A Place to Play by Elizabeth Goodenough This is a collection of ssays and photographs to go with the Michigan Television documentary “Where Do the Children Play?” (which I have not seen.) I found it interesting and somewhat depressing, as it turns out that experts are figuring out what kids need for healthy play, and city planners and parents are giving them exactly the opposite. Kids need to be outside, unsupervised. They need to be able to meet other children without having to be driven to them. They need sticks, rocks and water and to be allowed to get dirty and watch things grow. They need green hidey-holes where they can see and not be seen. This is told in essays by experts from around the world, people who’ve studied play in the past and present, in inner cities and other countries. Perhaps someday we, like Europeans, will have Adventure Playgrounds that more closely match what children need than our climbing structures, and licensed play workers who are trained to facilitate healthy play without controlling it. Perhaps someday we’ll learn to value the creativity that comes with dirt over the neat, ordered play of structured playgrounds and video games. Someday.
The most recent issue of “Brain, Child” had an article critiquing Last Child in the Woods and the idea of nature deficit disorder that Louv puts forth there; he’s also got an essay in this book. I agree with the article that it’s more important to spend time as a family than just to be outside, but I also think that A Place to Play answers some of her critiques of Last Child in the Woods, namely that what he’s calling for can only be accomplished by middle and upper class families with a stay-at-home mother and safe access to nature. In A Place to Play, they specifically talk about city housing designed to be both affordable for working-class people and to give children room to play together, as well as landscaping daycares and school yards to allow for more real contact with nature. These methods may not be currently popular, but they are possible and have been done before.
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots written and illustrated by Sharon Lovejoy This is a book so lovingly written and illustrated that I found myself wanting to try everything suggested. Lovejoy gardened with her own child as he was growing up, and also opened a public children’s garden which has operated for a very long time now. She starts with 20 favorite plants for children, and goes on to garden plans, including the best pizza garden plan I’ve seen (calendula or marigold planted throughout to look like cheese and fend off predators! Plus a slice cut out for path for weeding access.), a fragrant moon garden, a sunflower house, a butterfly garden, a garden of giants, tiny water garden, window boxes, a maze, and more. Each garden comes with a plan, list of materials, instructions for planting and maintenance, and a two-page spread of what to do and look for on your daily walk through the garden. I have seen several of the garden types she talks about in other books, but hers seem to have the extra details that bring a garden up to extraordinary. I could find only two downsides to this book, particular to where I live. First, she’s writing from California (though I see from her 
Gardening with Children by Beth Richardson. Photographs by Lynn Karlin Away from the landscaping, and on to actual gardening techniques with children. Richardson was most specifically concerned with being able to involve her children with the family vegetable garden. This book walks through the process of basic organic gardening including advice for including children at every step of the way (and how big a garden you can realistically expect to do with children and two working parents). Towards the end, there are some plant-specific guides for the ever-popular pizza garden, as well as a couple of ethnic cuisine gardens. I came to the realization a couple of years ago that a) vegetable gardening is more work than we have time for and b) our yard doesn’t have enough sun to grow vegetables anyway, so this was not the right book for us. I realize that I am going against crunchy-living guidelines by admitting this, though, so for those of my readers who do want to grow food with their children, this is for you.
A Child’s Garden by Molly DannenmaierThis is another child-oriented landscaping book, one that I would put more on the inspirational than the practical side. They talk about different features that children like, but the sample gardens are mostly not ones I’d consider possible to replicate at home. The first garden, for example, was in a very modest sized back yard. But the back yard (side and front landscaped equally beautifully but differently) included a tree house, a man-made waterfall and pool, filled in with over 80 species of plants. Both parents were professional master gardeners, it turned out, and this level of expertise was typical in the book. Gardens were either home gardens of professionals or public children’s gardens. On the up side, gardens from all over the country were featured, so there were ideas for more climate zones than many other books. Near the end were some more practical themed garden ideas including plant lists for gardens including a dinosaur garden and Chinese and African gardens. I found it entertaining, but definitely more on the eye-candy versus the practical end of the spectrum.
Great Gardens for Kids by Clare Matthews. Photographs by Clive Nichols This is a book of distinct projects for child-friendly landscaping features, arranged in chapters by type with four or so examples for each type. Topics include active play, water features, furniture, hideaways, and parties. Some of our favorites included the giant spider-web for climbing, the houses of perennial vines (rather than annuals) with version both more and less floral, all of the water features (some even appropriate for very young children), the beautiful daffodil labyrinth. Though instructions are given, they don’t include specific dimensions or sizes of pots called. Projects can cost much more than you’d think just looking at them. The horizontal climbing wall, which looks relatively simple to install, calls for four sheets of marine plywood ($80 each), plus climbing holds ($40/ 12 at REI), bolts and paint ($20 a gallon) – that’s $500 assuming bolts are free. And if one wanted to attempt more than one project from the book, costs could add up quickly. One other drawback is that it’s a British book, and climate and plant availability could vary (I haven’t checked.) Still, the projects are attractive enough for adults (I remember vividly reading it when it first came out several years ago) and look like they would inspire years of fun outdoor play for children.
And What Comes After a Thousand? by Annette Bley This book opens by setting up young Lisa’s friendship with the elderly Otto. They have special ways of counting together, deep conversations, a victory dance to do if Lisa manages to hit the copper buffalo in the garden with her slingshot. Then, Otto gets sick and dies. Lisa is confused by the strangers at his funeral who don’t understand the victory dance and who all talk quietly, which Otto hated. Where has Otto gone? She finds the answer in their discussion on numbers – where do they live and how high do they go? This is translated from German, which I mention because the art looked German to me the first time I picked it up. It is a gentle and moving approach to a thorny subject. 
Always and Forever by Alan Durant. Illustrated by Debi Gliori A family of woodland animals lives happily together, until Fox gets sick and dies. Then for a long time, no one in the family can laugh or enjoy life anymore. It takes help from a friend and considerable effort on their part to go on with life and find happy ways to remember Fox. Here, the gentle animal pictures help to remove the story enough to make the raw and real pain bearable. The story feels honest both about the pain and the possibility of recovery. 
The Other Side of Sadness by George A. Bonanno So it turns out that both Freud and Kuebler-Ross were wrong about grief. People don’t need to sever their emotional connection to the deceased as Freud thought, nor do they need to express and work through grief in defined stages as Kuebler-Ross thought. Really studying bereavement is quite recent – within the past 20 years – and Bonanno shares what he’s learned in a career focused on it. He talks about the evolutionary uses for sadness (making you slow down enough to figure out how your life is going to worked without your loved one); when grief counseling hurts more than it helps (if you were already recovering on your own); the ranges of normal recovery, experiences with talking to or feeling the presence of the deceased after death (common for some, but nearly always kept secret in our science-loving society); how to tell and what to do if grieving is going to far (if you’re still not able to function after six months). He talks about the experience of grieving in other cultures, particularly those which are more community than individual focused. This means that the society pays more attention to whether people follow the proscribed rituals than to what they are feeling – which turns out, as often as it’s been studied, to make recovery much easier for people. I especially liked the story of the African tribe which traditionally tells lascivious tales about the deceased at the funeral, saying that applying the morals of the living to the dead is extremely inappropriate. Most of all, he says that bereavement is part of the natural order of things. Humans are made to be resilient and recover. I found this very helpful, and recommend it highly to anyone dealing with grief or helping the bereaved.
How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell Young Hiccup, about 11, is about to undergo his initiation rights. In his Viking tribe, the Hairy Hooligans, all potential members must prove that they are heroes by capturing and training and adolescent dragon – the bigger and fiercer the better. Hiccup’s father is the chief, so there’s extra pressure on him. Hiccup, however, is too timid to pick out the fiercest dragon from the cave, and also not good at yelling, the preferred and only known method of training dragons. This felt to me like a story that was almost really good. Hiccup can communicate with his dragon, Toothless, even though it’s only a Common or Garden, by speaking to it in Dragonese. But though he eventually saves the day, he never actually manages to train his dragon or convince him that cooperating could be beneficial to both of them. If he was developing a new and improved dragon training method, that he should end up with a trained dragon. Also, the combination of a lot of 9-year-old level potty humor and a high level of bullying and social aggression left rather a bad taste in my mouth. Lightening Bolt thought that both of these were fine – Hiccup was nice to his friends, after all.
Rex Libris: I, Librarian by James Turner Some libraries have gone soft, allowing talking, hanging out, even tolerating overdue books. Not at Middleton Public Library, where Rex Libris and Circe are in charge. Middleton may sound average, but it has rare books from all over the universe, and is situated on a convergence of ley lines that allows fictional characters to wander around the library from time to time. Hard-hitting sesquipedalian librarian Rex Libris is on the job, preventing evil samurai from destroying the library and journeying to outer space (assisted by his gun-happy chickadee) to retrieve overdue books from space emperors. I have read more than once that comic books use higher vocabulary than regular fiction, but this uses the highest proportion of erudite words I have ever seen in a non-scholarly text. It’s also highly self-aware, with editor’s notes from a fake editor at the beginning of each issue (several bound together in the book) and the occasional nonsensical intrusion from the editor, which Rex must take a break from the story to protest before the story can continue. The one downside is that the book has such dense and tiny text (was it shrunk down to fit the paperback?) that it took focus and holding the book up close to read. Still, this is good adventuring for book-lovers with a sense of humor.
The Entymological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene LowThis one I picked up just based on the title. It’s funny and light, set just after the turn of the last century. Petronella, a plucky British lass, is just about to have her coming out party, having just turned sixteen. However, two unfortunate events occur. First, her uncle Augustus accidentally swallows a beetle and develops an insatiable and most improper appetite for bugs. Secondly, two foreign dignitaries who showed up at her coming-out party uninvited are kidnapped from it. Despite rival factions of eccentric relatives trying to prevent her from doing so, Petronella sets out to solve both of these mysteries. She is aided by her best friend Jane and Jane’s brother James, a beautiful specimen of manhood. (If only James would notice Petronella as anything but a younger sister! Alas!) Petronella and her Uncle Augustus are both charming characters whom I would love to see more of. This is a romp for middle school and up both as historical fiction and for the mystery, at an age level where mysteries are in short supply.
alibrarymama 