Tuesday Storytime: Big City Life

Only two more weeks before the Summer Reading Program kicks in, and we're all about the heroes and villains at that point.

For today, we're looking at life in the big city.


Blackout
John Rocco
ISBN: 9781423121909
Caldecott Honor book, large-format comic-book panels with minimal descriptive narration.

I am ambivalent about this book.  I love it as a personal read, and I've had a lot of luck with it in one-on-one sessions, where it becomes less a "story" and more an exploration of the event that is depicted (a city-wide blackout that lasts for a few hours, through the lens of a young child who is desperate for their busy family to play a board-game with them.)  On the other hand, the almost totally wordless  nature of the book makes much less suited for storytime, even though the story and the concepts are really perfectly suited for this age-group.  It's frustrating to try and balance being true to the book as written, and the desire to explain and narrate so that the younger kids, or the ones further back in the rows who can't see the action in the panels clearly, have a chance to understand what is going on.  I always feel like I'm doing the creator a disservice regardless of what I choose.  I hate that I feel this way, because I love the comic style, and I love the storyline itself, I just don't feel like this is the best setting for it.


Count on the Subway
Paul Dubois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender, illustrations by Dan Yaccarino
ISBN: 9780307979230
Yaccarino's distinctive pop-art livens a quick by-the-numbers run through the subway system.

I love this book!  So cute and lively and the rhymes are so nifty and cleverly hidden in the numbers.  A count up to ten, then back down to one, and ending in Grand Central Station, all through the perspective of a young girl and her mother, traversing the subway in the most matter-of-fact manner.  Too adorable for words, and a perfect representation of the very different realities of life in the city that my rural storytime kids have no experience with.


All Through My Town
Jean Reidy, illustrations by Leo Timmers
ISBN: 9781619630291
Overstuffed and busy, with few grounding reference points in the text or illustrations.

I liked this one when I pre-read it, but when I started it in storytime, I realized it was much too busy and unfocused to be a keeper.  The storyline is meandering - starting in the morning and the rhymes reference the buildings and events on the page as the day progresses, but there is no solid reference to time of day or to the buildings/events that are referenced, just the onomatopoeic language of the references; "shopping, sacking, sorting, stacking - rows so nice and neat" with an illustration of a market of some sort.  I wanted to like it, and it wasn't bad, especially with the fun language throughout, but it was confusing to the kids, sadly.  Would be really good with a classroom or one-on-one to ask "what sort of place do you think this is?" for each page and circumstance, and to refer that back to the kids' experiences with their own grocery stores, libraries, and streets.