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

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.