New Arrivals: Picture Books: Go, Shapes Go! by Denise Fleming

I love Fleming so much.  Her work is just so lively and fun and off-kilter.  I am in awe of her visual imagination.

Go, Shapes, Go!
Denise Fleming
ISBN: 9781442482401
Printed-paper collages made from limited shapes assembled into various arrangements.

So awesome.  Our narrator, a little wind-up-mouse, is assembling a collection of shapes.  At first we're not quite sure what's going on, as the rectangles and circles assemble and arrange, but pretty soon it becomes clear - we've got a shape-made sock-monkey!  Unfortunately for us, Monkey trips, and the shapes have a different animal in mind when they re-assemble, this one with a taste for little toy mousies!  Eeek!  All's well that ends well, and a new collection of shapes gets added to the cast.

Adorable, quick, and easy to read and follow the illustrations.  Also, it's really weird how the monkey manages to look harmless and adorable and like a toy, but the cat actually looks a bit menacing and predatory - they're LITERALLY made from the same shapes!  Just amazing.

Tuesday Storytime: Mice

I love mice.  They're cute and furry and there's eleventy bazillion picture books about them.

Today's lineup:

Seven Blind Mice
Ed Young
ISBN: 9780399222610
Caldecott Honor Book, colorblock mice and textured elephant against a black background.

Ed Young is a genius, and I love this book.  It's fairly short, easy to read and for kids to understand, and the contrasts between the actual elephant body part and the interpretation that the mouse makes is really startling.  The trunk-to-snake transformation was especially a hit.  I also really enjoy the size contrast between the panels with the mice (in various configurations) and then the panels with the mice appearing as tiny little color blobs against the enormity of the textural tan elephant body parts.  The ONLY thing that bothers me (and I freely admit to overthinking things) is that I'm a little bummed that it was a white mouse who figured out the puzzle of the elephant.  I know that in color theory for light, white is the combination of all colors, but it still bugs me.  (/overthinking)


Mouse Mess
Linnea Riley
ISBN: 0590100483
Halfway between naive and pop-art, a chunky brown mouse trashes a kitchen as he eats.

This one is a first read for me, and I really liked it.  The fun here is that the mouse works his way steadily through various foods, leaving a huge mess behind him, and then at the end, finally notices the state of the kitchen, and immediately blames it on the absent humans before self-centeredly heading back to bed and leaving the mess behind.  Funny, short, and simple.


Mice
Original rhyme by Rose Fyleman, illustrated by Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 9781442456846
Mixed-media collage of funky big-eyed, big-toothed mice and various household objects and foods.

Lois Ehlert is a master of creating amazingly textured collage creations, and this one is no different.  Set to the old rhyme "I think mice are rather nice..." it does drag a wee bit with stretching the rhyming lines out onto multiple spreads, but the illustrations are so quirky and the rhyme so short that I almost don't mind the stretch.  The end has a lovely surprise as the narrator is revealed to be someone who perhaps thinks mice are "nice" in a very different way that initially imagined.



This set as a whole is really nice, because all three of them feature black or dark backgrounds, but each of them is still as totally different as can be.  I really love showcasing the variety of artistic styles and types of presentations that can work within picture book format, and I was very happy with how it turned out to be so varied this time.


Bonus book (under consideration but too long for my age-group)

Library Mouse
Daniel Kirk
ISBN: 9780810993464
Beginning of a series, text-heavy.  Notable artificial 3-D animated feel to surfaces and textures.

Sam is a library mouse, and he loves his home near the children's department.  Every night Sam read from the books in the library, and he soon decided that he wanted to write a book himself.  So he wrote it, illustrated it, bound it, and shelved it (alert readers will note that he shelves his books in the right places), where it was subsequently found by the library patrons.  He does this again and again, writing lots of different books, and eventually the library wants to know who their mystery author is.  Sam doesn't want to give up his secret identity or get evicted, so he creates a clever ruse that encourages other patrons of the library to become writers as well.  Interesting story, serviceable illustrations, and a great introduction to demystifying the writing process for very young kids.  Seems like it would be excellent for classroom use.  

Storytime Potentials: Once Upon a Twice, Denise Doyen, Barry Moser

This book came up as a suggested title when I was searching for "Mouse" themed books for an upcoming storytime.

Sadly, this one is waaaaay too long and linguistically complicated for use in storytime, but it has interesting potential as a storytelling (ie - no books, just memorized) experiment, along the lines of Jabberwocky.

Once Upon a Twice
Denise Doyen, illustrated by Barry Moser
ISBN: 9780375956126
picture book with "nonsense verse" of portmanteau words, mostly descriptive, narrating the tale of an especially adventuresome mouse who didn't heed the cautions of his elders.

The language in this is just stellar, although I have to give an early shout-out for the beautiful cover with the glorious moon hanging over dense jungly grass-scape (shades of William Joyce's The Leaf Men) and the lush dark pages with firefly glows on every page not-quite concealing the pairs of non-firefly-eyes that peer hungrily at the little mousies.  (Attentive viewers can pick out snake and cat eyes on many of the pages, as well as a soaring hawk silhouette menacing overhead.)

Now, that said, the language.  I love nonsense verse, but here the words are really not that nonsensical - they're more like rap or beat poetry vocalizations and improvisations - here's an example from early in the book describing the mice:

The Mice were scoutaprowl
They runtunnel through the riddle -
Secret ruts hid inbetwiddle-
But one mousling jams the middle!
Whilst he goofiddles, others howl;
"What's the holdup?  What's the matter?"
Night's qui-etiquette is shattered!

And another one later on, describing a deadly danger:

Half-submerged, a slender queen
Esses 'cross the pond unseen,
Espies the furlickt mouse's sheen,
Sly serpentine - bound not to miss...

So really, I do think that "nonsense verse" is taking it a little far.  Anyone can see where those words are coming from, and the implications of them as so blended or creatively applied (I'm especially fond of "esses" as a water-snake's movement verb).

Anyway - the actual story isn't all that amazing - brazen mouse wants to stop and smell the roses, to enjoy life under the moon, and ignores warnings to stick to hidden paths and to watch out for danger.  A quick snap, a snaky struggle, and our mousling learns an important life lesson, which results in a long life, and great popularity as a teller of terrible tales to subsequent mousy generations.

I really do think it would be fun as a Halloween story to tell, I just can't do it with my group because they're way too young.  I almost think that adults would enjoy the wordplay more if they were just listening.

Tuesday Storytime: Mice

Found a really cute book while selecting storytime reads called Busy Little Mouse, by Eugenie Fernandes, with clay-sculpt illustrations by Kim Fernandes, and so I decided to pair it with a couple of other cute mouse books for an easy theme.

Busy Little Mouse

Eugenie Fernandes, illustrated by Kim Fernandes

ISBN: 1550747789

Clay-sculpt illustrations, farms, animal sounds.

The story isn't technically about the mouse - it jumps from him pretty quickly over to a page-by-page handover of different barnyard animals.  Each is introduced through interactions with the previous, and each page ends with a "what does the little (insert animal) say?" which is great for a first story, as the kids can be interactive and bouncy and slowly settle into listening mode.  The illustrations however, do have the mouse tagging along with each animal switchover, and the story concludes with him going home to bed after his busy day.

Whose Mouse are You?

Robert Kraus, illustrated by Jose Aruego

ISBN: 0689840527

1970s Library of Congress and ALA notable book, yellow/orange naive illustrations.

This is one of those "classic" picture books that I feel I ought to like more than I actually do.  Not that I dislike it, but I don't get the cult love that many have for it.  That said, it is a classic, it is a cute little short story, and it fit well here.  Readers get a little mouse "Nobody's mouse" because his mom has been eaten by the cat, his dad is in a trap, his sister far from home, and brother is nonexistent.  Sparked into action, he saves his mother, father, sister, and wishes for a brother, and then the last third shows him happily belonging with each of his relatives, including the teeny tiny newborn brother.

I Miss You Mouse

Greg Foley

ISBN: 9780670012381

Lift-the-flap "search" story.

I love Greg Foley.  His stories are so cute and sweet and simple and nice.  This one is no exception - mouse gets a lovely note from Bear, and goes looking for him, because she has something important to tell him.  Lift-the-flaps hide animals in various environments - leaf piles, rocks, pond - where animals who are not Bear inform the mouse she has to keep searching, until she goes home at the end of the day to find Bear there, and tell him her important news (and give him a sweet lift-the-flap-wrapped present).