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.

New Arrival: Picture Book: If You Plant a Seed, Kadir Nelson

If You Plant a Seed
Kadir Nelson
ISBN: 9780062298898
Read July 18, 2016

Sweet but a smidge preachy book using gardening as an extended parable about getting along and spreading peace, not hate.  I'm keeping this one back with me, and it's going to be in my first post-summer-reading storytime, because I've been saddled with a garden this year, and it's been really interesting, and I think placing this book with a set on gardening will make it seem a lot less moralistic.  It really is beautiful.  Nelson is an amazing artist.

Tuesday Storytime: Black History Month, Children

I don't like to make a big deal out of Black History Month for my storytimes, but I do feel like I ought to at least reference major national observances just like I do holidays.  My usual approach is to simply select my usual storytime themes, but to limit my titles to those with obviously Black illustrated characters.  This means that I don't often do biographies of famous people, or "issues" stories very often, and I wonder sometimes if most people even recognize that I'm doing it, since I don't mention the Month during storytime at all.  On the one hand, that feels a little stealthy, but on the other, I like that I can actually DO a storytime about bedtime or families or city life without it having to be explicitly a "Black" story.

Little Monster
Barrie Wade, illustrated by Katinka Kew
ISBN: 0688095976
Mandy overhears her mom praising her for being good, but when everyone laughs about "little monster" Jimmy, she reconsiders.

I really like this story because it perfectly illustrates how kids overhear and interpret adult interactions, molding their behavior to gain a specific reaction or to empirically prove their ideas true or not.  Mandy is up late one night and overhears her mom praising her for being good, but when her brother Jimmy gets multiple laughs for being a "little monster," Mandy isn't so sure that being good is all it's cracked up to be.  The next day she's a holy terror in the most innocent of ways - sticking out tongues, minor direct disobedience, general acting-out, and by the end of the night, mom snaps and calls Mandy a "little monster," but mom being the bright sort, figures out immediately what's up, and reassures Mandy that love and affection and laughter are unconditional, whether a kid is a "little monster" or "good as gold."  Very sweet, but some families might be a bit uncomfortable that Mandy isn't punished for any of her "bad" behavior.


Ten, Nine, Eight
Molly Bang
ISBN: 0688009069
One of my favorite bedtime books.  A sweet father and daughter go through a countdown rhyme as she prepares for bed.

Previously reviewed here.  Always delightful, and even though I did it quite recently, it's a perfect middle book because of the very short narrative.


Please, Baby, Please
Spike Lee & Tonya Lewis Lee, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
ISBN: 0689832338
Adorable toddler is front and center in oversize, child's-eye-view illustrations.

This one isn't my favorite to read, and I hate that.  I LOVE the illustrations, and the "baby" is delightfully expressive and perfectly a toddler, getting into things and being entranced by things - just absolutely beautiful work by Nelson, and I really adore the loving attention he paid to details.  But, the narrative is 60% comprised of the words "please" and "baby" arranged in different orders as thus: "please, baby baby, please" or "baby baby baby please" "baby please, baby baby" etc.  Which is not only repetitive, but difficult for the reader.  It's not enough to keep me from doing it every once in a while, but it's absolutely enough to keep this book off my favorites list, which is a crying shame.  

 

Big Jabe, Jerdine Nolen, Kadir Nelson

Big Jabe, Jerdine Nolen, illus by Kadir Nelson.  ISBN: 0688136621

Read Oct 2, 2013

Picture Book: Plantation South slaves are delighted with Big Jabe, a tall-tale man who does all their work for them, and might have something to do with mysteriously spiriting them away when they're tormented by the overseer.

Abby loves to fish, but she never thought she'd fish a great big boy out of the river!  Big Jabe grows fast - from one day to the next he's a grown man!  The pear tree he plants likewise grows quick - before a full season is gone, it's full-grown and heavy with fruit.  He can pick the entire cotton harvest in one morning, and the plantation itself seems blessed with enormous yields.

But woe betide them all if someone gets beaten - tornadoes swirl down, and torrential rain falls; and afterwards, someone's always gone missing!  No scent to follow, no trace of them anywhere, and Big Jabe's always around, working hard and helping everyone out. 

By the end, Addy herself is suspected of magic, and both her and Big Jabe vanish like the mist - on to another place to help out and rescue the unfortunate. 

Kadir Nelson is an amazing illustrator, and this story has all the tone and cadence of a sermon, without the preachy parts.  Nice to pair with John Henry for another great black folk figure, or with the original story of Moses.

Dancing in the Wings, Debbie Allen, illustrated by Kadir Nelson

Sassy is tall.  She has long gangly legs, and huge feet.  She's also a ballerina, and quite proud of her height - mostly.  Her brother teases her about it, but she gives as good as she gets, and keeps on working hard at her dancing.

Still, being tallest is not the greatest thing - her ballet teacher stumbles over Sassy's feet, she can't dance partner work because she's taller than all the boys, and she can't even dance in ensemble with the other girls because she's too tall to fit in.

When a famous Russian instructor offers try-outs for a summer dance festival in DC, she's excited and proudly signs up to audition, but the snickers and cracks from her fellow dancers, and from her brother, finally get to her.  Maybe she is too tall and gangly?  Maybe her feet are too big?  Maybe - maybe it would be safer just not to try out at all...?

A pep talk from a favorite uncle cheers her up and gets her confidence back up to par, and she attends the audition in her brightest yellow leotard, determined to be noticed, and to do her best. 

I love this story.  I've read it before, and I liked it then, too.  I'll never be a ballerina (I'm pigeon-toed with weird hips) but I am pretty tall for a girl - 5'10" in my bare feet.  I'm married to a lovely guy who happens to be 6'6".  His sisters all break the 6' mark.  We were all swimmers, and we all have legs that practically reach our armpits. 

I'm gonna have me some tall kids eventually, I just know it.  Books like this one are perfect for me to keep in mind when they get a little older, because kids (and adults) can be really cruel about physical differences.  It takes a lot of repetition for someone who's always singled out for being different to realize that sometimes different can be really really good!  All it takes is one look at that picture of Sassy in her bright yellow, head bowed in disappointment (temporary) with those looooong skinny legs, and I know right where she's coming from.  This book is a keeper.