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Hello, I'm Johnny Cash by G. Neri - review

 

I don't know about these passion-project picture book biographies. Don't get me wrong - *I* love 'em. My colleagues love 'em. Awards committees love 'em. Parents sometimes love 'em.

But I have to heave a heavy sigh and admit that I have trouble getting a kid to take Andrea Davis Pinkney's marvelous, swingy Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa into his or her hands, or The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos, or the new picture book biography of Golda Meir, Goldie Takes a Stand!: Golda Meir's First Crusade.

 

 

Golda. Meir. WHO... reads that book? HOW... do they end up picking it up? Without adult intervention, that book NEVER gets read. I interviewed the brilliant Chris Raschka about his new picture book biography The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening this past spring. And I somehow never got up the courage to ask, "What the hell, Chris Raschka? What child will be interested in the life of Sun Ra?" I played Sun Ra's music for my kids in the car, and after about 20 minutes, they politely asked me to turn it off because it was making them crazy.

 

 

They've never wondered about these people. They've never even heard of them, in some cases. It is usually possible to tease out a reason for kids to learn about them - we need true stories of struggle against adversity, the power of will, or an example of a kid "just like you" who grew up to find his or her place / succeed on his or her own terms / change the world. But in ten years at the library, I bet have helped fewer than ten kids who were looking for a picture book biography. 

I'm not saying they'll never get read. WITH the aforementioned adult intervention, they'll get read. They'll also show up in classrooms an get taken home for reports. Although since they aren't programmed to provide report answers (no bolded vocabulary words, no timeline, no maps), kids tend to reject them in favor of Time for Kids or Who Was when report time comes around.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash stands a greater chance than most of getting plucked off the shelf by an auntie or a dad - there are plenty of grownups who just can't wait to share The Man in Black with their kids. Heck, my friends Aimee and Jim named their firstborn June.

And I'm so glad. I love this book. Greg Neri is clearly a devoted fan, inspired by the way struggle and talent shaped the life of this extraordinary musician. In a note at the back, Greg states that he shaped this biography around the stories Cash told about himself - in essence, telling Johnny's story the way Johnny would tell it.

That is such an interesting take on research, and I think especially thoughtful for a children's book. Everything I've read about Johnny Cash seems to indicate that he wanted to inspire people to do good deeds and follow their conscience, and to that end he would probably have told children about the poverty and sorrow that shaped his actions in his early years, and how music kept him going and ultimately lifted him up.

 

Big curves, arched body, and then the guitar angling just north of a horizontal line - everything points at Cash's squinty take-aim expression.

The oil illustrations are in a straightforward pictorial style, full of air and open faces. That picture on the cover pretty much says it all - this is one case where the cover is just as strong as the interior art (I'm looking at you Grandfather Gandhi - why is your cover so blah when your inside is so dramatic?!).

In the end, regardless my misgivings about the audience for picture book biographies, as long as the publishing companies will put a few bucks into them, I am of course happy they're around. School libraries should keep buying 'em, teachers should use them to introduce music units and history units and to put a human face on math and the sciences.

And I'll keep shoving them at youngsters and parents at the public library. "Golda Meir! Very important lady!" "Sun Ra! Um... it's important to show that even serious weirdos have a place in our culture!" Who knows, that kid may grow up to be our next serious weirdo, brilliant mathematician, or straight-shooting Israeli prime minister.

 

Nonfiction Monday - High Riders, Saints, and Death Cars: A life saved by art by Nicholas Herrera - review

 

It's the fortunate teenager who will come across this beautifully produced art book and its subject, self-taught folk artist Nicholas Herrera. Not only does Herrera describe his process, inspirations, and technique, but he speaks frankly about his wild youth, bad behavior, and the consequences thereof.

 

 

The Wreck, Mi Vida de 25, 1999

 

 

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?"

Nonfiction Monday - Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America by Susan Fillion - review

 

Art and history intertwine in the story of Claribel and Etta Cone, two sisters from Baltimore whose intellectual openness and love of art–not to mention tidy personal fortunes–brought them into contact with many pioneering minds of the early 20th century. More than mere art patrons, the sisters forged decades-long friendships with Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse.

 

The collection of art that they amassed, which includes many masterpieces of Postimpressionism as well as works from Asia and Africa (now at the Baltimore Museum of Art), liberally illustrates the gracefully designed pages of this book. So too do the author’s colorful Matisse-inspired illustrations, most of which are based on archival photographs. The book is a pleasure not only to behold but to hold, too - prestige paper and meticulous attention to color honor the author, her subjects, and the art.

 

Painting by Susan Fillion based on a famous photo from 1903.

An art educator in Baltimore, Susan Fillion has obviously spent untold hours with the Cone Collection and with the voluminous correspondence and other papers of the sisters. She frequently describes a scene or situation from Claribel’s or Etta’s perspective, an effective and engaging device. In the hands of a writer less intimate with the sisters, this might feel false or presumptive, but Fillion keeps it simple and convincing. A beautiful and accessible gateway to a study of Postimpressionism, and a moving portrait of two extraordinary women.

Adapted from a review that originally appeared in School Library Journal.

 

Today's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at Emu's Debuts.

 

Reading on the radio: Brief lives

Why does a kid read a biography?

 

A couple of reasons. The most common reason is the old "I have to write a book report on George Washington Carver." Boy do you want to find a peppy, well-illustrated biography of George Washington Carver for that kid. A decent book, written by someone who actually cares about and is interested in George Washington Carver, as opposed to a generic series biography written by someone who got the assignment in an email, will make all the difference for that kid.

The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of George Washington Carver and Science and Invention in America by Cheryl Harness. National Geographic Children's Books.

These Cheryl Harness biographies are just the right length for older elementary school students. Heavily illustrated by the author and loaded with extras like timelines and maps, they are interestingleisure reads but work for writing reports as well.

 

Some kids will read biographies by choice: either they're interested in the subject, and they're inhaling everything they can find about, say, Jimi Hendrix in every medium available; or they're that kid who only likes true stories. That kid deserves a subscription to the National Geographic Photobiographies series.

Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Golio, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe. Clarion Books. This impressionistic book about Jimi is notable for its wild mixed-media illustrations and for an afterword that addresses his use of drugs and alcohol without being judgemental or whitewashing the facts.

 

When I asked my friend Tracy, who teaches 3rd grade, if any recent biographies jump out at her as being particularly noteworthy, she shrugged. "The Harry Houdini book," she said, "but mostly I just enjoy reading the biographies that the kids write."

Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman. Greenwillow Books. Fleischman has also written a long-form kids' biography of Mark Twain, called The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West.

 

Tracy's response, though, is a great reason to encourage kids to read biographies. Barbara Kerley's The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According To Susy) is a lively portrait of the writer as an eccentric family man, and includes portions of the biography written by his (ultimately tragically ill-fated) daughter Susy. Ms. Kerley also includes a page of entertaining instructions for writing a biography yourself.

I've been asking around, and it seems to me a lot of people can remember maybe one biography that they read as a kid that made a big impression on them. For my husband, it was a book about an ice hockey player called Roger Crozier, Daredevil Goalie. 

 

Crozier was a "daredevil" because for many years he didn't wear a facemask. I would say maybe he should have.

 

For me, it was Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, the story of six men crossing the Pacific on a handmade raft. Like-minded readers today might try Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm, or a biography of an Arctic explorer.

Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson (Photobiographies)by Dolores Johnson. National Geographic Children's Books.

 

You never know who is going to inspire a young person. It's worth asking what they're interested in, what they want to be when they grow up, what fiction books they read.

A kid who likes funny fiction will love the nonfiction stories that children's author Jon Scieszka tells about growing up with his five brothers. I would like to note that I finally found a name that stumped Maryland Morning host Tom Hall - luckily, Mr. Scieszka's website gives us a handy pronunciation guide!

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka, by Jon Scieszka. Viking Juvenile.

 

 

Audrey Hepburn with the writer Colette.

People who like princessy books will love the light, wonderfully stylish drawings of Audrey Hepburn in the picture book Just Being Audrey. Her mother was a baroness! How come I never knew that?

Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo, illustrated by Julia Denos. Balzer + Bray.

 

Kid is thinking about law? Why not think big!

Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx / La juez que crecio en el Bronx by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Bonus for being bilingual!

By the way, Jonah Winter is a name to look for when choosing biographies for children. He's written picture book bios of all kinds of people, from Frida Kahlo to Hildegard von Bingen to Sandy Koufax. He comes by his interest honestly - his mother Jeanette Winter, with whom he collaborated on the Hildegard book and a book about Diego Rivera, also writes picture book bios to watch for. She has done Jane Goodall, Georgia O'Keeffe, Bach, Emily Dickinson and more.

 

Another terrific author who has something of a specialty in biographies for kids is Kathleen Krull. Wilma Rudolph, Jim Henson, Cesar Chavez and L. Frank Baum have each caught her attention. She also has written a series of lively collected biographies - books about musicians, presidents, athletes, pirates, writers taken in context. Look for books with "(and What the Neighbors Thought)" in the title.

Lives of the Athletes: Thrills, Spills (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt. Harcourt.

Emily Arnold McCully, who is probably best known for Mirette on the High Wire, for which she won the Caldecott Medal, also writes and illustrates terrific nonfiction. Manjiro: The Boy Who Risked His Life for Two Countries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) tells about a Japanese boy who helped open up relations between Japan and the U.S. in the 1800's.

Which brings us to another important point about biographies written for children. What I just wrote about Manjiro makes it sound boring as dirt - but in the hands of a talented writer like Emily Arnold McCully, his story sings with pathos and adventure. The pictures glow and the characters come alive.

 

Biographies are written for children of all ages and reading abilities. Dan Yaccarino's book on the ocean environmentalist Jacques Cousteau has no more than two sentences per page, with bright, graphic illustrations.

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Second and third graders can handle a little more text: I love Keep Your Eye on the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton by Catherine Brighton, about Buster Keaton's early years. The way this book breaks down Keaton's pratfalls and early movie-making process, it's hard not to want to try some of his tricks out for yourself. 

 

I'm going to leave off with a book about a woman whose tricks you should maybe not try at home. Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart is probably the best of many Amelia Earhart books written for kids. The story of Amelia's life is told in strong, well-paced chapters, but between each chapter we get the hour-by-hour account of her fatal flight and the subsequent rescue efforts. Author Candace Fleming has pieced together a great deal of research, and without speculating on the fate of Amelia and her navigator, allows us to imagine her voice desperately calling out over the radio in the empty Pacific.

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming. Schwartz & Wade.

 

Nonfiction Monday is hosted today by the marvelous Travis at 100 Scope Notes. I have been M.I.A. from NF Mon for a while, but I'm happy to be back.

And be sure to listen to my conversation with host Tom Hall on this Friday's Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast on Maryland's NPR station, WYPR 88.1 FM. If you're out of the listening area, audio of the segment will be online by the end of the day on Maryland Morning's website.

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!).

 

Nonfiction Monday - Bobo Explores Light by GameCollage - review

 

Just press play.

No, I mean it. You want to know what an iPad does, and why? Just hit the play button on that trailer for the new children's science app Bobo Explores Light up there.

What an iPad does, and why:

 

Nonfiction Monday - Animals with Super Powers by Natalie Lunis - review, plus A Memoriam to Charley, a Brine Shrimp

It's a bittersweet day here on the Pink Me couch. The season's changing, the pool has closed. We recently made the not-difficult-at-all decision to finally ditch this bony old beast for a new couch, one with padding in all the right places, one with cushions that have yet to be vomited on. It's an exciting moment, but I can't help wondering if we will be as happy on the new couch as we have been on the - truly repulsive - Jennifer Convertibles sofa that I bought in New York so many years ago. The frog-printed slipcover will be going too.

Will our crazy pillows fit on it? Will we all fit on it? The boys are getting bigger, and nowadays much more likely to be buried in a D&D manual than in a Hardy Boys mystery.

Added to this seasonal introspection is a sliver of bad news that has hit our family unexpectedly hard: Charley, the World's Oldest Living Brine Shrimp, has died.

 

Nonfiction Monday: Flesh and Blood So Cheap by Albert Marrin - review

In all the brouhaha over last week's Wall Street Journal article about the apparent excess of darkness in young adult literature, I didn't see a lot of people admitting the fact that some kids - and some adults - just like to read about dreadful stuff. The sweetest looking old lady in the library will come to me inquiring about Chelsea Cain's next book. The mom with a toddler on one hip and a five-year-old trailing behind is on a Jack the Ripper kick. The lacrosse goalie in her polo shirt and bouncy ponytail is looking for "something like Isaac's Storm."

Serial killers, natural disasters, industrial accidents - I should do a display or something: "Secretly Freaky Readers Recommend."

 

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.

Nonfiction Monday: Manners Mash-up - review

I'd have had this book reviewed earlier, but there was a manners emergency.

One of Zhou's teachers came into the library with her almost-three-year-old son, who has got to be one of the cutest little guys in the whole world. She was looking for ABC books, truck books, and dinosaur books (I love three-year-old boys!) - and also a manners book that wasn't too heavy-handed.

I kind of pooh-poohed her - at almost three, there's plenty of time to teach him about elbows on the table. At almost three, they're so cute that we still forgive them if they forget to say "excuse me" when they burp. We're programmed that way. But Kayisha had this story to tell:

Nonfiction Monday: World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky, illustrated by Frank Stockton - review

And what have we here? Mark Kurlansky, noted author of interesting nonfiction for adults has turned to our youth. I raise an eyebrow.

Nonfiction Monday - You Just Can't Help It! Your Guide to the Wild and Wacky World of Human Behavior by Jeff Szpirglas - review

 

Ok Jeff Szpirglas is one of my people, I can tell. Is it the pinstripe suit (below)? No. Ironic deployment of business wear is, at best, a heavily qualified predictor. Is it because, in a set of factoids about acceptable public behavior, he advises young people about proper comportment at a rock show ("Stand up, punch the air with your fist")? Not that either, although I will take this as evidence that he is one FUN classroom teacher.

Nonfiction Monday: Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities by Chris Barton, illustrations by Paul Hoppe - review

 

When I was a kid, I didn't really like children's literature. Sure, I read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and Judy Blume (especially the spicy ones!), but mostly I would sneak books off my parents' shelves. I read Saki and All Quiet on the Western Front. I read Tropic of Cancer at about age ten. (BO-RING!)

What I liked the most, though, were the books my dad would bring home from traveling. Airport paperback crime novels and true crime. Oh, how I ate up that true crime.

Now that my job is helping kids find books that they'll want to read, I have noticed that there's not much true crime for kids. I can't give them what I read at that age - Helter Skelter gave me nightmares for years - decades! So along comes Chris Barton (The Day-Glo Brothers, Shark vs. Train) to fix this flaw.

Nonfiction Monday - Celebritrees: Historic and famous trees of the world by Margi Preus, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon - review

It's the right time of year to be thinking about trees. The gigantic willow outside my window is just beginning its annual fireworks show: today it is dripping antique gold stippled faintly with grass green. That's pollen, mostly - just a warning that this review might be a little less coherent than usual. Pollen makes me dippy.

The trees in this book are better-known than my willow. Older, for sure. Larger (the Tule Tree in Mexico measures 177 feet in circumference), taller (a coast redwood named Hyperion is 379 feet tall), more hollow (the Boab Tree, used as a prison in Australia, could fit 10 men inside).

Nonfiction Monday: Journey into the deep: Discovering new ocean creatures by Rebecca L. Johnson - review

 

What does it take to suck a kid into a book of nonfiction? You can't use a drag net, or barbed hooks. Robotic arms cannot scoop a child into a lucite barrel, and very few children old enough to read are small enough to pick up with two fingers and stuff into a test tube.

But those are just a few of the methods that scientists use to collect marine specimens for study. Rebecca Johnson tagged along with the Census of Marine Life on several collection expeditions and had a chance to observe firsthand all the going and the getting and the looking and the recording. She does an amazing job describing the research activities - clearly, economically, accurately, using sensory details to extend the you-are-there impression that begins with her use of second person narration.

And the spectacular photos of fantastic-looking creatures that accompany these descriptions - those are the seine nets, the robotic arms, the probing fingers that snag the kid reader.

Astro the Steller sea lion by Jeanne Walker Harvey, illustrated by Shennen Bersani - review

What do you want in a nonfiction picture book about an animal? I'll tell you what I want, and you see if that matches up.

• I want a story that will hook kids.
• I want photographs or realistic illustrations.
• I want any animal care professionals in the story depicted with rigor and respect, modeling correct postures and behavior for dealing with wild animals.
• I do not want the author to invent some internal malarkey for the animal. Not even, "Barty the tortoise was lonely." No. Unless it's a pet or some other long-observed individual (the chimps at Gombe for instance), humans may not presume to know the emotional life of an animal.

Print Workshop: Hand-printing techniques + truly original projects by Christine Schmidt - review

I am anti-craft. I don't mind saying it. The thought of gathering a fistful of pipe cleaners, glue, wobbly eyes, and children all in one place and then encouraging them to interact is just... brrrrrr. Sounds scary and sticky and nerve-racking to me. I have friends who are good at that stuff. Also, there is school, and camp, so my children are not craft-deprived in sum. I know my strengths, and I abdicate my areas of weakness.

On the other hand...

Nonfiction Monday - Code Quest: Heiroglyphs, written by Sean Callery, illustrated by Jurgen Ziewe - review

 

Here's what I wrote when I reviewed this title for School Library Journal:

Fans of Ancient Egyptian history or readers of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles will delight in learning to decode Egyptian heiroglyphs for themselves in this interactive work of nonfiction. A first-person mystery story narrated by an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist provides a slender thread upon which is hung multitudes of sidebars, factoids, captioned photos, graphic text elements, maps and diagrams. Photos of Egyptian artifacts and sites are reasonably plentiful, but of such small size they can be difficult to appreciate.

The illustrations that accompany the archaeologist's story are rendered digitally, employing exaggerated perspective and texture mapping, which gives the book a video game effect. The accompanying CD, however, includes a font for making one's own heiroglyphics on a computer - not a game. A determined reader will sift through the cacophony of clues to decode all the heiroglyphic and pictographic messages, but the design clutter and tiny typefaces will cause all but the most obsessed codebreakers to give up.

Nonfiction Monday - Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Brian Floca - review

Last night we took our kids to a concert of choral music, and right in the middle of the program, one of the second grade mommies from our school stepped to the front of the ensemble, opened her mouth, and let loose with some of the purest, most accomplished, happiest music I have ever heard a human being produce. We had no idea.

Such moments are revelatory. To see a person stand at the intersection of discipline and imagination and bring forth something as unexpected as art... well it blew my mind, I can tell you. What could you do, what could any child do, what could any child not do, with an idea and hard work and desire?

Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen - review

What god of publishing comes up with these illustrator pairings for Joyce Sidman's books? It's extraordinary. I honestly thought nothing could match the pair-up of Joyce's precise word choice and Beckie Prange's precise art in Ubiquitous. The work of both women managed to be scientifically accurate and lyrically lovely at the same time.

But in Dark Emperor, Rick Allen uses an old-fashioned medium - linoleum-block printing - to illustrate the mystery and fascinating life of the world at night, and the synergy between the images and the poems is just as perfect.

There's something about a woodcut. The organic texture of the printed ink and the shape of the gouged lines will always  invoke early illustrated books. Compositionally, because the block of wood already has a shape, woodcuts almost always have their own frame, even if it is only implied, and even if that frame is broken, as it is in many of the prints in this book. This formal quality tends to lend the images a little extra authority.

Anyway, all that gallery talk jibber-jabber aside, these illustrations are just gorgeous. I can only guess how many layers of printing Rick Allen piled up to make such sophisticated color blends and juxtapositions. Each picture is a world one could sink into.

 

Isn't that amazing?

And the poetry, shouldn't I talk about the poetry? About the mushrooms:

they spread their damp

umbrella tops

and loose their spores

with silent pops.

"Silent pops." Can't you just see it? And smell the musty damp earth? Aren't you just a kid, scrunched down close to the ground, examining the miraculous weird perfection of a mushroom?

Well I am.

And I always love Joyce Sidman for providing a paragraph or two of prose information about the subject of each poem.

Rick Allen has this to say, in part, about the process of making the illustrations for this book:

The prints for Dark Emperor were each printed from at least three blocks (and in some cases as many as six) and then hand-colored with a strongly pigmented watercolor called gouache. There are definitely faster methods of making a picture, but few more enjoyable in a backwards sort of way.

Hail. Hail to the artist/craftsman. And to the poet/scientist.

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.

Nonfiction Monday: Fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada, adapted by Jamar Nicholas - review

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN. It is a brutal chant of a title, a provocative confession from an avowed defender of childhood, a clear-eyed reminiscence, and a concisely laid out description of what happens to a child when violence is an accepted aspect of his social system.

In prose, it's laudable. Everyone should read it. In graphic novel form, it's a bucket of ice water to the face. Everyone can read it.

Nonfiction Monday: Gaps

It doesn't happen often, but it happens. A mom, a little girl, a boy - most frequently a dad, and what does that say about men and reading and their interests? - approaches the librarian looking for a book that will assist a child in learning about something that he or she wants to know about... and the book does not exist.

Horrors! Gasp! But I'm not kidding here. As much as I complain and moan and groan about the formulaic nonfiction put out by so many publishing companies, I am also grateful that at least somebody has put out a kids' book on stem cell research, or Latvia, or Garrett Morgan.

Because nobody has published one (at least not recently) on radiology. Or star lacrosse players. Or Randy Rhoads (or any other rock drummer that I can think of).

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.

Half a boy and half a man - puberty for fellas

Lady comes into the library the other night, looks me straight in the eye, and says, "Where are your books on puberty? For boys." Now, I don't want to generalize, but that request, delivered with that demeanor? Single mom. Single mom who has had it up to here with B.O., secretive behavior, and shifty, monosyllabic attitude. I have so much, much respect for single moms. Every single mom should be issued a cape and tights, because they are all superheroes. Single dads too, of course. It is all on them.

Fortunately for this single mom, who I am calling SuperSingleMom, I have made something of a study of puberty books, especially puberty books for boys. In a lot of families, and certainly in single-mom families, it's mom who handles the Big Talks, and therefore girls are guaranteed a certain amount of information, instruction, and genuine commiseration when the time comes.

It falls to Dad, of course, or to the most dad-like person around, to do the puberty talk with Sonny Jim. We moms just do not have applicable firsthand experience. Now, I do not know how this goes in most families, but SuperSingleMom was frustrated with her estranged husband's reluctance to bring up the subject with their 11-year-old son. And I have to say I am dreading the day my culturally Catholic husband has to acknowledge our sons as sexual beings.

But I'm sure as hell not going to do it.

100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days by Bruce Goldstone - review

100 things I like about this 100th day book:

Ok not. What, come on, do you really need a hundred? Would you even sit still to read a hundred? Yeah one would think not. One would need to have written a book as appealing and clever and also thoughtful as Bruce Goldstone's new book in order to get a reader to actually sit still to read 100 of virtually anything. Or so one might think...

Ergo. A few things I like about this 100th day book:

Hot x: Algebra exposed! by Danica McKellar - review

On Nonfiction Monday, bloggers across the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids. Despite all the nonfiction I read, I am only an occasional contributor, mostly due to me often forgetting what day it is. Monday really creeps up on you sometimes, doesn't it? Today, the exceptional kidlit blog The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting, with links to all of this week's nonfiction posts.

Let us now praise Danica McKellar. Nonfiction Monday, prepare to eat her math.

Would you, have you, responded with knee-jerk distaste to a pretty girl, a TV star, protesting loudly that "Math Doesn't Suck"? (especially when her book with that title is subtitled "How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail"?) Do you find the magazine-style covers of the pretty girl's books, promising personality quizzes, and "boy-crazy confessionals" along with word problems and polynomials, patronizing and/or pandering?

Well, you might. You might. But don't.

Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals, illustrated by Ashley Wolff - review

So engaging and interesting, I didn't realize it was also an ABC book until I reached the letter W! Ashley Wolff's collage and gouache illustrations incorporate so many subject-appropriate scraps - food wrappers, newspaper, pictures of food and flowers - that each page is a treasure hunt. A multicultural cast of children load up the composter with garden waste, kitchen scraps, and all kinds of things that would otherwise go in the garbage. Fun to read and informative to boot.

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!

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According To Susy) by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham - review

I had a review for this book half written, and then I looked through it again. I caught the variety of voices - Twain's, his daughter Susy's, and the author's. I surveyed the back matter - author's notes on Twain and on Susy, and a one-page outline of "How To Write a Biography." And I don't know, man. I'm not sure this is so much a library book as it is a textbook, and I mean that in a good way. It's readable, entertaining, true, and totally instructive. Possibly it should be required in every elementary school classroom.

Much has been written about Mark Twain, one of America's best-known novelists. He has been biographized for all ages and all reading levels. The extraordinary Barbara Kerley (The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, You and Me Together, and Greetings From Planet Earth to name just a few) had been thinking about doing it herself when she came across an interesting fact: Twain's daughter Susy had done it, at the age of thirteen.

What a gold mine, right? Firsthand observations of the biographee by a biographer who knows what young people want to know because she is one herself! So Kerley gets her hands on microfilm of the complete manuscript, finds just the right excerpts, and fills in just the right background and geographical details.

• A cutaway of the Twain house in Hartford shows us Susy observing her Papa all over the house - talking to the cats, reading in bed, striding about the dining room pontificating between courses.
• We are taken to the family's country retreat - Susy's aunt's house - and given a rundown of daily life there.
• Twain's writing process is described in detail, including Mrs. Clemens' judicious editing - she is shown toning down the rougher areas, while the Clemens daughters look on ruefully.

The book is brilliantly designed as well. Twain quotes appear in one typeface, Susy's in another, and Susy's writing is bound into Barbara's larger book as little journal pages. I don't know who thought of that, but it's genius. Hey and speaking of larger books, could publishers please quit with the oversize? Lots of libraries cannot accomodate the tall books, especially in non-fiction, and must shelve them spine-up instead of spine-out, which means they circulate less. (This message has been brought to you by me, Charlotte, Kate, Irene, and a whole bunch of other school librarians.)

If you bought The Trouble Begins at 8 by Sid Fleischman (my respects, old man, you will be missed) last year, you might be thinking twice about buying a second Twain title so soon. But do. The two books complement each other, and this one is for a younger audience.

Susy was Twain's favorite daughter, and she died at the age of 24. As it happens, I ran across Laura Skandera Trombley's new book Mark Twain's Other Woman while I was assembling this review, and found this tragic paragraph:

Twain was alone [in London, after a twelve-month world lecture tour] when a second cable arrived... informing him that Susy, his favorite daughter and the child most similar to him in many respects, had died an agonizing death from meningitis at the family's home in Hartford while her mother and sister were still en route. For two weeks, Susy's fever spiraled and she grew delirious, sometimes wandering through the empty house... As the infection spread, she went blind. She found a gown belonging to [her mother] Olivia hanging in a closet and spent her last hours stroking and kissing the dress, believing in her delirium that her mother was dead... For the rest of his life, Twain mourned his lost daughter."

I am so glad that Barbara Kerley has given us the bright and bold Susy, as well as her famous father.

Tricia is hosting Nonfiction Monday today at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Saving the Baghdad Zoo: a true story of hope and heroes, by Kelly Milner Halls and Major William Sumner - review

This book is absolutely a must-have, no-discussion, gimme-gimme purchase for the school library, the public library, or for any animal-loving kid. The story of U.S. and Iraqi military and civilian volunteers rescuing and caring for zoo animals in post-invasion Baghdad, it is full of wondrous moments: peril, as when a convoy transporting animals on an hour-long journey across town encounters sniper fire; tragedy, when a soldier ventures too close to the tiger cage; nobility, bravery, and humor.

Sidebars give information on the animal species, background about the war, and first-person reminiscences by Major William Sumner, the civilian affairs officer assigned the duty of "doing something about" the zoo. An archaeologist by training, Major Sumner had expected to be assigned to the Baghdad Museum. Surprise!

Lieutenant Colonel Wunderlich, a civilian affairs officer responsible for restoring public works to service in Baghdad, posing with lion cubs.

Not only did Sumner and his team find and care for the animals in the Baghdad Zoo, they gathered abandoned exotic animals from all over the large city, from private petting zoos and palace menageries. In a chaotic six-hour fracas, they rescued sixteen of Saddam Hussein's priceless Arabian horses from a racetrack in the most dangerous part of town. They assisted in the birth of six lion cubs even as fighting continued in the city.

This team worked hard, improvised, begged, went undercover, did research, going far beyond the call of duty to feed and care for these creatures. It's a fascinating story, a terrific discussion starter, an inspiration.

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 Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass, illustrated by E.B. Lewis - review

The Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass, illustrated by E.B. Lewis

"Art was an adventure, and Walter Anderson was an explorer, first class."

Oh heck, I don't have to read any further. I'll buy this book for our school library for that line alone.

One of the reasons I suspect that it is hard to write children's books about artists is that, by and large, artists are weird. Can I say that? Sure ok there are artists that live in a house, paint in a studio, come home every night at 5:30 pm and make the salad... but many many visual artists are Aspy like Warhol, or tortured like van Gogh, or, at the very least, desirous of an immense amount of solitude. Cezanne. Georgia O'Keeffe. And Walter Anderson.

It can be difficult to explain to a child why a grownup might need to be alone. Really alone. Alone for a long time. The three books I've linked to here, Cezanne and the Apple Boy, Georgia Rises, and The Secret World of Walter Anderson, do a good job of showing what the artists were after with all that solitude: there's a lot of air, a lot of nature, and, thankfully, a lot of reproductions of each artist's actual work. Can't stand artist biographies that don't show the work.

But of the three, I think it's the Walter Anderson book that succeeds best. The text of the book focuses on the privations that Anderson endured - chose to endure - in order to work on a uninhabited barrier island off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, while a long author's note relates his biography, not shying away from the mental illness that seemed to be palliated only by perfect isolation.

Personally, this makes sense to me. The author mentions that her husband had been director of the Walter Anderson Museum, and it has been my experience that spending a lot of time with a person's stuff is the best way to learn that person. Bass clearly feels this guy. And luckily, her text was teamed with E.B. Lewis, whose sensitive, realistic watercolors have brought such warmth to books like The Negro Speaks of Riversand Jacqueline Woodson's The Other Side. His animals and landscapes, particularly the water and the varying light on the island, are masterful.

Of the many artist biographies that I choose when I select books for a school library, this will be one of my favorites.

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.

Prowling the Seas: Exploring the hidden world of ocean predators, by Pamela S. Turner - review

Prowling the Seas: Exploring the hidden world of ocean predators, by Pamela S. Turner

Ok, I want Pam Turner's job.

And before you point out the obvious, I am aware that I have no excuse - Pam Turner obviously decided that her job was going to be tagging along with and interviewing biologists doing fieldwork. I know perfectly well that it's not like somebody called her up and said, "Hey, Pam Turner! Pack yer stuff, you're gonna go catch frogs with herpetologist (and fashion icon) Tyrone Hayes!" So, conceivably, you or I could wake up one morning, snap on our research gloves, and write a book proposal about a nineteen-year-old ornithologist who was recruited to spend six years in the Congo doing biology.

She didn't write that book. I'm thinking about writing that book.

But she wrote Prowling the Seas. She contacted the brilliant and dedicated folks at the Tagging of Pacific Predators Project (TOPP), listened and watched them and learned and read and asked questions, and produced this good little book, perfect for, say third grade and up. Four species are profiled, with strong, clear photographs (mostly provided by the researchers themselves), an outline of each animal's life cycle, maps of migration routes, and real-life episodes from the scientists' experience tracking the beasts.

We learn about white sharks, bluefin tuna, leatherback turtles, and the sooty shearwater, a predatory seabird. Interesting choice of animals, don't you think? Now the shark, of course - he's what you call charismatic megafauna: big and scary and high-profile. Ever since Jaws, you've got to contact Mr. Shark through his agent. And everybody loves a sea turtle. We were on Jekyll Island last spring when an injured sea turtle named Dylan was released back into the sea, and there must have been a thousand people on the beach to wave goodbye him. You'd have thought he was, you know, Dylan. Or at least... Dylan.

Gratifying, then, to see the tuna and the shearwater getting the same kind of attention as these more-celebrated species. The tuna, especially, is a lot more interesting than you'd have thought. And the picture of the researcher with his whole arm shoved down a shearwater burrow to retrieve a chick? Oh man, that is one dedicated biologist.

The TOPP personnel are doing a lot to extend our knowledge of these predator species, some of which, due to their pesky habits of diving deep and/or flying high over some of the most little-traveled segments of the globe, have life cycles, or at least life stages, that are considered cryptic. ("Cryptic life stage" - I spent the last twenty minutes trying to remember that phrase. How cool would it be to have a "cryptic life stage" as part of your own biography?)

This book makes it clear that by studying these animals, we can gain a more accurate picture of changing patterns in the sea, and in the air. And that's on top of learning cool things about interesting animals.

The Vermeer Interviews: Conversations with Seven Works of Art by Bob Raczka - review

The Vermeer Interviews: Conversations with Seven Works of Art by Bob Raczka

What a pleasure, to have an excuse to really sit and savor the paintings of Vermeer. And Bob Raczka is such an excellent guide - he recruits the subjects of the paintings themselves to explain Vermeer's tricks and techniques, details and intentions. Since so little is known about the master himself, this slight distancing device allows the speculative conclusions that art historians have drawn about his methods to be voiced without a constant drone of qualifying phrases. "Scholars think," "it is thought that," boring boring. Much better to have a coy model say, "Only Master Vermeer knows for sure."

In his conversation with the woman in Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, the interviewer asks why she is opening the window - is it to investigate a noise? to water a flower box? The young woman replies, "... it doesn't really matter why I'm opening the window. What matters is that you are asking the question. It means that Master Vermeer has succeeded in making you curious, and he would be tickled to know it." This is a lovely little capsule definition of what makes a painting successful, and a reminder that when reading a work of art, it is as important to step back as it is to get in close.

The design is terrific. The interviews are given a background of old, stained, slightly crinkled paper, and the subdued design palette is made up of rich browns, golds, and navy blue.

As a former art history student, who has spent hours upon hours sitting in front of works of art soaking in every detail - necessary labor if you have to write a five-page paper - I can say that there is no better way to introduce kids to the pleasures of interrogating art on their own than this book, one of Bob Raczka's best.

Really, Really BIG questions by Dr. Stephen Law - review

Really, Really BIG questions about life, the universe, and everything by Dr. Stephen Law, illustrated by Nishant Choksi (and gentlemen, when the illustrations are as important to the book as these illustrations are, you PUT the illustrator's NAME on the COVER. Respect!)

I would like to organize my thoughts about this book. To do it justice. Because the book is certainly well-organized. It takes major philosophical questions - both the eternal ones, like "How can I tell right from wrong?" and the excruciatingly current ones, like "Did someone design the universe?" - breaks them down gently, and then finds accessible, often amusing analogies to go about finding the answers.

Many questions are left unanswered. Most, even, I'd say.

"How can we decide who is right about eating animals? We all agree it's wrong to kill and eat humans. But many of us think it's okay to eat other animals. And if it is okay, what's the difference between humans and other animals that makes it okay? Can you think of such a difference?"

That is the end of the segment on "Should we eat animals?" The author builds a solid platform of known vs. unknown logical quantities, and tops his structure with a challenge to the reader, all the while using friendly, down-to-earth language and a tone that never feels lecture-y.

There are a couple of areas that possibly - hmm - skirt the edge of oversimplifying. A discussion of observation and evidence avoids use of the word "experience," even though experience is an important tool that we use to collect data about and forge expectations of our world. I think this omission is intentional - because so many fallacious arguments are based on experience. But it would be churlish of anyone to deny this book based on such minor elisions.

Dr. Law has something of a cottage industry in teaching philosophy to non-philosophers. He is the editor of the journal Think, (somewhat pompously subtitled "Philosophy for everyone") and is the author of three well-received books about philosophy for older children. He even wrote the DK Eyewitness Philosophy book. Really Really Big Questions is his attempt to reach the youngest readers yet.

The design integrates the text blocks, headlines, and the funny, bold, retro-contempo style cartoons in a very up-to-date way, with lots of white space and big eroded type. Well, not "white" space. Every high-tooth page is full-bleed in a different bright color. A little hard to read? Eh, a little.

Extra points for a diverse cast of characters: boys, girls, grownups, kids, white, brown, green, gray (lots of aliens - and also robots!). And in case you got a little glimmer of recognition from that subtitle ("life, the universe, and everything"), there's an excellent piece of logic from Douglas Adams on page 15. Extra points for quoting Douglas Adams.