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.

Nonfiction: Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols

Blue Mind: the surprising science that shows how being near, in, on, or under water can make you happier, healthier, more connected, and better at what you do.
Wallace J. Nichols
ISBN: 9780316252089
Nonfiction: popular science: the therapeutic benefits of various interactions with water.

Interesting book, but despite the footnotes and carefully applied various disciplines and sciences (everything from property valuation to fMRI to sensory-deprivation chambers), it felt a little light-weight.  I don't know why - perhaps because most of what was covered falls squarely into common sense.  I sympathise with the scientific urge to explain and nail down the whys and wherefores of life, but for something as basic and universal as this, it feels somehow cheap to attempt to pin down specific biological responses and say that those are the reason; to me, that is confusing the mechanism with the motive.

Perhaps in humans, the mechanism and the motive are so interlinked as to be one and the same when looked at through a scientific eye, but in the meantime, as much as I enjoyed reading about the science behind emotional responses, and the peculiar human preferences that make ocean-view penthouses millions of dollars more expensive than their city-view next-door neighbors, I just didn't feel like I was any more renewed or enlightened about my relationship with water, or any more able to advocate for it.

Still, it was a nice enough read, much like floating around on a lazy river loop.  The journey is relaxing, even if you don't go anywhere new.

Tuesday Storytime: Boats

Last week of summer for most of us here in SC, so I'm finishing out the season with the last of a trio of "vacation" books, looking at boats on rivers and oceans.

Two of these are repeats, I've used and liked them before, but the middle book (Little Tug) is new to my library, and I tried it out for the first time today.  I liked it also - very short and cute.

Toy Boat
Randall de Seve, illustrated by Loren Long
ISBN: 9780399243745
Painterly full-spread illustrations of a handmade toy boat on a dangerous night alone on the lake.

This is a sweet book, but it does get a little intense - there's a separation, then a storm, and a night alone on the water before the happy reunion with the boy.  I love the cadence of the words here, and the repeated "Move along" from the various sources.


Little Tug
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9781596436480
Blocky print in limited color palette and very few words show the tug helping boats, and then a sweet goodnight.

This is my first read of this one, and I was a little worried that the lack of text would be a bit of a problem, but the flow was really smooth and slow, and that allowed plenty of time to appreciate the artfully blocky pictures.  I especially liked that the sailboat is male, and the motorboat is female.


Sail Away, Little Boat
Janet Buell, illustrated by Jui Ishida
ISBN: 1575058219
Stylized people and beautiful water scenes follow a toy boat from a brook downstream to the ocean, in verse.

This one is one where I'm not entirely sold on the verse structure.  Some books really just sneak it in there, and other books practically celebrate their verse structure, and some are just so brilliantly versified that it's a joy to read them.  This one is just a bit meh, and that makes it hard to summon the necessary energy to read this (decently long book) in the necessary rhythm to keep the verses and rhymes somewhat pointed.  That may just be me being a bit tired today.  Otherwise, I love that the boat itself is pretty much an excuse to explore the sights and sounds and wildlife (so much wildlife) along a brook, river, bay, and ocean.  The water, especially the fishes in the water, are just mesmerizingly painted.


And that's the end of summer for us, so next week, we'll do "Back to School" even though most of my group are too little to be in classes yet.