Tuesday Storytime: Monstrous families

I also had Amanda Noll and Howard McWilliam's fantastic I Need My Monster cued up, but the crowd was predominantly littles, so it would have been too long. Highly recommended. 

I Am A Witch's Cat

Harriet Muncaster

ISBN: 9780062229144

Looooooove this book so much. The miniatures/dollhouse/collage illustrations are fantastic, the story is cute, and the premise is perfectly executed. Really excellent.

Go Away, Big Green Monster!

Ed Emberley

ISBN: 9780316236539

Classic cut-out reveal book. Simple, no nonsense, super fast, super fun for the kids to see how the monster grows and disappears. 

Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters a lullabye

Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kelly Murphy

ISBN: 9780763642013

Slow and very sedate, but a welcome change in tone from most upbeat or quirky halloween/monster books. This one is sweet and gentle, and ramps down smoothly from the end of a school day to the nearly endless rituals of bedtime. Sweet.

Tuesday Storytime: Cardboard Boxes

I did a "box" storytime (cough) years ago, and I had the WORST time finding good picture books for the topic, which I thought was so weird - cardboard boxes are totally a THING with kids, right? Now I'm happy to say that there are quite a few good "box books" out there to choose from, and I've got three really nice ones.

Big Friends
Linda Sarah, illustrated by Benji Davies
ISBN: 9781627793308
Birt and Etho are Big Friends, and they love taking their giant cardboard boxes up to the top of the nearby hill and playing fantastic games with them. Until Shu, a younger boy, gets up the nerve to ask to play also, and suddenly being a trio is just too much for Birt. He bails and sulks and avoids the other two boys until they come by his house with an amazing cardboard construction to share - maybe a trio isn't so bad after all?

Not a Box
Antoinette Portis
ISBN: 9780061123221
This is like the platonic ideal of a box book. A cute little black outlined bunny and box appear on each spread, with a question about what the bunny is doing with/at/in that box? Answers are on the next spread, as the phrase "not a box" is repeated (with just enough variation and emphasis) alongside the same illustration of the bunny and box repeated, but with added red outlines of the imaginary item that the box is representing. Very very good interactive and fun super short book. Remember to use a good robot voice for one of the "this is not a box" repeats.

What to do With a Box
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Chris Sheban
ISBN: 9781568462899
This is like a more dreamlike and artistic version of Not a Box. Yolen's slant rhymes and strange cadences work more often than not, but can be a bit tongue-trippy at times. The artwork is fake collage done with watercolors and colored pencils and inks, very well done, but perhaps a litttle overproduced? Just the tiniest bit? The kids seem to be siblings, but that's not made hugely clear, and they aren't diverse or minority, which is a shame, because the "story" doesn't require a static cast of characters to present the concept. I would have liked to see more and varied faces and bodies enjoying the boxes, rather than the same duo of "samey" white kids we always see. Very pretty, and artistically quite clever, but I sort of prefer the directness of Not a Box, or the more depthful friendship message in Big Friends.

Tuesday Storytime: Monster Bedtimes

There are SO MANY monster books out there now! It's awesome!

My Monster Mama Loves Me So
Laura Leuck, illustrated by Mark Buehner
ISBN: 9780688168667
A monster child narrates roughly over a day explaining how the mama monster does things to show her love. Touching and silly-gross at the same time.

Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kelly Murphy
ISBN: 9780763642013
A pair of school-age monster (siblings?) race home from school and run through their monstrous bedtime routine before settling down to sleep at the end.

Goodnight Little Monster
Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Bonnie Leick
ISBN: 9780761456834
A VERY CUTE toddler monster goes through an exhaustive and inclusive bedtime routine, this time from the mama's perspective. Really seriously adorable, but man those spiders on the end-papers are gonna be the death of me.

Tuesday Storytime: Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are always a hit.

How Do Dinosaurs Play with their Friends? (board book edition)

Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mark Teague

ISBN: 043985654X

One of the more obviously moralistic of the "How Do Dinosaurs..." series offers conflict resolution in a dino-sized package.

This board book version MIGHT be shorter than the regular one - it's been a long time since I looked through it and I can't remember.  Regardless, there is no story to speak of, just narration of what a dino does with his friends: does he hog the swings? or pout and grump? or refuse to share? Of Course Not! Dinosaurs are GOOD friends, and so they share, and take turns, and respect other people's feelings. About half the book is spent on the bad examples, and about half on the good examples, which is a good flow for storytime, but I'm not so sure it's better for moral impressions. (Psychologically speaking things go better when ONLY the good examples are presented, oddly enough.)

Dinosaur Roar!

Paul & Henrietta Stickland

ISBN: 061335933X

One of my all time favorite dino books.  Lots of dinos, lots of compare and contrast words, so short.

I love this book so much. It's short and simple and rhythmic and the contrast words are delightful vocabulary: "dinosaur fierce, dinosaur meek... dinosaur clean, and dinosaur slimy... dinosaur spiky and dinosaur lumpy..." with just absolutely perfect bright clear colorful images and expressive faces and bodies. Really delightful, I don't even care that there's not a story there.

Dinotrux

Chris Gall

ISBN: 9780316027779

What's better than dinosaurs? Dinosaurs that are ALSO heavy construction equipment, obviously!

These steamy meany stompy powerful things are Dinotrux, and they're not playing around - life is hard work, and they're gonna get things done! Each dino-machine combo has an appropriately-dinosaurific name: "dumplododucus" "garbageadon" "semisaurs" and gets a spread to themselves or shared with another complementary mecha (they seem like mecha to me) talking about their prehistoric lives and work.  The (cute but unnecessary) catch at the end is that over the eons, they've evolved into the current batch of "tame" construction vehicles that people work with every day.  

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.

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.  :)

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.

New Arrival: Picture Book: The Emperor and the Kite, Jane Yolen & Ed Young

A very pretty new arrival today, in the form of a lovely collaboration between the very talented Jane Yolen and the equally talented Ed Young.

The Emperor and the Kite
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Ed Young
ISBN:  9780399214998
Young's colorful and precise "papercut" artwork counterpoints Yolen's savvy and streamlined phrasing.

This is in the form of a Chinese fable, but I don't know if it actually is.  I do know that this particular story is older, and this is a newly-released edition with updated (and absolutely stunning) artwork.

Our Emperor has strong and able sons, and they are like the suns in the sky.  He also has beautiful and proper daughters, and they are like the moons in the night.  He has (but has pretty much forgotten) one final small girl child, who is young and small and quiet.  When hardship falls upon the Emperor, his lauded sons and beloved daughters weep and mourn for his dire fate (from a safe distance, of course), but the youngest actually gets up and does something for him.

Sweet and pat, of course, but that's a fable for you.  

Tuesday Storytime: Dragons!

This is my last free storytime before the Summer Reading Program starts.  I decided last year that I was going to have my storytimes for the little kids match up with the programs for the big kids in the Summer Reading Program, and I don't regret that - I love all the books and crafts that I've chosen - but I do feel a twinge that it will be AUGUST before I get to choose another personal, only at this library storytime theme (and before you ask, yes, I have already chosen them and picked out the books: swimming, going to the beach, and back to school).

So for the last storytime before we get to exult in science: Dragons!

(As a bonus, ALL THREE of the books I read this time got taken home by patrons - I LOVE when that happens!)

Me and My Dragon
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580892780
Bright red comically-exaggerated non-threatening dragon, and a mundane kid and environment

Some kids want puppies, some goldfish, but this kid - he wants a dragon!  He adopts a nice fire-breathing red variety from the pet store, gives it a place to sleep (a cardboard castle with a drawbridge) and teaches it how to fly (pushing it off a cliff) and takes it to obedience school, settling down to enjoy life together.  This could also very easily go into a Pet Ownership theme with Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy and Shirley Hughes' Dogger.

Waking Dragons
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Derek Anderson
ISBN: 9781416990321
Soft-edged pudgy oversized dragons are woken up and taken through their morning routine by a diminutive knight.

So little text to this story, but it's very sweet, and lots of fun.  The only weird issue I have with it is that in my accent, "syrup" and "cheer up" are nowhere close to a rhyme, and that always makes my brain hurt a little bit.  This is like the platonic ideal of a middle of storytime read - interesting pictures, minimal text, short or no plot, and no big drama.

Hiding Hoover
Elise Broach, illustrated by Laura Huliska-Beith
ISBN: 9780803727069
Thin, spiky, exaggeratedly elongated characters in a brightly colored world.

Daddy says "No pets!" so when the duo finds Hoover (a thin, spiky, elongated, green flappy dragon) in the back yard, they know they're going to have to get creative in order to keep him.  Hoover is hidden in bed, in the closet, tries on their clothes, ends up as a coat-rack, a stepladder, a chandelier, a vacuum, an armchair, and an umbrella, each time fooling poor Daddy, who never notices a thing.  Until the end, when there's a fairly big hint that maybe Daddy has noticed Hoover after all.

Goodwill Find! The Girl in the Golden Bower, Jane Yolen, Jane Dyer

I might already own a copy of this lovely picture book, but for a hardback in pristine condition for 50 cents?

Mine.

The Girl in the Golden Bower
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jane Dyer
ISBN: 0316968943 (reinforced binding)
Original fairy tale by renowned author (and personal favorite) Jane Yolen, about the power of love and family.

Oh this book is so pretty, y'all just don't know.  Jane Dyer has that same lush richness as Kinuko Craft without the overdone sumptuous frothing, and the same scene-setting mastery as Paul Zelinsky without the rigidity of form.  It just makes my heart happy to look at.

I love fairy tales.  They are so simple, and so deep.  Like still pools in a dark forest, reflecting the surface, and harboring secrets deep within their hearts.  This one fits the old pattern beautifully - a sorcerer's curse, a ruined castle, a beast deep within the woods, a good-hearted woodsman, a beguiling woman with cat eyes and a green kirtle, sad untimely deaths, and not one, but two different pure-hearted girls who save the day by being their own sweet selves.

The only difference between this and a "real" fairy tale is that this one doesn't end with a wedding, or even a betrothal - in fact, there's not even a suitor!  The omission is glaring, but in my opinion, it only enhances the innocence and sweet nature of the tale being told.

Not bad for 50 cents!

 

Foiled, and Curses, Foiled Again, Jane Yolen & Mike Cavallaro

Foiled
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mike Cavallaro
Middle-Grade Graphic Novel
ISBN: 9781596432796
Re-read March 26, 2014

Curses, Foiled Again
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mike Cavallaro
Middle-Grade Graphic Novel, sequel
ISBN: 9781596436190
Read March 26, 2014

Pretty sure I reviewed Foiled before, but I got hold of the sequel, so wanted to hit it up again to be sure where I stood.  It holds up well to a re-read, although I was much more aware of the forbodingly looming birds showing up everywhere this time around.  Still think Aliera is a fantastic name.

Curses, Foiled Again picks up right after we left off, with Aliera not yet used to the idea of faery at all, let alone her place as a Defender of a realm she can't even see normally.  Avery is bound and determined to be her knight, and Aliera is bound and determined to not trust him.

The storyline is again really terribly short - these are really almost graphic novellas.  The "dark lord" is a little eye-rolly, especially given the age-group this is aimed at, and the reveal on who is the big bad was woefully expected (although handled fairly well).  I liked that Aliera wasn't given super instincts to go with her new position, and she's flailing around wildly trying to figure everything out and be the hero.  That's a nice and unexpected direction to go, and I hope it continues.  What I didn't like, and which wasn't a problem as much in the first, was that with the very stylized speech and thought bubbles, I really had a hard time during the climax figuring out who is saying (or thinking) what to whom.  I think this is my own fault for not reading enough comics as an impressionable child, but I really did have to read a few pages over again to match lines with characters.  Despite my own shortcomings, that shouldn't ever be a problem.

As the first did, we're set up here at a nice breather, ready for the next encounter.

Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen

Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen
ISBN: 9780399256646
Read November 20, 2013

YA: Sleeping Beauty re-tell from the perspective of the fairy "godmothers" although the sleeper is a fae also...

Weird.  I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been allowed to come to the realization that this was a Sleeping Beauty re-telling more gradually and naturally over the course of the story, instead of having it plastered on the cover.

Because to be quite honest, it ISN'T the story of Sleeping Beauty. Unless you accept that the story of Sleeping Beauty that we all know was mangled all out of shape and smushed into a container that didn't quite fit it all, and then dumped out somewhere quite different and mixed up with some extra bits from who-knows-where.

To that end, I have a hard time reviewing this.  Is it a good re-work of Sleeping Beauty?  For me, nope.  It was weird, focused on the fae end of things, didn't really have that mystical fairy-tale feel, and too many of the classic elements were missing or occluded.

Was it a good story of itself?  Actually, yes.  I liked Gorse, I liked the mythology of their strange Appalachian-seeming hippie-fae family, I liked all the sibling interactions, and I really really liked the bits in the dark with the Grey and the Prince.  Those bits strongly reminded me of The Perilous Gard (Elizabeth Marie Pope) which I read a while back.  I really like creepity fae that take advantage of darkness and odd motivations.

So I'm not sure about it.  My suggestion?  Try not to think about classic fairy-tales when you read it, and just enjoy a strange, somewhat nigglingly-familiar story about a clumsy and unlucky 13th child of the fae, and what happened a long time ago, when she was a child.

Foiled, Jane Yolen & Mike Cavallaro

Foiled, Jane Yolen & Mike Cavallaro.  ISBN: 9781596432796

Read August 28

 

YA Graphic Novel, urban fantasy, fencing heroine, first of series? 

 

Aliera Carstairs (excellent name, by the way) is a fencer; foil, not saber or epee.  But, she's not a rich fencer.  So when her thrift-store-obsessed mom finds a 2 dollar practice saber with a gaudy enormous gem stuck to the end, she's delighted to have it.  She's a little more conflicted about Avery - the new boy in school, and her lab-partner for frog dissection.  He apparently likes to stab and slice things.  (About the time of that revelation, the alert reader may also notice some interesting happenings with crows.)  The action here is pretty slow, mostly introductions to Aliera's regimented life, lofty goals for her foil-fencing, her conflicted feelings about Avery, and her relationship with her disabled cousin.  The end picks up dramatically, with a complication regarding Avery (which I really really like) and the resulting introduction to a colorful world that Aliera (and perhaps her cousin?) will be spending future installments learning about and adventuring in.  

 

The only quibble I have with the art is the occasional side-profile where people (especially their mouths) look just odd.  I also thought that the grey-scale went on for just a smidge too long.  I understand why it was done, and think it's really a powerful and clever application, I just was getting a bit dreary when faced with all the unremitting grey for so long.