Murder of Crows: A Novel of the Others
Anne Bishop
ISBN: 9780451465269
2nd in Series, after Written in Red
Read April 18, 2014
I read the first of this series and did a shorty review of it a while back, and I'm happy to say the sequel was pretty darn good. I was sad to see less of the Elementals; I love the seasons and the weather/natural phenomenon ponies so much, but they weren't a big part of this.
I will say the plotting was more solid this time around, although the characters are still a little one-dimensional. That's ok with me, because I like the dimensions they show off, and honestly I wasn't looking for the next great literary epic.
Good stuff: More about the background and the world, some really creepy moments (meat grinders and hands in jars) and a good bit of Tess (who is scary scary!).
Not so good stuff: A few elisions made me wonder about either plot-holes or the mental capacity of the Others. After learning that it's not wise to use attacks that could involve ingesting the blood of their enemies, the main characters assist on an all-out-attack, where either the main characters forgot to tell the other assailants about this little detail, or the other assailants didn't give a crap - and none of the so-far pretty serious consequences were mentioned as a result. That bugged me a little.
The totally unnecessary mis-communication regarding the "sweet bloods" kept at the facilities was really irksome. I just hate that particular method of introducing in-group conflict or tensions, and it felt very false to the characters and story so far to end on that particular note.
However, I still enjoyed the crap out of it, read it straight through, and can't wait for the next one!
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Tuesday Storytime: Jumpy
Add this one to my roster of "weird themes" - this one is about animals jumping. It was great fun, if you're wondering, especially Jump! which seems created for wild and active toddlers.
Oops-a-Daisy!
Claire Freedman, illustrated by Gaby Hansen
ISBN: 1589250370
Pastels, soft edges, and a gentle "moral" to keep trying.
This one is very sweet. Little Bunny is discouraged by her difficulties in learning to jump - it's so hard to get her feet to do what she asks, and there's so much to keep track of all at the same time! Anyone, even adults learning a new physical skill, can sympathize with the frustration and despair of ever getting it "right." But Mama Rabbit is always nearby, and she deflects worries and defeatism by pointing out the other "Little" animals learning to do things also; Mouse trying to climb a grass stem, Badger (with Daddy Badger!!) digging, Duck swimming in circles. Daisy Bunny relaxes and continues to try, knowing that everyone tries and fails.
Good length for my little ones, with full-spread illustrations to keep their attention during the longer patches of reading.
Jump!
Scott M. Fischer
ISBN: 9781416978848
Super-bright cartoonish animals with exaggerated features and almost no text to clutter the page.
I LOVE IT! Starting with a bug on a jug, the animals encounter something bigger and badder, each time JUMP!ing out of the way, til we get to the shark vs the whale, and we get a vertical spread instead of the normal horizontal flow.
If You're Hoppy
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic
ISBN: 9780061566349
A very 'interactive' and non-traditional text, using the "If You're Happy and you Know It" rhyme to riff off of.
This one's cute, especially when it gets to "if you're slimy and scaly and mean, you're a... oh, never mind" with a multicolored shadow of a creepy monster on the page and reveals it at the end to be the frog from the start of the story. Very fun, and a great ending for the day. Any book with a surprise reveal pterodactyl is a good book.
Oops-a-Daisy!
Claire Freedman, illustrated by Gaby Hansen
ISBN: 1589250370
Pastels, soft edges, and a gentle "moral" to keep trying.
This one is very sweet. Little Bunny is discouraged by her difficulties in learning to jump - it's so hard to get her feet to do what she asks, and there's so much to keep track of all at the same time! Anyone, even adults learning a new physical skill, can sympathize with the frustration and despair of ever getting it "right." But Mama Rabbit is always nearby, and she deflects worries and defeatism by pointing out the other "Little" animals learning to do things also; Mouse trying to climb a grass stem, Badger (with Daddy Badger!!) digging, Duck swimming in circles. Daisy Bunny relaxes and continues to try, knowing that everyone tries and fails.
Good length for my little ones, with full-spread illustrations to keep their attention during the longer patches of reading.
Jump!
Scott M. Fischer
ISBN: 9781416978848
Super-bright cartoonish animals with exaggerated features and almost no text to clutter the page.
I LOVE IT! Starting with a bug on a jug, the animals encounter something bigger and badder, each time JUMP!ing out of the way, til we get to the shark vs the whale, and we get a vertical spread instead of the normal horizontal flow.
If You're Hoppy
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic
ISBN: 9780061566349
A very 'interactive' and non-traditional text, using the "If You're Happy and you Know It" rhyme to riff off of.
This one's cute, especially when it gets to "if you're slimy and scaly and mean, you're a... oh, never mind" with a multicolored shadow of a creepy monster on the page and reveals it at the end to be the frog from the start of the story. Very fun, and a great ending for the day. Any book with a surprise reveal pterodactyl is a good book.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Juvenile Nonfiction: Lives of the Scientists, Kathleen Krull & Kathryn Hewitt
Lives of the Scientists: Experiments, Explosions (and What the Neighbors Thought)
Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
ISBN: 9780152059095
(Part of a series of "Lives of" books)
First off, I really don't like oversized bobble-head art, but despite that, the faces are well done and engaging, and the other (non-portrait) illustrations are even more attractive, done in a soft-edged realistic style.
Second, I really DO like the effort put into highlighting women scientists, and that they included scientists of color and from non Western backgrounds (although they could have done a bit better, in my opinion - it's still pretty heavily western-centric).
Here's the biographical breakdown, non-Western scientists in bold, and women in italics:
Zhang Heng
Ibn Sina
Galileo
Isaac Newton
William and Catherine Herschel
Charles Darwin
Louis Pasteur
Ivan Pavlov
George Washington Carver
Marie Curie
Albert Einstein
Edwin Hubble
Barbara McClintock
Grace Murray Hopper
Rachel Carson
Chien-Shiung Wu
James D Watson and Francis Crick (with an honorable mention of poor Rosalind Franklin in England)
Jane Goodall
The biographies are short and to the point, focusing on the mind-set (and often on the peculiar personal habits) of these varied scientists. In addition to their scientific discoveries, the biography talks about their beliefs, their family and children (or lack thereof) the hardships they overcame, and how they died. Each bio also tries to add a bit of levity by including some 'truth is stranger than fiction' tidbits about their lives.
The For Further Reading page is sadly just one page, but the resources included look solid and comprehensive.
Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
ISBN: 9780152059095
(Part of a series of "Lives of" books)
First off, I really don't like oversized bobble-head art, but despite that, the faces are well done and engaging, and the other (non-portrait) illustrations are even more attractive, done in a soft-edged realistic style.
Second, I really DO like the effort put into highlighting women scientists, and that they included scientists of color and from non Western backgrounds (although they could have done a bit better, in my opinion - it's still pretty heavily western-centric).
Here's the biographical breakdown, non-Western scientists in bold, and women in italics:
Zhang Heng
Ibn Sina
Galileo
Isaac Newton
William and Catherine Herschel
Charles Darwin
Louis Pasteur
Ivan Pavlov
George Washington Carver
Marie Curie
Albert Einstein
Edwin Hubble
Barbara McClintock
Grace Murray Hopper
Rachel Carson
Chien-Shiung Wu
James D Watson and Francis Crick (with an honorable mention of poor Rosalind Franklin in England)
Jane Goodall
The biographies are short and to the point, focusing on the mind-set (and often on the peculiar personal habits) of these varied scientists. In addition to their scientific discoveries, the biography talks about their beliefs, their family and children (or lack thereof) the hardships they overcame, and how they died. Each bio also tries to add a bit of levity by including some 'truth is stranger than fiction' tidbits about their lives.
The For Further Reading page is sadly just one page, but the resources included look solid and comprehensive.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Picture Book: Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, Duncan Tonatiuh
Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote (A Migrant's Tale)
Duncan Tonatiuh
ISBN: 9781419705830
This is a hard one to review. The surface story is a "brer rabbit vs wily coyote" tale of a young bunny's search for his father who is long overdue from working away from home. The understory is almost not an understory at all - the parallel between the folktale coyote and the human trafficker coyote is obvious. Equally obvious is the mythical "North" on the other side of a great fence and wall where the father works in endless fields to support his family.
Here goes anyway. I don't think I'll ever use this book directly in programming, because just the subject matter is too politicized for me to handle in what is intended to be a neutral space. I deeply regret that being the case, but it's too far above my pay grade to rock the boat when there are hundreds of other titles available to suit my needs. Am I glad it's in the catalog and available to check out? Yes indeed, and I plan to use it for displays and other appropriate title-suggestion venues. I just don't ever see myself using it as a storytime book.
Now on to the text and art themselves: On one level, I'm actually happy that the treatment is as obvious and as (I hate to say it) clunky and ham-handed as it is - because I feel less bad rejecting it from an artistic standpoint than I do rejecting it because of the socio-political environment. If it weren't for the touchy subject matter and obvious intent, I don't think I would have given this art style and storyline a second glance. It's just clunky and not very well written, and the art doesn't appeal to me.
What do I dislike? It's just clunky. It takes forever (5 full spreads) to set up the point - father is away and is expected back, but doesn't arrive. It's cliched, and not in a good way, and super slow to get to what should be the point: young rabbit's adventures. When we do get going, they're repetitive, and not in a good way. The coyote requires food as payment, again and again over the travel (on a train, across a river, through a tunnel), as do the border guards (depicted as snakes with army helmets). The ending is equally cliched - night falls and the exhausted rabbit and coyote rest in a shack, until coyote decides to eat rabbit for dinner (don't even get me started about the really NSFW implications of trying to explain THAT parallel in social studies class with middle school kids) and Papa appears magically over the horizon, drives the coyote away, and little rabbit reprises his arduous journey immediately (and off-screen) with all the papas from the fields who are ready to return home to their families, where the last spread reveals that (again off-screen) "crows" took all their money and supplies, so they have no way to support themselves still, after all that work.
Otherwise, there's a lot of dialogue, and a lot of text on each page, but it's didactic and obvious, not interesting. Most of the text is white on darker backgrounds, but there are random pages where it's black, for no good reason, and it's jarring to switch. The art is stylized, and I don't mind that, but the compositions are usually fairly poor. When you're using a very stylized and static form, it's necessary to compensate for that by having vibrant compositions with a lot of implied movement, or implied social/emotional resonance. There were only two pages I really felt accomplished that: the beginning of the story as the families are setting up the party area, and later the half-page of coyote pulling rabbit across the river.
Overall an interesting book. I'm glad it was made. I'm glad that we have them in the collection. I wish that it were a better quality.
Duncan Tonatiuh
ISBN: 9781419705830
This is a hard one to review. The surface story is a "brer rabbit vs wily coyote" tale of a young bunny's search for his father who is long overdue from working away from home. The understory is almost not an understory at all - the parallel between the folktale coyote and the human trafficker coyote is obvious. Equally obvious is the mythical "North" on the other side of a great fence and wall where the father works in endless fields to support his family.
Here goes anyway. I don't think I'll ever use this book directly in programming, because just the subject matter is too politicized for me to handle in what is intended to be a neutral space. I deeply regret that being the case, but it's too far above my pay grade to rock the boat when there are hundreds of other titles available to suit my needs. Am I glad it's in the catalog and available to check out? Yes indeed, and I plan to use it for displays and other appropriate title-suggestion venues. I just don't ever see myself using it as a storytime book.
Now on to the text and art themselves: On one level, I'm actually happy that the treatment is as obvious and as (I hate to say it) clunky and ham-handed as it is - because I feel less bad rejecting it from an artistic standpoint than I do rejecting it because of the socio-political environment. If it weren't for the touchy subject matter and obvious intent, I don't think I would have given this art style and storyline a second glance. It's just clunky and not very well written, and the art doesn't appeal to me.
What do I dislike? It's just clunky. It takes forever (5 full spreads) to set up the point - father is away and is expected back, but doesn't arrive. It's cliched, and not in a good way, and super slow to get to what should be the point: young rabbit's adventures. When we do get going, they're repetitive, and not in a good way. The coyote requires food as payment, again and again over the travel (on a train, across a river, through a tunnel), as do the border guards (depicted as snakes with army helmets). The ending is equally cliched - night falls and the exhausted rabbit and coyote rest in a shack, until coyote decides to eat rabbit for dinner (don't even get me started about the really NSFW implications of trying to explain THAT parallel in social studies class with middle school kids) and Papa appears magically over the horizon, drives the coyote away, and little rabbit reprises his arduous journey immediately (and off-screen) with all the papas from the fields who are ready to return home to their families, where the last spread reveals that (again off-screen) "crows" took all their money and supplies, so they have no way to support themselves still, after all that work.
Otherwise, there's a lot of dialogue, and a lot of text on each page, but it's didactic and obvious, not interesting. Most of the text is white on darker backgrounds, but there are random pages where it's black, for no good reason, and it's jarring to switch. The art is stylized, and I don't mind that, but the compositions are usually fairly poor. When you're using a very stylized and static form, it's necessary to compensate for that by having vibrant compositions with a lot of implied movement, or implied social/emotional resonance. There were only two pages I really felt accomplished that: the beginning of the story as the families are setting up the party area, and later the half-page of coyote pulling rabbit across the river.
Overall an interesting book. I'm glad it was made. I'm glad that we have them in the collection. I wish that it were a better quality.
Picture Book: Rock 'n' Roll Mole, Carolyn Crimi & Lynn Munsinger
Rock 'n' Roll Mole
Carolyn Crimi, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
ISBN: 9780803731660
This is a delightful book, and I'm so glad it crossed the desk while I was around to intercept it! My only sadness is that it's WAAYYYY too long to be used in my Storytimes - I'll have to hold on to it for the rare occasions that I get a school tour or a group of older kids.
Mole loves rock and roll - his idols are Mick Badger, Moo 2, and Goose Springsteen - and he can play too! He rocks shades and a leather jacket, and he even has a trio of little school chicks who follow him around like groupies!
What Mole doesn't have is the confidence to play in public. His friend Pig is fine as an audience - they're best friends - but the public? Scary! Still, when Pig organizes a school talent show, Mole is willing to help. Help set up, help promote, help run - not to play. Until Pig's i-pod for his dancing act fails, and he's left in the lurch unless one brave friend steps up to help out one last time.
I like that this book gives no indication that the i-pod failure is anything other than bad luck - that Pig isn't tricking Mole into performing for his own good - he's legit in the lurch, and Mole is such a good friend that he's willing to step out of his comfort zone to help his friend succeed.
I love the illustrations - everyone is so cute and still recognizably animals with snouts and hooves - even the little chick groupies are adorable. The text is fantastic as well - the voices are realistic and not coy or overly precious, and Mole's "rock star" persona is too cute for words.
All the stars!
Carolyn Crimi, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
ISBN: 9780803731660
This is a delightful book, and I'm so glad it crossed the desk while I was around to intercept it! My only sadness is that it's WAAYYYY too long to be used in my Storytimes - I'll have to hold on to it for the rare occasions that I get a school tour or a group of older kids.
Mole loves rock and roll - his idols are Mick Badger, Moo 2, and Goose Springsteen - and he can play too! He rocks shades and a leather jacket, and he even has a trio of little school chicks who follow him around like groupies!
What Mole doesn't have is the confidence to play in public. His friend Pig is fine as an audience - they're best friends - but the public? Scary! Still, when Pig organizes a school talent show, Mole is willing to help. Help set up, help promote, help run - not to play. Until Pig's i-pod for his dancing act fails, and he's left in the lurch unless one brave friend steps up to help out one last time.
I like that this book gives no indication that the i-pod failure is anything other than bad luck - that Pig isn't tricking Mole into performing for his own good - he's legit in the lurch, and Mole is such a good friend that he's willing to step out of his comfort zone to help his friend succeed.
I love the illustrations - everyone is so cute and still recognizably animals with snouts and hooves - even the little chick groupies are adorable. The text is fantastic as well - the voices are realistic and not coy or overly precious, and Mole's "rock star" persona is too cute for words.
All the stars!
Tuesday Storytime: Stars
This one was spurred by finding How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers, while looking for "Space" themed books for our Summer Reading Program.
This program was riiiiight on the edge of too long for our wiggly ones, but it worked out ok overall.
Coyote Places the Stars
Harriet Peck Taylor
ISBN: 0689815352
Naive folk-art with a heroic Coyote.
This one was the really long one, and I'll admit to eliding some of the paragraph-long descriptions when I could get away with it. Coyote is bored, so he climbs up to the moon and uses his arrows to re-arrange the stars into patterns and shapes more to his liking. Afterwards, he is proud of his work, and shows off to all his friends in the animal kingdom. I really liked that this story has Coyote as a clever cunning hero than a trickster, and that the images that were chosen to represent the other animals as his friends.
Stars
Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Marla Frazee
ISBN: 9781442422490
Pen-and-pencil episodic drawings, imaginative and fanciful concepts.
This one was a bit long for the middle spot, but would have been perfect length for one of my usual first or last stories. Because it doesn't really have a plot - just a dreamlike improvisation off the theme of stars - I put it in the middle today. The underlying theme is that between the stars in the sky and the stars that are all around us (paper stars, star stickers, flowers or snowflakes or fireworks) people should remember their worth and be "shiny." Bonus stealth Firefly reference (probably unintentional) made it harder to resist.
How to Catch a Star
Oliver Jeffers
ISBN: 0399242864
Blocky NO David! -style artwork, very simple, but colorful and clear. Super-simple storyline.
The boy loves stars, and he's imagined what a perfect friend a star would be - so he sets out to catch one. He looks (and waits) all day, then tries and fails to reach an evening star in the sky, and the reflection of one in the water, and almost gives up before finding a star (starfish) on the beach to be his friend. Other than the slightly odd note of having to "catch" a friend, this is sweet and simple and cute.
This program was riiiiight on the edge of too long for our wiggly ones, but it worked out ok overall.
Coyote Places the Stars
Harriet Peck Taylor
ISBN: 0689815352
Naive folk-art with a heroic Coyote.
This one was the really long one, and I'll admit to eliding some of the paragraph-long descriptions when I could get away with it. Coyote is bored, so he climbs up to the moon and uses his arrows to re-arrange the stars into patterns and shapes more to his liking. Afterwards, he is proud of his work, and shows off to all his friends in the animal kingdom. I really liked that this story has Coyote as a clever cunning hero than a trickster, and that the images that were chosen to represent the other animals as his friends.
Stars
Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Marla Frazee
ISBN: 9781442422490
Pen-and-pencil episodic drawings, imaginative and fanciful concepts.
This one was a bit long for the middle spot, but would have been perfect length for one of my usual first or last stories. Because it doesn't really have a plot - just a dreamlike improvisation off the theme of stars - I put it in the middle today. The underlying theme is that between the stars in the sky and the stars that are all around us (paper stars, star stickers, flowers or snowflakes or fireworks) people should remember their worth and be "shiny." Bonus stealth Firefly reference (probably unintentional) made it harder to resist.
How to Catch a Star
Oliver Jeffers
ISBN: 0399242864
Blocky NO David! -style artwork, very simple, but colorful and clear. Super-simple storyline.
The boy loves stars, and he's imagined what a perfect friend a star would be - so he sets out to catch one. He looks (and waits) all day, then tries and fails to reach an evening star in the sky, and the reflection of one in the water, and almost gives up before finding a star (starfish) on the beach to be his friend. Other than the slightly odd note of having to "catch" a friend, this is sweet and simple and cute.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
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).
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