Category — Children's Book Reviews

I’ve been neglecting this blog terribly the past several months – it’s as if after quitting my Day Job I’ve put everything on hold ’til I’m finally outta there! Not really; I’ve been doing other things, notably, thinking about ways to get the news out there about The Forever Friends Club: the great little easy-reader chapter book my little press has just produced!

The book’s gotten fantastic reviews. Adoptive Families magazine called it “a delight,” and Motherhood Later said it was “ a wonderful twist to the adoption tale.” Plus, it has tons of free downloads, including a complete educators guide as well as a printable kit so kids can start their own club for forever friends!

I love this little book and I know that once adoptive families (and all families!) get their hands on it they’ll love it, too!

If you want to be eligible for one of 3 copies of this well-reviewed, well-written, and beautifully illustrated book about a group of kids who put the friendly in friendship, please comment below this blog entry and answer this question by May 30:

What makes a good friend?

Is that you are Zeus for Halloween.

This was an amazingly easy costume to make, which from my perspective (the mother and chief seamstress) was key.

Outfit includes 1 toga (instructions and helpful video for tying a toga found on youtube) made from a white sheet putchased at the thriftshop for $2; a wire crown gussied up with some gold leaves purchased at a crafts store; and a gold belt made from a scrap of gold fabric I had lying around. Shoes were this summer’s sporty sandals – they still fit him or else I’d have spray-painted them gold.

We also made a lightning bolt out of cardboard and tin foil. This was shoved into the plastic pumpkin after a minute of use. Good thing it was bendable!

His other idea was to be Poseidon as depicted in the Percy Jackson books, which would’ve involved bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals. Maybe a shell necklace or something. But he worried that no one would get it.

No one really got the Zeus outfit, actually. Every other kid we went trick-or-treating with was dressed as a vampire.

My 9 year old son and I just finished readingCrispin: A Cross of Lead, by Avi. I read it to him at bedtime, and I think if you’re going to introduce any 9 year old to this book that is the way to do it. I was able to explain it to him as I read. I doubt most 9-year-olds have the background knowledge of pre-Reformation England to really understand it.

It’s interesting to me that this book won the Newbery award in 2003. There’s been a lot of discussion on the library lists and blogs about the relevance of the Newbery in the past few years and I think this book is a good example of the problems with the award. I’ve read about half of the Newbery award winners (and more than half of the honor books) and in many cases I don’t agree with the selection. Not that I think the choices aren’t deserving, but in many cases I feel the books that were given an honor (as opposed to the top award) are more appealing to kids, faster-moving, and more universal than the actual winner. Now that I’ve read Crispin: The Cross of Lead, I feel the same way about the 2003 winners. I loved both Hoot andThe House of the Scorpion and I usually have no problem booktalking either book or suggesting them on the fly to my 4th and 5th graders – but I don’t feel the same way about this book. That’s probably not the only criteria the Newbery folks use to give the awards – but that’s my #1 criteria: can I sell this book to the kids in my library. And this book, for me, is a hard sell. The same goes for the winners of the last few years – I happened to love The Higher Power of Lucky - but how to get my kids to want to read it? And forget Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! My kids lack the background knowledge to understand this book. When I read it, it’ll be out loud to my son.

That said, I did enjoy this book and we were both on the edge of our proverbial seats during the final confrontation. I did have a bit of a hard time buying the character change from Crispin – he got a lot of confidence awfully fast for a kid who didn’t even have a name until the past couple weeks of his life. But I guess that’s the power of love!

Some resources for using Crispin: The Cross of Lead in the classroom:

• A study guide for Crispin: The Cross of Lead
• Video interviewing Avi, from Reading Rockets, where he talks about the struggle of writing – as a writer myself I love what he says about having trouble deciding what to say next a hundred times a day. From such a prolific author this means a lot! He also talks about his dyslexia. This could be really inspirational for kids who struggle with writing. 
• A great page of suggested booktalks for Crispin: The Cross of Lead.

“I wish for a change and a friend,”

 says Little Pig, when he learns these three new words. And just like that, it happens. Simple, easy, wonderful!

Wish, Change, Friend, which is written by Ian Whybrow and illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke (and which seems to be, sadly, out of print) is a brilliant, charmingly illustrated picture book that tells the story of someone – Little Pig – who inspired to get outside of his box. Little Pig lives alone in the forest. He loves to read, and he has all the books and acorns and twigs that he needs. Until one day he finds three words in one of his books: wish, change, and friend.

The next morning, after making his wish for a change and a friend, he wakes up to find that it’

s snowed (a change). He makes a snowman, who comes alive (a friend). Little Pig decides he likes these new experiences, and so he and his snow friend take a journey. They meet a penguin, who himself has been reading and

 learning new words: pig and together. Well, what do you know? Pig is there! And he and his snow friend aretogether with the penguin! They ponder the fantasticness of this, and then decide that together is the best word of all. The end!

I read this book with kindergartners right before the holiday break (winter theme) and I was a tad worried that the book was too existential for them. But it wasn’t. They got it. They really did. Just like Little Pig, they make text to self connections all the time. And if you’

re going to believe a talking, reading pig whose snowman comes alive, the coincidence of wandering off and finding a talking, reading penguin who just happens to be learning new vocabulary about YOU makes total sense!

After I read it (twice) we did some really fun collage art, too!

Five years ago my husband and I decided to adopt a child from Russia. We know lots of adopted kids; my five-year-old son Jacob’s best friend is adopted as is his little sister. Our playgroup contains any number of adopted or foster children and we have several grown-up friends who are adoptees. Even our regular babysitter is adopted. For Jacob, then four, this was just another way to add to our family. The thought of a ready-made little brother or sister was helping all of us, perhaps especially Jacob, heal from the late-term miscarriage we’d suffered that winter. He was excited.

What Jacob didn’t completely understand was why Mommy and Daddy had to go away for so long to get a sibling. It usually takes two trips to Russia to adopt, each trip a week, if not longer, and children Jacob’s age don’t usually accompany their parents. He was happy to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a couple of weeks (he’s spent so much time at my mom’s B&B, the Rosemary House, that he now announces to the guests that he works there) but he’d never been apart from us that long before. I wanted to explain to him what it would be like for his father and me to travel to meet our new son, so I turned to our nightly ritual of story time to help show him what our journey would be like.

Mishka: An Adoption Tale, is a book I wrote specifically for adopted children, siblings of adopted children, and any child curious about the adoption process. Mishka tells the story of Mo, a teddy bear who lives on the shelf of an airport bookshop. Mo sees families coming in and out of the bookshop and longs for one of his own. Then one day, a man and a woman come into the store and they buy him! But instead of taking him home, they take him on an airplane and they fly for many hours. Once they land, they take Mo to a strange building and give him as a gift to a little boy, Yuri. They play with Mo and Yuri, but then they leave. Will they ever come back? Will they be a family? Through Mo’s eyes, children can feel some of what adopted children feel and they can see the process of Russian adoption as well. It’s a reassuring tale of a teddy bear (in Russian, a mishka) that finds a family of his own.

Seeds of Love, written by Mary E. Petertyl and illustrated by Jill Chambers, is the story of a little girl whose parents are traveling to an unnamed country, probably China, to adopt a new baby. The little girl in the story is confused about why her parents must go so far away to get a baby, and she’s anxious about staying with her grandmother. After all, her grandmother doesn’t know to cut the crusts off her toast and to turn her nightlight when she goes to bed. Her mother assures her that her grandma will know what to do, and presents the little girl with a pot of dirt in which she puts a couple of seeds. She instructs her daughter to water the pot every day they are apart. When the seeds start to sprout, that’s when the girl will know her parents are coming home. As a picture book, neither the artwork nor the text ofSeeds of Love are very impressive, but I would still suggest it as an important companion for any child whose parents are adopting a sibling internationally. The messages in this book, that adopting overseas is a recognized way of adding to your family and, when it does happen, that Mommy and Daddy will come back to you, are crucial for the child left behind to hear. This book is currently out of print, but if you find a copy it’s worth keeping.

Over the Moon, written and illustrated by Karen Katz (one of my favorites) is the story of a couple anxiously awaiting the arrival of their new baby. Everyone gets in on the anticipation: Grandma, the fruit seller, and the little girl from next-door all ask when the baby is coming. “Soon,” the parents answer, and then they get the call! The baby has been born in a far-away land, full of flowers and palm trees and birds, reachable “over the moon and through the night.” Once they get the baby they are nervous as they’ve never cared for an infant, but before they know it they’ve spent their first day as a family and are looking forward to the next. Illustrated in Katz’s brilliant and funky style, I highly recommend Over the Moon for families formed by international adoption, even those children who, like my younger son, were not adopted from a tropical location. She captures that anticipatory, excited feeling of waiting for “the call,” perfectly.

Finally, I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, written by Rose Lewis and illustrated by Jane Dyer, tells the story of a single woman adopting a little girl from China. Both the narrative and the pictures are simple, but powerful, and even now, after reading it fifty times, I still tear up when the mother first meets her new daughter. Like Over the Moon, there is no sibling in this book, but the first time I read it to my son the value in reading him this story became clear: it carefully and completely illustrates the process of falling in love with the new child. This is something my son missed by remaining at home, but through reading this book he can get a taste of what it was like for us.

Hands down, Cressida Cowell’s adventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III have been my favorite bedtime reads with my 9-year-old that we’ve done in our 3-year history of reading chapter books. And we’ve read a lot of books that way. Some, we’ve had to give up on the reading-out-loud midstream, as they’ve been too, too long and we realized we just wanted it over with (most recently Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke fit this bill). But that hasn’t happened once with the Hiccup books – although my son did jump the gun and read the last one in one night without me since he couldn’t wait to see what happened!

The reason these books, starting with How to Train a Dragon (book 1), moving up to How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm (this is the UK title for book 7; it may be changed once it’s put out in the U.S.), are so great is that Hiccup, the hero of the books, is a fantastic character. The books take place when the Vikings ruled the seas (although this should *not* be considered historical fiction. I mean, I guess it is, but it’s pretty loosely based on those times and most of the details are comical and stereotypical as opposed to accurate), and Hiccup’s father, Stoick the Vast, is the ruler of all the Vikings in his tribe: the Hairy Hooligans. Hiccup is the heir to this throne, but he is nothing like his father. He’s skinny, weak, a bit timid, and most unlikely to lead anyone into battle. But he is smart, and we know he eventually grows up to be a great leader because the books are presented as his grown-up accounts of how he came to rule his Viking tribe.

These books are funny, poignant, and fast-moving – all qualities I *love* in a book. Someone I work with says that I’m secretly a 10-year-old boy because of my taste in chapter books, but I think it’s that I have little boys in my house and I see no need to read books that will bore them! There’s so much great stuff out there, like the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock series, that we don’t need to waste our time reading anything but the best!

And…apparently they’re making a movie of this book, which is very fun! It’ll come out in 2010, so if you give the little boy in your life this series now, he’ll have them all read by the time the movie comes out. Or if he’s anything like my son, he’ll have them read by the end of January!

This morning I could not get the song “Let it Snow” out of my head. Probably because we’re listening to a streaming Christmas radio station in the library, or maybe because it’s almost Thanksgiving break, which makes it almost Christmas break, which leads to January, which is pretty much the only month in central NC when we might get snow.

In honor of that song (which is now once again stuck in my head), I want to talk about a sweet little picture book about snow: Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee. This is a cozy little book about a girl who takes a walk in the snow, following some mysterious tracks: “Tracks in the snow / Tracks in the snow / Who made the tracks? / Where do they go?” goes the refrain, and the little girl speculates it could be a rabbit, a bear, a hippopotamus, a duck, a woodchuck, or a number of other animals.

Wong Herbert Yee, who I know from the Fireman Small books (a favorite to read during Fire Safety week or any time kindergarten and 1st grade talk about community helpers), illustrates the story with soft, stippled watercolors that somehow make me think of the quiet inherent in walking by oneself through a snowy landscape.

Tomorrow: more books on snow!

Snow, by Uri Shulevitz, is a wonderful celebration of what a pure JOY snow can be, especially through the eyes of a child. It sums up that feeling you had when you were a kid (and can still have now you’re a grown-up), when you wish and wish and wish for it to snow…

and then it does. Even when the radio and tv say differently:

But snowflakes don’t listen to radio, 

Snowflakes don’t watch television. 

All snowflakes know is snow, snow, and snow.

This book has a very few words mixed in with marvelous, humorous illustrations that you need to pause and pore over before turning the page. When I read it to a group of 1st graders last year we looked at each page slowly, then the next, and the next, until I got to the final, satisfying page. Everyone was quiet when I was done. We were all wishing for snow.

One Tiny Turtle, by Nicola Davies, is a non-fiction book about sea turtles, but this book is not as simple as that. Davies accomplishes what the truly great non-fiction picture book writers do: she makes a factual book read like a fictional story. Everything in the book is true; the turtle is not anthropomorphized in the least but. But at the same time it is a character in its own life story, and the language she uses to describe this wild animal’s life cycle is compelling and poetic. Here’s an example, where she is describing the Sargasso Sea:

Just beneath the surface
is a tangle of weed and driftwood
where tiny creatures cling.
This is the nursery of a sea turtle.

This is also a book that can be used on several different levels. The main text is like that of a picture book, but in sidebar text we also find out more about the sea turtle. If reading this to a 4-year old, you’d probably want to stick to the main text. But if reading it to a 7-year old, you could read both parts. It is a great read-aloud as well as a great non-fiction research text. Plus, the gorgeous illustrations, by Jane Chapman are realistic without being scientific, accessible but not cartoonish.

In On the Farm, a brilliantly written and illustrated collection of poetry, David Elliot and Holly Meade manage to capture the essence of a farm: the characteristics of the animals (rooster, cow, pony, dog, sheep, cat, goat, pig, snake, bees, bull, turtle, duck, hen, goose, and rabbit) and its places (barnyard, pigsty, garden, barn, pond, field and house) in the few, spare (but perfect) poems that accompany the gorgeous, water-color filled woodcuts.

I will use this book when our kindergarten goes on their farm fieldtrip, but I’ll also use it when we do poetry with the upper grades. I can also see applications for understanding similes and metaphors (my 4th grade son is doing this right now) – parts of poetry, of course, but also helpful when teaching the stand-alone concept of figurative language.