the public service warning to spay and neuter your pets, don't let them wander free (unless they're microchipped and collared) and to be careful with your own black cats and dogs around Halloween night so that bad things don't happen to helpless animals who rely on us for their entire lives.


Boo to You
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 9781416986256
Ehlert's story isn't Halloween themed, but her signature cut-out and layered collages are certainly creepy enough to qualify.

Ehlert is always stunning.  Her collages are textural and layered and so interesting to look at.  This one is no different, but I have to say her grotesque cat even gives me pause.  That grimace on the cover - yow.  From a mouse's perspective, probably fairly accurate.  If a kid likes this story and have pretty good tolerance for mayhem, might I suggest a bedtime read of The Rescuers by Margary Sharp (yes, what the Disney movie was based on, and YES the book is a lot better, and nearly nothing like the movies at all).  If the kids like that one, there's about six more, all in the same vein of brave mice, scary cats and dogs, and suuuuper evil villains who don't actually do much on-screen.

Tuesday Storytime: Edgar Allen Poe

Our library decided to host a county-wide celebration of Edgar Allen Poe, and there were events across the entire system and in various other locations through the month of October.  We were asked to tie as many existing library programs into the event as possible, so I challenged myself to come up with toddler-friendly books that were both Halloween appropriate and which somewhat referenced Edgar Allen Poe or his thematic legacy.  I think I did pretty well, all things considered.  I chose to hit on gothic architecture and creepy suspense with Eve Bunting's amazing Night of the Gargoyles, I referenced the ubiquitous Raven with the sweetly translated Rosie the Raven, and double-teamed Poe's own pet cat (Catterina, because OF COURSE) and the creepy (and very child-UNfriendly) story The Black Cat with Cynthia Rylant's Moonlight the Halloween Cat, and finished off with a slightly expurgated and modernized rendition of Poe's courting poem about self-esteem and beauty.  Programming readers's advisory level: awesome.

Night of the Gargoyles
Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner
ISBN: 9780395968871
Gargoyles on a public building creep about and play tricks as they come alive at night.

Wiesner's illustrations really carry the story here, no offense to Bunting.  The graphite work is amazing, and the expressions on the various gargoyle and human faces is a master-class in showing, not telling.  Bunting's perfectly-honed slightly laconic and dry wit keeps the whole thing from imploding into a grotesque macabre sentiment.  Gargoyles have very simple, childlike pleasures: scuttling around the building and peeking into windows, playing in water fountains, and mildly tormenting helpless creatures (the hapless custodian who is the only one who believes they come alive).  It's beautiful and slightly creepy and subversively funny (jokes about bird poop appear well-received by all ages).  A perfect reference to Poe.  

Rosie the Raven
Helga Bansch
ISBN: 9781554518340
Rosie doesn't look like all her siblings, but she is self-confident and loved by her raven parents.

There is a real dearth of decent books about ravens in the picture book arena, and I find that a crying shame.  This is one of the few that I entirely enjoyed, and I decided it would represent all the sweet and innocent (or prosaic) writing that Poe did, most of which is largely forgotten.  Rosie is a miniature human child born to a family of ravens.  When her siblings grow up and leave the nest, her parents realize that Rosie isn't going to be able to do the same, and will need to migrate south with them.  The family works together, and Rosie learns to accept herself and her non-bird limitations with grace and courage.

Moonlight the Halloween Cat
Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
ISBN: 9780060297114
Moonlight is a black cat, and she loves the lights and noises and creepy creatures out on this particular night.

Moonlight stalks around, a black cat with gleaming, almost day-glow green eyes peering out from the various spreads and pages.  She's a black cat, a Halloween cat, and she knows this night from all the other nights because of all the Halloween things that she encounters; trick-or-treaters, jack-o-lanterns, strange lights, bright moonlight.  A sweet and VERY short story.  I probably should have stuck this one in the middle here.

Bonus Poe Poem:
"Thou would'st be loved?  Then let thy heart/"
from Poetry for Young People: Edgar Allen Poe  (2008 edition)
Brod Bagert & Carolynn Cobleigh
ISBN: 9781402754722
A curated collection of child-appropirate poems (and oddly enough some fragments of stories) by Poe.

Even in a collection of poems designed to be available and intelligible to young people, I only found one poem I felt like the kids would even slightly be able to understand, and that's Poe's untitled poem that he would send to girls that he fancied.  The poem itself is chaste enough, and I only slightly modernized and altered the wording to make meanings clear for a very young, very modern listening group.  It's good advice for all ages, and a nice positive note to end on.

Tuesday Storytime: Halloween Prep

It was a couple of weeks before Halloween, and I was still working my way through my tons of lovely Halloween and monster books.  This time around I focused on fears of Halloween (either parental or kid-centric) and picked a trio of reassuring monster mashes.

Me and My Dragon: Scared of Halloween
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580896597
The cute duo from Me and My Dragon handle big Halloween fears.

This one is more fun if you're familiar with the Me and My Dragon book, but even so, it's pretty obvious that the dragon isn't really the one who's apprehensive about Halloween.  Friends and family are reassuring, and the boy uses psychologically-appropriate positive self-talk to encourage himsel-SCUSE ME, his dragon, and everything turns out to be fun and enjoyable.

Where's My Mummy?
Carolyn Crimi, illustrated by John Manders
ISBN: 9780763631963
A baby mummy starts to play hide-and-shriek with his Mommy mummy, but gets lost.

I think I'll probably be reading (or suggesting) this book for my whole career.  Baby mummy is playing hide-and-shriek before bed, but now he can't find Mommy mummy anywhere.  He wanders the graveyard, swamp, and woods searching for her, and finding creepy (but helpful and caring) grownup neighbors instead, all prepping their own selves for bed in various ways, and eventually ends up in the woods, scared by something truly terrifying - a mouse!  Mommy mummy is instantly there to save the day and provide reassurance and a return to the bedtime routine.  Really really really cute.

Not Very Scary
Carol Brendler, illustrated by Greg Pizzoli
ISBN:97803743551470
Melly counts up scary creatures on her walk over to a Halloween party, where she meets them again.

Melly is headed to her cousin's Halloween party, and she's a little bit nervous that it will be too scary for her.  As she heads down the street, the ever-increasing numbers of creepy Halloween creatures in this cumulative counting book make her more and more nervous, until she gets to the party and is reassured to realize they're not very scary after all.

S.A.D. is a pain in the bum.

Apologies for the long unscheduled break, but Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD: what a cutesy appropriate acronym) is a giant pain in the patootie, and it really beats me up every fall. For me, I always have a really nasty adjustment period in the early fall, but as of now, I'm fairly settled into my "new normal" for the winter.  Imagine if you took a hibernating bear and forced her to stay awake and go to work every day in the winter. Lots of grumping, lots of eating really unhealthy foods, and LOTS of sleep. That's me, just a lot less hairy.

I'm back up and running, and I want to stay caught up with the current crop of reviews and storytimes for y'all, but I also don't want to ignore all the work I did (by the skin of my teeth, some days, but I did it) over the fall while I wasn't able to blog about it.

So I'll be catching past reads up roughly chronologically.  Christmas break is coming up, but I'll set up a series of auto-posts and use that time away from work to help catch up.  If everything goes according to plan, I'll be caught back up by New Years!





 

Tuesday Storytime: Pumpkins

Continuing our month-long Halloween party;

Pumpkin Soup
Helen Cooper
ISBN: 0374361649
Lush oversized oils and wild imaginative scenes.

I really love this book a lot.  It's perfect for halloween storytimes for my area and age-group because it isn't about halloween or pumpkins, it's about friendship and quarrels and wild imagination and regrets and sacrificing and compromise, but it's GOT pumpkins and wild imaginations and scary possibilities, and walking out in the dark, so it gets at many of the same fears from an oblique approach. Similar, but a bit more obvious, is Bear Feels Scared, by Karma Wilson (another potential for later this month).  Anyway, it's beautiful and sweet and if I didn't always use it for pumpkins and halloween every year, it would go very well with Three By the Sea, by Mini Grey, which deals with essentially the same plot, and possibly The Lapsnatcher, by Bruce Coville or On Mother's Lap, by Ann Herbert Scott.

Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin (boardbook)
Tad Hills
ISBN: 9780375858130
Duck & Goose series in miniature.  Cute, innocent, and faux-naive drawings.

Short and sweet.  Duckling and Gosling see Thistle (a swan cygnet, I believe?) wander by with a pumpkin, and they head off in an industrious search for one of their own, looking in allll the wrong places. Kids find it impossible to resist answering the series of questions with forceful "NO"s that get even louder and more excited and exasperated the longer the hapless babies look in silly places.  Thistle re-appears at the end to offer a pointed tip, and the quest ends in success.

Pumpkin Cat
Anne Mortimer
ISBN: 9780061874857
Sweet naturalistic drawings show the life-cycle of a pumpkin, from seed to jack-o-lantern.

Cat and Mouse are growing a pumpkin, and they walk through all the steps necessary to create a home for a plant and then make it grow. It gets a bit repetitive, as the call-and-response of "What now?" doesn't change AT ALL through the whole book.  Regardless, a very simple and factual explanation of where pumpkins come from, for the very littlest listeners, and the Cat and Mouse make for sweet and adorable narrators and proxies to watch.  The final page does say "Happy Halloween" as the Mouse makes the pumkin into a "surprise" for Cat (a jack-o-lantern), so be aware.

Juv Fiction: Ranger in Time: Long Road to Freedom, Kate Messner

Ranger in Time: Long Road to Freedom 

Kate Messner

ISBN: 9780545639217

Ranger is a flunked-out search and rescue dog with a magical first aid kit collar that sends him through time to people who need to be found or rescued - or both!

This is the first of this series I've read, and it appears to be the third or fourth book. Vague references are made to what seems like a gladiator/Roman setting, and perhaps the American West?  This one is set in the days of the underground railroad and of slaves escaping to try to avoid the brutality of the developing cotton market in the deep south.  Ranger pops back into time on the day that Sarah learns that her owner is selling her little brother Jesse down south, because he's not valuable to him any more.  Sarah decides to take matters into her own hands and take them both north to freedom.  Messner presents an incredibly accurate book (granted it's light on the gory details, and overall it's more positive and uplifting than a lot of accounts actually were) that focuses attention on the agency of the former slaves saving themselves, with the assistance of kind people across the country - white, black, free, and slave.  An even more powerful Author's Note at the end goes into details about the people and places in the story which are real, and about the resources and museums available.     

Tuesday Storytime: Scary Friends

It's OCTOBER!!!!

Yay!  Now I can use all my scary books and my monster books and my black cat books and my pumpkin books and really there are just too many good books to use for as few Tuesdays as there are in October.  If I had a storytime every day in October, I might get through them all.  Anyway - we start off the month gently, with a set of "scary" friends.

Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Mo Willems
ISBN: 0786852941
Willem's signature colored papers and oddly-placed figures in space.

Leonardo is a really terrible monster.  I mean, just horrible.  He can't scare anyone!  So he hatches a plan - to find a super-scaredy-cat kid and at least manage to scare ONE person.  Leonardo is so terrible at being a monster that he can't even manage that, so he makes a scary, big, decision, and finds something he can do wonderfully.



Spike, the Mixed-up Monster
Susan Hood, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
ISBN: 9781442406018
Bright colors and scribbly outlines make this fresh and energetic.  Mexican-Spanish phrases and styling.

Spike is an axolotl (its a real thing, go look it up) and he desperately wants to be a scary monster, but he's really tiny, and kindof cute.  At least, all the other creatures at the pond think so.  When a truly scary gila monster heads over, everyone else flees, and it's up to Spike to scare the other monster away!  He's never scared anyone yet - will he succeed this time?  I love that the "appearances are deceiving" message goes both ways in this story, and that Spike instantly offers help and encouragement.  A good message, with a good set of non gendered anthropomorphic characters.


Wolf's Coming!
Joe Kulka
ISBN: 9781575059303
Kulka's illustrations are dark and forboding and looming, with plenty of expressive faces.

A set of woodland creatures scurry and hide in rhyming sequences as a business-suited, square-shouldered, enormous wolf stalks through the woods, getting closer and closer to home.  A sharp eye (or multiple read-throughs) will reveal tiny little hints at a twist ending, but suffice it to say that all the build-up is for a totally different sort of shock than the kids (or parents) are expecting.

Nonfiction: The Trainable Cat, John Bradshaw & Sarah Ellis

The Trainable Cat
John Bradshaw & Sarah Ellis
ISBN: 9780465050901
Specific directions on using rewards-based training to accustom cats to household life requirements.

Very readable, with clear step-by-step instructions.  The authors are based in England, which colors their attitudes towards cat ownership in small ways, but the advice is absolutely universal, and would be beneficial to every owned cat, as well as to their owners.  The only difficulty is the time and patience required for the training to actually occur, to keep up with the training, and have it be effective.

Covers everything from tricks: "playing fetch" and "coming when called" to life skills like tolerating nail clippers and companion animals (info for cats, dogs, and smaller animals), to really crucial things like tolerating cat carriers and not freaking out during vet visits.

YA Fantasy: Skyborn, David Dalglish

Skyborn (first of a trilogy)
David Dalglish
ISBN: 9780316302685
Floating islands, religious oppression, spunky war-orphans.

Part of my ongoing research into "floating islands in the sky" stories, and this first book started out very neatly, but it's headed into religious territory that I don't feel particularly inclined to pursue.  I've got the feeling of the writing and the world-building pretty well from the first book.  I very much enjoyed the focus on their version of military academy, and on the training in magic and tactics and their equipment, and I also thought Dalglish did a very good job of describing aerial combat.  If it wasn't for the religious overtones building up through the book, I would probably have stuck with the series just because it's decently written and interesting politically, but oh well.

Tuesday Storytime: Teddies and Bears

I love that teddy bears exist.  I especially love that we have picture books about actual wild bears, about "real" bears who act in anthropomorphic or unnatural ways, and even books about stuffed teddy bears!  I picked a set today that focused on "real" bears, across a spectrum of natural to fantastical situations.

My Friend Bear
Jez Alborough
ISBN: 0763605832
This sequel to Where's My Teddy? showcases the joy of making a new friend.

Eddie (a little boy) and his teddy bear (named Freddie) are walking in the woods where they encountered the bear from Where's My Teddy? when they come across the giant teddy once more.  This time tho, Eddie finds out that the bear is lonely and friendless too, and after a bit of a mix-up involving a talking teddy bear, the two spend a day becoming fast friends.  Great rhyming cadence, lovely word-play, and cute lighthearted illustrations.


Bear is Not Tired
Ciara Gavin
ISBN: 9780385754767
Sequel to Room For Bear (super cute about chosen families) talks about the fear of missing out.

Winter is coming, and for most of the Duck family, that's no big deal.  But not for Bear.  He has to hibernate, and he is really unhappy about being asleep while everyone else is up, and missing all the fun and getting left out!  This not-so-subtle comparison to early bedtimes and naps is actually handled really sweetly and with cute illustrations of Bear getting more and more tired, until "every sound was a lullaby" and "nothing made sense anymore." The solution that Mama Duck comes up with to welcome Bear back to the waking world in the spring is cute and sure to resonate with little ones who are SURE they've missed something.


Every Autumn Comes the Bear
Jim Arnosky
ISBN: 0399225080
Oversized, fall-off-the-pages dark and visceral paintings are a bit scary, but the story is calm and measured.

Arnosky doesn't shy away from a scary picture, and there are a few here, not least of which is the cover.  A VERY large, black, hairy-scary bear is so big that all you can see are clawed feet and the tip of a nose, and a BIG black furry shadow looming over the whole book.  Inside is equally realistic.  A sere fall-winter landscape is cold contrast to this looming black presence, with a bright red mouth and tongue, and sharp white teeth and claws.  Despite the intense illustrations, the story is calm and matter of fact, with few words and not really any emotional resonance: the bear simply comes, notices things, does a few things, and finds a den to sleep away the winter in.  It's a very interesting dichotomy, and I think the dark and powerful images made quite a few of the parents uncomfortable, but the kids loved it.

Juv Fantasy: Dragon Slippers, Jessica Day George

Dragon Slippers

Jessica Day George (Tuesdays at the Castle)

ISBN: 978159990575

Coming-of-age, betrayal and friendships, and very nice dragons, with a side order of creepy.

I really loved Tuesdays at the Castle, and I don't know why I assumed it was George's first book, but I just discovered the truly excellent Dragon Slippers, and I'm very glad I did.  Great storytelling, excellent characters (both good and bad) and a lovely take on dragon-kind and dragon hoards.

Creel's family is dead, so she and her brother are being raised by her aunt and uncle.  Sadly, no one really has any money, so auntie gets the bright idea to have Creel captured by the local dragon, rescued by the local lord's son, and carried off to a glorious life in the manor house (whereupon manorial favor (ie, money) will shower down upon the rest of the household (meaning auntie).  Creel, like most of us reading this devious plot, attempts to point out the many and manifest errors in logic, but auntie is firm, and Creel figures the old dragon is probably dead anyway, so she'll hang out for a bit, then come back home and her aunt will move on to a new wild scheme.

But the dragon is NOT dead, and Creel finds herself set off on an adventure that has her struggling to use her wits and her talents (embroidery and design) to support herself in a wide and wild world that doesn't particularly care about her.  

Creel is sharp and smart, clever and hard-working, and she's aided by (and hampered by) a well-written supporting cast (human and dragon).  She plans, she acts, and she is unafraid to speak up for herself (even when it doesn't necessarily work out well for her).  

The story gets a little dark and parts of it are downright creepy towards the end, but the overall tragic/terrible details are blurry and distant - think Prince Caspian, or the weirder parts of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Anyone who's more than one book into Harry Potter ought to be just fine as well.     

Young Adult: The Walled City, Ryan Graudin

The Walled City
Ryan Graudin
ISBN: 9780316405058
A pair of sisters cross paths with mob bosses and desperate kids in a gritty crime-filled shanty-town.

This book is roughly based on the reality of the Walled City of Kowloon, which used to be in Hong Kong, but set in roughly modern times. What's interesting is that for a large part of the story, I couldn't tell if they were even in a real-world setting, or a gritty semi-modern "fantasy" analogue, and it doesn't really matter.  The story is real and gripping and powerful, and even though it's a bit darker than I usually select (trigger warnings here for rape and abuse and parental abandonment and really just about every type of violence you can think of), I'm glad I read it, and it was VERY good.  It reminded me strongly of The Girl With Ghost Eyes, but with better agency and voices for the women leads.

Play Script: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jack Thorne & J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Jack Thorne (based on a concept and the HP universe of J. K. Rowling)
ISBN: 9781338099133
Read August 1, 2016

Did I wait long enough to avoid spoiling those who don't want to be spoilt?  If not, please skip to the next review!

First things first: yes it's short.  Very short.  It's not anything like the complexity and length of any of the later novels, and in tone it's actually a lot more like the first few books than the latter ones.  I am sure that the talented acting and directing cast have added a lot more flavor and impact to the bare script in the actual play itself, but this is a review of the written script, and it's just a little on the flat side.

Good Things:
More Official Harry Potter story!
Scorpius.
Time Travel done not so horribly
Interesting worldbuilding grace-notes and lovely call-backs and nods to the books.
Serviceable and solid plotting and pacing.
Snape getting to be a hero!

Not So Good Things:
Flat Characters
Storyline and moral was trite and cliche
Limitations caused by format (unavoidable, but still present)
A bit too reliant on hitting those nostalgia notes: no new ground being tread here.

Very Bad Things:
Unfortunate treatment of ALL the women in the script. If it were one or two instances, or one or two characters, I would shrug it off, but it's ALL of them, in EVERY interaction, in EVERY bad cliche of womanhood there is. It was to the point that I was feeling sorry for the actresses trying to salvage their characters.


Was it fun to read? Absolutely.
Would I love to see it?  Certainly.  I can only hope they'll decide to produce a staged-filmed version, or perhaps to translate it to a movie or short BBC-style "season" of two or three long episodes.
Did I notice things that made me cringe a bit and like it less in the critical-evaluation sense?  Yep.
 


 

Nonfiction: Do Parents Matter? Robert and Sarah LeVine

Do Parents Matter? Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax
Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine
ISBN: 9781610397230
Read September 17, 2016

An interesting cross-cultural study of various parenting practices and the outcomes observed, but flawed and limited in a lot of ways.  Really makes one wish that there were larger groups studying this sort of thing in earnest - I think there would be a great deal of knowledge acquired that way, but it might not be particularly flattering to the current medical/psychological concepts, so there's understandably little push for it.

The authors use personal anthropological/sociological observations and those collected by other groups to make comments about various parenting tactics and supposedly basic concepts, inferring from their observations that there is very little universal about how children are nurtured and raised, and that despite that vast gulf of differences, mainly the adults end up as well-adjusted adults in their respective societies.

I would have liked more citations or deeper explanations, as a lot of things are hand-waved or offhandedly explained without backing: I want to be clear that I don't think they're faking any of their information, or purposefully being misleading, I just wanted to have a clearer understanding of what they're basing that on (which would have made this a much thicker and more scholarly book, so I can completely understand why they chose not to).

Overall interesting, but it raises a lot more questions than it answers.

Nonfiction: The Perfect Horse, Elizabeth Letts

The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis
Elizabeth Letts
ISBN: 9780345544803
Read September 2016

So the title is a bit misleading, because honestly the US didn't know (or didn't care) about European stallions during the course of the war, and even through the course of this book.  They don't even appear in the narrative until half-way in, and that's just to track the beginnings and development of the characters for when they DO become important, which is at the last minute (insert "typical American" joke here).

So this is the real sub-title: How Devoted People from LOTS of Countries Saved Really Expensive Horses During the Last Days of the War.

So: Why is this important?  Did you know that Hitler wanted to apply eugenics to horses, so he got the civilian manager of the German-hosted Olympics to start a horse-breeding program, which he did mostly by stealing the Arabian and Lipizzaner horses from neighbors as they were conquered.  Horse-loving people in several places all worked furiously behind the scenes to keep the welfare of the horses in mind as the horrible war took place and people's minds were generally on more important global issues, until one week, right at the end of the war, when everything fell into place for the US to basically steal the stolen horses, and try to get any of them back to their proper owners and countries of origin (which we didn't do very well, but it was only partly because we were selfish and wanted them for ourselves).

Very well written, interesting cast of characters, and a really interesting read - right up until the end, when all the narrative drive just dies a slow whimpering death as people lost track of the horses which had been so important up until then, and leaves the story to end with only two of the now-American horses' fates actually known.  How sad that was.

Tuesday Storytime: Baby Animals

The only difficulty I have with this type of theme is that it makes it more difficult to have a coloring sheet that goes along with the theme - in those cases I have a collection of general "storytime" or "book" themed coloring sheets that I use instead.

Baby Bear Counts One
Ashley Wolff
ISBN: 9781442441583
Very detailed woodcut-style art, very dark and vibrant and detailed.

Baby bear and Mama bear are walking through the autumn woods and Baby counts various animals as they prepare for winter by stocking up or migrating away.  A good mesh of naturalistic (the artwork and the matter-of-fact descriptions of the animals' various activities) and fanciful (the conceit of Baby and Mama talking).  Very nice, but a smidge on the long side.  I actually read Bunnies!!! first, and I regret it, because this one was longer in reading than it ran when I previewed it, and we had VERY squirmy audience today.  It would have flowed much better in the top billing, which is why I'm listing it here as such.

Bunnies!!!
Kevan Atteberry
ISBN: 9780062307835
A sweet-faced monster is quite excited by a family of pastel bunnies, but they keep running away!

The art here is notable specifically for the quality of the emotional content conveyed with very little text and minimalistic art style.  It's really delightful to watch the kids respond as the little sweet monster gets more and more discouraged by the bunnies who keep running from his over-excited advances.  The twist ending manages to be sweet and to draw a chuckle from both parents and the older (or genre savvy) kids who realize what's about to happen again.

Hush, Little Horsie
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Ruth Sanderson
ISBN: 9780375858536
Beautiful restful spreads and vignettes of pairs of dams and foals in various environments.

I love this book.  It's sweet and calming and restful, and the catch at the ending is very well done - a parent reading to her horse-mad small child, putting them to bed.  The rhymes are VERY repetitive, but I don't even care - they're pretty and calming, and just different enough to flow beautifully from one horse family to another.  I do wish there was at least one horse father or grandparent present, but that could be easily altered by a quick-thinking reader.  Beautiful and quite short on the read, which made it a delightful positive finish for our overactive audience today.

Graphic Novel: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3, Ryan North & Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 3
collecting issues 1-6 of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and a crossover issue of Howard the Duck #6 (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is re-numbered after Marvel "event" of 2016, following the previous set of 1-8 & specials reviewed here.)
Writer: Ryan North
Howard the Duck Writer: Chip Zdarsky
Artist: Erica Henderson
Color Art: Rico Renzi
Trading Card Art: Joe Morris, Matt Digges, David Robins, Chip Zdarsky, & Doc Shaner
Van Art (I swear this is a thing that actually exists in this collection, and the van is awesome): Joe Quinones
Letters: VC's Clayton Cowles & Travis Lanham
ISBN: 9780785196266
Read August/September 2016

The continuing adventures of Squirrel Girl continue!  Everything I loved about it before, I still love, and the sweet and fun tone is delightful and refreshing in a lot of grimdark surroundings.  Excellent stories, even more excellent characters (although I thought that Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boy (Boi?) were sadly neglected this time through) and just so much joyous fun from time-traveling start to "the great hunt" of the finish.  Even beyond the stories themselves, the collection includes the little aside notes on the bottoms of the pages, the in-jokes between authors and artists, and the lovely letters from fans (real or imagined, but I think mostly real - judging by the cosplay pictures).  All of that just adds a lovely layer of fun metafrosting to the nutty cake.

Tuesday Storytime: Dancing

Three really lovely dancing books today.

Flora and the Flamingo
Molly Idle
ISBN: 9781452110066
Wordless lift-the-flap book with a double-page unfolding spread. Beautiful illustrations.

This one really had to have been amazing to make it past the usual storytime hurdles.  It's a wordless picture book, AND it has lift-the-flaps on quite a few of the pages (AND a big double-spread fold-out section at the end) so you know it has to be really cute or really amazing to get past all that.  And it is!  Both.  Cute.  And amazing.  Flora is a dancer, and as far as I can tell, she's at the zoo. Maybe she's dreaming, or she has a pet flamingo, because there's really nothing in the way of backgrounds to let us know one way or the other, and I find that it doesn't really matter. Either way, Flora is a dancer, and she's wearing black swim flippers (to look like the flamingo's feet?  Because she likes wearing swim flippers? Again, not important.) and a swimming cap, and she and the flamingo are DANCING. TOGETHER. It's beautiful, and the proportions are delightful and the matching movements with the very different bodies are just so sweet and the little bits of story that unfold through mirrored movements and poses and facial expressions are just delightful. It really is just lovely. I love Molly Idle's books so much.


Wiggle
Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Scott Menchin
ISBN: 1599610930
American-cartoon style dog leads an interactive-inviting story through a day of wiggles.

"Do you wiggle out of bed? If you wiggle with your breakfast, it might wind up on your head." These are the important questions in life, and ones that invite the audience to wiggle right along with the irrepressible dog star in this book.  There's not much substance, and it's awfully quick, but for a short middle book and short toddler attention-spans? The wiggly content and the fast pace make it perfect. This one also got the rare award of actual toddler laughter. Adults tend to chuckle quite a lot in my storytimes, but I don't often feature stories that hit the little ones' funny bones. This one was a rare exception, and it was a smash hit. Prepare to follow this with a song or an activity that lets those wiggles free!


How Do You Wokka-Wokka?
Elizabeth Bluemle, illustrated by Randy Cecil
ISBN: 9780763632281
A diverse inner-city sidewalk is home to a variety of dance styles told with wokka rhymes.

Wokka-wokka is how the first kid dances, and they go along the sidewalk and ask a lot of others how they dance too - and the answers are as varied as the kids encountered.  We get flamingo dances (how appropriate!) and mariachi dances, and breakdancing (dancing like a clock), and the worm (fish-flop dancing), and by the end of the book, the whole neighborhood is dancing all together in their different ways, all having a great time with the repeated rhyme chorus.

Tuesday Storytime: Cars and Trucks

I was on vacation this week, so I left a nice simple bouncy storytime program for my replacement to run.  I always feel so bad when I miss, partly because I really enjoy storytime and seeing the kids every week, but also because I feel honor-bound to leave a good program behind, so it often has really good stories that I wish I were reading myself!

Big Truck and Little Truck
Jan Carr, illustrated by Ivan Bates
ISBN: 0439071771
Dreamy pastel-bright watercolors of a little truck stretching to meet the requirements of a big-truck job.

Big Truck has been teaching Little Truck for a long time, and they do all the jobs together: go to the market, pull things out of ditches, haul veggies and compost, and everything else needed on the farm.  But when Big Truck has to go to the shop for a while, can Little Truck manage everything alone for the first time?  Sweet, satisfying, and re-assuring, all while being "trucky" enough for the most die-hard enthusiast.


Calling All Cars (boardbook)
Sue Fliess, illustrated by Sarah Beise
ISBN: 9781492638360
Bright poppy "modern" cartoon illustrations of all sorts of cars.

This is like a modern-day short version of a Richard Scarry's "Things that Go" sort of book.  It's cute and quick and fun, and very modern (in the "wow this is really going to be dated in a couple dozen years" sort of way) in the artistic sense. The narrative roughly follows the course of a day, but it really is just a rhyme as an excuse to illustrate a whole lot of cars and trucks.


Zoom! Zoom! Sounds of things that go in the city
Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Ted Carpenter
ISBN: 9781442483156
Retro-pop illustrations in quad-tones (blue, red, yellow, black) and a fun swinging rhyme structure.

Catchy rhymes, cute retro cityscapes and cars, and a fun lighthearted set of rhymes, with onomatopoeic highlight words on each spread.  Each one has the focus on a different type of cityscape: a morning scene with trash trucks and busses, a highway under construction, a metro train, ambulances, ice-cream trucks... This one does have non-cars: bicycles, joggers, skateboards, etc, but it's still very vehicle-oriented, so I kept it, just because it's so pretty and fun.

  

Tuesday Storytime: Haiku Trio

I had originally hoped to do all three about pets, but I wasn't quite able to manage it.  Still, these three worked very well together, and it was a nice chance to incorporate some poetry into the storytime routine.

Won-Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku
Lee Wardlaw, illustrated by Eugene Yelchin
ISBN: 9780805089950
Linear, edgy, almost comic-book art, with minimalist backgrounds.

Won-Ton is a shelter cat who's been adopted, and he's ready to tell us all about the process in a series of truly delightful haiku.  I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this is my favorite book from this storytime, and probably one of my favorites in general.  Wardlaw just does such a perfect job capturing the sly and superior tone of a cat, even in undignified moments, and Yelchin's lanky bony angular artwork is just perfect.  I especially love the expressive eyes.


Hi, Koo! a year of seasons
Jon J. Muth
ISBN: 9780545166683
Koo is a panda bear (perhaps related to the panda Stillwater from the Zen books) and this is his year in unmetered haiku.

Unlike Won-Ton and Dogku, the haiku here are more free-form, with the understanding that syllable breaks in the original don't quite match up to what syllables represent in english. So some of these are quite short, and others are much more wordy than expected.  Still, it's a beautiful and interesting way to represent time flowing in little snippets of verse.  We start in autumn, which is a good fit for this time of year, and flow smoothly through to end at the height of summer. Quick, sweet and touching, but the illustrations don't quite manage to carry as much interest.


Dogku
Andrew Clements, illustrated by Tim Bowers
ISBN: 9780689858239
A dog sits on a doorstep, hoping for a home.  Sweet painterly illustrations.  Lots of color.

Like Won-Ton, we have a dog hoping for a forever home in this story.  Unlike Won-Ton, this puppy has invited himself in, and it's a gamble as to whether he'll be allowed to stay.  (Happy endings are not optional in my storytimes, so no worries there.)  Great framing, a good progression through the day, and a nice "cliffhanger" for the little ones.  I'm highly tempted to save this one for another storytime and match it up with Taxi Dog.

Juv Nonfiction: A Smart Girl's Guide to Worry (American Girl) Judy Woodburn, Nancy Holyoke & Brenna Vaughan

A Smart Girl's Guide to Worry: how to feel less stressed and have more fun
American Girl nonfiction/advice books
Judy Woodburn and Nancy Holyoke, illustrated by Brenna Vaughan
ISBN: 9781609587451
Very specific and science-based (mostly CBT) techniques for conquering anxiety.

A very clear and straightforward advice book that focuses attention on the reality-warping aspects of worry and anxiety, and provides Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy-based mental and physical techniques to counteract those negative impulses and move beyond fear-based thinking.

This isn't a match for a good therapist, but for your run-of-the-mill kiddo who is suddenly anxious about a particular subject or activity, or is growing awkward and walled-off as she grows older and feels less confident in herself, this is a great starting point, making it clear that everyone has to deal with worries, and while some people suffer more than others, there are techniques that will work over time to negate or quiet down those fearful or insecure thoughts.

Recommended.

Juv Nonfiction: School Rules (American Girl) by Emma MacLaren Henke & Stacy Peterson

Just in time for the school year, we've got new copies of some of the American Girl advice books.  These are really great books, and I'm very glad to have them.  As a bonus, the nonfiction books don't actually advertise for American Girl at all, which makes it much easier to review them with a clear conscience.

School Rules! tips, tricks, shortcuts, and secrets to make you a super student
American Girl nonfiction/advice books
Emma MacLaren Henke, illustrated by Stacy Peterson
ISBN: 9781609587437
A generalized preparatory handbook of habits, with a few "quizzes" to show basic tendencies.

This book is a very straightforward school prep guide.  It addresses mental and physical habits to drop and to pick up, talks about procrastination and perfectionism, about the value of appearances vs content, and gives information about study habits and how to best learn new topics.  It also talks about how to request help when needed, and how to handle the stress when projects or topics are difficult to master.

Basic, clear, straightforward, and science-based.  An excellent book that balances excitement about school and learning with clear reassuring facts and advice.

Nonfiction: Becoming Nicole: Amy Ellis Nutt

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family
Amy Ellis Nutt
ISBN: 9780812995411
Read August 21

The only downside to this book is that while it's about Nicole and her journey, the majority of the book is told from the perspectives of her relatives: her mother and father, and her identical twin brother.  I found that less disturbing during the narration of their early lives, but once Nicole was into the 5th grade, it was odd to read snippets from her journal, but have the bulk of the narrative driven by the experiences of her parents, or from case-notes from a therapist.  I really didn't feel like I ever got to hear Nicole's story, just the story of her family.  Which, ok, that's the title, I know.  But I somehow thought it would be both.  I was interested to see how her family developed and coped (especially her dad, who was portrayed as sensitively as possible, but was still massively hung-up on his ideals and his pre-determined thoughts about what was appropriate for a really long-ass time) and her brother, who had what seems like a fairly normal bout of teenaged/college "what is life really all about" slump, made worse by all the attention paid to his suddenly-famous sibling.

Regardless, it was a very moving and interesting story, and I still hope that perhaps Nicole will take some time from college and theatre to work with another ghostwriter and tell HER version of the story we got here.  I'd love to hear her words.

YA Novel/Graphic: Draw the Line, by Laurent Linn

Written and drawn in sections by Laurent Linn, this isn't as solidly half-and-half graphic novel and book like The Adventures of Hugo Cabret or the more recent Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape.  Still, there's a decent amount of illustrated material, which really adds something to the story.

Draw the Line
written and illustrated by Laurent Linn
ISBN: 9781481452809
Read August 20

Adrian has a lot of talent, but he's also a pragmatist (perhaps a pessimist) - he knows that artsy gay online comic creators aren't really the power players at school, so he's WAY into the closet, about everything.  His wardrobe is made of muted greys and taupes, he keeps his head down, and no one besides his two similarly-marginalized friends has any idea what sort of ideas and passions make him tick.  But all that changes dramatically when Adrian watches a flamboyantly gay classmate get savagely beaten at a local diner, and Adrian makes a terrified stand that puts him in the spotlight, and into the sights of school bullies.

It was a little heavy-handed at times, and the progression was a bit quick, and the ending a bit pat, but I forgive those in the interests of having a mostly upbeat and positive story, despite the focus on some tough issues.

I don't know if there's anywhere more for Adrian's story to go, but it might be interesting to see Linn tackle a slant-wise sequel that focuses on one of the other characters involved, several of whom have really strong potential for a powerful story of their own.

Picture Book: Elliot, Julie Pearson, illustrated by Manon Gauthier

I don't know that I've seen a book directly about foster care and adoption that addressed the actual realities so specifically before.  It's unsettling, but very well done, and very needed.

Elliot
Julie Pearson, illustrated by Manon Gauthier
ISBN: 9781927485859
Read August 2016
Elliot is a small bunny who has parents who don't know how to care for him, so he lives with different families instead.

In scratchy drawings and minimalist backgrounds, we learn about Elliot.  "His mother and father loved him very much.  BUT... When Elliot cried, his mother and father did not understand why.  When Elliot yelled, his mother and his father did not know what to do.  When Elliot misbehaved, his mother and father did not know how to react."  So they ask for help from Thomas the social worker, and Elliot goes to stay with other families while his parents try to learn to care for him.  He stays with one family for a while, and then goes back home, but then has to go to another family, and eventually Thomas explains that his mother and father will never know how to take care of him, so Thomas will find a forever family for Elliot.

What I really like here is that the text specifically ties Elliot's fears and worries and anticipation into his misbehavior (or desire to misbehave) because that is actually true, and something that normal attached families and children have a hard time understanding.  I also like the scratchy informal artwork, that looks like it could have been drawn by a child, and the focus on Elliot and keeping his needs met and making sure he's informed of the process, while very specifically not giving him any power over how the situation unfolds: it's not because Elliot misbehaves or does anything, it's all based on his parents and on the decisions Thomas makes.

Very good resource, and I'm very glad to have it.

Picture Book: What to Do With a Box, Jane Yolen, illustrated by Chris Sheban

What to Do With a Box
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Chris Sheban
ISBN: 9781568462899
Read August 2016

New arrival!  This one is awfully cute.  There are a good few "box" books out there, and I think this one adds nicely to the collection.  It's a little on the sepia/bland side, so I don't know if it will work for storytime, but I'm thinking about giving it a whirl, just so I can say I did an entire storytime theme around cardboard boxes.  The things that give a librarian joy.

So I said earlier that it's a bit sepia/bland - what I should have said is that it's box-colored.  Most of the illustrations are of slightly hazy sepia-toned children playing in various quite-lifelike boxes, with their imaginations or drawings fading off the box into a sort of dreamy realm.  It's a lovely way to envision the imagination that kids use when they're playing in a box or crate like that.

There isn't much of a story - it basically just asks what a box can be, and then each spread answers it with a different imagined playscape and a different set of children or single child with their own box or boxes.  Still, it's sweet and fun and the language is easy and beautiful.

I think I've just convinced myself to do it.  :)

Management: Be Our Guest, Disney Institute

Professional development titles should always be so fun and quick to read. 

Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service (revised and updated) 

Disney Institute: Theodore Kinni

ISBN: 9781423145844  (2011) 

Read August 2016

Basically the same idea as the Coldstone training I had way back when.  I wish I could have read this when I was first starting out as a manager, but now there's a lot here that I realize is institutional, and if you don't have the institutional backing and the money/infrastructure/manpower to make it happen, it doesn't really help much at the middle-management level, regardless of how inspiring and motivating it wants to appear.

Not to knock the Disney machine.  They've got a great thing going, and they're smart to share it (in fact, at ALA this year, there was a keynote address co-sponsored by one of the vendors that WAS How to Create the Disney Experience, using this very idea.  Again, not very helpful unless you have legit and enthusiastic buy-in from all levels of the organization - so I'm glad I read the book and didn't waste my short amount of time at the conference.

Basically, the idea is that the more streamlined, simple, attractive, and coherent you keep your operational "narrative," the happier, more calm, and more appreciative your audience (customers or patrons) will be.

So: 

1) focus on the basics first: safety, mission statement, the actual provision of the services.

2) add on set-dressing: make the environment pleasant and use experiential cues to support your basics.  Have clear signage, open and attractive areas where things all fit in (branding) and think about other senses to engage: scent, sound, temperature.

3) have a highly trained cast: make sure your employees are very good at their jobs by training them on the SPECIFICS of how to interact with people, down to hand-gestures and facial expressions.  (This is the part that Coldstone was very big on.)  You want friendly interchangeable motivated and helpful blank-slates that project the personality of the company, not of their own person.  (Honestly, this bit is really questionable from a HR perspective, but you gotta admit that they're right and it works!)

4) behind-the-scenes control: there has to be infrastructure to support all the other points, and if you don't have that institutional and manpower infrastructure, good luck making all the other things stick.  Put actual time and energy into developing and adapting processes and policies to keep audience and cast happy and working efficiently together to give the audience what they want. (or even what they don't yet know that they want, but they want it when they see it.)  

A fun read, with lots of Disney insider trivia and history, but it really does have to be an all-or-nothing sort of approach. 

Tuesday Storytime: Summer Showers

We've finally had some rain here, so it's time for our Summer Showers storytime - I usually do one in spring and one in late summer after the Summer Reading Program finishes off.  In South Carolina, summer is absolutely not over at the end of July - we're just getting started.  Last year it didn't cool down til November, and I don't see that changing much this year either.

Thunder-Boomer!
Shutta Crum, illustrated by Carol Thompson
ISBN: 9780618918651
Loose free scribbly lines and washes of color and lots of small panels and vignettes.

The panels and vignettes make this a little less suitable for storytime, but we had a small-ish group today, so it worked out pretty well.  I love the loose flowing scribbly lines and the slightly sloppy washes of color everywhere, and the differences between the wide-open outside and the slightly cramped and crowded inside.  We start on a hot country afternoon: dad's plowing, mom and kids are cooling by the pond, and a "Thunder-Boomer" rolls in, prompting a scramble: tractor put away, chickens hustled back into the coop, laundry pulled off the line.  The bottom falls out, and poor Dad has to run out to rescue a last broody chicken, and then it's just huddling together while the storm rolls through.  After the rain and wind and hail die back down, they emerge to a wet and clean world, and a tiny kitten, courtesy of the broody chicken and drenched by the storm.


The Big Storm! A Very Soggy Counting Book
Nancy Tafuri
ISBN: 9781416967958
Oddly paced, but short and sweet: forest animals take refuge one by one in a small cave - surprise bears!

Tafuri's lovely drawings with their vibrant colors and clear lines are perfect for this short and sweet count-up-and-back-down.  The frontispieces show a pair of bears heading into a hillside cave, and then the story begins with the smaller woodland creatures swooping in to take refuge from the storm - as the numbers and the animals reveal, they don't know the bears are already there!  All ten crowd in for the night of storms and rumbly thunder, but in the morning the sky is clear, but why can they still hear thunder so loudly?  A mad scramble for the outdoors makes up the count-back-down, and the bears are left peacefully asleep.


Tap Tap Boom Boom
Elizabeth Bluemle, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
ISBN: 9780763656966
An urban thunderstorm brings umbrella vendors and a retreat into the subway station.

The short choppy rhythms of this book and the syncopated speaking patterns and slant-rhymes (at least for me) make this a challenge to read fluidly, but it's a really great book, especially for my area, which is a lot more familiar with farms and suburbs than with subways and city sidewalks.  A Tap Tap Boom Boom rolls in, and as the rain soaks through everything, people retreat to the subway station for refuge and a chance to dry off and socialize for a bit before re-emerging to find a scrubbed-clean city and a nice rainbow.  This one also is good for humanizing and normalizing city life, again a challenge for this particular area.  For a city-life trio, I'd pair it with Nana in the City and I don't know what else.

Graphic Novel: The Last Dragon, Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay

The Last Dragon
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay
ISBN: 9781616558741
Read August 15, 2016


An introduction by Neil Gaiman is sweet, but unnecessary for this sweet and delightfully traditional dragon slaying fairy tale.

Once upon a time there was an island that was plagued by dragons, who just adored eating people.  Apparently we taste good.  The folk banded together and slayed them all.  Now it's hundreds of years later, and dragons are a faded memory - all dead, all gone.  Until one final egg hatches, and a new dragon begins to grow up in the woods, all fire and hatred and appetite.

We join a healer's family and a pair of young boys searching for a hero, all desperate to save their town from this re-born threat from the past.

The art is beautiful, the characters are individualized as much as possible given the short length of the story, and a sweet little romance doesn't detract from the plot to destroy the dragon and save the townsfolk.

Finance: The One-Page Financial Plan, Carl Richards

The One-Page Financial Plan
Carl Richards
ISBN: 9781591847557
A simplified direct approach to counteracting the tendency to do nothing when you can't do the best.
Read August 2016

Richards is very smart.  He knows that when faced with difficult decisions, the tendency is to waffle back and forth and to hesitate and not do anything, rather than have to know that you DID do the wrong thing (or even perhaps the not the absolute best thing).  This gets really bad when dealing with financial issues, because really, doing SOMETHING is generally better than doing nothing at all.

So he breaks things down into simple (not necessarily easy) suggestions:

Track your daily spending.

Make a budget or use expense-monitoring software and check to see if your ideas about your spending match reality.  Adjust either ideas or reality until they match.  Don't spend time feeling guilty if it's not a match, just make it match however goes best for you.

Figure out what YOU want money for, and what that looks like to you in 5, 10 years?
Security?  Travel?  Kids?  Retirement?  New house?

Keeping your current spending habits and lifestyle in mind, AND what you want for the future, start researching how much money you need to have put aside to make those things happen.

Write a single page that says basically: "We need x $ for our vacation this year.  We need y $ for replacing the roof.  We need z $ for our retirement fund.  We're doing THIS to make it happen."

Automate transfers and deposits and payments as much as possible - so you don't have to constantly think about "sacrificing" to meet your goals.

For emergencies or special-occasions, refer to your actual physical page of goals and needs before deciding.  You've really already decided, just be persistent and DON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND.

Remember things change - check your sheet and your plans purpsefully every year (not when you're tempted by a shiny special occasion or flailing in an emergency) and either re-affirm or modify.

Actually invest something.  Anything.  Find a good financial adviser and follow their directions, or make a 60/40 split in stocks and bonds.  Make stocks safe and VERY DIVERSE holdings.  Every year, take your gains and losses and redistribute them to keep the split at 60/40, and if possible grow the investments instead of cashing them out.  Investing works best long-term.  Anything shorter than a few years needs to be CDs instead.    

Dalma Heyn, 1992, ISBN: 0679413391

I'm not listing the title because I do review mainly children's books, but it's easy to find with the info I provided.

Author: Dalma Heyn
ISBN: 0679413391
Turtle Bay/Random House, 1992
Read August 2016

Inspired by professional and cultural literature presenting affairs as being unrelentingly horrible in outcome for married women, Heyn went out and actually talked to some (white, upperclass, privileged) women who DID have affairs, and when their thoughts and reasons clashed horribly with the literature, she took the brave step of abandoning the established "professional" truth, and simply listened and recorded what the women said, and then compared and contrasted that with psychological and sociological studies.

Basically, Heyn showed that if SOCIALLY KNOWN, (even just to the husband) having an affair was most often quite detrimental to women and their security (emotionally, physically, and fiscally) and to their standing in society, if the affair was private, the women in question often felt that this experience provided them a place to be a full, whole person, rather than the "socialized wife" that they all felt they were expected to be inside of marriage.

It was dated, but interesting, and I'd really like to see someone tackle polyamory and plural marriages, because I think some of the interesting dynamics of self-sacrifice and of being less-than a whole authentic self to make a married relationship work, and of course the idea that most men, and some women have that when married they have ownership or controlling rights over the other partner's sexuality.

Interesting read.

Graphic Novel Book Club: New Suicide Squad, vol. 1 Pure Insanity, by Sean Ryan et al

Our last graphic novel was intended to tie in with the new Suicide Squad movie, and from what I hear, audiences liked that movie just about as much as our readers liked the New Suicide Squad collection.  By which I mean they're not liking it much at all.  Interesting how that works out.

Anyway.

New Suicide Squad, Vol. 1: Pure Insanity
collecting New Suicide Squad issues 1-8
ISBN: 9781401252380
writing: Sean Ryan
breakdowns: Tom Derenick
artists: Rob Hunter, Jeremy Roberts, Norm Rapmund, Vicente Cifuentes, Scott Hanna, Trevor Scott, Mark Irwin, Batt
colorist: Blond
letterers: Taylor Esposito, Dave Sharpe

Read August 2016

So the OLD Suicide Squad was disbanded apparently, so Amanda Waller is working with a bull-headed, homicidal, over-achieving Vic Sage (what a name) with his hand-picked new Task Force X (why so many names, y'all?) purposefully picked to cause as much strife and mayhem as possible.  Poor Amanda.

So returning from the old team we have Harley, Deadshot, and Black Manta, and Vic drags in Deathstroke and Joker's Daughter (who really isn't, but ok, let's have more crazy women with strange issues about the Joker being the formative male figure in their lives because THAT's totally not sexist and old news already).  At some point the Australian dude and Totally Not Evil Flash get dragged into this ridiculousness, just to have more characters involved I guess?

I'm sure there is a plot, I just couldn't find it.  The team gets sent to Russia to research something, and explodes it instead (quelle surprise), gets sent to tactically explode something in China, and DOESN'T explode it before a bunch of vat-grown mutant (does DC have mutants?) supers lurches zombie/Doom-like out to pummel them (they eventually explode things).  Then there's Chinese Superman, who I think dies because they can't figure out what to do with him... and all the while Vic the dick and Amanda are jousting for position back at HQ.

Anyway - it's a hot mess.  The women are simply crazy - no characters there to speak of.  Harley's a far cry from the self-possessed crazy but somewhat self-aware character she is in her flagship series (review coming soon for that one), and Joker's Daughter is simply a mess and spends most of the time being useless or unconscious.  Characters defect or are invalided out nearly every issue, making it difficult to care about the team.  Honestly, the only one I felt anything for was Black Manta, who really just needs to get out of there and find a team of reasonable people to work with.  (Good luck, man.)  Waller is presented sympathetically, Vic is amazingly cardboard for being the major antagonist, and honestly Waller's assistant has the most "humanizing" moments in the whole thing.

Art was decent, but oddly stretched and warped in places, like the panel layout wasn't finalized before the scenes were drawn, and someone just used the stretch tool in MS Paint to make things fit in their new locations.  Lots of red, lots of explosions as backgrounds (saves drawing buildings) lots of cement-bunker environments or nearly-empty cubical farms.  The women (save a few moments for Waller and her assistant) are constantly sexualized, even when in the middle of mayhem, or when unconscious.  The male characters are differentiated by costumes, and that's about it.  Once in their prison/psych uniforms, I had trouble recognizing characters from earlier panels.

Not hugely recommended, but there's a possibility for interesting development for Manta and Waller, so if you're interested in them, it might be worth it.  Otherwise, the characters are mostly there to provide a superficial reason for all the explosions.      

Tuesday Storytime: Zingy Blingy Rhythm

The Ring Went Zing! a story that ends with a kiss
Sean Taylor, illustrated by Jill Barton
ISBN: 9780803733114
Scratchy colored-pencil and watercolor anthropomorphic animals chase a ring, in growing numbers.

I Got the Rhythm
Connie Schofield-Morrison, illustrated by Frank Morrison
ISBN: 9781619631786
A delightful AA child beat-bops through a park associating rhythms with different senses and sounds.

Dancing Feet!
Lindsay Craig, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780375861819
A series of animal-feet-based "who does this" pages get kids involved, and then a splash page at the end has children and animals all dancing together.

Tuesday Storytime: Splashy Summer

I have such fun picking out themes for storytimes.

All-Weather Friends
Udo Weigelt, illustrated by Nicolas D' Aujourd'hui
ISBN: 0735810486 (library)
A German wives' tale gets Moss the frog into weather forecasting trouble, before a new friend sets him straight.

Moss is flustered when his friend Hedgehog demands that he forecast the weather, and in his panic, he makes up stories.  None of his forecasts come true (this book has the record for the weirdest-weather day ever!) and in despair, after ruining his friends' plans for the day, he sets off for the weather frog in the human house to learn forecasting.  What he learns instead, is how to be a friend, and how to be truthful, even when people are very demanding.


Down by the Cool of the Pool
Tony Mitton, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439309158
A lively barnyard song-and-dance sparked by the frog at the farm pond.

This one is quick and lively and super-fast-paced, and the illustrations are likewise loose and bright and vibrant and full of action.  The text is incorporated into the illustrations, which makes a couple of pages a bit hard to process in front of an audience, but the words and the escalation of the rhyme is fairly predictable.  I do find the ending a bit abrupt, but otherwise it's a bright fun read.


Water in the Park: a book about water and the times of the day
Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin
ISBN: 9780375970023
A city park, with pond, playground, sprinklers, and grassy field, sees a full day of visitors.

This is an interesting premise, and it feels just a little bit forced, to be totally honest, but the close focus on individuals (from a child's perspective - so we have the names of children and dogs, but not of any adults) and on the ebb and flow of visitors to the park saves it from being tedious.  We start at 6 am, with a quiet park, where turtles enjoy the first rays of sunlight on the rocks.  Through the day, various people and animals enjoy the park and interact with water in lots of different ways, from dogs splashing in the pond to kids schlepping water in buckets over to the sandboxes, to babies playing in the sprinklers, to birds bathing in the puddles left over from the workers watering the flowers, until nighttime, when the last dogs finish their walks and a torrential storm soaks everything.

Tuesday Storytime: Gardening

Well, MOSTLY gardening.  I thought I had a third gardening book already set aside for this week, but turns out I didn't, so we used a new arrival (Summer Days and Nights) instead, and it worked out fine.  Next time around I'd like to have it more specifically gardening, but que sera and all that.


Summer Days and Nights
Wong Herbert Yee
ISBN: 9780805090879
A generic "Asian" family spends an idyllic day and evening with traditional summer activities.

Yee is best known to me because of his sweet and simple Fireman Small, which I use with nearly alarming frequency when I do firefighter or local hero storytime themes.  It's just so sweet and kind and endearing.  This book is a little more generic, but it's still a lovely story, nice and gentle and just perfect for bedtime.  Perhaps a bit too sweet and slow for storytime (especially with the size - this is a SMALL book: 6 inches tall and only about 8.5 wide, and most of the pictures aren't even the whole size of the pages. Our unnamed and un-gendered child wanders through a summer day, with requisite mentions of cats napping in the sunlight, iced lemonade, splashing in pools, picnics in the park, and catching butterflies.  What makes it slightly more interesting is the inclusion of nighttime scenes, and here is where the sub-theme of summertime life (most especially insect or small-animal life) is most pointed, as we see a mouse, owl, fireflies, crickets, and frogs outside in the evening before finally it's bedtime.


Lola Plants a Garden
Anna McQuinn, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw
ISBN: 9781580896948
Lola is a sweet Black child with a new and growing series of books about central child life topics.

McQuinn's Lola and Leo stories are generally very good for topical and child-interest storytimes.  As an aside, Lola is Lulu in the UK, where they're originally published.  For Lola, we have books about reading, and about interacting with baby siblings, and now about gardening, and we also have two featuring her little brother Leo (Zeki in the UK): Leo Loves Baby Time, and Leo Can Swim, for another set of important kid-friendly subjects.  I admit to being biased towards these simply because they feature Black children and families, and there are still too few of those books, and too few done by GOOD storytellers with GOOD illustrators.  I want people to know that just like girls and people of color learn to identify with all the millions of little white boys that feature as the heroes of stories, little white boys can do the same with a hero who is a girl, or a person of color.  It's a long slow slog, but I really feel like it's important to do as much as I can.  Soapbox over.  Lola is inspired by the nursery rhyme Mary Mary Quite Contrary, and with the help of her mom and dad, plants a flower garden, waits for it to grow, and then hosts a party for her little friends.  Simple, sweet, solid logical realistic activities.


If You Plant a Seed
Kadir Nelson
ISBN: 9780062298898
Previously reviewed here.

It worked out very well for storytime!  The little ones loved the bright active vibrant paintings, and the older kids were very intent on the story slowly unfolding with the turns of the pages.  I was very satisfied.