Top 10 Picture Books

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Katy K.

Top 10 Picture Books

Here’s an attempt at favorite picture books for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the Broke and Bookish. Top Ten Tuesday

It’s no longer Tuesday, and it turns out that the theme was really Top Ten Favorites of X Genre – but Cecelia over at the Adventures of Cecilia Bedelia put together an inspiring list of her favorite picture books. I put together this list of favorites yesterday, but didn’t quite manage to get it posted.

Picture books are a wonderful kind of book that can work better than any other for a broad range of ages – even books with texts written for the very, very young can be illustrated with details to keep the adult reading them interested. Picture books are some of the first books I started buying for myself in high school – I’d get my everyday reading from the library, but buy beautiful picture books to look at over and over again. These books are listed roughly in the order in which I’d introduce them to children, from babies to toddlers to preschoolers and early elementary-aged children, and includes books I remember from my own childhood as well as reading to my little brother, cousins, and my own children.

hushHush Little Baby illustrated by Marla Frazee. (1999) One of the very first books we bought our son because, even as a baby, he asked for it daily for weeks. Frazee tells a funny story of desperate parents and a slightly well-meaning big sister, set in historic Appalacia.

Everywhere BabiesEverywhere Babies by Susan Mayer. Illustrated by Marla Frazee. (2001) Beautiful rhyming text follows a diverse cast of babies through their first year. I could have put this one in my Tearjerkers list, too, because that first birthday party at the end gets me every time.

All of Baby Nose to ToesAll of Baby Nose to Toes by Victoria Adler. Pictures by Hiroe Nakata. (2009) Nakata is a favorite picture book illustrator, and this book is perfect for reading while cuddling with a baby.

eachpeachEach Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. (1978) A charming book I’ve read to lots of small children. The text alone is simple enough for little ones, but the element of hide-and-seek makes it good for older ones, as well.

madelineMadeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. (1939) I don’t really need to explain this one, right? I had it memorized for a very long time from my little brother wanting it so often.

snowydayThe Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. (1962) Another one that brings back fond memories from my childhood as well as reading with my own children.

knuffleKnuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. (2004) I think this was the book that introduced me to Willems. Though I love lots of his work, this is one we’ve read to bits and given as gifts.

threepigsThe Three Pigs by David Wiesner. (2001) My love and I bought this meta twist on the classic fairy tale for ourselves well before we had children, but they love it, too.

There Are No Cats in This BookThere Are No Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz. (2010) This is a more recent favorite – but when my children want a book renewed, and ask for it again months later, and it’s a hit read aloud both to preschool and 2/3 classes – you know it’s a solid picture book.

ladybugbumblebeeLadybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Soman and Jacky Davis. (2009) This is another one we bought due to popular demand after borrowing from the library, and that was a hit with the classroom, too. In a charming blend of real life and imagination, Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy find a superpowered way to find something they both want to play.

animaliaAnimalia by Graeme Base. (1987) I bought this for myself a long time ago, when I was supposed to be too old for picture books. Base’s gorgeously paintings for each letter of the alphabet are so detailed that I spent hours looking at them, but the text aimed at more traditional alphabet audiences is a lot of fun, too.

littleredridingLittle Red Riding Hood by Trina Schart Hyman. (1983) This is my first favorite illustrators. The pictures are beautifully composed and detailed, but the people have such believable expressions, and there’s usually a cat or a small child looking directly out at you to draw you into the picture. Here, Little Red is completely believable as a four-year-old almost old enough to carry out an errand without getting distracted. This particular book has been a favorite with my children, but it’s also symbolic of the many other beautifully illustrated fairy tale picture books I’ve read and added to my personal library over the years. Maybe next time a list of favorite fairy tale picture books!

What are your favorite picture books? Or which genre would you choose to do a Top 10 of?

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Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Katy K.

Oh my goodness! It’s been six months since I’ve reviewed a steampunk novel – it’s time for another one!

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical GirlGideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl by David Barnett Tor, 2013.
Gideon Smith is a young man addicted to the penny dreadfuls, especially the “true stories of Captain Lucian Trigger, hero of the Empire, as told to his companion John Reed.” Captain Trigger travels all over the world, including the far-flung outposts of the British Empire in North America and India, among others. When Gideon’s father is lost at sea in mysterious circumstances, and a young boy of his acquaintance draws a picture of a monster he claims to have seen that matches exactly the description of one that Captain Trigger once encountered, Gideon decides that there’s nothing left for him in his little fishing village. He sets off to find Captain Trigger himself, to enlist his aid in solving the mystery. On the way to London, he meets Maria, a beautiful clockwork girl whose master is missing and who is being mistreated by the serving staff, who don’t recognize her human-like intelligence.

Meanwhile, Bram Stoker is in Gideon’s home village, trying to overcome a bad case of writer’s block. There he meets vampire Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is seeking revenge on her husband Dracula’s killers. She believes them to be ancient Egyptian frog monsters, the Children of Hequet.

Gideon’s illusions are shattered when he learns that Captain Trigger isn’t the hero the papers make him out to be – indeed, he’s a broken shell of a man, hoping against hope for the return of his lover, John Reed. Even so, Gideon seems to have the charisma to attract a motley band of people to track down John Reed in hopes that his disappearance will hold some clues to the mysteries that Gideon is investigating. In addition to the characters already mentioned (minus the little boy), it includes the foul-mouthed reporter Aloysius Bent, hoping for a career-saving story, and famous sky pilot Captain Rowena Fanshawe.

The one troubling thing in this book was that while it seemed on the surface to espouse modern sexual values (and there was no explicit sex in the book), the only named “good guys” to die (spoiler alert!) were those who engaged in less traditional sexual activities. As in, heterosexual activity in or out of marriage is OK, but homosexuality or a down-on-her-luck street girl turning to prostitution in times of extreme need, not so much. The deaths in the story all had other, more obvious reasons, and I felt like Barnett thought he was demonstrating the open-mindedness of his steampunk empire when writing the story – but as the only factor linking multiple deaths, the effect was rather the opposite.

On the whole, though, while it took a couple of chapters for me to feel fully engaged with the story, once it got going, I very much enjoyed it. The colorful characters and over-the-top adventures involving sky pirates and mysterious monsters, with a touch of romance, made for a rip-roaring tale with all the elements a satisfying steampunk story needs.

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Guest Post: Martin Berman-Gorvine

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Katy K.

Today I have a guest post from Martin Berman-Gorvine, author of Seven Against Mars and Save the Dragons, talking about Save the Dragons and its upcoming sequel. Welcome, Martin!

martinprofileAnyone who has ever walked into the dusty but magical confines of a “used” bookstore and chatted with the erudite, eccentric owner while stroking the shop’s obligatory cat will instantly grasp the primary source of inspiration for Save the Dragons. Aren’t such places really gateways to other worlds, other ways of thinking and being? For Teresa D’Angelo, who is a lonely and unpopular teenager as so many of us are or vividly remember being, the mysterious appearance of Gloria’s Gateway Books in the familiar, dreary streets of South Philadelphia starts out as such an escape, with a secret back room that offers an enchanted entry to a strangely transformed world—one where dragons are a familiar but endangered species and America is the seat of a British Empire whose skies are crowded with airships and whose roads teem with “electric carriages” invented more than two hundred years ago by “Sir” Ben Franklin.

But as the writer Delmore Schwartz once observed, in dreams begin responsibilities, and Gloria, the sometimes-redhaired lady, sometimes-orange tabby cat owner of the bookstore, has a private agenda when she helps Teresa make the passage between worlds: to arrange for her to meet Tom Purnell, a teenager from the parallel world’s version of Chincoteague Island, home of the wild ponies and, on that side of the gate, also of one of the last remaining dragons as well as of a research station sponsored by His Majesty’s Government where Tom’s father works with colleagues to crack the secret of heavier-than-air flight before the rival French Empire. Together Tom and Teresa must figure out why no dragonets have been born anywhere in years, and rescue Tom’s father from dastardly French kidnappers.

Save the Dragons

In a sequel that is now nearing completion, Gloria has moved her magical bookstore to Chincoteague Island and established contact with yet another parallel world—one where only paranoid crazy people think that UFOs aren’t real, because everyone remembers how “The High Ones” arrived on the Moon at the same time as the Apollo 11 astronauts, helpfully deposited Neil Armstrong and company on the South Lawn of the White House, and brought peace and prosperity to the world. Of course there’s a catch—isn’t there always? You see, the High Ones, who look like a cross between giant starfish and something out of the Burgess Shale, like stability in government, so twenty-first century America still has a president whose name rhymes with “Blixen.” Also, children are strip-searched before they can go to school, because some people don’t like the way the High Ones are running things and have taken to expressing their discontent explosively. Jo Purnell, Tom’s younger sister from British Imperial America, must help her new friend Arnold Grossbard from the High Ones’ America figure out whether and how to fight the alien menace.

Now, because writers aren’t exactly like that other kind of magician who never give away their secrets, I’ll let you in on one vital wellspring of imagination. It can be summed up in one word: READ. Read everything and anything. Among the books that helped inspire Save the Dragons and Heroes of Earth (the working title of the sequel) are some obvious ones like Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but also Rachel Carson’s environmentalist classic Silent Spring and Garry Wills’s contemporary account of the end of the 1960’s, Nixon Agonistes. You never know what convoluted wiring will close the circuit and turn the light bulb on.

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Eleanor & Park

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Katy K.

I’d mentally flagged this as a book I wanted to read before it was even published, but things going the way they do, I didn’t actually check it out from the library until I had a gap in my listening schedule, after lots of other people had already fallen in love with it. It was a Cybils finalist in the teen section, an Odyssey Honor Book, a Printz Honor book, and a best teen (or children’s) book from Boston Globe Horn Book, Publisher’s Weekly, New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, and NPR. But I really did love it, too, so just on the off-chance that you haven’t heard about it, I’ll put down a few thoughts.

Eleanor & ParkEleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Read by Rebecca Lowman and Sunil Malhotra. Print St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013. Audio from Listening Library, 2013.

Eleanor & Park is a bittersweet story of 1980s teen romance, happy ending not included. They meet on the school bus, forced to sit together, even though overweight, red-haired Eleanor gives off a weird vibe that Park is afraid will rub off on him, making his already precarious social position as the only half-Korean kid at their Omaha high school even more difficult. Gradually, though, they bond over the music and comic books Park brings for the bus ride – Watchmen is being newly released, and Park has lots of punk rock tapes for his Walkman.

Life is rough for both of them. Besides being a natural target for the school bullies, Eleanor lives in poverty with an abusive stepfather and must be careful to protect her cowed mother and younger siblings. Park’s father reminds him often that he’s a pansy in comparison to his taller, more athletic younger brother. Both Park and Eleanor cling to their relationship as the one thing that makes life worthwhile, even as they know it can’t last.

The book is told alternately from both character’s points of view, and the audio book has a different narrator for each of them. Rebecca Lowman perfectly captured Eleanor’s hard, snarky attitude, while Sunil Malhotra sounded just right for Park’s somewhat gentler nature. My heart melted and pounded and I cried actual tears over it. I loved Rowell’s Fangirl, too, but I think that Liviana at In Bed with Books is right that that is more geek girl wish fulfillment, where this is real, intense first love, good for geeks as well as traditional teen romance fans.

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3 Multicultural Picture Books

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Katy K.

Hooray for multicultural children’s books! I checked out several in preparation for Multicultural Children’s Book Day, and put more on my list from books that I found out about then. Here are three of our favorite recently found multicultural picture books. Also, it’s Kid Lit Blog Hop day – click on through and see what other great things my fellow kid lit bloggers have put together!

Kid Lit Blog Hop

Rainbow StewRainbow Stew by Cathryn Falwell. Lee & Low, 2013.
Fun, rhyming text and bright painted illustrations show siblings of African descent brightening a rainy day by picking vegetables of all colors in the garden and then making them into stew for lunch. A framed graduation photo in the living room and scenes of everyone curling up with books while the stew simmers make it clear that this is a family that values education. Growing your own veggies is really popular these days, and this book will appeal to those families with a story told in words simple enough for older toddlers and up. This one was recommended by Mia at Pragmatic Mom. I found my four-year-old going back to over and over on her own.

Say Hello!Say Hello! by Rachel Isadora. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010.
In another book good for quite young children, Carmelita, her mother, and her dog walk through their multicultural neighborhood on their way to Abuelita’s house. They stop to say hello to their friends in the appropriate language (pronunciation guide included). The puppy always knows just what to say in every language: “Woof!” The cut-paper collaged illustrations perfectly illuminate the beauty of variety. (Even though this is the only one of the three with no food on the cover, there’s plenty on the inside, as they pass lots of ethnic food shops and go on to eat at Abuelita’s house.) My colleague Ms. J. used this as the focus book for a storytime series called “Multicultural Me” and it was also a hit with my preschooler.

Cora Cooks PancitCora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore. Illustrated by Kristi Valiant. Shen’s Books, 2009. 2/25/14
For a preschooler/early elementary audience rather than toddlers, Cora Cooks Pancit tells the story of a Filipina-American girl, the youngest of a large family, who’s finally allowed to provide real help cooking a traditional Filipino meal for her family. We watch as she’s first left out by her older siblings, then her delight when she’s told she can help, followed by an array of delicious food dancing through her head as she decides what to cook. Finally, she and her mother go step-by-step through cooking this traditional noodle dish and sharing stories of Cora’s grandfather, whose recipe they’re using. Though it feels like it’s meant specifically for Filipino children (and I really don’t see many aimed at this audience!), this is also a celebration of growing up enough to contribute to the family, a sentiment that children of any ancestry can relate to.

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Flora & Ulysses

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Katy K.

Flora & UlyssesI know I’m behind on my reviewing, but for the first and probably last time, I finished reading a book the very day that it won the Newbery, and for one glorious moment, I felt On Top of Things.

Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. Candlewick Press, 2013.
Flora loves comics, especially the ones about the Amazing Incandesto, even though her mother, a romance writer, doesn’t believe that comics are Literature Worth Reading. Flora’s reading merges with real life when she sees a squirrel sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Ulysses comes out a superhero squirrel who can understand human speech, type poetry on Flora’s mother’s typewriter, and fly. The story is filled with flawed and colorful larger-than-life characters, including Flora’s quiet father (divorced, and in opposition to her loud mother), a temporarily blind boy named William Spiver, and an attack cat. The story is told mostly in prose with short section in comic panels, and the action takes place over the course of just a couple of days as Flora tries to save Ulysses from her mother (who is sure he’s rabid) and Ulysses helps Flora comes to terms with her parents’ divorce.

I was really prepared to love this one. I’ve loved many of DiCamillo’s books, and I was excited about the blend of comics and prose. Somehow, this fell a little flat for me. Maybe it was that the human characters seemed too close to caricature, or that the scope of the story wasn’t quite epic enough for a superhero premise. It also felt too magical for realism, but not quite magical enough for true fantasy, while the little magic that was there was too fantastic for magical realism – labels shouldn’t necessarily matter, but something, somewhere didn’t quite jibe for me. Sadness.

Obviously other people have felt very differently about this – the Newbery is the biggest, best-known honor for American children’s books, and I’ve read lots and lots of positive reviews of this. But for now, I’m going to stick with Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Desperaux as my favorite DiCamillo books.

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Save the Dragons

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Katy K.

Congratulations to Kim, the winner of my tenth anniversary giveaway, and thanks to everyone who entered!

I loved Seven Against Mars last year, so of course when Mr. Berman-Gorvine offered to send me a copy of his latest book, I was happy to accept.

Save the DragonsSave the Dragons by Martin Berman-Gorvine. Wildside Books, 2013.
Teresa is wandering around the streets of Philadelphia with a bad case of the teen blues, when she stumbles across Gloria’s Gateway Books. Inside is the most wonderful used book and record store imaginable, filled with books and records that shouldn’t exist. A steaming cup of hot chocolate, a note addressed to her, and a friendly cat are waiting on the counter for her. After a few visits, she starts leaving notes not just for the owner, but for a boy she finds has been visiting, too.

Actually meeting the boy turns out to be more difficult than either of them imagined, though – Tom lives in a Philadelphia that’s still part of Britain, where England itself has been part of the Napoleonic Empire for a couple of centuries. They are going to have to learn more about the magic of Gloria’s Gateway Books to be able to meet in person.

When they do, Gloria herself tells them that they haven’t been brought together just because they’re kindred spirits – the precious dragon that Tom’s father studies is in grave danger, and Tom and Teresa must save it. Exciting adventures across continents, traveling by train and airship ensue, and both teens gain enough self-awareness to feel less bleak about their normal life circumstances.

The violence is low and romance is mild, but with lots of kissing. For that reason, I’d say that kids young enough to find romance icky wouldn’t enjoy this, but that it’s otherwise appropriate for middle school and up.

There was a lot about this book that I loved and a few things that didn’t quite work for me. I loved, loved, loved Gloria’s Gateway Books, both a portal between worlds and a repository for rare books and music from multiple dimensions. I enjoyed the alternate history of Tom’s dimension, the natural history of dragons in it, and the interplay between Teresa and Tom as they negotiated between Teresa’s modern dating expectations and Tom’s old-fashioned and formal courting mores.

My lonely sixteen-year-old self would have loved the idea of a boy in an alternate dimension who was perfect for me, and I don’t think that an inter-dimensional matchmaker would have bothered me, either. As an adult, though, the romance didn’t quite ring true. It felt like Tom and Teresa were pushed into a romantic relationship, so that Teresa would help with Tom’s problems, when she could have helped just as well out of pure friendship and a sense of adventure. And on the topic of adventure, while it was fun, there was a lot of circuitous travel that wasn’t necessary to solve the problem at hand, and a little too much reliance on adults for a purely satisfying teen adventure. I’m guessing that only that last might bother the target audience. Issues aside, the blend of speculation, adventure and romance made for a very entertaining read, especially recommended for fans of magical bookstores and dragons.

Now I’m trying to remember other books I’ve read with magical bookstores. There’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, but I could swear I read a book as a young teen with a bookstore that, like this, appeared and disappeared on its own. Did anyone else read this?

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Texting the Underworld

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Katy K.

I first heard about this book from Charlotte and was intrigued enough to go reading multiple interviews (and enter giveaways) before I asked my library to buy it so I could read it. I’m glad I did!

Texting the UnderworldTexting the Underworld by Ellen Booraem. Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013.
Conor is a scaredy-cat, so afraid of change that he’s deliberately not-quite-failing pre-algebra, to avoid the risk of leaving his neighborhood school for the prestigious Boston Latin School and asks his little sister, Glennie, for help with spiders. One night he spots a banshee, Ashling, outside his bedroom window. He knows from Grumps’ stories that seeing a banshee means that someone in his family is going to die soon. But Ashling is vivacious and curious – she’s doing work as a banshee to earn a new life for herself after an early death over a thousand years ago. She wants to go to middle school with Conor before settling down to work. This leads to hilarious situations, as Ashling uses the knowledge gained from Conor’s Trivial Pursuit cards to make her way through school.

Conor is pretty sure, though, that Ashling’s there either for Grumps or Glennie, and losing a family member is even more unacceptable than going to Latin School. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect his family, even travelling to the Other Land to ask three questions of the Lady (with home back-up from his best friend, Javier.) Everyone is surprised when the Other Land is not just the Irish underworld they were expecting, but a massive clearinghouse for souls operated by the underworld gods of every tradition that has an underworld, including my favorite, the Babylonian god Nergal. The ending is bittersweet, with an unexpected twist.

Conor is a rare fantasy hero, a genuinely ordinary boy dealing with high-level supernatural powers. I loved the way he was able to face his fears to save his family. The humor and the thoughts about loss balance each other nicely, leaving a book that’s both funny and thoughtful without tipping either into heaviness or fluff. I also very much enjoyed Ashling, who stays unapologetic about her 9th century values even as she’s trying to make her way in the 21st. The message about the value of other cultures (in this case, other than Irish) is more subtle, but still there. The focus on death might make this a little difficult for younger middle grade readers – but I’d highly recommend it for older middle grade and up, especially to kids interested in mythology.

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Little Red Writing and No Pirates Allowed

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Katy K.

Two more picture books: the first was going around my blogs over the summer, and was popular enough here that I had to wait months to get it. The second was a random book picked off the new book shelf because we like pirates around my house.

Little Red WritingLittle Red Writing by Joan Holub. Pictures by Melissa Sweet. Chronicle Books, 2013.
Little Red is a sharp pencil who decides to write an adventure story for her class writing adventure. She’s both writing and experiencing this clever retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, in a way that’s confusing to tell but makes perfect sense in the book. Each page of her adventure illustrates another common form of bad writing, as she’s first trapped in the forest of too many adjectives, then trapped in situations with fearful run-on sentences and the dangers of straying off the story path. The ending, as Little Red uses one of the red words from her word basket to defeat the Wolf 3000 pencil sharpener, is – dare I say it – more satisfying than the traditional rescue by the woodcutter. This combination of story and writing lesson had the strong possibility of failing on one or both counts, but amazingly succeeds at both. I’d thought my four-year-old, too young for writing assignments, might not get it – but she and my son and his teachers all loved it. For me it’s love at a level where I’m happy checking it out from the library when we want it again, but it’s going in my son’s school library, and possible individual class libraries as well.

No Pirates Allowed! Said Library LouNo Pirates Allowed! Said Library Lou by Rhonda Gowler Greene. Illustrated by Brian Ajhar. Sleeping Bear Press, 2013
Stinky Pirate Pete and his parrot storm into the library with a treasure map showing that there’s treasure in the library. Lou the librarian initially shushes them, but after she’s straightened them out on proper library behavior, she teaches them to read. It turns out the library does have treasure – just not the kind Pirate Pete was expecting! This a fun story in bouncy rhyme. I loved watching the message play out – mostly exciting and only a tiny bit preachy. Tiny Library Lou’s stern facedown of Pirate Pete and her enthusiasm while teaching letters are both priceless!

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Locomotive

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Katy K.

Remember there’s still time to enter my Tenth Anniversary Giveaway!

LocomotiveLocomotive by Brian Floca. Simon and Schuster, 2013.

I checked this one out after reading Amy’s review over at Hope is the Word.
Gorgeous layered illustrations with expressive typography and poetic text tell the story of a family traveling west by rail in the 1860s. It was Cybils Middle Grade Nonfiction finalist and – more power to Amy for her prediction skills – won this year’s Caldecott. It is beautiful to look at and very informative with lots about the way the train works and the various people it takes to run it as well as the landscape it travels through. It’s also very long – more of an elementary school length than a preschooler length. I read it through, but couldn’t convince either of my kids to let me read it to them. That has much more to do with neither of them liking trains especially than the book itself. It would do very well for any train or history lover from kid through adult.

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