We’ve been reading a lot of graphics lately.  This has a lot to do with the fact that I keep bringing them home, because it’s what I want to read…but they love them, too.  Here are a couple from this past week:

Frank Cammuso.  Otto’s Orange Day.  Illustrated by Jay Lynch.   RAW Junior, 2008.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

You’ve got to love Toon Books for bringing the love of comics to a young audience.  Because they’re written for emerging readers, plot and language are simple and straightforward, but they also introduce the literary elements of panels and speech bubbles.  Geeks say yay!

Otto’s Orange Day has three acts, or “chapters.” ^[1]  First, the indroduction:  we meet Otto and his love of orange; he meets a genie, and wishes for everything to be orange.  Second, the conflict:  Otto realizes his mistake (orange lamb chops?  orange hued traffic lights?) and calls Aunt Sally Lee for help.  Third, the resolution:  a lack of specificity turns the world blue briefly, but a pizza delivery saves the day, as it often does.  Cute, fun, simple story.

James Kochalka.  Johnny Boo, Volume 1:  The Best Little Ghost in the World.  Top Shelf, 2008.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

You look at Johnny Boo, you see his fabulous hair and his gleeful expression, and you can’t help but think how cute he is.  You open the book, you see his even smaller ghost pal Squiggle, and you are so overwhelmed by cuteness of his “squiggle power” that rainbows spew from your orifices.  The book’s cuteness factor waxes just shy of saccarine.  They meet the ice cream monster (that’s his hand on the cover) and it’s all fun and games until someone get ingested.  Bodily functions save the day, but you’ll have to read the book to find out which one(s)!

While that’s easily the most disturbing review I’ve ever written, it was a book that both girls and I enjoyed and recommend.

^[1]  More suitably expressed using “air quotes.”

Last week I brought home Holly’s Red Boots by Francesca Chessa, to field test it as a potential process art storytime title.  It makes for a good read aloud, and the girls have enjoyed it.  I’ll borrow Geraldine’s description (from the unprompted book-reportish note I found on the table):

Holly wants to play outside but her mom says she must waer [sic] her red boots.  The end.

I’ll elaborate that the crux of the book is Holly’s search for the boots, instead finding all sorts of other red objects.  Great for younger kids.

We also read David Lucas’s Peanut several times this week.  The story is about a peanut-sized monkey (with, as you can see from the cover, a body-tail size ratio of approximately 1:4) who grew inside a flower.  No shortage of absurdity there.  He ends up being afraid of everything, and it takes a friendly beetle, whom he initially suspects is a ghost, to tell him otherwise.  The illustrations are great; we especially loved the depictions of various bugs.  The story seemed to have some major plot issues to me—for example, just-born Peanut doesn’t know enough about his environment to understand wind or rain, but he has concepts of monsters and ghosts?—but the girls didn’t mind.

The illustrations are solid enough to carry the story in its week spots.  Even on the last page, when Peanut tells Beetle, “Come on!” apropos of nothing.  Beetle replies with, “Do let’s be careful!”  I have no idea how we landed on that moral, but it’s surrounded by a lively illustration of a tree that has the following on its branches:  an aardvark, an owl and bat (who are awake), a snake, an anteater, a pineapple, a bunch of grapes, and is that a butternut squash?  It’s pretty entertaining.  Omit the last for lines of text, and you’d have a perfect spread.

Find out what the other kids are reading this week at The Well-Read Child.

Hooray for midweek movie nights!  Absence of spouse + regularly scheduled pizza night = blissful anarchy.  I’m only a year late to this conversation…but here’s why:  it’s only been within the past few months that the girls have proven themselves ready for full-length movies.  (Admittedly, we still have some work to do in the Weathering Dramatic Tension department, but that’s fodder for another post.)

So, how ’bout that WALL-E?  Apparently a post-apocalyptic story can successfully feature unbridled optimism and a “love conquers all” theme.  Awesome.

Holy conversation starters.  Where to begin?  Dangers of mass consumerism?  Dangers of environmental neglect?  Dangers of a sedentary lifestyle?  Dangers of…osteopenia?!?!  Seeing as the girls are 4 and 6, we can probably forego the “Danger, Will Robinson!” issues for now.  And anyway, first screenings should be for enjoyment only.  Life lessons can wait.

Okay, so I snuck in some mild-yet-conspicuous commentary, in the form of praising WALL-E’s found art.  Roadside treasures used to be one of my hobbies, and while I haven’t found any good junk in some time, it’s a love I hope to share with the girls.  Rhys is already primed for it, exemplified by her ever-growing rock collection, but I think Geraldine may take to it, too.  Time, and a few good examples, will tell.

Compliments:

• Using Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” was brilliant.
• The blatancy (and sad familiarity) of the lesson, “B is for Buy n Large, your very best friend.”

Nagging questions:

• So…well into the future we’re still making robots that pay homage to Johnny 5?  Is Short Circuit really that memorable?  (Maybe it is.  My mom loves that movie.)
• Seriously, where did all those babies come from?  These people are clearly in no shape to, uh, know each other, but seem too apathetic to bother with asexual reproduction.

I leave you with a deduction only Rhys could make at the end:  “WALL-E’s a girl now!”  I unthinkingly voiced my opinion to the contrary, and now I’m kicking myself for it.  I should have silently admired whatever thought process went into that deduction, but I’ll get the hang of my allow-them-to-think-for-themselves-without-criticism resolution yet.

Everyone, it’s eLeMeNOs Tiiiiiiiiime!

The eLeMeNoS.  It’s eLeMeNOs Time!.

Looking for an album dedicated entirely to mnemonic devices?  Kinda like Schoolhouse Rock, but less dated?  Meet the eLeMeNOs.  Not that I can offer much in the way of an introduction—everything I know about them comes from their minimal website.  (Coloring pages, anyone?)

If you’re in the upper-elementary set, get ready to learn about (i.e., memorize) various landforms and parts of speech, minus the boredom factor.

Most of the songs are set over an acoustic guitar, or sometimes on a thin, electronic backdrop, and I mean that in the best way possible.  No, really.  I’m looking that sentence over, too, and wondering who’s going to actually buy my “It’s a compliment” line…I guess you’re going to have to suck it up and sample the album, ye naysayers!

[ Recovering from the fact that I just wrote the phrase “ye naysayers”... ]

Anecdote time!  Let’s turn back the clock to the first time my family listened to the album:

[ “The Planets” starts. ]

Lyrics:  We know the planets in the solar system./ We know there are nine.

[ Curious, I start counting on my fingers until it becomes clear that I will not be able to remember all of them without aid of the song. ]

Lyrics:  Pluto is number nine./ Pluto is number nine.

Me:  (to Nate)  Apparently these guys don’t listen to the news.

Nate:  Yeah…unless this song was written before they declassified it.

Me:  No, the album came out this year.

Nate:  Hm.

Me:  Yeah.  (beat)  Wait!  Maybe the song was written as a rebellion against the declassification.

Nate:  Well, that was just the International Astronomical Union being all self-important and arbitrary.

Me:  Something like that.  (beat) Yeah, that must be it, because the next song is called “Don’t Go, Pluto.”

[ “Don’t Go, Pluto” starts. ]

Lyrics:  In August of 2006/ at the international astronomers convention/ it was decided that Pluto’s much to small/ to be a planet after all…

[ I burst out laughing at the specificity of the lyrics. ]

Fin.

Lesson learned:  I shouldn’t be so quick to question the subject knowledge of musicians specializing in mnemonics.

We found two noteworthy books in our family reading this week.  Geraldine’s favorite was The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg (text) and Bruce Ingman (art).  The story is about a pencil that draws a boy, and then a dog, and then a cat, and a whole world for them to live in.  Mistakes are made, so the pencil creates an eraser…but the eraser has a mind of its own.  Duhn-duhn-duhnnnnn.  Some of our favorite details were the offbeat names that the creations are given (even balls and eggs ask, “What’s my name?”) and the realistic appearance of the eraser shavings, which made you want to sweep them off the page.

The Pencil draws some interesting parallels to the biblical creation story.  In the beginning there is only the pencil—who knows where it came from?—which then starts to create and add color and name things.  The erasers are similar to the flood.  The similarities seem to end there, though.  The main difference is that the pencil means only to be accommodating and helpful, even with its intentions in creating the eraser, whereas the Judeo-Christian God is all rigid and pissed off in the first book.

Rhys’s favorite book this week was Bear’s Picture by Daniel Pinkwater (text) and D. B. Johnson (art).  If you couldn’t guess, the straightforward plot revolves around a bear painting a picture, but the clever illustrations add layers of complexity.

Two “fine, proper gentlemen” who happen by balk at the noncomformity of a bear who paints pictures.  Bear explains the elements of his abstract painting—a honey tree, a forest stream, and a hollow log—and the painting visually swallows the gentlemen (although they probably just walked off).  If you invert the final painting, you see that the abstract elements join to make a portrait of Bear.  Bonus:  his ears are the hats of the two proper gentlemen.

See what the other kids are reading this week at The Well-Read Child, host of the new weekly “what my children are reading” meme.

This Thursday, June 11th, 2009, two amazing things are happening:  I am turning 28 (okay, maybe that’s not amazing) and my library is hosting a birthday-themed storytime party.  Well, I think it’s amazing.

After the large-scale game of Hullabaloo and the cupcakes, we’re going to have a balloon-covered dance floor that will call for some pretty spectacular music.  So.  I cooked up this playlist, with it’s-my-birthday songs, not-my-birthday songs, and getting-older laments:

• The Jimmies – “Somebody’s Birthday”
• Recess Monkey – “Bithday Bite”
• Candy Band – “It’s Your Birthday”
• Charity and the JAMband – “Happy Birthday Baby”
• Daddy a Go Go – “Birthday Song”
• Justin Roberts – “It’s Your Birthday”
• The Hipwaders – “Birthday Ruckus”
• Dog on Fleas – “Unbirthday”
• Ralph’s World – “Happy Not My Birthday”
• Ham and Burger – “Happy Birthday to the World”
• Brady Rymer – “Every Day Is a Birthday”
• Uncle Rock – “Gettin’ Big Blues”
• The Terrible Twos – “When I Get to Eleven”
• Asylum Street Spankers – “Be Like You”
• Pencilhead and the Playground Punks – “The Birthday Song”
• ScribbleMonster – “The Half-Hearted Birthday Song”

Laura Rankin.  Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny Tiny Lie.  Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2007.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Ruthie likes small things.  Teeny, tiny things.  Trains, ponies, tea sets, the likes.  Then one day on the playground she finds an improbably small camera, which she desperately wants to keep—even when her classmate tells her its his.  So she lies and feels guilty, her parents and teacher help her through it, and she gives it back, happily ever after.

What I love most about this book is the way angles are used to convey emotion.  This is first shown when Ruthie and Martin are arguing in front of their teacher.  The two of them are leaning in toward each other in anger/confrontation, while the teacher is leaning back in surprise.  Then, my favorite illustration in the book shows Ruthie looking out the bus window, her face and ears flattened as her guilt weighs on her.

Probably the best example of it, though, is the page where she prepares to tell the truth to her teacher.  The text reads, “Ruthie took a deep breath and began to walk to the front of the room.  Mrs. Olsen’s desk seemed very far away.”  This appears to be true, because Ruthie is drawn on an exaggerated vanishing point, where she seems to be smaller than the coffee mug on the teacher’s desk.  Naturally, facial expressions are also used as emotional indicators, but using that in combination with leanings and angles makes all the difference.

Lori Mortensen.  Vote for Our Zoo.  Illustrated by Gina Perry.  Picture Window Books, 2009.  32 pages.  Age 7 to 9.

Vote for Our Zoo is the kind of book I wish I had available to me in elementary school.  When I was in third grade (1989) my teacher brought out these dusty old social studies books from the 1970s, and we all wondered, “What the heck is social studies?”  Those books didn’t really answer the question.  They were so outdated, the teacher ended up putting them away for the rest of the year.  Even though I went with my parents to the 1988 presidential election, I didn’t have a concept of voting until the next round, four years later.  This is not happening with my kids!

There are good kids’ books about voting out there (Eileen Christelow’s Vote!, for example), but this is the most straightforward, easy-to-grasp book that I’ve seen.  The kids campaign to save the zoo, they go to a town meeting, there’s a secret-ballot vote, and they don’t end up winning.  Happy ending, though:  the animals get to go live on a wildlife reservation.

Gina Perry’s illustrations bring the book to life, using a healthy dose of fun and color to liven what some might consider a dull issue.  (It’s not.)  This is probably a weird thing to be in love with, but I completely adore how you can see inside the characters’ mouths.  Yeah.  You must check out her illustrations on her website and sketch blog.

Mary Kaye.  Music Box.  2009.  On sale July 2nd.

At the annual spring conference of the Children’s Librarians of NH, we have a showcase of performers on the roster for Kids, Books and the Arts grants.  This year Mary Kaye came over from Maine to join us, and out of everyone, I was most drawn to her performance. ^[1]  Her voice is enchanting, and has been compared to Natalie Merchant’s.  While I’d throw in the qualifier that Merchant’s vocals are unparalleled in my mind, the comparison is appropriate.

During a car ride, listening to Music Box, Nate made an acute observation: “She likes to make sounds.”  Under time-pressed circumstances, that could serve as a one-sentence review of the album, but it deserves much more than that.  The lyrics are fun—lots of young child appeal—and excepting the tongue-twistingly alliterative “Tasting Tea,” they’re good for singalongs (most kids can handle the lyrics “I’m a bug, bug, bug, bug, bug”).  Scoring big points with me, most of the songs are good for dancing, too.

Highlights -

• “Under the Moon” – A cumulative song with the sounds of various animals and some kids who want to take a late walk.
• “Music Box” – This song is about different everyday sounds, like popcorn popping, clocks ticking, bees buzzing, and teeth being brushed.  It seems like that must be a step in achieving music literacy, the way that print awareness is a stage of learning to read.
• “Turtley Turtleloo” – This is my favorite from the album.  It’s catchy, and isn’t this the perfect description of love?  “It wasn’t what I planned/ but he’s my favorite toy.”

other reviews:
Boston Children’s Music.

^[1]  Norman Ng also shows promise, and I can’t wait to see him perform for Family Fare this summer.  And the above statement is no offense to the highly-entertaining Peter Boie, or to Alex the Jester, with his Andy Kaufman-like charm, but we’ve had—and highly enjoyed—both of them before.

The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire in Dover is one of the best places in the state for young kids to have fun.  Last weekend our family visited for the second time since they moved from their Portsmouth location.  We loved the museum from its Portsmouth days—we had a membership, and we even had the girls’ 1st/3rd joint birthday party there.  Now that the museum has moved to a larger, more open space, they’ve taken something great and made it awesome.

Me:  Rhys, what do you like best about the children’s museum?

Rhys:  I like to go in the submarine.  It has sharks.  And anglerfish. ^[1]  They try to stop us!

Me:  What about you, Geraldine?  What do you like best at the museum?

Gigi:  I like the post office.  You get to send letters.  A lot of them!

Nate:  I think she likes the phone, too.

Me:  Yeah, she does.

Nate:  Don’t you want to know what I like?

Me:  Of course…

Nate:  I…like the thing with the rain that goes up and comes down…and I like the big huge thing in the middle…and the sonar…and…I like the fish ladder…thingie…and that whole room is cool!

Gigi:  And I like the kids’ cafe and the dancing on the TV, and the rain thing.

Nate:  You don’t really have to put mine in there.

Me:  Oh, but I do.  Especially the way you expressed it like a child, in a big, run-on sentence.

Nate:  That’s what I was going for!

What do I like best?  I’m tempted to say the Cochecosystem, which is extremely cool (and was also still under construction the last time we went) but this particular visit, on May 23rd, I enjoyed the Gallery 6 exhibit, “From Scribble to Finish:  Illustrating Children’s Picture Books”:

It was very cool, with rough sketches, finished products, and everything in between, and they were all by illustrators with local ties.  Now, I’d love to tell you to run-don’t-walk down to see it, but the thing is, the exhibit was from April 1st to June 1st, so I’m afraid you can’t run fast enough.  The next exhibit promises to be fantastic, though:  It’s going to be a textile arts exhibit, and the museum tweeted a sneak peek a couple weeks ago.  Looks cool, doesn’t it?

Ok.  I didn’t bring “From Scribble to Finish” up just to rub it in your face that you missed it.  I have good news—it’s Blog Locally Week, something I just made up, at ayuddha.net this week!  Stay tuned.

^[1]  She pronounced “anglerfish” very deliberately.  And accurately.