Category — Picture books

“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.

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.

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.

If you Google the phrase, “Mommy and I are one,” you’ll find links to conflicting evidence that that phrase, communicated either subliminally or directly, can elicit positive biofeedback in people who hear it. I don’t know if it really can make people relax or not, but as the mother of small children it seems plausible. Mommy and I are one; no boundaries between mother and child. A completely comforting and thrilling thought for a little one.

Owl Babies, by Martin Waddell, is one of my favorite picture books of all time – both to recommend for the kids at my school (we also have Las Lechucitas) and to read to my own children – probably because its theme is so universal and similar to the “Mommy and I are one” sentiment: Mommy may go, but Mommy comes back. It’s a sweet, slightly funny, and reassuring book, with some of the most clearly delineated characters of any picture book: Sarah, Percy, and Bill.

When Mama Owl goes out hunting for food, Sarah tries to reassure her owl baby brothers, Percy worries that something will happen, and Bill can only repeat, “I want my mommy.” Each owl echoes the conflicting wants, needs, and knowledge of any child whose mother has gone away for a while, and when she finally comes back, their relief, along with the reader’s, is tangible. Perfectly illustrated with gorgeous woodcuts, Owl Babies belongs on every young childs’ bookshelf.

November is National Adoption Month, a fact I know well as the author of two children’s books about adoption. Because of that, I’ll be spending lots of time this month reviewing my favorite adoption books for children.

Adoption books are kind of funny: a few are really great, but most are really didactic and spend a lot of energy trying to make the adopted child feel ok about being adopted. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but the children’s books about adoption that are also children’s literature are few and far between. Many of them are low on plot and high on sentiment. Or rather, the plot is the sentiment.

What really great books about adoption manage to accomplish is to be a great little book for children first, and a book about adoption second. The adoption stuff is almost after the fact. It can be the main point of the book, and often is, but the book doesn’t scream: Hello! I’m an adoption book!

A good example of what I’m talking about is A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kaska. In the book, Choco is a cute yellow bird in search of a mother. (Sound familiar? It should…this is the exact same premise of the book I learned to read by reading it over and over to my mother when I was 4: Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. More on that book below**).

Choco looks and looks for a mother. He asks a series of creatures if they’re his mother but they all laugh at him. Yes, the giraffe is yellow, but it’s far too tall to be his mother. Mrs. Penguin is approximately the right shape and size, but she doesn’t have stripey feet like Choco does. Choco is sad! No one will be his mother. But then he meets Mrs. Bear, who looks nothing like Choco but has the one element that all mothers have in common: love

Awww.

A perfect book for all adoptees, but particularly transracial adoptees, A Mother for Choco is that rare adoption book that, in addition to being a great read for adopted children, is a great read for all children.

——

**Okay, back to Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. As I admitted, I learned to read with this book, and I readily admit it is a classic early great 1st reader…but if you really think about it, it’s a fairly cruel tale with two basic morals to it: first, don’t leave home, or else, and second, if you think anyone who doesn’t look exactly like you could possibly be your mother, you’re a nutball. The first lesson I can live with, the second I can’t.

When my children want to make me cry they bring me our copy of The Sea Chest, by Toni Buzzeo. I think it’s partially because I still want a little girl after my two boys, or maybe it’s because my youngest son is adopted (and the story in the book is about adoption), but it’s mostly because it’s a beautiful book that thoughtfully and sweetly tells the story of a family who doesn’t know they need a daughter…until they find her

To learn more about The Sea Chest, read this interview of Toni Buzzeo.

The Wave, by Suzy Lee, is a gorgeous, wordless picture book that tells the story of a little girl and her companion, a wave. The little girl, drawn simply in black charcoal, starts out a bit afraid of the wave, but once she faces her fears and defies the wave, sticking her tongue out at it as it crashes over here, she emerges a bit humble, and then turns joyful, able to experience and explore all the seashore has to offer.

One of the wonderful things about wordless picture books is that they’re accessible to all readers. The Wave is simple enough for a very young child to understand, but the illustrator has also created the story through a series of sophisticated artistic decisions, which can be appreciated by the adult “reader” as well. Much as Max in When the Wild Things Are moves from the small square of his bedroom to the full page of the monster dance, the little girl in The Wavemoves from left to right through the course of the book. Left is safety, the shallows, and right is through the chaos and unknown of the wave, into the tide pool where curiosity and exploration are rewarded .