Barbara Kerley.  The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy).  Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham.  Scholastic, 2010.  48 pages.  Age 4 to 8.

I hope my girls aren’t writing a biography about me, because it would read like this:

Last night Daddy stayed in New York because of work.  Mama let us stay up really late, gave us ice cream for dinner, and let us skip a bath.  This morning she was yelling at us because we weren’t getting ready for school fast enough.  Whose fault is that?

At least I can take comfort in the fact that no one will ever want to read my biography.  That is one of the many differences between me and the extraordinary (so I’m told) Mark Twain.  He was a brilliant author—both entertaining and exceedingly clever—and, as readers, we are lucky that his eldest daughter followed in his writerly footsteps.

Susy Clemens was 13 years old when she decided to write a biography of her “Papa.”  Barbara Kerley wrote in an author’s note, “I know [13-year-old girls] tend to call it like they see it.  Susy did not disappoint me.”  Throughout the book are passages from Susy’s biography, in her own words, unobtrusive misspellings and all.  Her writing is charming and funny.  I suppose we know who she takes after.

As a whole, the book is as much about Susy (according to her Papa) as it is about Twain.  Her biography would later be published in its entirety, annotated with “copious comments by her father,” as the title page puts it.  The biography was published under the title Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain, if you are inclined to read the full text and commentary, but all of the best quotes have already been pulled for this book.

Splitting the focus onto a remarkable young daughter is no surprise if you’ve read What to Do about Alice? (also by Kerley and Fotheringham), a biography of Alice Roosevelt.  Alice only offers a few scant details about President Theodore Roosevelt (you know, little things like that treaty he was trying to arrange between Russia and Japan), and that’s a good thing.  There are any number of boring old biographies about presidents and famous authors, but giving their spunky daughters a place in history is absolutely brilliant.

If you want some additional non-boring information about Mark Twain, go for Sid Fleischman’s The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West.  I have nothing but love for a book that opens with, “Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth.”  Trouble is for a middle grade audience, as lower elementary kids won’t know Twain from Shakespeare.  What they do know, or should, is the spunky heroine.  This book is just perfect for that.

Nonfiction Monday is at the Miss Rumphius Effect today.

I’m not usually inclined to tell the Internet where our family is going more than 2 hours before we get there.  I suppose it’s to maintain some semblance of privacy in this ridiculously open-book life I’ve orchestrated for my family.  However, exceptions must be made, proportionate to an event’s potential for awesome. ^[1]

In that spirit, I’d like to announce that tomorrow we’ll be at the Meltdown Family Music & Book Fest.

The fact that I’m giving twenty-something hours notice for this, instead of the usual two, indicates that this event will be roughly 10 TIMES as rad as the places and events we normally go to.  According to my numbers, anyway.  You really should consult the flyer and do your own math.

If you’re located somewhere within a loosely-defined “driving distance” to western Mass., you should come hang out.

^[1] That’d be “awesomeness” for the grammar hounds, but I much prefer to treat “awesome” like a noun.  I’ve long thought that adding -ness to an adjective undermines its power and/or usefulness.

Youme.  Sélavi, That Is Life:  A Haitian Story of Hope.  Cinco Puntos Press, 2004.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 9.

“Not so long ago and not so far away, people with guns could take a family, burn a house and disappear, leaving a small child alone in the world.”

So begins Sélavi, That Is Life, a story of street children in Port-au-Prince that spans the 1980s and 1990s.  The children in the story find ways to look out for each other and share what little they have, but they live in constant fear of the “people with guns” (a suitable way to explain a military presence without getting into politics).

One day the children are chased away and threatened by soldiers, and Sélavi escapes to a church, where he asks the congregants to help his friends.  They join together to build an orphanage, Lafanmi Sélavi, which opened in 1986 and housed about 500 children.  After it was completed, those involved tried to help others by painting murals with messages like, “If children are sleeping on the streets, what are we doing for them?”

The military continued to pose a threat, whiting out their murals, and eventually destroying Lafanmi Sélavi.  The orphanage was later rebuilt, and the children also started a radio station, Radyo Timoun, in 1994.  The radio station was important to those young activists, because their words were written “in the air where they cannot be painted out.”

This gently told story is followed by factual endnotes and a supplemental essay by Edwidge Danticat.  There are no dates in the story proper, and key figures like Jean-Bertrand Aristide are unnamed.  The only thing that matters is the children—they are the ones who are given names, backstories, and credit for their social impact.  But the book’s back matter is important for the adults who share this book with children, so they can fill in details as appropriate.  Danticat’s essay certainly informed this review.

The watercolor illustrations are very well suited to the story.  I especially like how thoughts, memories, and even radio waves are much more abstract than the “here and now” (or is it “then and there”?) images.  Ideas and actualities often share the same page in this story, so the contrast in style helps to make that distinction.  The black and white photographs that accompany the back matter help drive home a message to young readers that this is a real story about real people.

Nonfiction Monday is at Lost between the Pages today.

The day Gigi was born, March 2003

Gigi’s first birthday, March 2004

Gigi’s second birthday, March 2005

The day Rhys was born, March 2005

The girls’ first and third birthdays, March 2006

Gigi’s fourth birthday, March 2007

Rhys’s second birthday, March 2007

The girls’ third and fifth birthdays, March 2008

The 2009 birthdays were low-key family affairs, and I don’t think we took any pictures…but if we find some I’ll post them.

Little Artists is a monthly program for children ages 2 to 5 who want to explore their creative side. After reading a few stories, we have an activity that focuses on the process of making art, rather than the end product. We sometimes get messy, and we always have fun.

This is the recipe I used on 03/04/2010.  If you have ideas for ways I might tweak it next time, please leave them in the comments!

Books to read:

• Curious George Goes to the Beach by the Reys’ ghostwriter
• Gotcha, Louie! by H. M. Ehrlich (text) and Emily Bolam (art)
• Miranda’s Beach Day by Holly Keller

The project:

We created a little science experiment to test whether sand (the colored craft store kind) sticks better when you use a glue stick or white glue.  The consensus was that the glue stick worked better, although the first answer I got was from one of the parents, which was kind of missing the point.  Parents don’t like white glue, because it’s messy and runny and takes forever to dry.  But guess what?  I don’t do this for the parents.  And it seems pretty obvious that some of the kids would never get to do something like this otherwise.

What worked:

I don’t know about the kids, but this definitely helped me a little bit with the winter blahs.

The kids were even more creative than I imagined.  One girl kept layering glue over sand over glue over sand, etc., and then she stirred it into a soupy swirl at the end.  Incidentally, it was her mom that said the glue sticks work better.  I need to remember to fill that glue bottle…

What didn’t:

Toward the end, I realized I could have created a beach/summer playlist so we had something to listen to after the stories were done.  I suppose my excuse is that I’m not used to Little Artists being so thematic, but it was definitely a missed opportunity.

About a month ago, in my Hats for Haiti? post, I mentioned a Reading Rockets article about using picture books to understand what happened “over there.”  These are the three nonfiction titles we chose from the list.

Ellen J. Prager.  Earthquakes.  Illustrated by Susan Greenstein.  National Geographic, 2002.  32 pages.  Age 4 to 7.

The unfortunate thing about this title that the buildings sort of look like they’re dancing.  I made that comment off-hand before opening the book, and it put my not-quite-5 year old in a silly mood—not quite the tone I wanted to set.  The opening words (“Shake, rattle, and roll”) did nothing to help.

What I like about this book is just about everything else.  It’s great for the youngest nonfiction readers, with concise, accessible text that uses analogies to help to help explain this complex topic.  Here is a sample passage:

“Most earthquakes happen because the Earth’s outer surface is moving.  Like a giant jigsaw puzzle, the planet’s outer surface is made up of big pieces called plates.  These plates move very slowly in different directions, so slowly you can’t feel them moving.” (p. 14)

The advantage of this book over the other two, content-wise, is its simple diagram of earthquake-resistant architecture.  It also provided the best advice of what to in the event of an earthquake, and included a simple science experiment to show how buildings shift during a quake.

Franklyn M. Branley.  Earthquakes.  Illustrated by Megan Lloyd.  HarperCollins, 2005.  34 pages.  5 to 8.

The illustrations in this book are much more realistic than in the National Geographic book.  The text goes a little more in-depth, and it uses historical examples of earthquakes.  Tsunamis are discussed, and there is more coverage of the destruction caused to things like bridges and underground pipes.  But the text is still simple enough for young children to understand:

“Every earthquake has a center.  That’s where it all begins.  Parts of the earth move up and down or sideways and make waves that spread out and go through the whole earth.  They are called seismic waves.  The word comes from seismos, a Greek word meaning to shake.  Scientists all over the world measure the waves on seismometers.” (p. 8-9)

At the end of the book, there is a page with more earthquake facts, and a list of the top ten most destructive earthquakes in terms of lives lost.  Looks like Haiti will be on that list in the next revision.

Seymour Simon.  Earthquakes.  Smithsonian/Collins, 2006.  32 pages.  Age 7 to 12.

The advantage of this book, besides a more sophisticated text, is the use of actual photographs to show how much destruction an earthquake can really cause.  Those are supplemented by illustrations that explain concepts like fault lines, and maps that show earthquake zones.

The book provides greater explanations of things like seismographs and the Richter Scale, and introduces the Mercali Intensity Scale.  Of the three, this book is the best bet for older readers:

“Our planet’s solid rocky crust floats on the mantle, a 1,800-mile-thick layer of very hot and dense rock that slowly churns around like a huge pot of boiling soup in very slow motion.  The slowly moving mantle carries along the solid crust, which is cracked like an eggshell into a number of huge pieces called plates.” (p. 13)

Nonfiction Monday is at SimplyScience Blog today.

I have a history of not loving documentaries.  The largest contributing factor has been a lack of comprehension of how dressing up like a historical figure to sit in front of a camera and read letters added anything to their actual content. ^[1]  But I’ve had to rethink that.  What if fashion was really important for the subject of a biographical documentary?  Wouldn’t elaborate costume design make perfect sense?

As you know from my recent Nonfiction Monday roundup, Dolley Madison is one of my favorite first ladies, so I was really excited to find out that WGBH’s American Experience is all about Mrs. Madison tomorrow, March 1st, to kick off Women’s History Month.

Among her many merits, Dolley was a fashionable lady (turbans? why not?), and getting to see dresses like she might have worn is a treat.  There is a behind the scenes look at costume design which is absolutely fascinating.  I’m starting to think that I’ve been waiting all my life for the right documentary to win me over, and that this will be the one.

There are a few preview clips available, and my favorite is about the courtship of Mr. and Mrs. Madison:

[Watch it on YouTube]

The others are about how Dolley invented the role of the first lady and the extremes of partisan politics of the day (with a “head up your ass” background comment that reminds me of my grandfather).

That’s March 1st at 9:00 PM.  Well, it is here.  Maybe you should check your local listings.  Thanks to Jen Holmes from American Experience for the heads up.

^[1] What I considered worse—and I still don’t quite get this one—is when a non-English speaking person is translated by someone who sounds like he’s speaking with a fake accent.  The person doesn’t speak English.  We don’t need to hear his lines read as if he did.  That’s what overdubbing is for.  But that’s another story.

Bari Koral’s Rock and Roll Garden is our new official “Yikes, we’ve been in the apartment for almost 48 hours (and it’s starting to get chilly)” album.  I have to be sure to keep it on my phone at all times in the event of a power outage.  Works great for rainy days, too, or anytime there’s a little extra energy to burn.

Several of the songs have guided movement-oriented lyrics.  “Boom Boom” will get you to stand, jump, and spin between periods of sitting.  “Clap It” will have you clapping right, left, and all over the place…you’ll even clap your toe, whatever that means.  Then there’s “Dance All Day,” which asks the listener to touch different body parts, strike a pose, and, well, you can guess the rest.

The other songs will keep you moving, too.  “Big Sounds” invites zooming around like different vehicles.  “Hey Ducky” is a finger play waiting to happen (“Five little duckies/ Swimming in a row”).  And the girls even made up a dance to “Pop.”  It involves starting small, like a corn kernel, and getting a little taller with each pop.

The album is short—under 30 minutes—but it’s so fun and pleasing to listen to, we spun it three times in a row.  At my suggestion!  If you’re a parent, you know what a huge compliment that is.  This is a must of any young kid who likes to move…so just about every young kid.

Standard disclosure:  The CD was provided by Waldmania! for review.  They have neither paid nor pressured me to speak well of it.

Rhys is a big boy now.  At least, that’s what she was singing to herself at storytime this past Saturday, during the craft.

Now, given her recent haircut, someone might believe her…well, probably not.  I’m projecting.  I usually own the names people call me, but I was never into “androgynous.”

…says the person who had a shaved head for the better part of 1996-2006.  I know, I was asking for it.  Moving on.

Rhysie was actually singing “Big Boy Now” off the album Toddlerville from Baze and His Silly Friends.  And, if you ask me, it’s the standout track on the album.  It has a charm I was having a hard time putting my finger on, so I turned to my musical better half.  (Seriously.  We agree on classic punk, and not much else.)  This is a paraphrase of our conversation:

Nate:  Spanish guitar, I guess.

Me:  It seems like it should be part of a movie with bad guys…

Nate:  It does have a spaghetti western thing going.

Me:  Yes!  I think that’s what I’m trying to say.

Nate:  Except there aren’t any horns, so I don’t know if it qualifies.

Me:  Oh.

Then he proceeds to tell me something about the “characteristics of modern rockabilly” and I proceed to nod like I have half a clue what he’s talking about.

So, even if spaghetti western isn’t quite accurate, there is definitely a gunslingers-at-the-opposite-ends-of-the-jungle-gym element at play.  “I’m a big boy now/ You better watch out.”

As a whole, the album has lots of silliness (as you might expect from the band name.)  That silliness is something all kids need and enjoy.  Another favorite track, “This Is Your Body,” rocks and rolls listeners into bouts of spontaneous dancing.  Yes!  It rolls!  If you need proof, watch the video.

To summarize the album’s merits, let me put it this way:  With no electricity and a dwindling phone battery, this was the first album we chose to listen to.

Standard disclosure:  The CD was provided by the band for review.  They have neither paid nor pressured me to speak well of it.

In my last post, I mentioned a listserv message that had me incensed.  The gist of it was to ask what other libraries were doing with their Baby Einstein DVDs since the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released their study that showed that children under two shouldn’t watch videos.

I’m not sure what makes me cringe more—that the person thinks that the AAP actually conducted research on the topic, or that they think such research happened recently.  If you’re thinking of discarding all DVDs aimed at a certain population, maybe you should take a glance at the research, and not just rely on media confusion and listserv subscribers…?!

The AAP hasn’t conducted research

The AAP published their position statement about children’s media in 1999, and it states that children under two shouldn’t watch TV:

“Pediatricians should urge parents to avoid television viewing for children under the age of 2 years.  Although certain television programs may be promoted to this age group, research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers (eg, child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills.  Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged.”

AAP Policy Committee on Public Education.  (1999).  Media education.  Pediatrics 104(2), 341-343.

http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;104/2/341

The AAP makes no claim that videos are actually harmful.  What they say is that time spent watching TV takes away from time playing and interacting with people—things that a multitude of research studies have proven to be integral to healthy development.  It’s self-evident.  Time spent doing one thing equals less time available to do something else.  You obviously don’t need to conduct any research to back up that statement.

And yet one might find this abstinence policy a little extreme.  As mentioned in the previous post, parents can make TV time into an interactive experience; but even when it’s used as a momentary diversion, is that really such a bad thing?  Is it imperative that we interact with babies every hour of every day?

Ethical quandary

I’m sure there is research on that topic—whether we should incessantly prattle at babies, or if we should give them downtime.  With all the time, motivation, and database access in the world, I could find an answer for you.  However, even with all of those things, I could not tell you whether videos are actually harmful to babies, because the AAP has precluded such research with their policy statement.  By saying that no child under two should be exposed to television, they render any controlled study on the topic unethical.

Where does that leave scientists who want to research the subject?  Pretty much restricted to parent surveys.  It’s not as though a survey study can’t make its way into a peer-reviewed journal—it happens—but its validity will always be considered somewhat suspect.  Who wouldn’t be tempted to tell a white lie or two to avoid sounding like a horrible parent?  Just me?  Doubt it.

What the CCFC says

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) has a “fact” sheet on their website entitled Baby Scam, which derides the makers of videos for children, particularly Baby Einstein.  My favorite part is the cigarette pack style warning:  “THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS RECOMMENDS NO SCREEN TIME FOR CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF TWO.”  Doesn’t it make you want to panic, like letting your kids watch these videos is on par with handing them a pack of smokes, or maybe a bottle filled with scalding hot coffee or household cleaners?  Or just about anything you read on Really Bad Parenting Advice?

And yet, if you read through it (and especially if you check their citations), you realize that the most mud they can sling is to say that research on the subject is inconclusive.  How frightening.

But…they have footnotes!

Let’s comb through some of the claims the CCFC makes in Baby Scam, shall we?  They definitely zeroed in on the parts that served their purpose.  Me, I’m more of a “What did they conclude?” kind of girl.

Baby Scam says, “Television viewing is negatively associated with regular sleep patterns for babies.”  The study they cite says:

“Our data are cross-sectional, which precludes us from making causal inferences.  However [ . . . ] it is plausible that television viewing leads to disordered sleep in this young population.”  (emphasis mine)

Thompson, D. A. and Christakis, D.  (2005).  The association between television viewing and irregular sleep schedules among children less than 3 years of age.  Pediatrics 116(4), 851-856.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/116/4/851

N.B.  Read page 855 for several other “limitations to this study that deserve comment.”

Baby Scam says, “For babies 8 to 16 months, every hour spent watching baby videos is associated with slower language development—they know six to eight words less on a standardized vocabulary test than babies who don’t watch.”  The study says:

“Further research is required to determine the reasons for an association between early viewing of baby DVDs/videos and poor language development.”

Zimmerman, Frederick J., Christakis, Dimitri A., and Meltzoff, Andrew N.  (2007).  Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years (abstract).  The Journal of Pediatrics 151(4), 364-368.

http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(07)00447-7/abstract

I could go on, but I think you’ve got enough data to sense a pattern.  I won’t contend that there are associations between watching videos and [insert bad thing], but we don’t know how many other factors may be contributing to [bad thing].  I guess it’s not necessary to demonstrate that one causes the other before picking up a pitchfork.

Further reading

In 2005, Kaiser Family Foundation published The Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six: A History of Research, a comprehensive literature review spanning five decades.  Not to spoil the ending, but their “conclusion” about media effects on children under two was that more research is needed—no surprise there.  For an overview of more recent research, see Baby Einstein Controversy: What Parents Need to Know on Paula Slade’s Children’s Entertainment Examiner blog.

Top image credit:  “baby einstein” by Flickr user Kimblah, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 license.

Bottom image credit:  “The magic of television” by Flickr user Ian Turk, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 license.