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GIVE IT: All the goodies for this holiday season

 

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed... -- Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything

 

It's not just me, is it? Faced with the task of buying one or more THINGS per family member or dear friend - determining what that THING shall be, finding it, pricing it, procuring, storing, sometimes hiding it, then processing it via gift wrap and tags - doesn't everyone get a little Doblery? After all, he gives her his heart - something he had to neither shop for nor wrap. She gave him a pen.

But, for better or for worse, we're giving gifts. And you know what will make you feel a little better about participating in this annual collective shuffling of goods bought sold and processed? If those goods are actually, you know, GOOD. Like books. 

Read on, babies!

GIVE IT: the Hillary Rodham Clinton Presidential Playset

I've been working on a list of great books to give kids this holiday season for the Baltimore Sun. Did you know I write for the Baltimore Sun? I always forget to link to those articles here. Anyway, I've been up to my armpits in beautifully printed picture books, factbooks, and pop-up books. I've even gone to the local independent bookstores to see items that the library doesn't buy - sticker books, activity books, books with storycubes.

But I haven't been looking at gift books for grownups, not at all. That's because Quirk Books sent me this set of paper dolls and I kind of want to give it to everyone I know, even the people who haaaaate Hillary. Maybe especially them.

It's a cool set. I just showed it to my friend Amanda and at first she said "Whaaaaaat?" and then she looked a little closer and went, "Is that... Bono?" and then I showed her that it also comes with a paper doll ghost of Nancy Reagan and I think she was sold. For me, it was the paper doll of the Notorious RBG. I wonder how Justice Ginsburg and Hillary get along. I kind of get that 'guy's lady' vibe off of Ruth - you know, how some women really groove on men and are a little frosty with other women? I don't know.

 

But I can stick em in my dollhouse diorama and pretend they're having high-level civil discussions while sort of secretly sniping at each other. Oprah's in the room and she's mentally rolling her eyes. "WHY do women DO this to each other?" she'll be thinking. Then paper-doll Bill can come into the room in his jammies and Ruth can twinkle at him and Hillary can be like, "Yeah, here we go." Brigadier General Duckie has no opinion on the matter. He's just waiting around for his tiny little RBG hug.

Can you imagine Bill Clinton back in the White House? He was a pretty good president, but he's such a clown to me now. I don't know who on the other side is manipulating his public image this way, but it's like any day now I expect him to come out with his own brand of beer. Remember Billy Beer?

The set, which collapses to book form, comes with three pop-out scenes: the Oval Office, the Situation Room, and the White House lawn. There's a paper podium and a presidential desk. You can put Hillary in a variety of pantsuits plus a ballgown that comes with an updo. There's even a spare head sporting those bitchin' sunglasses.

 

You get Secret Service agents to guard her paper butt, the ghost of Jackie O to judge her paper butt, and a couple of opponents whose paper butts she can kick. Disappointingly, there's no Trump. I can imagine that back when this project was in its planning stages, the geniuses at Quirk thought about it, "Should we put in Trump?" "Nah. Stunt candidacy. He's only in it to drop out in a huff when he doesn't get the numbers." So instead this set includes Jeb Bush and John Boehner. Remember those guys? And Trump and Bernie are available as a color PDF on the Quirk site.

Keepin' it relevant, Quirk. I like that. 

How to pick a cookbook for your kids

 

It can't be easy, right? Writing a cookbook for kids? I mean, if you're writing a cookbook, that means you are a good cook. You know your asparagus from your elbow macaroni, if you know what I mean. And here you are writing instructions for people who don't know what the salt looks like when you tell them to get it out of the cupboard.

IT'S THE BLUE CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER. CYLINDER. YOU KNOW, ROUND LIKE A... oh Christ I'll get it. SEE? THIS IS SALT.

It's beginning to look a lot like BOOKSHELF - Great pairs of book to give kids 2013

 

 

Well there aren't a lot of shopping days left until Christmas, but the good news is that in these depressing final days, when the best that most stores can offer is a choice between Picked-over or Shopworn, your favorite independent bookstore is an absolute ACE at getting that brand-new book - or books - for you just about right away.

Let's place our order, shall we?

Tools of the trade - Two books that are making me better at the things I do

You might think, if you know me from reading Pink Me, that I am a children's or teen librarian. I'm not - at my system we are all generalists. So while I love fixing kids up with great books, the fact is I also enjoy helping grownups. I spend most of my time drumming up copies of just the right David Baldacci, or helping readers find Amish romance novels and car repair manuals.

 

Which, um... Amish romance novels? Right. I'm going to need a finding aid for that.

Read and grow rich - How my kids did on the 1922 SAT-10

 

As the kids were getting ready for bed last night, my husband pulled out Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun and flipped through it.

Unbored is a pretty great book - it has about a million unexpected and funky things for a kid to do: DIY Fiction! Farting Games! Make a Cigar Box Guitar! and it sits on our shelf until somebody pulls it out and has a little fun with it and then puts it back where it'll sit for another 6 months. That book makes a great gift (although if there's a second edition, I'd recommend the illustrations to be a little less hipster/retro. If it were me, I'd get Stephen Gilpin to do 'em. And I might spring for color.).

Anyway, tonight Bob found this page of questions from the 1922 Stanford Achievement Test, and just for fun started reading them out loud. I am always pretty amazed at the random stuff my kids know, and tonight I just had to ask - how do you know that?

So here's a sample of the questions from page 202 of Unbored, and how my kids knew the answers. VERRRY interesting, and a huge validation of leisure reading.

Building our house by Jonathan Bean - review

A family of hippie hipsters - or post-hipster hippies if you want to split hairs - move from their Hampden rowhouse to a field outside of Monkton and build a house, two toddlers in tow and a bun in the oven. Does mom wear glasses? Does dad wear plaid? Is their jeep a vintage Willys, are their shoes extra-chunky? Does a cat lurk on the periphery?

Do not hold any of these things against them.

Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth's Strangest Animals by Michael Hearst - review

Come for the freaky pictures, stay for the entertaining text. Boy, if I could give aspiring nonfiction writers one piece of advice, it would be - try to make a book that I can recommend to kids using that sentence. Although I guess it doesn't work for like, presidential biographies. Freaky pictures of presidents are rarely appropriate for kids.

Anyway. Michael Hearst, the author of Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth's Strangest Animals, seems to have figured that magic sentence out all by himself in this, his first nonfiction book for kids.

The Goldilocks Variations, words by Allan Ahlberg, pictures by Jessica Ahlberg - review

A new MAD Magazine anthology has been published, celebrating - errr, "celebrating" - 60 years of, as they call it, "humor, satire, stupidity and stupidity." Good old MAD. It's where we went for dumb grunting laughs before God invented Homer Simpson.

And although sometimes it's easy to forget the huge amount of satire in MAD, MAD is also kind of where we went for snarky, well-informed chuckles before God invented Jon Stewart.

AND it was our source of slightly baffled grins while we were still too young to be well-informed or snarky. In fact, MAD was making snide remarks long before "snark" was anything other than some kind of bandersnatch variant.

Reading on the radio: Great graphic novels for kids

 

From Rapunzel's Revenge, by Hale, Hale, & Hale.

 

Here's your latest list of great graphic novels for kids, courtesy of the legwork I did prior to a recent appearance on WYPR's Maryland Morning. This time, host Tom Hall and I were joined by author and librarian Snow Wildsmith (my idea!) for a talk about which graphic novels, how graphic novels, and, most importantly, why graphic novels for kids. Snow and I get all smarty-sounding at a couple of points there, I totally encourage you to listen:

8-17-12: Comics: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Literally, the Ugly.).

Pantone Colors, illustrations by Helen Dardik - review

 

Once, very briefly, I worked in publishing. I learned a lot in that short time, and I learned things that have come in handy in most of my subsequent jobs. (I have also briefly worked in museums, in software, in ice cream, and in men's pants, and the knowledge that I gained in each of those venues has had unexpected applications later in life. For example, I can still estimate a man's inseam at 25 paces.)

In my capacity as an Editorial Assistant, I had occasion to sit in on those production meetings that were really budget meetings, during which line items like color, paper, coatings, die-cuts, and binding options were discussed with a sometimes brutal disregard for the needs of the content. Those meetings would make a grown man weak in the knees.

 

Nonfiction Monday - Ancient Egypt: Tales of Gods and Pharaohs by Marcia Williams - review

Do you love Marcia Williams? I love Marcia Williams. Marcia Williams is a British illustrator and author. She writes large-format, intensively-illustrated adaptations of classical literature for kids.

Let me tell you how great this is: lots of little kids get into tales of adventure, and then their parents think to themselves, "Oh, I'll bet he would love Robin Hood!" Or King Arthur, or the story of Troy, etc. And then they ask the librarian - "I want him to read King Arthur." Whereupon the librarian is like, "Errr... you know that adultery and patricide play a big part in that story, right? Is he ready for The Sword in the Stone?"

Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless rhymes from 50 celebrated cartoonists - review

FIFTY ARTISTS FIFTY! It's like a Ziegfeld chorus line up in this fine large-format comic anthology, except hairier. And less able to walk and sing at the same time. Probably really bad at doing anything in unison.

 

From "Hush Little Baby" by Mo Oh. I love her line and her delicate colors.

Fifty of your favorite comics artists have taken on 50 old-fashioned nursery rhymes, resulting in an anthology that is funny, strange, sweet, and surprising. Some of the artists, like Nick Bruel (Bad Kitty) and Marc Rosenthal (Phooey!), are familiar names in children’s publishing; others, like the talented Mo Oh (Lily Renee, Escape Artist, which is not a good example of her sweet and funny style) and Jen Wang (Koko Be Good), are relative newcomers.

Reading on the radio - Gift books 2011

 

There is a secret joy that librarians are allowed at holiday time. Although we are ardent in encouraging people to borrow, not buy, most of us... well, we're kind of into books. We can't help wanting to own them. And though librarians vary in the extent to which they successfully keep themselves out of bookstores - some don't even try - all bets are off when it comes to buying gifts for our family and friends.

I stopped in at WYPR's Maryland Morning to talk to host Tom Hall about this subject. I brought a great huge stack of books and asked Tom to pick out the ones he wanted to know more about. If you miss the broadcast, you can listen to our conversation on the Maryland Morning website by the end of the day. The station has also posted a list of the books I brought to the station, or click "Read more" to see an expanded version (book trailers! whee!).

 

Fractured Fables from Silverline Books - review

Kids who like the Little Lit titles (It Was a Dark and Silly Night..., Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies) will cackle over this collection of familiar tales given an irreverent twist. Rapunzel thinks the prince's request to 'let down her hair' is 'really random'. Gepetto injures his hand trying to spank his robot son after the Blue Fairy grants the wish that makes Pinocchio a real boy. Red Riding Hood's Grandma runs a martial arts academy. Cinderella rejects the lovely blue ballgown provided by her fairy godmother - she was thinking more "Anne Hathaway at the Oscars".

A Butterfly is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long - review

I swear to God, I thought the last thing I needed was One More Butterfly Book. And I also thought, when I saw that this book had been nominated for a Cybils Award in the Nonfiction Picture Book category, for which I am a first-round judge, that maybe I had finally outgrown my susceptibility to Sylvia Long's gorgeous watercolors and graceful calligraphy.

After all, I am well aware that A Seed Is Sleepy and An Egg Is Quiet - I have bought those books, I have gifted those books, and I have recommended those books. They make good baby shower gifts, among other things. I mean, as well as being informative and inspiring. I thought there was probably not one more serene natural subject worthy of Ms. Long's well-researched scrutiny and Dianna Hutts Aston's tranquil prose.

But holy crap, I could stare at this thing for hours. Lovely.

So if you have Waiting for Wings and Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar and Laurence Pringle's An Extraordinary Life in your school or classroom library and you thought you were done, well, better make a little room on the shelf. And give your kids sketchbooks and some colored pencils - they're going to want to go outside and draw something.

 

Something like this owl butterfly, caligo memnon, with a 5-inch wingspan.

11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill & Nancy Carpenter - review

 

Ok, stop: the peaceful, rapturous expression on our girl scientist's face as she lets fly a slice of bologna in the school cafeteria would have sold me on this book even if I had not already been giggling, snorting, and cackling on almost every page prior.

I'm going to scan that page. Hold on.

Tsk. I can't fit the book on the scanner without breaking it in half, and it's a library book. I'm going to take a picture of that page. Hold on.

 

Look at that. That's a The-Hills-Are-Alive face. That's Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet crossing the finish line with a half-ton of wild but gifted racehorse under her butt. That face - you just know it - is going to get in soooo much trouble in about fifteen seconds, but for now, that is the face of scientific validation.

 

You need this: Picture books for parents

Misnomer. False advertising. NOT picture books for parents. This is NOT a review of Go the F**k to Sleep. What I think about that book was expressed quite soundly - and strongly - by Roger Sutton of The Horn Book. Roger Sutton is a modern-day hero.

No. These are picture books that are fully for children. Funny, sweet, colorful, devoid of swear words. BUT. They are books that grown-ups will legitimately enjoy themselves. It is one of the perks of having little kids - you have an excuse to consume picture books. Some picture books are insipid or tedious. But some are sly and sparkling.

TO WIT:

Everything I Need to Know Before I'm Five by Valorie Fisher - review

 

If I owned as many plastic bugs, letters, numbers, dice, marbles, dolls, blocks, dollhouse furniture, and Matchbox cars that Valorie Fisher does - and at times it feels like I do - those objects would be broken, tangled, mangled, and covered in dust, not bright and sweet and clean like the hundreds (thousands?) of little treasures in this book.

Not that this is important or will contribute to your enjoyment of Everything I Need to Know Before I'm Five, it's just an extra image to conjure. Valorie Fisher's living room, I bet, isn't carpeted with this toy mulch; nor are her plastic roosters living with their plastic kin in the bottom of a plastic bin that has not been excavated SINCE THESE KIDS WERE THREE I mean come on can't we get rid of SOME of this stuff?!

Hrm.

On the other hand, I will bet her house isn't some hyper-organized scrapbooker's heaven, either. I bet it's adorable. I used to know a couple who had decorated the rooms in their house in themes: there was the Maya Room, with frescoes and faux Pre-Columbian statues; and the Fresnel Room, papered in plastic Fresnel lenses. The fireplace in their kitchen was a mosaic of bottle caps, and the mantel was a parade of hundreds of salt and pepper shakers.

I'm a little distracted. We had an earthquake yesterday, it's possible you heard about it. Nobody was hurt, power and water stayed on, looks like we're going to have to have our chimney rebuilt la la la I'm not thinking about that right now... and as I walked around the house picking up framed photographs and art from the floor where they had fallen, I thought of my friends and their house full of knicknacks. What a mess I bet it is over there. My office is floor-to-ceiling books, and when the house started shaking I remember making a very specific wish that I not be buried under them. If Valorie Fisher keeps her doodad collections in her studio on shelves, she might have been buried under half a ton of particulated kitsch.

That's no way to go.

I'm placing these droids in your care - Star Wars book roundup

Recently, I read a book written for grownups. It happens! Of course, the book I read was Nerd Do Well, the memoir of actor and comedian Simon Pegg, and Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Star Trek) is nothing if not an overgrown eleven-year-old boy, so actually, the book didn't fall that far outside my usual purview.

It was a kind of so-so book, if you want to know. The fanboy confessional can often descend into aching self-importance (see also: Patton Oswalt), but there were some brilliant discussions of pop culture, criticism, and pop culture criticism (also see also: Patton Oswalt). Mostly about Star Wars. Simon Pegg has thought a lot about Star Wars.

As have we all, n'est-ce pas?

In my house, Star Wars is practically a family member. Storm troopers, clone troopers, Jedi, Sith, sand people - their costumes and powers find their way into every mode of imaginative play engaged in by my sons. I have fought my way to a grudging détente over what I still call the second three movies - we own them on DVD, but they cannot be watched while I am in the house.

(I mean, come on. In the second series of Star Wars movies, they named Leia's adoptive father "Bail." If that isn't telegraphing a certain abdication of commitment on the part of the filmmakers, I don't know what.)

Recently, I assembled all the Star Wars gimmick books in our house and got the boys to run 'em down. By 'gimmick books' I mean the engineered books - the DK Readers are not included in this review, nor are the nominally grown-up novels like The Thrawn Trilogy, The X-Wing Series, Jedi Academy Trilogy, The Han Solo Trilogy (I might read that), or The Bounty Hunter Wars.

 

 

Bee & Bird by Craig Frazier - review

If I weren't already fully developed, brain-wise (and probably on the downward slope, a likelihood that is difficult to deny, given how frequently I leave my phone at home and my inability to Tweet with any regularity), I would expect to be about fifteen points smarter by the time I closed this book.

There's a striped bee. On the head of a red bird. In a green-leaved tree. In the bed of a yellow truck. And then our perspective shifts so that the truck appears to be driving across a black and white landscape as the bird flies away. What was that?! Oh. We were looking at the truck across the back of a cow. Hi, cow. The cow is standing in a flat green field next to wavy blue water.

What's next for the bird? What will that big white thing turn out to be? And why would a bee ride on a bird's head?

 

Craig Frazier (Lots of Dots, the Stanley books) gives us a wordless picture book full of large shapes, bold patterns, clear colors, and a surprising amount of personality. Rather than leave his giant color fields plain and flat, often a subtle gradient will indicate contour or volume.

Wordless books are the most wonderful investments. The best ones allow the reader to conjure endless stories, like the protagonist of Still Life With Woodpecker, who meditates on a Camel pack for several years. Or like Jane Eyre, filling the blank endpapers of books with her own thoughts.

Maybe I am not all that far gone after all. I've been through Bee & Bird three or four times now and I'm still finding new things that tickle me. And my husband and I finished the diagramless New York Times crossword puzzle last Sunday. We should just keep exposing ourselves to patterns and shifting perspectives, and maybe watch Powers of Ten every couple months.

Put Bee & Bird on your short list of things that are mind-blowing and fun at the same time. Bubble wands, kaleidoscopes, wordless books.

Nonfiction Monday: the Star Wars Craft Book by Bonnie Burton - review

Craft books. So tempting, so cool! In my experience, no other type of book causes people to delude themselves quite so thoroughly.

The cute little R2-D2 hat? Oh My God I am SO going to learn to crochet so that I can make that hat! The AT-AT herb planter? Hey, that could happen - we have almost all those supplies laying around the house somewhere. And half the rest of this stuff is all cutting and glueing felt! Easy! Ok there's a little sewing if you want the Jar Jar Binks Voodoo Doll to look like Jar Jar Binks and not like Jabba the Hutt. And there's some embroidery. Paper mache. Hmm.

On the other hand - sticking pins into Jar Jar Binks? GENIUS.

Let's Play Games! by Hervé Tullet - review

 

I am going to sing a song about Hervé Tullet. Heck, his name is practically a song already.

Hervé, Hervé
The kids all say:
Let me have that!
This one's blue!
I made a match!

Hervé, Hervé,
The teachers all say:
What do you see?
Use your finger!
Can I keep this?

Hervé, Hervé,
We could play all day,
While our tiny brains develop
In a million different ways.
Hervé!

(Hmmph. This is why my husband is the extemporaneous lyricist in my house, not me. I do a good melody, but he's the guy who, pouring the bubble bath in the tub for our younger son, rhymed "car key" with "Gethsemane" in his extemporaneous Jesus bubble bath song. I can't top that.)

Press Here by Hervé Tullet - review

 

MAGIC.

When an idea is so simple you can't believe nobody's thought of it before - and to my knowledge, IN the whole history of books, which is a pretty long damn history, nobody has - and when that idea works SO well that everyone who encounters it, from age 3 to, well so far I haven't discovered an upper limit, gasps at its cleverness... well, that's magic.

 

(Contrary to what the tag line of this video avers. Screw you guys, I know magic when I see it!)

Press Here is a book that's been compared to an iPad app. Simple instructions ("Press here." "Rub the dot on the left." "Clap once.") create the illusion that the reader is rearranging a series of dots, causing them to multiply, grow, change color, etc. But I'll tell you - don't worry about the iPad app comparison. I've shown this book to plenty of people who've never touched an iPad, and they are charmed and blown away, just as I was the first time I saw it, at ALA Midwinter in San Diego.

This is the rare picture book that I feel compelled to carry with me wherever I go. Delightful, simple, and everyone who sees it wants to show it to someone else, to share the magic. Best of all, it invites imitation. If it weren't French, I'd expect Hervé Tullet to win the Caldecott Medal for it. Bravo. And thank you to Chronicle Books for sending me a copy.

Bob Staake's Look! A Book! - review

 

Here is a fun exercise in creativity: 

1. Think up a three-item list of rhyming nouns. A screw, bamboo, Anne Hathaway saying "WOO!"
2. Draw a giant complicated colorful scene incorporating these items. NOTE: your scene can include anything you like, but your three rhyming nouns must be on the right-hand side of the page
3. Fold your picture in half like a greeting card
4. This is the tricky part: make holes in the left-hand side of the picture opposite your three rhyming nouns, so that, when closed, your nouns peek out.

Yay! You have made a simple version of the super-cool spreads that populate this masterful visual feast from Bob Staake.

Reader Advisory at Christmas time

Ok, listen. I know I have something of a reputation for being able to find a book for any kid, but it's not like I'm some kind of genius. I ask them what they've been reading and what they've enjoyed and I try to come up with a book that's kind of like what they say they like, and when all else fails, I give them one of the Lunch Lady books. (Preorder Lunch Lady and the Bake Sale Bandit today!)

Simple!

My usual question to a reader, adult or kid, is, "What's the last thing you read that you really liked?"

If the grownup says, "Oh, I really enjoyed Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter," I give them A Short History of a Small Place.

You got a kid who says, "I liked Who Shrunk Daniel Funk?" you can give that kid Oggie Cooder.

If a kid says, "I liked the Molly Moon books," I recommend The Pig Scrolls. Yeah that's tracking sideways a little, but I've seen it work.

But I asked a sweet little brown-eyed first-grade girl last night what was the last book she read that she really liked, and she thought about it a little and said, "I guess it was that biography of Neruda."

Give books

Not these books. Fun books. Pretty books. Books that kids will be excited about getting, and will be happy to own. Books like the ones in this SUPER LONG POST. Read and enjoy.

There are so many excellent things to give this year that I am just going to list them out. Here's a handy table of contents:

Mirror by Jeannie Baker - review

Two families - one in Sydney, Australia, and one in Morocco. Jeannie Baker takes us through each family's day, showing us warm domestic scenes and sweeping landscapes, making subtle, everyday connections across the seemingly vast gulf of difference separating the two settings.

The Moroccan family gets around by donkey, while the Australians drive a yellow minivan. The Australian kid wears a red t-shirt and jeans, and the Moroccan kid wears his jeans under a red djellaba. Both boys have a baby sibling in a fuzzy yellow sweater. Tea is poured, pets are fed. The Moroccan boy likes to draw: the Australian one writes a story. Maybe they'll write a book together one day.

Nonfiction Monday: Do you Barbie?

As a parent raises a little girl, certain questions will arise.

Do we paint the room pink? What if she wants us to?

Will we ruin her life if we ban glitter? What if we teach her how to use the vacuum and therefore allow her to experience the evils of glitter herself? Will we then be reinforcing gender roles re: housework?

When do we start insisting that she wear a shirt when she goes outside?

Who the hell manufactures hot pants for toddlers and why?

And then there's Barbie.

Natural History by DK Publishing - review

I am intensely irritated by this book. Yet I cannot keep myself from paging through its marvels. It's like the Anthropologie catalog - you just know the clothes are poorly made and ridiculously overpriced, but ooh! that skirt is cute!

Billed as "A landmark in reference publishing,' it is instead, like many DK books, useless as a guide in any practical sense. "Over 5000" species are pictured, with little captions, grouped in taxonomic order. But the taxa are only explained in the most rudimentary terms - "The plants in this order are genetically similar but physically different." Oh? In what way? Further, there is no indication of scale, no habitat context, and, while 5000 may sound like a lot? It's not.

13 Words by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Maira Kalman - review

Bird. Despondent. Cake, Convertible. Mezzo-soprano. And eight more. Write a story using these thirteen words. It doesn't have to make sense. Nope. In fact, it might be more fun if it didn't. (If you can wedge a song into your story, do it.)

I would read this book to a class and let them come up with guesses about how it came to be. I myself am guessing. For all I know, Lemony Snicket startled a pigeon one day and it flew up and hit him hard in the head and when he came to, he only knew thirteen words, so this story came about as therapy. Could be. You don't know that guy's life. Neither do I.

Maira Kalman is at her very best here, layering thick pasty paint in ultra-saturated colors, adding lots of interesting details that could be the result of her own random-word assignment. Tambourine. Porcupine. Pocket square. Nap.

I'm going to come right out and call this a classic. If it were published forty years ago, New York Review of Books would be republishing it right now. That kind of classic.

J. Otto Seibold presents Other Goose! - review

Since we've been on a singing, storytiming kick lately, I thought I'd offer this Bizarro World Christmas carol my husband Bob made up once:

 

Christmas is going, the goose forgot his hat,
Please throw a penny at the old man's cat.
If he hasn't got a cat, then throw it at his head -
If you throw it at his head then he might be dead.

 

You got that? Have we set the tone, as it were, for this review?

The Tree House by Marije Tolman & Ronald Tolman - review

 

Here is a little song for Lemniscaat Books:

I don't know if people here buy your books
With their luscious touch and high-class looks
But please keep making them
Because...
Your European illustrators communicate like Turkish waiters
Wordlessly supplying me
With nuts and sweets and strong coffee
Ink, pastel, collage, and then
I turn it over
And start again.

 

Just Too Cute, and other adorable stories for horrible children, by Mike Reiss, illustrated by Johnny Yanok - review

ZOMG! Check it:

The Oyster
What is moister
Than an oyster?
Grandpa's Pamper
Can be damper.

And that's not the worst of it! In three stories and a bunch of poems, Simpsons writer Mike Reiss deploys gleefully subversive wit to merrily bash the stuffin' out of cute fuzzy animals, exposing them for the gluttonous freeloading nonconformists that they really are. Hee-YEAAAH!!

Think http://www.fupenguin.com/ for the grade-school set, kind of.

I LOVE THIS. I mean, I do not mind funny middle-grade books that rely on farts and pratfalls, dumb insults and dumber adults - but it is a special kind of joy to find someone writing real wit for kids.

Johnny Yanok is a great choice to illustrate this festival of irreverence, adding detail and furbelows to already well-described scenes, pumping the page full of pattern and hot midtone colors. His style, a kind of modified mid-century geometric thing, will be familiar to Cartoon Network viewers and the kind of kid who watches the Pixar shorts that come as bonus features on the DVDs.

That's going to help get this book into the right hands - even though it's shaped like a picture book, this thing is clearly for middle grade readers, who sometimes balk at picking up anything that looks like it's for younger kids. So art that scans older is a plus.

Hipster aunties and uncles, take note. This is just the kind of thing you're going to really enjoy watching the nieces and nephews unwrap come holiday time. Thank me later.

Alphapets by Shiho Ishikawa and 100 Shapes by Nao Sugimoto - review

These two are gift books - not suitable for the library, because they are consumed as they are enjoyed. Thus, they're a little off my usual beat, but I couldn't resist.

Clear, happy color palettes and kicky patterns make these two little art activity books catnip for the design-inclined. Which I am. AlphaPets is a book of big block letters, each of which can be punched out, and with a few folds and a few tab A / slot A insertions, turned into a little origami-esque animal that corresponds to the letter. That is, M turns into a winsome mouse, O is a very cleverly-designed ostrich, W is a wallowing whale. We had three generations punching and bending and folding at one point, making all the animals that corresponded to our names.

Maybe a little tricky - my seven year old only managed to make a couple without help, and my mom gave up pretty quickly. Trifocals can only help so much. Also, as with plenty of origami, some animals benefited by a little dab of glue. But there are additional step-by-step photos plus videos available online (currently in Japanese but still very helpful).

100 Shapes may look like a simple book of stencils, but the suggestions for how to use them are quite sophisticated, as are some of the shapes themselves. Of course there is a tree, a house, and an elephant, but also the book includes stencils of the Eiffel Tower, a seated woman, fish, and electric guitar, and a cruise ship. Of the two books, this is the one that has longer legs. Kids are encouraged to combine the shapes to make scenes, color them in using patterns, and use them to cut shaped pictures out of colored paper or old magazines.

Available for a pretty good price, too. Just the thing for those late-summer and back-to-school birthdays!

Feeding the Sheep by Leda Schubert, pictures by Andrea U'ren - review

You know what I love for first and second graders? I love a good process book. Whether it's baking a cake or sculpting a clay pot, any book that starts with raw materials and ends with a manufactured item, and shows us the steps in between already has a leg up in my esteem.

Unfortunately, some process books can be - how do I say this - boring.

Not Feeding the Sheep (and not either of the other two books I linked to).

Subway by Christophe Niemann - review

NOT just for New Yorkers, this swingy rhyming book follows a daddy and his two little kids on a subway adventure on a rainy day. They take the A train from jazzy Harlem all the way to sleepy Far Rockaway. They savor the view as the Q crosses over the East River. They have fun with the map - why take the 1 straight from the southern tip of Manhattan to the southern end of Central Park... when you could take the 3 to the 5 to the N to the B to the C to the 7 to the 6 to the E to the D and end up at the same point?

SEASONS by Blexbolex - review

You are familiar with this creature Blexbolex, non? This French illustrator who works in line and silk screen?

Me neither, and Oh My God how have I missed this guy? But wait - I see that he did the illustrations for the recent edition of I Know How to Cook, and that was one big honkin doorstop of a cookbook (and it is French) but I almost had to have it anyway, because of those illustrations.

The Purple Kangaroo by Michael Ian Black and Peter Brown - review

Now I know what the Evil Hate Monkey (some photos not particularly appropriate for work) did when he was but a young, not-quite-evil-more-like-just-an-Impish Smartass Monkey. I need to buy this book for all my friends RIGHT NOW.

One joke (one funny funny joke). Peter Brown's clear, delicious colors. Might look nice in a basket next to something made of chocolate and a few Jordan almonds, don't you think?

Here's the video Michael Ian Black and Peter Brown made about making this book, and you know what? The Evil Hate Monkey thing is not as far off as one might think. Hard to believe anyone ever meets Michael Ian Black and then decides to let him write children's books. But then again, I am wearing a Boy Scout uniform shirt and a chainsaw earring right now and people beg me to do library service to children, so I guess...? standards are really low? Whatever keeps us in Pop-Tarts, right?

Fierce Style: How to Be Your Most Fabulous Self by Christian Siriano - review

The fact that Christian Siriano went to prom with my longtime babysitter has NOTHING to do with how much I enjoyed leafing through this book. (It has everything to do with why I picked it up in the first place though - we miss you Marci! Hope they show Buffy on TV in Ecuador!)

Although the book is for the most part obviously written by a professional, and liberally studded with grating catchphrases that I'm sure are a lot more charming in person (if I never hear the phrase "hot mess" again I will weep not a single tear), there is plenty of real Christian in here. He lists Subway and T.G.I. Friday among his favorite places to eat, advises all women to wear heels all the time, and still has a place in his heart for Saved by the Bell. What do you think - was this tiny, marvelous, gay suburban Maryland kid a Screech or a Zack?

He also thanks my friend Kristen in the Acknowledgments - she teaches jewelry making where he and Marci went to high school. (And about those catchphrases? He provides a glossary: "I call everyone 'lady' because everyone has that inner lady who needs to wear full-length gloves and a bird hat." Here's where I shake my head and have to admit he has a point.)

I love his Manly List of Manly Things to Do: he advises buying a flannel shirt "red plaid only," buying a wallet, or playing a sport, like throwing a frisbee around in the park and then getting a frozen yogurt "with fun toppings!". At the end of the list he confesses "Okay, so apparently this is as manly-man as I get. I tried!" You have to appreciate a fellow who knows his strengths.

This. This is his strength.

In between the pictures of glamorous women and glamorous Siriano gowns (see above, the glamorous but non-model-sized Christina Hendricks, in a glamorous Siriano gown at the glamorous Golden Globes - designers who can dress non-model-sized people get my particular respect, and in this instance I venture to say the ex Mrs. Malcolm Reynolds has NEVER had her fabulous assets clad to such advantage) and snips of style advice from Tim Gunn, Vanessa Williams, Heidi Klum, and Whoopi Goldberg (of all people), there is advice about coping with disappointment and depression, finding your creative voice, and, of course, about making things work for you when you are just a little bit not like everybody else. I know a ton of teenagers who could benefit from the practical, hardworking, slightly self-indulgent advice in this book.

I picture Christian Siriano eighty years old, still tiny, still peering through his pushed-down glasses with that look of terrified resolve. He always looks like he knows damn well the situation calls for a suit and he is showing a flamenco dress, and if that flamenco dress isn't the most heart-stopping thing anyone has ever seen he is TOAST. Lucky for him, that flamenco dress is ALWAYS heart-stopping. At eighty, he will still be surrounded by towering, beautiful women, women hoping he will work his vision upon their bodies - the Valentino of the twenty-first century.

I kind of hope he will have stopped calling everyone "tranny" by then, though!

Born Yesterday: The diary of a young journalist by James Solheim, illustrated by Simon James - review

"I wasn't wearing so much as a hair ribbon. And horror! My mom and dad were there. If I'd known I was going to be born in public, I'd at least have put on a tank top."

Have you ever gazed at that tiny sweet burbling new member of the household and wondered just what's going on in there? Who hasn't? James Solheim's take on it is hilarious - written in diary format is one baby's observations, hopes and aspirations.

"Why is nobody taking me to school? Ever since I was born, it's like they've been avoiding the subject."

It reminds me of that video that was going around a few years ago - the hipster dad and the heartbreaking story of his baby who was born without the ability to walk.

Her baffled baby look riding in that tiny little wheelchair cracks me up every time.

Born Yesterday will be tons of silly fun to share with new big brothers and sisters as a lap book. It will be a great gift for new parents, too.

Sunny by Robin Mitchell & Judith Steedman - review

Ohhhh...

There's a passel of new parents
Wearin' thrift store threads
Turnin' cast-off neckties
Into quilts for the bed.

They take guitars to parties
Never cut their kids' hair
You can call them hippies
But I will call them... Sarah.

That's an extemporaneous folk song I wrote just now, inspired by this happy little gem of a book. It is not a very good little folk song, certainly nowhere near as good as the music on the CD that accompanies the book. But the parents in my song, the kind of parents who give their kids names like Utah or Fern, Skeezix or Priya or Ruby or Ezra (most of whom are in fact named Sarah, but some of whom are named Josh or Molly or Jeff), will recognize this item as a thing that they would have made, if they had the time and the awesome indie musician friends.

Mitchell and Steedman craft little ragdoll people with round wooden heads, sort of like what Fisher Price Little People used to look like, but taller and skinnier and more prone to wearing dirndl skirts. In this book, these funky little friends are posed in a variety of cleverly made dioramas representing city environments. The main character, Sunny, wanders around listening to the various city sounds he hears, and then the kids put 'em all together in a music jam. Heavy on the percussion, as most kids' music jams are.

It's the inclination toward the homespun that clicks this book in with those parents, the parents in my song and on my Facebook friend list. I think it's what happens when Pixies fans have kids. They learn that Pete Seeger rocks OUT when he's in good form. They discover that Woody Guthrie recorded some of the best weird children's songs ever. And they'd rather make stuff themselves than settle for ANY of the crap at Toys R Us, and most of the crap at the grocery store.

There - I just drew a straight line from punk to hippie. Or goth to hippie. Indie to hippie. Sheesh. Labels are meaningless, leave me alone.

   

So much love and effort has been put into this project, with terrific results. Look at the black and white pictures they've used in the backdrop of this diorama. That's just the right dash of grit - and there's something like that on each page that halts any possible slide into sweetie-precious-land.

The songs are fun and upbeat, yet gentle enough for quiet time or even a lullaby. And they are real songs, with production effects and key changes and lyrics that make sense. (After 8 years of listening to this stuff, I love to hear artists who respect children enough to craft actual music, rather than cranking out three chords and some chanting and calling it a Grammy nomination.) (No disrespect to Ziggy Marley, or any of this year's nominees - Hi, Eric's dad!)

The doll-like figures are simple enough to inspire a kid to try to make his or her own Sunny. Even the camera angles on the dioramas are well-thought-out. Two girls playing hopscotch are shot from above, as if we are looking down on them from a fire escape.

It's a book any parent could feel good about, and any kid could fall in love with. More Mitchell & Steedman stuff is available on buyolympia - naturally!

Lives of the great artists by Charlie Ayres - review

Brightly written and augmented with activities, Web resources, and fun facts, this book profiles 20 European artists. Each entry, from Giotto to Van Gogh, begins with a summary paragraph and a portrait before dropping readers into the artist's life. They accompany J.M.W. Turner as he sells a painting, and wait with Goya for the Spanish royal family, who are coming for a portrait sitting. Facts about each artist's life, technique, and importance are skillfully blended into these present-tense vignettes, which are recreated from documented sources.

The works of art chosen to represent each artist are heavy on the drama and detail, resulting in high kid appeal and interesting captions. In some cases, sketches are included. The book's design merits special mention: each artist's entry has its own palette, drawn from the works of art used as illustrations, and, despite the multitude of sidebars, the layout is clean and clear. Back matter includes "Chronologies of the Artists," locations of major collections of each artist's work, a glossary, and picture credits.

Unfortunately.

In the school library, the 700s (art and culture) must be the whitest section of the library. I am SO SICK - literally ill - when I look at the ranks of art survey volumes (artist monographs are a little better, with decent books on Noguchi, Foujita, Jacob Lawrence, Clementine Hunter, Augusta Savage, Jerry Butler, and Frida), and see all Europe, all the time. Asia, anyone? Africa?

"Lives of the Great Artists." Pshaw. "Lives of some great European artists of the last 600 years" would be the more accurate title, and would reflect the scope that the author states in her introduction.

I don't blame Charlie Ayres here - she has written a graceful, thoughtful book about a very specific place and time in art history. I am disappointed, rather, with the publisher, for tagging this book with a title that gives the misleading — and offensive — impression that the only important artists are European. Also, if I'm beating on this book, I'm going to go ahead and say it - that cover is an eyesore. Sloppy text in clashing colors makes it easy to find on the shelf, true, but the cover has no relationship to the content of the book, especially given the exciting and tasteful page design. Charlie, you got robbed.

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound: A Birder's Journal by Sallie Wolf - review

Do you have a journal? A place to make lists, sketch things, glue in a clipping or a feather or a scrap of cloth? This is a book that asks, "If not, why not?"

This extremely first-person book of poetry, prose and sketches is ostensibly about birds. But, like many books that are ostensibly about birds, it is really about being alive to the world around you. Sallie Wolf watches the birds around her house for a year, making lists of species, doing little sketches, making poems. And - I don't mean this the wrong way - Sallie Wolf, a talented artist, includes many sketches here that are not intimidatingly well-executed. Gestural, instinctive little drawings. Her poetry is also notable for its humility: grounded in the everyday, she refers to sewing machines and middle school in her imagery. Drafts are included, complete with crossed-out lines. Nothing in this book is overthought or overworked.

I adore this. If you want to show a kid that anyone can make a poem, don't ask them to read Song of Hiawatha. I shared this book with an older friend last week, a hospice patient who peacefully spends a lot of time looking out the window. She's never drawn before, and to my knowledge has never written poetry, but I took her a little stash of art supplies and a sketchbook.

Modest in size, with a design palette as muted as a winter day, with glowing accents like holly berries, this accessible little book will inspire readers to look around and listen, and to record the small events they witness.

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, selected and edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly - review

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, selected and edited by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly

This hefty tome landed on my desk with a question on a Post-It: "Shelve with adult or in kids' graphic novels?"

Let's discuss. First of all, the beast is 350 oversize pages long. It has an introduction AND a foreword. On the other hand, the Introduction is written by Jon Scieszka, and the first word of it is "Wow."

Dennis the Menace and Little Lulu are in this book. So's Pogo, Uncle Wiggly, Donald Duck, and Gerald McBoing Boing. The comics are funny - slapstick name-calling kid-friendly funny, fast and loose and unselfconscious, but the editors obviously did not select anything truly offensive. Nobody gets called fatso or four-eyes, and I was on the lookout for characters getting smacked in the mug with a frying pan, and I didn't see a one.

It is an interesting exhibition of the state of play in the mid twentieth century. If you were writing a paper about humor for children, or the evolution of adult perceptions of children's humor, you would refer to this book. But you would also giggle.

I think that what most tempts us to slide this puppy in with the grownup books is its sumptuous production and classy design. Printed on ivory paper, the cartoons are reproduced in their original misregistered halftones, but I swear the page numbers and some of the interstitial text looks as beautiful and fine as letterpress. This high-quality presentation is something that Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly are known for. I swear that man took the money he made from Maus and sunk every cent into TOON books, their publishing company. They've been using toothy paper and thick inks since RAW, and if comics ever become thought of as fancy and luxe, it will be because of these two. 

While this book might be kind of too much for a kid to check out of the public library, it would make a really excellent gift - it would be the kind of book that would stay in a child's bedroom for six years, as he picked it up and put it down, browsed for something silly, or showed his favorites to his friends. And it deserves a home next to The Best American Comics. Librarian's choice.

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex - review

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex

I read a lot of funny middle-grade boy books. I, in fact, have something of a subspecialty in "If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid." SIGH. *I* didn't even like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Although the author sent me a really nice email thanking me for my extremely ambivalent review. Jeff Kinney = classy guy. No matter what you think of Greg Heffley.

So I end up using the words "goofy," "silly," "cute," and, when I'm feeling not-so-inspired, "funny," in my reviews kind of a lot. Every now and then I have a chance to bust out "witty." Not that often. Binky the Space Cat got a "witty" from me, for its winking and generous portrayal of Binky, an overweight housecat training to be an astronaut. The True Meaning of Smekday I called witty. Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant (which probably also got an "urbane"). And - not coincidentally - these are three of my hands-down favorite middle-grade books EVAR.

Joined now by this first book in what I hope will be a long long long (think Hardy Boys, Barnett - hope you're not doing anything for the next ten or twelve years) series of detective novels starring preteen everyman Steve Brixton and his honorary brother and actual best friend, Dana.

WITTY. This book. Wit to the Tee. There is a prom limo. There is a thug who is "nasty, brutish," and (you guessed it) "short." Mac Barnett even takes a swipe at the ALA's READ posters - truly, truly a man after my own fuggin' heart.

Our protagonist, Steve, a naturally bright kid to begin with, has been thoroughly schooled in the habits and techniques of solving mysteries by his heroes, Shawn and Kevin Bailey, cleancut, midcentury all-American boys who are not only ace teen sleuths but also varsity athletes! The Bailey Brothers' tips (haymaker punches, complicated knots, How To Spot a Scoundrel (hint: they limp)) come in handy when Steve tries to check out an old library book and is suddenly surrounded by a SWAT team of secret library agents!

Except - not only are Shawn and Kevin fictional, they're also conspicuously Golden Age. In the few instances when their advice isn't actually dangerous (Have to jump out of a second-story window? Roll when you hit the ground! Need a hiding place? Behind an airplane propellor is a good spot!), it's ludicrously old-fashioned.

Nice disguise, huh? Luckily, Steve is resourceful and knowledgeable and persistent - and heals fast - plus, all his experience reading detective novels has sharpened his deductive reasoning to a fine point.

The chapters are short, the funny is abundant, and the clues are all there. I'll bet my mom (an inveterate mystery reader) would have figured it out. But neither I nor my 8-year-old did. Listen: I kept reading this book even after the kids were in bed, my husband was out watching the Browns get creamed again (sorry honey) and I had those horny Southern vampires all cued up on the DVD player. I totally needed to see how it ended.

Oh wait - did I forget to mention Adam Rex's illustrations? Again? Adam Rex is brilliant. (I can't wait to read the forthcoming Fat Vampire - Laura, where's my copy?) Adam Rex's illustrations push this thing over the edge - from well-written serial fiction, exceptional grist for the mill of the middle-grade reader's imagination - to something that you could absolutely give as a gift. The cover and spine are exciting and packed full of things to look at, while echoing the format of older hardcover series fiction.

What I need now is MORE.

The Word Snoop by Ursula Dubosarsky - review

The Word Snoop: A wild and witty tour of the English language by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Tohby Riddle

We were recently informed by our six year old that it is just not fair that he has to learn to read English. "English is weird and hard and everything is different in different words!" he complained. Oh, it's true, little man. We're sorry. We should totally be Spaniards.

(t-shirt available from TopatoCo)

We did, however, try to explain that we are endowing him with one of the most versatile, descriptive languages on the planet. His grown-up cousin, a marine biologist, told him that, for example, English affords botanists thousands of ways to describe the hairs on a plant leaf or stem. He was not mollified. His 8-year-old brother was similarly pissed off about the inconsistencies of English when he was learning to read. But now he likes it. For example, he was utterly charmed by this book, which presents our language as a fascinating compendium of mysteries, stories, and tricks.

The Word Snoop speaks directly to inquisitive children in this tour of pangrams, palindromes, interrobangs, spoonerisms, leetspeak, backronyms and mondegreens. Ms. Dubosarsky is clearly a fan of the eccentric, acrobatic English language, and is a dab hand with an anecdote, recommending that readers try to find a recording of Lead Belly singing "The Pig Latin Song." She explains how to make portmanteau words, challenges the reader to solve - and create - word puzzles, lists a few great tongue twisters, celebrates rhyming slang, and so much more.

The ivory color, small size, serif type, and classy pen-and-ink illustrations give the book a slightly obscure feel, as if it might have been discovered at the back of an old bookshop. This is a good thing - kids who love mysteries and history and old-fashioned novelty will gravitate to it.

Short chapters with even shorter sections make The Word Snoop perfect for picking up and putting down. It's a book to buy, not borrow.

One Shoe Blues, by Sandra Boynton, starring B.B. King - review

One Shoe Blues, by Sandra Boynton, starring B.B. King

This is Sandra Boynton's collaboration with B.B. King. You knew it had to happen. One beloved icon meets another. Let's just say - there are Converse high-tops involved, and that can't be bad.

So - I snatched this off the shelf today, and read it to myself while waiting to pick up the kids from school. Then I read it out loud to some 3rd graders while waiting for the 1st graders to arrive at dismissal (the 1st graders are always last). There is a song in this book: the song is called "One Shoe Blues". I sang the song to the 3rd graders. Did I know the melody? Well, no. There's sheet music in the back, but I figured - it's blues. You can make up blues. The kids enjoyed it, even though they rolled their eyes at my singing. The other parents were more charitable.

When we got home, we played the DVD. It was A. Dorable. Sock puppets and B.B. King singing about how he can't find his left shoe. (The shoe is on his foot.) B.B. King's mama hollers for him to look under the bed and in the closet. He says he did. She says did he look THOROUGHLY under the bed and in the closet. (B.B. King's mama has found herself dragged into the search for a missing item before, one surmises.) Set in a lovely little red shack, with curtains blowing and trees out the window, I loved the little movie. It's on YouTube, see what you think.

Oddly, the DVD was not that well received by the 1st graders and 3rd graders in attendance. I'm guessing they weren't particularly impressed by B.B. King. They don't know a blues legend when they see one. Why would they? But I was very enthusiastic, and played the thing twice, and was happy to answer the question, "What ARE blues, anyway?"

And, like the celebrity appearances on Sesame Street, I believe that such was Sandra Boynton's sneaky little plan. B.B. King is the bait to get the parents into the room, and after watching together, maybe there's more conversation. Or maybe not. Maybe Sandra Boynton just wanted to hear B.B. King sit in a chair and play her song. Nothing wrong with that, either.

All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee - review

All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee

One of the things I have always thought was odd about hard-line Waldorf School philosophy - and before you email me, let it be known that I have one marvelous little cousin and one fantastic grown-up niece who are Waldorf products, and I have no problem at all giving the Waldorfers some of the credit for how beautifully they have turned out so far - but as I said, one of the odder dicta of Waldorf founder Rudolf Steiner, and he had a LOT of dicta, guy was just Mr. Ruley Rulemonger, and some schools are all like, "Yes SIR Mr. Steiner sir - we'll build our classrooms with NO CORNERS," and some schools, like my cousin's school in Hawaii, are all kind of like, "Oh yeah, but knitting? Brah, it's hot here like, we don't really need knitwear. How about we teach em all how to juggle?" and that works for them.

But one of the Waldorf things is that there should be no shadows in a child's early life. And hence, there is no black crayon in the crayon box at a Waldorf school.

And I am NO anthroposophist. I am not even a teacher. If that works for them, hey wow. I figure, any school that actually has an educational philosophy (as long as it isn't, like, "Let's ignore stuff that makes us uncomfortable") is way ahead. My kids' school is a Reggio Emilio-inspired school. Do I know what that means? Not super much. But does it mean that teachers have meetings discussing how to implement that philosophy? Yes. Yes it does. And do those meetings give those teachers an additional opportunity to discuss different strategies for working with each student's strengths and weaknesses? Yup. And that is good.

But if you asked, I would say that, since black exists in nature, a kid should have black in her crayon box. Would I fight the Waldorf teachers on it, if my kids went to a Waldorf school? No. But that's what I think. And Marla Frazee, whose work in this book has recently been recognized by The New York Times, notably pulls the black crayon out of the box - to great effect - in All the World.

There is blue sky, there is green farmland. All beautiful. There are adults and children and older folks of all sizes and colors, grouped in all the ways that can make a family. Also, all beautiful. But the rocks on the beach are dark gray. And the pond during a thunderstorm is darker gray. Shadows are black. Wind is black. Also beautiful. The darkness, as night falls around a warmly lit roadside restaurant, is dark. I love this. Without being specific, or even mentioning it in the lovely text, darkness is included in the book's inventory of nonthreatening things to be found in our world.

My homies at School Library Journal called it "Perfection," and yo, we do not hand out that kind of epithet lightly. My kids enjoyed this book as much as my husband and I did. They liked the lilting poetry, and following the various families throughout the book. If you can make it through to the massive music jam at the end without a sniffle, you're a better man than me. I'm giving it to the kindergarten teacher for Christmas.

Kids go! by They Might be Giants, illustrated and animated by Pascal Campion - review

Kids go! by They Might be Giants, illustrated and animated by Pascal Campion

Here is my review:

 

If that didn't have you bouncing a little in your seat, well then I don't think I can help you. If it did, then you'll have to either get the book or buy the animated short on iTunes to see the full version. Go!