travelinglibrariansdesk

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Two Awesome Picture Books Rather Different in Nature

Another terrific title I could not resist when circulating books today: Dan Santat's The Adventures of Beekle, the Unimaginary Friend. The story opens on the Island of Imaginary Friends (not to be confused with the Island of Misfit Toys!), and this grabbed me immediately - what a lovely idea! Plus - "Beekle". What a perfect name for an imaginary friend. The story is otherwise fairly predictable, the illustrations pleasant, but in a few places, like the whale-filled ocean over which Beekle sails to find the real world, the dazzling sea monster and the glorious tree he eventually climbs to look for "his" friend, the art is dazzling. Likewise, the text is somewhat uneven. Beekle and his friend Alice get to know one another through a series of funny, awkward and creative moments, yet Santat also employs sentences like "He sailed through unknown waters and faced many scary things.". Ugh. Lazy writing frustrates the heck out of me as a teacher of literature. "Many scary things" just begs for elaboration. No decent editor just lets such a sentence sit there, and no harm would have come to the story in a few more pages! Beekle himself reminds me of an adipose - a creature from the "Partners in Crime" episode of Doctor Who - sweet face, the body of a soft rubber squeaky toy, waddling movements. I would choose this book for shyer kids, especially if they already have imaginary friends, because it endorses proactive behavior: if there's something you want, don't wait for it to come to you - go get it!

Kabir Sehgal and Surishtha Sehgal's book The Wheels on the Tuk Tuk takes the familiar song "The Wheels on the Bus" and adapts it for India (though it could be almost anywhere in the developing world - most of them have tuk-tuks of some sort). The fun in this book is the details of the adapted song, though I enjoyed the art as well. But lines like "People on the street jump on and off", "Tuk tuk walla says squish in together" and "Tuk tuk walla sips-sips chai" just created a happy feeling, reminding me of all the tuk tuks I've jumped on and off of. Even if this book is alien to your own (American) culture, the song is practically an earworm, and songs are a terrific way to teach anything, including the details of another culture.

There's one other book I'm going to comment on today: Bettina Love's Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. I haven't read an education book for a while because it seems fruitless and painful to fill my head with ideas (which is what happens when I read books on education) of how to improve my teaching when I'll never see the inside of a classroom again. However, since I agree with the premise, I snatched the book. Since probably the majority of school reform ideas come out of the heads of white, reasonably well- or over-educated politicians, they very often don't take into account variables well-known to the teachers of underprivileged, black, brown or simply poor rural white students. This mismatch leads to thousands of misspent dollars and hours on ideas that had no hope of affecting the students they (possibly) intend to help. I'm looking forward to Love's new ideas, even if I can't implement any of them myself.

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

Picture books with an international focus

A mom came in today with an astounding heap of children's books. Every one was "presumed lost", so her kids had been enjoying them for quite a while. She wanted to see if the returned pile cleared the card they had been checked out on, but to my amazement, it didn't. She still had about a Benjamin in overdue fines on her card, so we checked her daughter's, which had almost as much in overdue fines! Then she asked me to check her husband's card, where we found about $20 in overdue fines, and she decided to just pay that one. Wow. It reminded me of the women who used to come into Lord & Taylor's handbag department: when one of their cards failed, they'd pull out another until they found one that wasn't maxed out. You'd think if one of your credit cards were maxed out, that would be a warning to stop shopping, but apparently not. At least in this scenario, it's about kids reading books - which I ALWAYS wish to encourage. And she apparently does, too - she returned with another HUGE stack of books to take out on her husband's now-clear card.

In her stack, I found three intriguing items: Reza Dalvand's Mrs. Bibi's Elephant, Minfong Ho and Saphan Ros's The Two Brothers, and Duncan Tonatiuh's The Princess and the Warrior. I'm delighted that she's teaching her children to read about other cultures!

Mrs. Bibi's Elephant is adorable: a simple story with a surprisingly cryptic ending. My favorite page showed Mrs. Bibi having tea with her elephant, the teacup balanced perfectly on the end of its trunk. The story pits people who have and love pets against people who like things (chandeliers, jewelry, the stock market). The town's children, who love the elephant, oppose the town's adults, who don't care about pets. A delightfully furry (or scaly, or feathered) Marxist message from Iranian illustrator Reza Dalvand.

I thought I would write about Ho and Ros's The Two Brothers, but there's not much to say about this one, unless you're simply into Cambodian stories. It's a classic fairy tale of the 1001 Nights style; unfortunately, the artwork is pleasing but unremarkable. I much preferred the startling art of Duncan Tonatiuh's The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes. No fable with a lesson here: the princess and the warrior's adventure is remarkable and traditional, but bittersweet and unresolved. The art really sets this story apart. Although I'm sure it exists elsewhere, this is the first time I've seen an artist employ precisely the style seen on artifacts, tombs and temples of the Aztecs, placing them in action sequences like cartoon characters. It's gorgeous, unusual, and faithful to Aztec art.

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

Two Very Different Books That I Read Overnight

I adore fairy tales. Since my present of Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book at about age 5, I have always enjoyed them, and I enjoy equally those who rewrite them and inject new life into them, from Marissa Meyer's Cinder to Robert Munsch's The Paper-Bag Princess, Amanda Lovelace's the princess saves herself in this one and my beloved Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles to Jane Yolen's grim Briar Rose and Charles deLint's Jack the Giant-Killer - oh, I could go on and on. Oddly, a number of "princess saves herself" narratives appear in The Blue Fairy Book, though I suppose they're Mulan-esque: she has to disguise herself, either her cleverness or her beauty or both in order to be badass, and the resolution DOES involve a man. In Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) takes another angle altogether: the traditional villain of Sleeping Beauty IS the sleeping beauty. Narrated by Toadling, the "evil" fairy godmother of the usual story, Kingfisher's story takes us into faerie, giving us Toadling's history, but Maleficent this isn't. The author herself calls it a "sweet" novella, and that's a good description. Both hero and heroine are flawed, basically gentle characters, and the tearing down of the briars is a dubious prospect that both engage in, finally, as if they must finish the fairy tale rather than because the "prince" desires the "princess". For those who enjoy new interpretations, Thornhedge is a little gem.

How can I resist a book entitled The Book No One Wanted to Read? I spied this one on the "to be shelved" cart and grabbed it. It's a quick read, but fun. Author Richard Ayoade is a British comedian, director and actor, and his acerbic sense of humor showed throughout the book. The illustrations are lovely pen and ink images of a library and multiple "fig. 1" images that relate tangentially to the dialogue taking place between the narrator and the book who has written this book - that's not a typo. It's very meta - children who enjoy Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie series might enjoy this later in their reading careers. I specifically refer to We Are In A Book!, one of the most delightful examples of breaking the fourth wall I have ever seen, children's lit or otherwise. Deadpool might have been raised on such literature. While the dialogue (and pictures) feature a high degree of snarky humor, the ultimate result of the conversation is almost cliche. Like all children's books, the ending inspires readers to go out and create their own works of art, yet Ayoade never lets it get sappy. This reader smiled, picturing the narrator tucking the grumpy, prickly book under her arm and quietly leaving the library to find a coffee shop to write in. This is probably a terrific book to read aloud with a kid who's a bit too old to be read aloud to.

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

Civil Rights and adventure travel (for kids)

One thing I should say about this blog: if anyone reading it in the future needs to know the suitability of a book for a certain age, you'll have to follow my links to another site - I'm not qualified to judge, and I don't have children of my own, so dig deeper if you want to know if a book I recommend is appropriate for a specific kid or classroom.

My first two books today were clearly returned by someone teaching her children about civil rights. Doreen Rappaport's Freedom River, tells a story about crossing the Ohio River from the slave-owning states of Kentucky or West Virginia to the free state of Ohio. Surprisingly action-packed for a kid's book, the narrative keeps the reader in suspense until the end. The art, however, puts this one over the top. I would call the style "quilting with paper" - but collage pretty well covers it. The colors, patterns and textures create motion and a 3d effect that had me running my fingers over the pages. Absolutely gorgeous work in this one.

A very different style of art, simple, bright and almost cartoonish, supports the story of To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights. The narrative is twofold: a young narrator speaks of the thrill of watching Nichols on screen as a child with her family, and then a 3rd person narrative takes over with a biography of Nichols. I have heard and read Nichols' story before, and I particularly love the part where Martin Luther King, Jr. himself tells her not to quit the show, reminding her of how important it is for people to see her onscreen as an equal member of the crew. I'm glad Angela Dalton thought this story worthy of her efforts. She treats it lightly, not slowing the story down with too much detail, but the impact remains significant.

I really enjoy the way artists can "texture" children's books. Dan-ah Kim's lush The Train Home is like the above-mentioned Freedom River, composed of pen and ink drawing, cut paper and fabric. Again I find myself running my fingers over the page to feel the composition of the art. In the story, Nari looks out of her apartment window, annoyed by the noisiness of her environment, and, as the train rumbles by, she imagines where it might take her, away from city noise. In the forest, she imagines herself in a nest, surrounded by bleeding hearts, butterflies and blue jays. She imagines herself under the sea, living with mermaids and a newspaper-reading, spectacle-wearing octopus. The colors leap off the page as she moves from one potential home to another (what is it about marble lions and libraries?), eventually deciding that she wouldn't be happy without her sister's songs, her grandparents' stories and her parents' laughter. A stunning piece of artwork and a great nudge to children's imagination.

Last but not least is Anna Desnitskaya's On the Edge of the World. It piqued my curiosity because the cover (image, author, title of book) is on both sides of the book - one the reverse of the other. I started with Lucas's side, which tells of his life "on the edge of the world" in Southern Chile, where his father is a marine biologist. Desnitskaya interrupts the narrative with funny pages sketching Lucas's favorite things, illustrated maps and definitions, then returns to the narrative, where Vera begins appearing, as a ghost (outlined), as Lucas wishes he had a friend. He sends a signal in Morse code with his flashlight out into the darkness over the sea...at which point the reader must flip the book upside down and begin to read Vera's story. She lives on the Kamchatka Peninsula in North-Eastern Russia, and she also longs for a friend. It's a very clever and creative way to tell a story - my only complaint is that it's unsatisfying: Lucas and Vera never actually connect - Desnitskaya just leaves it as a possibility. The book has other virtues, however - teaching geography, local flora and fauna, and Morse code. I loved that Lucas climbed a tree to read a new book - and quoted the first lines of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Then, when we read Vera's story, we find that LWW is her favorite book. She, in turn, refers to The Hobbit (Lucas's favorite book) - great teasers for readers inclined to adventure. Even cooler, when I looked it up, I found that this one has been translated from Russian.

I read an article today detailing how one librarian teaches digital literacy; more on this in a future blog, I hope. In the background of a picture of her, I saw delightful "vintage", "travel" posters to Narnia and the Shire and Arrakis. Someday, if I become a children's librarian, I'd love to do something travel-related with this: decorate with such posters, design maps, plan brochures, travel agents... I suppose librarians don't usually do projects with teenagers, but if I could start a reading club, maybe kids would find the enthusiasm for their books enough to do projects - especially if it took place over the summer.

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

Three Books That Made Me Smile Today

I spent most of my time at work today learning how to accept passport applications, so my blogging got cut short a little.

Also, a quick note on the links: I wanted to link every book I mention so that anyone reading this can find out more about them or where to find them - but I don't want to link to Amazon or any other commercial site. I don't want to market anything here, and I would like to encourage readers to use the library. So a colleague suggested I use WorldCat, which tells readers about the book, what nearby libraries might have it, and where you can buy it. Henceforth all title links will go to WorldCat - but you can always look in Amazon yourself if you're so inclined.

I'm no authority on children's books, though I have studied them off and on since ed school in the 1990s. Finding good professors in ed school is tough, and one of my favorites was an expert in children's literature, so I took a couple of classes from her. I hope to do the same at Kent State, once I get the core classes out of the way. Both in video (TV, movies) and books, the best children's literature makes adults smile and laugh along with their kids - think Bugs Bunny vs. Teletubbies or Barney. I imagine most parents want their kids to settle on favorite books (the ones they'll be reading over and over and over and over and over...) that bring a smirk to an adult face, too.

So even though I don't normally comment on children's books that just demonstrate rhyming words, Jan Thomas's Rhyming Dust Bunnies caught my eye today. Partly I think this was because I spent yesterday ridding my bedroom of dust rhinos. LOTS of rhinos. What cracked me up about the rhyming dust bunnies was the occasional interruption of their "teaching rhyming words" by the broom, the dust mop and the vacuum cleaner. One of the bunnies always interrupts the list of rhyming words with a full sentence like "look out for the broom!" and the others criticize it for not rhyming. Just a good giggle, that book.

Then I grabbed This Is Not My Hat from the cart. Something about the potato-print/batik quality of the art and the very-large-ocean, very-tiny-fish appealed to me. If This Is Not My Hat preaches anything, it's don't steal, and if you do, excuses won't help. But author Jon Klassen shows much more than he tells, and leaves the reader hanging a little at the perfect ending regarding the fate of the sassy little fish narrating.

The last one that grabbed me today was The Ugly Five. If you're not familiar with safari lingo, The Big Five (lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and buffalo) are supposedly the most desirable animals to catch on film when traveling in sub-Saharan African countries. Safari companies marketing the local wildlife have followed this list with "The Little Five" (leopard tortoise, elephant shrew, ant lion, rhino beetle, buffalo weaver), "The Shy Five" (porcupine, aardvark, aardwolf, meerkat and bat-eared fox), and "The Ugly Five". Author Jan Donaldson heard a reference to The Ugly Five while on safari, and determined to write about them. She created excellent singsong chorus dialogue between the wildebeest, the hyena, the vulture, the warthog and the marabou stork that I imagine will appeal to children, and she includes delightfully specific details about the animals that any kid would enjoy - especially how dirty and smelly scavengers like the stork and the hyena are. I expected a fairly silly book, but this has it all - information, rhyme, affection, charming art.

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

Words to Avoid When Talking About Children's Books

Two adults and two children's books today. I read Jessica Love's A Bed of Stars, a memoir of a camping trip the narrator took with her father. I'm going to have to be careful of my words in this blog, because it's much too easy to throw around words like cute and sweet. You won't hear me using "cute" or "nice" - they're words so vague as to have no definition. However, A Bed of Stars is sweet. It's a mellow memory, not a grand adventure, but remarkable for the narrator because of the enjoyment she felt sharing the night sky with her father from their place in the bed of his truck. (Another term you won't read here is "bonding experience" - years of editing high school yearbook sports pages spoilt those words for me - ugh.)

I also read Not Quite Narwhal, by Jessie Sima. This one just barely avoids nauseating cuteness - reasonable people may disagree. A unicorn is born under the ocean to a group of narwhals. He's not very good at swimming like a narwhal, but he tries valiantly. One day he discovers unicorns, and learns that he can be a very skilled land-based horn-bearing creature - but he misses his narwhal family. It's a clever juxtaposition and meditation on where we belong, and what happens when we belong to two places and neither at the same time. It's not a heavy-hitting message - as delicate as the artwork. There's a lot of gooey, treacly unicorn literature out there for younger readers, but this one is not that.

When Looking for Jane fell into my lap, I was a bit curious, but as soon as I opened the flap I wanted to read it. "Jane", as I was hoping, does not refer to a person but the widespread underground movement on college campuses in the late 1960s dedicated to helping desperate women end unwanted pregnancies. I watched an excellent documentary at the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) last year. and at the same time as I was binge-watching the TV drama Cold Case this fall, I saw an episode ("Volunteers") that alluded to Jane's activities as well. The women of Jane are as impressive as the Freedom Riders - they risk incarceration to gather women, connect them with non-abusive medical doctors willing to perform the procedure, learn to perform it themselves, and set up cut-outs so that no one can identify each other, thus jeopardizing the system. According to their records, no woman ever died under Jane's care who had not arrived in serious trouble already. Anyway, really want to read this one!

Then there's this odd little item: What You Are Looking For Is In The Library. One of my co-workers told me she was reading it for an online book group she's in when she saw it on my pile of interests of the day. Since my card is still blocked, I gave it to her to check out. It's a smaller-sized book with a window and a cat on the cover - and it calls itself "a novel", title notwithstanding. Japanese author Michiko Aoyama tells a story about a librarian who can sense (as any good librarian should be able to) exactly which book each patron needs. What's not to like? I need to make a list of books about libraries, because they all sound enchanting, and as I believe in libraries as transformative places, this one would fit my worldview perfectly. Plus, I read so little Japanese literature - time to expand my horizons a bit!

[travelinglibrariansdesk]

New idea for a blog

New idea for a blog: circulation assistant who enjoys talking about the books she checks in and out every day. I have no idea if anyone would find my opinions of books interesting: I'm mainly writing for me. Last fall, after the library hired me, I began keeping a list of good-looking children's books for my mother, who says she's going to start reading books to little kids somewhere, as soon as she's settled into her new apartment. The list mushroomed right away.

Can I start a blog this way? I'd love to keep notes on the books I see every day. For instance, today someone returned Jenny and the Cat Club, a book my grandmother used to read to me. So dear to my heart, little black cat Jenny with her red scarf and silver ice skates, and her wonderful friends. I'm overjoyed that someone is still reading it!

Also, a really funny edition of Frankenstein: Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds. Worrisome, isn't it, to think that someone seems to want to encourage scientists to...um...duplicate Frankenstein's research? Not sure if that is what is intended by the title.

Just read an adorable book called It Came in the Mail. Little boy loves getting mail, so he writes a letter to the mailbox asking it to send him things. The first thing that arrives is a dragon. All the art is letter/postcard art, with appropriate and adapted post office stamps: "oversize" on the elephant, and "pearishable" on a giant pear.

Every day I'm amazed at the dazzling and creative art used in children's books. Yesterday I read a sweet Native American myth, called The Girl Who Loved Horses, a Caldecott winner from 1978 by Paul Goble. His Native American-style art is colorful and gorgeous, and sweeps across the pages in a way that suggests wild mustangs in motion.

The popularity of graphic novels has freed both adult and children's book authors from the either/or of "text" or "picture book". I nabbed a book today that I'd like to read called Trial by Jury Journal. I opened it to find that the story is told by all kinds of print media - the usual paragraphs, letters, newspaper articles, etc. I love creative flights like this. It reminds me of that beautiful series of books done as letters and postcards: Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine romance. I love the zing I get when I can connect two authors and think, I wonder if the older book(s) had an influence on the newer ones? Did Bantock's books pave the way for others of this type?

Update on Trial by Jury Journal: Good but not great. Kids will probably appreciate the character name puns more than I did - over several pages it wears a little thin (e.g., Anna Conda, Rhett Tyle). Still, the narration style keeps switching, which both keeps it interesting and develops individual characters. However, I think she could've gone further with the character development. They're not flat, but they don't have a full three dimensions. Still love the pen-and-ink art, reminiscent of Joseph Schindelman's original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Lemony Snickett.

Then there's Kaz Windness's If Ur Stabby, about a psycho anti-unicorn. Definitely NOT for kids under 12. A nice old man handed me the book the other day because (I think) his granddaughter had pulled it off the (presumably) adult graphic novel shelf, and he thought it might not be for children. Which it is NOT. However, the dark (one might say sick) humor of a depressed unicorn depicted largely in black and white is pretty funny if you've had a little too much princess literature, or the Pinkalicious series, come across your desk.

Just did a deeper dive into Stabby, who is apparently a graduate of Mother Goth Rhymes, which I can't put on hold right now because I have too many other books out that are overdue. (Just can't get myself to read enough. Very frustrating.) Fascinating stuff, though - "Stabby the Unicorn" is a meme, and apparently a game - "Unstable Unicorns", which would be a great name for a band, don't you think? But the game - "a strategic card game that will destroy your friendships" - is a little to manga for my taste. Even though they're "unstable", they're too cute and marshmallowy. More on that some other time, I think. Stabby is not manga. Original artwork - lots of curly, swirly letters and piles of skulls.

On a more serious, but still dark, note, I saw a book today entitled The Midwife of Auschwitz. My first reaction was YOW, this sounds horribly depressing. I was intrigued enough to read the blurb on the back, and it depicts exactly the story you'd expect of the title. However, I expect it would be an interesting take on the Holocaust, if you're in the right frame of mind. It turns out that among the atrocities the Nazis committed at the camps, they took the most Aryan-looking babies and gave them to German couples wanting children. Just like the Irish nuns and the evil folks in Before We Were Yours did.