The Ladybug Picture Book Award is chosen annually by New Hampshire children from preschool to 3rd grade.  The kids vote for their favorite of the ten nominees in throughout the month of November.  We are wrapping up our discussion of the nominees.

Time for (my) favorites!

Leah Wilcox.  Waking Beauty.  Illustrated by Lydia Monks.  Putnam, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

In this fractured fairy tale, a dim-but-likeable prince in search of a dragon to slay happens across a loudly-snoring princess instead.  (Apparently they sound the same.)  Three fairies are on hand to tell the prince how to wake her.  They repeatedly (and with increasing creativity) set up a couplet to rhyme with the word kiss, but the prince has no sense of meter and keeps interrupting with his own ideas.  Physical comedy ensues.  I won’t spoil it with a play-by-play, but my favorite moment is when the dead-asleep princess ends up floating on her hoop skirt in a pond while the prince fishes her out with a too-small net.  It’s priceless.  The interrupted rhymes make it a great read-aloud.  Wilcox and Monks also teamed up to create Falling for Rapunzel (2005), which is in a similar vein and just as funny.

Leslie Helakoski.  Big Chickens Fly the Coop.  Illustrated by Henry Cole.  Dutton, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Four comically-dressed chickens (my favorite wears a pink tutu and green boots) decide to put their fears aside and go visit the farm house, but they have a little trouble getting there.  The first structure they find has a roof and a door—those sound like a farm house—but it also has a tail?  Oops, it’s the dog house.  The language is absolutely gorgeous and fun to read:

“The chickens flounced, trounced, and body-bounced.  The dogs pounced.  Drooling muzzles dribbled.  Frightened yard birds quibbled.  Sharp teeth crashed.  Pointed beaks smashed.  Snouts snapped.  Wings flapped.”

But it should be a requirement to add chicken noises.  For me, it’s a loud, frequently-interjected buccaw.  That may or may not be the correct spelling, but I’ll happily demonstrate the sound in person.  Big Chickens Fly the Coop is the sequel to Big Chickens, which we haven’t read yet, but it’s at the top of our list now.

Daniel Pinkwater.  Bear’s Picture.  Houghton Mifflin, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Bear’s Picture is one of the books we read for our first Graves girls read! post, so you can read about it there.  While a bit thick on the IT’S OK TO BE DIFFERENT!!! moralizing, it’s probably my personal favorite of the lot, mainly for its nuanced illustrations.  That’s the adult in me talking, though, and since the Ladybug Award is chosen by the kids, I don’t think that Bear’s Picture stands a chance, or that it’s even a particularly good candidate.

If I factored kid appeal into choosing my favorite, I think I’d be rooting for Waking Beauty.  Rhys voted for Big Chickens Fly the Coop, and Geraldine voted for Those Darn Squirrels (which is a little odd since she had very recently said she preferred A Visitor for Bear to Those Darn Squirrels, but I don’t ask questions like that.  I’m pretty temperamental with my favorites, too).

More Ladybug Award reading:
Graves girls read! No. 13.1 – Bedtime at the Swamp and Little Blue Truck
Graves girls read! No. 13.2 – A Visitor for Bear and Those Darn Squirrels
Graves girls read! No. 13.3 – Tadpole Rex, Too Many Toys, and Bats at the Beach

The Ladybug Picture Book Award is chosen annually by New Hampshire children from preschool to 3rd grade.  The kids vote for their favorite of the ten nominees in throughout the month of November.  We are discussing the nominees in no particular order.

Kurt Cyrus.  Tadpole Rex.  Harcourt, 2008.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Tadpole Rex is a tiny little thing born in some prehistoric age, alongside the alamosaurus and triceratops.  (Consider my knowledge of prehistory expended.)  After he sprouts arms and legs, he lets out a ferocious (if tiny) “Ribbet!” and goes on the attack.  The illustrations play around with scale, making him sometimes look as large as his inner-tyrannosaurus warrants, and other times look suitably small compared to the actual size of the dinosaurs.  An end note substantiates the somewhat silly text with information about evolution and environmental concerns.

David Shannon.  Too Many Toys.  Blue Sky Press, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

None of us cared for this title.  It has a few characteristics of a cautionary tale about excess, but fails to make any sort of point, unless that point is that a cardboard box is the Best Toy Ever.  It’s the kind of book where parents will nod in agreement, and kids will shrug.  I’m not a fan of the illustrations, with the grotesquely exaggerated faces and the hard black lines that make everyone look like a poorly-stitched rag doll.  But that’s just me.

Brian Lies.  Bats at the Beach.  Houghton Mifflin, 2006.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

The bats have a pretty normal day at the beach, except they do it all at night.  And they eat bugs—gross.  And instead of flying kites they are the kites.  And they sit under those little paper drink umbrellas.  Okay there are a lot of differences to spot, and therein lies the fun.  It’s definitely the best of this bunch.  We also recommend Bats at the Library.

More Ladybug Award reading:
Graves girls read! No. 13.1 – Bedtime at the Swamp and Little Blue Truck
Graves girls read! No. 13.2 – A Visitor for Bear and Those Darn Squirrels

The Ladybug Picture Book Award is chosen annually by New Hampshire children from preschool to 3rd grade.  The kids vote for their favorite of the ten nominees in throughout the month of November.  We are discussing the nominees in no particular order.

Bonny Becker.  A Visitor for Bear.  Illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton.  Candlewick, 2008.  56 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Bear is so sure that he hates company that he spells it out on his door:  “NO visitors allowed.”  When mouse shows up for a spot of tea, Bear gives him the boot and continues preparing breakfast for one.  But mouse keeps showing up in impossible places, like the cupboards and the refrigerator, much to Bear’s distress. Even after boarding up the windows, stopping the chimney, and plugging the bathtub, the mouse finds his way back, causing Bear to weep dramatically and yell, “I am undone!”  They have their tea, and Bear finds that he rather enjoys the company.  I mean, what’s the point of knowing how to do a headstand if you haven’t have any friends to see it?

Adam Rubin.  Those Darn Squirrels!  Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri.  Clarion, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Beak-nosed Old Man Fookwire loves watching and painting birds, and misses them terribly during the winter.  He decides to invest in some bird feeders to convince them to stay, but those darn squirrels keep stealing all the seeds!  The old man battles the squirrels with clever traps, but it’s all for nothing when the birds decide to take off anyway.  The squirrels can’t stand the sight of him crying into his cottage cheese, and cheer him up with gifts and clever costumes.

Again, we were split for favorites with these two.  Geraldine said she likes A Visitor for Bear better, especially when they become friends.  Rhys likes Those Darn Squirrels! because they throw a party in Old Man Fookwire’s house at the end, and his “Those darn squirrels!” refrain is delivered with a smile.  I’m going to side with Rhys on this one.  They’re both good books, but Those Darn Squirrels! is packed with quirky humor that I find appealing.

More Ladybug Award reading:
Graves girls read! No. 13.1 – Bedtime at the Swamp and Little Blue Truck

The Ladybug Picture Book Award is chosen annually by New Hampshire children from preschool to 3rd grade.  The kids vote for their favorite of the ten nominees in throughout the month of November.  We are discussing the nominees in no particular order.

Kristyn Crow.  Bedtime at the Swamp.  Illustrated by Macky Pamintuan.  HarperCollins, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Bedtime at the Swamp is about a kid who, for whatever reason, is hanging around a swamp at dusk.  Suddenly he hears a sound pattern that repeats throughout the story—“splish splash rumba rumba bim bam boom”—and dashes up a tree to get away from what is surely a monster.  One by one, his siblings and cousins show up, and finally they meet the big green dinosaur/monster-looking thing…but the noise doesn’t stop with him, and he’s just as scared as the others!  What?  It’s Mom?!  Hm…as fun as it is to read “splish splash rumba rumba bim bam boom,” my mind cannot quite reconcile that as an onomatopoetic representation of what it sounds like to trudge through a swamp.

Alice Schertle.  Little Blue Truck.  Illustrated by Jill McElmurry.  Harcourt, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

Little Blue Truck is about the world’s friendliest little eyeballs-for-headlights truck.  He always takes his time and beeps hello to all the farm animals.  Then a self-important dump truck runs him off the road…and gets stuck in the mud.  It’s up to Blue and his barnyard friends to push the colossal dump truck out, and they manage with the help of a super-strong toad.  Then the animals pile in for a celebratory ride, with toad at the wheel.

As for favorites, the girls were split over these two titles.  Geraldine prefers Bedtime at the Swamp for the silly green monster and the sound effects, and Rhys prefers Little Blue Truck because the animals look funny when they’re all piled into the truck.  If I had to break the tie, I’d tip the scales in favor of Bedtime at the Swamp, because the writing is a little stronger and the plot is not quite so predictable.  Okay, maybe not.

We’ll have some much better nominees over the next few days, really!

This week I’m your happy rounder-upper for the “What My Children Are Reading” meme, hosted by the Well-Read Child.  Leave me your link in the comments, and I’ll post it right at the top here.

At Brimful Curiosities, they have books and art about ghosts this week.

At Fantastic Find, they have some silly animal books.

In the comments, Jeff at Out with the Kids writes:

The Mouse (2.5 yr old) is currently in love with It’s the Bear by Jez Alborough and William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow. The Bear (5.5 yrs old) and I just finished Ivy & Bean Doomed to Dance.”

And Vanessa from Silly Eagle Books writes:

We checked out songbooks at the library this week. Juliet (almost 3 years) really loved Frog Went A-Courtin’ by John Langstaff and Bake You a Pie by Ellen Olson-Brown and Brian Claflin.

As for us…

Graves girls read! No. 12 / Process art storytime! No. 8

I’m completely convinced that my neighborhood has the best foliage in Manchester.  Within half a square mile, there is a surprising amount of variety in the size, shape, and color of leaves, and they’ve all turned brightly this year.  I’ve been playing the part of the curious two year old, drawing the girls’ attention to the trees and their leaves while driving past, marveling at nature.  I’ve also used this as an opportunity to model pursuit of one’s interests through literature—an important life skill.  Fortunately, I had already picked out two relevant books for my October process art storytime:  Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert, and It’s Fall by Linda Glaser.

Leaf Man is an extraordinary book about a seemingly random arrangement of leaves shaped to resemble a person.  The wind carries Leaf Man off, and the remainder of the book ambles along the path of a breeze, perhaps even the same breeze that carries Leaf Man.

Ehlert used color copies of an impressive variety of leaves for the illustrations.  Most of the illustrations were arranged very deliberately, much more than when we first met Leaf Man.  Mostly we see animals, from chickens to cows to fish.  It was really fun to read this with the girls (and my storytime kids), taking the time to examine the details of each illustration, although all the stopping made the spare, run-on text seem choppy.  I found myself adding words to form whole sentences, just to maintain the flow of the story.

It’s Fall is a simple celebration of the season:  leaves falling, weather changes, migration, hibernation, and other related subjects.  The text is a pleasant read, but the illustrations are what make this a great book.  The artist, Susan Swan, used layers of cut paper and shadow to create a three-dimensional appearance that almost threatens to jump off the page.

This pairing of books begs to be followed up with a nature collage, so that’s what we did.  In storytime we used gobs of glue, but it turned out that we don’t have glue at home (?!) so we used double-sided tape.  Fine for leaves and pine needles, but completely inadequate for any other type of nature.  The girls had fun making their collages anyway:

This week, the girls and I read a couple of banned books.  I should say challenged books.  I don’t know if they were actually banned…but it’s so much catchier to use strong language, don’t you think?  You know, we could use some centralized, accessible data on challenges over the years…

One of the books we read was The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.  I had never read it before, and as literature, I had a couple issues with it.  I know part of the Dr. Seuss charm is in his made up words, but the frequency of those words was distracting.  The Once-ler makes is clothes out of “miff muffered moof”?  Really?  That detail is supposed to add to the story?  And what’s with the name Once-ler?  I gathered from the first few pages that it’s a has-been sort of name, but he and his family were always called Once-lers, thoughout their illustrious past.  Hm.

As social commentary, I thought it was fine.  Normally I don’t like my literature “sharpish and bossy” (i.e., overtly didactic), but messages about greed and environmental irresponsibility are useful and important.  I don’t think the forest industry needed to feel too threatened by a cautionary tale that uses exaggeration to make a point.  Are kids going to grow up thinking that we should never chop down a tree for any reason?  Doubtful.  Most people like to live in houses.  But they may think, huh, maybe we should plant some trees to compensate.  And maybe not pollute the air and water.

We also read And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole.  Rhys has the plot summary for us:

Me:  How were Roy and Silo different from the other penguins?

Rhys:  They were both boys, so they couldn’t have an egg.  But then someone gave them an egg, and they were happy!

Dunh duhn duhnnnnn…  The girls been brainwashed!  They no longer fear or loathe cute animals that pal around together even though they’re the same gender!  How could our library undermine our values like that?!

[ Excuse me while I compose myself...got a little carried away with the mock hysteria. ]

So, let’s point out the fact that this is a true story.  Something that actually happened, not some manipulative allegory.  Yes, the zookeeper figure says that they are in love—whatever the penguin equivalent of love is—but to be fair, they are in some sort of monogamous relationship.  Neither of them has eyes for the ladies.  To the average kid, this is probably just a cute story.  If the parent wants, they can use it a means to point out that these types of relationships happen with humans, too, without necessarily assigning any agenda-driven value to it.

What My Children Are Reading This Week is over at In Need of Chocolate today.

The other day I made a Twitter/Facebook comment about how I hate escorting kids to what I call our “military glorification section,” and how I wish we could subversively shelve The Enemy there.  I believe my remarks demand a review, and what better time than the International Day of Peace 2009?

Davide Cali.  The Enemy:  A Book about Peace.  Illustrated by Serge Bloch.  Schwartz & Wade, 2009.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

The Enemy is about two soldiers, on opposing teams, each in his own foxhole.  Our narrator was shown smiling the day he received his kill-those-savages-before-they-kill-you manual, but by the story’s initial narration he’s grown disheartened, to say the least.  He wonders if everyone has forgotten about them, or if maybe he and the so-called enemy are the last two people on earth.

By the end of the book, a truce is called for.  Even so, “A Book about Peace” is an inaccurate subtitle, presumably tacked on to appeal to the most likely audience for this book.  What the book is actually about is questioning authority and the validity of what we read; the common ground between all people; and taking ownership of one’s own situation.  That and, you know, War Is Bad, but I think that’s a secondary message.

The Wall Street Journal published a reactionary review of The Enemy, written by Meghan Cox Gurdon back in April.  Gurdon says the purpose of this “pure propaganda” is to “perplex children” and “inculcate a pacifist worldview as early as possible.”  I suppose it could be used as propaganda from either side of the fence, but to assume that inculcation is the book’s primary purpose is unfortunate.

It’s no huge secret that I’m more or less a pacifist.  It’s also no secret that I want to raise kids my kids to think for themselves.  I have hopes for them, but not expectations.  So, how I will use this book is like I use any other book with substance:  as a conversation-starter.  How did they get there?  Why do they continue to fight?  Do you think the others forgot about them?  And so on.  The questions can be adapted depending on the needs and maturity of the reader, and all of this can be done without suggestion or persuasion from the person asking the questions.

Gurdon made another comment that irked me.  She said that the idea behind the book was to “invite [readers] to believe that nothing is worth fighting for — when adults should know better.”  That is way outside the scope of this book.  No one is saying that there aren’t things worth defending—not even me!—but that doesn’t mean all fights serve a noble purpose.  The one in this story certainly didn’t.

To her credit, Gurdon did nutshell the book accurately: “Think of it as a kind of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ for the elementary-school set, though with chic, inventive illustration.”  That description is both poetic and apt.

A week in need of a good comfort book.

Sara Pinto.  Apples and Oranges:  Going Bananas with Pairs.  Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2008.  32 pages.  Age 3 to 8.

There have been a lot of changes in our household this week.  Well, one change that’s affecting several things:  Geraldine has started first grade.  We’re dealing with changing schedules and sudden intrusions like homework.  What we need is a comfort book.  A good choice for us is Apples and Oranges:  Going Bananas with Pairs.  When we took it out from the library last year, we read it over and over.  It’s great for a laugh.

The first page opens with the question, “How are an apple and an orange alike?”  Well, they’re both fruits.  They can be eaten, they grow on trees, they have peels…we can think of a lot of ways that they’re alike.  But when you turn the page, you get this answer:  “They both don’t wear glasses.”  A precedent has been set for the rest of the book:  explaining how objects that share at least a couple traits can also be compared by what they don’t do.

The humor wouldn’t work well without the illustrations.  On the page that asks how a motorcycle and bicycle are alike, for example, they just sit there innocently.  Then, when you turn the page to find out that they both don’t work in a bank, it shows them behind desks.  The motorcycle is helping a customer, or trying to, and it’s a riot.  I won’t spoil the fun with any more examples.  You must, must read this book.

A first day review for your reading pleasure.

Herman Parish.  Amelia Bedelia’s First Day of School.  Illustrated by Lynne Avril.  Greenwillow, 2009.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

I don’t mind Herman Parish keeping the Amelia Bedelia series alive, but this…what?  This can’t possibly be a prequel.  Too contemporary.  Neither a retcon so much as an alternate timeline.  Let’s think about this before we go any further.  Does Amelia Bedelia, beloved as she is, really call for an alternate timeline?

This book just doesn’t work for me.  Amelia Bedelia’s appeal is in her literal interpretation of idiomatic phrases.  Funny for an adult, but not so much for a kindergartner.  Five year olds interpret language literally by default.  In extreme cases, like when her teacher asks her to glue herself to her seat, it can be funny, but less obvious misinterpretations are hardly noteworthy.

Bubbles!!!  Okay, we don’t usually do themes, because (a) they probably get enough of it at school, and (b) I’m not nearly coordinated enough for that.  But when these two holds, placed on separate occasions, came in on the same day, I knew we had to pair them.

Margaret Mahy.  Bubble Trouble.  Illustrated by Polly Dunbar.  Clarion Books, 2009.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

If you made a vocabulary list out of the text of this book, it might look a little like SAT prep.  But it’s a story about a baby that gets trapped in a bubble and flies all over town—how intense can it be?  Turns out that the definitions of the “big” words aren’t important, but their use is important for rhyming, half-rhyming, and kind-of-sounding-like.  And even if you can’t remember how to say “cavil,” ^[1] just act like you do and keep the flow going.  It will make silly sense and sound kind of cool.  A fun read.  Perfect for storytime.

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.  Pop! A Book about Bubbles.  Photographs by Margaret Miller.  Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series.  HarperCollins, 2001.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

When I was a kid (actually, even through college and until rather recently) I didn’t like science.  Had no use for it.  We were a humanities family.  I’ve always loved math, though, and within the past half dozen years it sparked an interest in physics, and now I think science is The Best.  And I want to find non-intrusive ways to help the girls think so, too.  The Read-and-Find-Out Science series seems like a good place to start.  What we learned about bubbles is, they’re always round because of the distribution of air pressure, and they wouldn’t form if they weren’t sticky.

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

^[1]  Should I be embarrassed?