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© Katy Kramp and alibrarymama.com, 2004-2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Katy Kramp and alibrarymama.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My Very First Bible
My Very First Bible by Lois Rock. Pictures by Alex Ayliffe. The desire may not be universal, but Mr. FP was starting to want to learn about the stories at church. I had a definite agenda looking for a children’s Bible. The stories should be short enough to be engaging, but long enough to get the gist of the story across. The pictures should be attractive, and the characters should not look like Palestine was located somewhere in Northern Europe. Finally, it should follow the Bible narratives as closely as possible, not adding dialog, motives or morals where they don’t exist in the original. I would like to see stories of the strong Bible women included, and Mr. FP has no patience for prayers, so those aren’t a plus. This Bible met all but one of my (dare I say it) exacting criteria. The stories convey a lot with very simple words. The bright pictures look like they are cut from paper, with appealing round-nosed and smiling characters with tan skin. There’s only one very short prayer at the beginning. The stories tend towards the upbeat, with Goliath and Jesus the only named people killed. My only quibble was that the women were given pretty short shrift. Miriam, Sarah and some unnamed female disciples make appearances, but Esther, Ruth, Mary and Martha don’t appear at all. On the other hand, this is really a greatest hits Bible stories collection. With only 20 stories out of the whole Bible, there’s not a lot of room for minor characters of either gender. It was a great hit with Mr. FP, who would happily have read the whole thing in one sitting. If you’re looking for a children’s Bible either for religious text or basic cultural literacy, this is a good choice.
Brain, Child
Brain, Child Here, my friends, is a magazine for every mother (and possibly father) on my f-list. While most parenting magazines vary by parenting style or (in my experience) devolve into bland children’s clothing and toy fashions, Brain, Child assumes only that you still have a brain and want to use. It’s not how to parent but why we parent, and how we feel about it. The issue that I read was serious and tender and funny. It had two viewpoint essays on whether or not there’s such a thing as too many toys. Both authors made good points; the “yes” stance was taken by Adrienne Martini, whose Hillbilly Gothic I reviewed a while back. There were articles on the effects on your sanity of elimination communication; how real the emotional support provided in on-line groups; a birth mother’s story; an exploration of the movement not to try to get people with autism and other thing commonly labeled as disabilities to fit into mainstream society. Perhaps my favorite – I’ll just give you the tag line in the magazine: “Special needs children are given to special mothers? One mother calls bullshit.” It’s a quarterly magazine, which could be good or bad depending on your reading speed. If I had the money, I’d be buying you all subscriptions. Since I don’t, you’re on your own.
This Place in the Snow
Here’s a couple of picture books that Mr. Froggie Pants and I really enjoyed.
This Place in the Snow by Rebecca Bond A group of children build a fantastical snow fort in the enormous pile of snow left by the snowplow. The words feel lovely to read aloud, and the pictures are bright, whimsical paintings.
The Elves and the Shoemaker
The Elves and the Shoemaker by John Cech. Illustrated by Kirill Chelushkin “A long, long time ago, when shoes were still made by shoemakers and not by machines in factories, a shoemaker and his wife found themselves in very hard times.” So begins this new retelling of a classic fairy tale. The shoemaker cuts out his last pair of shoes before going to bed, but when he wakes up in the morning, they are beautifully put together. They sell for enough money to buy double the amount of leather, and thus turn around his fortunes. Finally, he and his wife decide to investigate, and find that a pair of elves in worn-out clothing are responsible. The language is good, but the pictures are what really stand out. They are ink and watercolor illustrations, in a palette of mostly browns and black with the occasional bits of red or orange. Chelushkin plays with the perspective, so that a plane can be a table on top and a house or a hat underneath, while little elves of all shapes crowd the edges of the pictures. They are more eerie than usual for fairy tales, but very fun to find everything going on.
Sorcery and Cecilia and The Grand Tour
Rereading Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles reminded me that she had a couple of new and unrelated books come out which I’d not yet gotten around to reading. Here they are.
Sorcery and Cecilia, Or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
The Grand Tour by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer Both of these books are set in just post-Napoleonic War England (at least, the characters are English.) Our little tagline might be something like “Jane Austen’s World Meets the Society of Wizards with Nail-Biting Yet Hilarious Consequences.” Both novels were written as actual letters sent from one author to the other. Sorcery and Cecilia consists of letters between two cousins used to carrying on adventures together. Cecy, at home in the country, begs for news of the city from her cousin Kate, who is coming out and having her first London Season. Kate starts out bored and awkward, until a witch mistakes her for a rival wizard and tries to poison her (using the enchanted chocolate pot of the title.) Her hairpins still won’t stay in, but now she needs to find the other wizard to warn him. Meanwhile, someone keeps spying, very badly, on the social events that Cecy is attending. Should she report him or give him tips? The girls might be in over their heads, but at least they’re having a fabulous time.
In The Grand Tour, Cecy and Kate are both newly married and off on a joint Grand Tour of Europe for their honeymoon (it helps that their husband are best friends as well.) Cecy’s contributions come from a supposed deposition after the adventures, while Kate is writing in her commonplace book. They have not even made it to Paris before intrigue finds them. A strange woman finds Cecy alone in the hotel and gives her a mysterious flask to give to the older Lady Schofield (Kate’s mother-in-law, joining them as far as Paris.) No sooner have they found what it is than it is stolen. As they explore the mystery, they find that other historical items are being stolen around the continent. Could someone be trying to imitate Napolean’s ambitions? The Duke of Wellington asks them to investigate secretly. As before, the writing is snappy in a nice period-ish way, the fashion impeccable and the characters intrepid.
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The Heroines
The Heroines by Eileen Favorite It’s the early 1970s. Thirteen-year-old Penny Entwhistle lives with her mother in a little B&B on the Illinois prairie. Along with some regular customers, this B&B is visited by the heroines of literature, who come at the most stressful points of their stories. Penny has clear memories of Blanche DuBois and Scarlett O’Hara (who tried to steal their silver). Now, though, Penny is really sick of all the attention her mother gives them – particularly the weepy Deirdre, who’s currently taken over Penny’s own room. Penny snaps. She meets the mysterious Conor in the woods, a Celtic king who claims that Deirdre is his runaway wife and wants her back. When the police get involved, Penny tells them the truth, with predictable results. She meant to hurt her mother – but suddenly, Penny is the heroine in her own story, and things are not going well. This is light and amusing fiction for fans of the classic heroines.
