One K-5 school library, coming up! The 000's

Checking out the picture books

Late this summer an entire library of books was delivered to a new school in Baltimore. I should know - I picked all 2,254 of them. It was what you might call a labor of love. Emphasis on the "labor". Actually, emphasis on the love.

As we shelved what amounted to thirty thousand dollars worth of brand-new beautiful books, one of our parent volunteers said, "I bet you've read half the books in this room!" I did a quick scan of a few shelves and admitted that actually, I have read probably upwards of 75% of them. Most of the fiction, all of the picture books, and one heck of a lot of the nonfiction. Wow. I am either really really sad or really really dedicated.

You may hire me to create or maintain your school library collection, and I will certainly not object, but I thought it might be nice to share some of the lists I created. I'll do a series of about a dozen posts, at least the nonfiction, starting with the 000's. This will be my own version of School Library Journal's Series Made Simple issue (which is a great resource, by the way).

The 000's are kind of a weird little miscellany area of a school library. Every school should have a set of the World Book, and please do buy an almanac every year, but if you have the bucks, try to get a few "strange but true" reference books in there. Some kids really respond to Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Guinness World Records. Books like these have a sneaky added benefit - the indexed entries introduce kids to a nonlinear method of approaching a book, important when they're doing real research later.




Gee, Joshua. Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying Truth About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, & More. A kind of weird book to start off with, but, as the kid says in Beetlejuice, "I myself am strange and unusual."

Teitelbaum, Michael. Bigfoot Caught on Film: And Other Monster Sightings!. The 24/7: Science Behind the Scenes series from Scholastic is... it's ok. Little niblets of info, good for hooking readers, but it's nice to have something with a little more depth to back these books up, in case your readers do get interested in the subject. I picked carefully through this series and selected just a few titles.

Prieto, Anita C. B Is For Bookworm: A Library Alphabet. These alphabet books from Sleeping Bear Press are a bit uneven. This one is pretty dry, but I wanted to fill out a small suite of library-themed books. If you're tempted by the ABC book for your state, or about a particular subject, be sure to get your hands on it and read it through first. Some of the words can be awfully obscure.

Ruurs, Margriet. My Librarian Is A Camel: How Books Are Brought To Children Around The World. How people live around the world is a particularly important theme in this school, and one that I personally find important. Kids find the juxtapositions fascinating, too. The pictures in this book are very nice.

Farndon, John. Visual Encyclopedia (DK). I keep buying and buying this book, and they keep loving and loving it until they love it to pieces. I'm not the world's be-all end-all fan of Dorling Kindersley - I don't think they fact-check hard enough - but this single-volume encyclopedia + elementary school kids = LOVE.

Aronson, Marc. For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever. Frankly? I bought this on Jon Scieszka's recommendation. More graphically interesting and up-to-date looking than that other "dangerous" book, which I swear was written for parents.

Farndon, John. Do Not Open. Irresistable, full of fun facts about freaky stuff, several activities and suggestions for bringing the info in the book to life. Worth the few extra bucks. My 8 year old got a copy of this for his birthday and was enraptured. His little brother is learning to read just as fast and as hard as he can so he can have a turn with it.

Macdonald, Guy. Even More Children's Miscellany: Smart, Silly, and Strange Information That's Essential to Know. Same stuff, but for smaller kids.

McDonald, Megan. Stink-O-Pedia: Super Stink-y Stuff From A To ZZZZ. I like Stink Moody. I like him better than his sister, Judy. I buy Judy Moody, but I buy Stink too. He's funny, he's good-hearted, he's a 'second chapter book' for boys who think fantasy is pointless. Stink reads encyclopedias in his spare time, so I thought I'd offer his fans Stink's very own encyclopedia.

Murrie, Steve & Matthew. Every Minute On Earth: Fun Facts That Happen Every 60 Seconds. I never can seem to find enough books about time. Time is hard to explain. So when this book arrived at the public library, I snatched it. I stood and read it between customers at the information desk and I figured if I was fascinated enough to read it all the way through, surely somebody in that school would be too.

Mark, Jan. Museum Book: A Guide To Strange And Wonderful Collections. This is Baltimore, baby. We've got a light bulb museum and a teeth museum and we used to have a dime museum. We are to strange and wonderful as Paris is to lovely and inspiring.

Marcus, Leonard S. Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture-Book Teams Go to Work. Marvelous funny anecdotes, lots of illustrations showing all steps of the creative process, a very nice introduction to the concept of collaboration. Terrible cover though.

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon - review

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon
It's possible that my opinion of this book has been influenced by the appearance in my bed this morning (at, possibly, 7am, I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on yet), of a seven-year-old who wasn't interested in it when I suggested it to him yesterday at the library, but who had apparently woken up, read the whole book, and now needed to synopsize it for me, read the funniest passages out loud, and tell me that he needs the next book in the series RIGHT NOW. He could barely get the words out for laughing.

After we kicked him out (my saintly husband: "Let Mommy sleep, ok? Go read something else."), I fell back to sleep and dreamed about pudgy animated dragon pirates. Ursula Vernon, get your agent on the phone with Noggin. Danny Dragonbreath is good animated.

So. Danny Dragonbreath is the only semi-mythological creature in a school full of non-mythic reptiles and amphibians. He gets a little picked-on for this, but his is an upbeat, enthusiastic semi-mythological 5th-grade spirit, and he doesn't let that bully Big Eddy the Komodo dragon get him down. His best friend Wendell is (predictably) a more cautious, intellectual type, and in the way of mismatched best friend pairs everywhere, Danny has to cajole Wendell into assisting him in his pursuit of unorthodox solutions to common problems.

In this instance, the problem is a research paper on the ocean, a subject that Danny knows nothing about. Danny's solution? A visit to Cousin Edward the sea serpent, who takes the gung-ho Danny and freaked-out Wendell on an undersea tour. They explore a coral reef, a sunken ship, and a deep-sea trench. Along the way, sneaky Ursula Vernon finagles interesting facts about sea creatures and ocean phenomena into the adventure.

But it's the snarkalicious writing that will keep my seven-year-old, and other kids who appreciate funny (I'm thinking it might appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid devotees, if I can get them past the dragon thing) coming back for more. In a sidebar, Vernon writes, "A school of potato salad can skeletonize a cow in under two weeks, assuming that the cow doesn't get bored and move."

Our library system has Dragonbreath filed as a graphic novel, but it's not. It's one of those hybrids, something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with pages of panels carrying the action in some places and pages of text doing the bulk of the work. There could be more graphic passages, I have to say. Ursula Vernon's drawing style is extremely nice - full-on grownup quality work, with a strong line quality and bold shading that highlights each panel's central idea. Think Owly.

Such high contrast sometimes makes a comic look ominous and bleak (Dark Knight Returns, Grendel), but in this case, the choice of grass green as a highlight color keeps that from happening, and it's a technique that is particularly appropriate and effective in the undersea scenes. The vertical panels that show the sinuous Edward diving or rising to the surface are unusually lovely. Page layouts are varied and interesting, but still quite simple and easy to follow.

In sum: . I've been looking for a Babymouse for boys for a long time, and I think Dragonbreath is it - snappy, giggleworthy text and strong, coherent graphic passages telling a fun, friendly, exciting story with just the right balance of realism and fantasy. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs with bated breath!

Lives of the The Great Artists by Charlie Ayres - review

Lives of the The Great Artists by Charlie Ayres
Brilliantly laid out, beautifully printed, brightly written, and augmented with activities, web resources, and fun facts, this book will hook young readers of every type.

Twenty European artists are profiled, arranged in chronological order. Each entry begins with a summary and a portrait, and then the reader is dropped into the artist's life. We 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.

The narrative is written in the present tense, which gives it a fictionalized "feel," but the bulk of the events and feelings described are based on correspondence or other documentation (although such support is not cited in the book).

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 color palette, drawn from the works of art used as illustrations, and despite the multitude of sidebars, layout is clean and clear.

Back matter includes chronologies of the artists, locations of major collections of each artist's works, a glossary, and catalog entries for each work of art.

Unfortunately, this graceful, thoughtful book is badly marred by a garish cover that not only fails to represent the rich content within, but also fails to acknowledge the author's stated scope - European artists of the past seven hundred years. There is no such qualifying language on the cover, leading to the unpleasant - and offensive - impression that the book is declaring that the only important artists are European.

Antony Mason's A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the Twentieth Century takes a more encyclopedic approach to this subject and would make a good companion volume.

You're a bad man, Mr. Gum! by Andy Stanton, read by the author - review

You're a bad man, Mr. Gum! by Andy Stanton, read by the author

"'I am glad you asked me that,' said Friday, 'because the universe is my specialist subject and I am the winner of quizzes where that's concerned.'

This audio book had our whole family giggling all the way up Interstate 95 from Georgia when we came home from Spring Break. Really. Now, I don't want to take away from the print edition, which is certainly a funny book, with hip little illustrations and a chapter entitled "Mr. Gum Has a Cup of Tea" whose entire text is "Mr. Gum had a cup of tea," but on audio...

Let's put it this way. The other audio book that we really enjoyed on that trip, Neil Gaiman's The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection, included an interview with the author as a Special Bonus Feature. The interview is conducted by Gaiman's daughter Maddie, who asks good questions, including: "Why do you like audio books?" Neil answers this (and all the other) questions with his accustomed brevity, saying, (and I am paraphrasing here - that thing about Gaiman's brevity was me lying) that he likes audio books because he as an author can read the book as he first heard it in his head when he wrote it. Funny voices and all.

So, Andy Stanton apparently had choirs of lunatics speaking in his head when he was writing You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!. Or maybe just Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and the entire Monty Python ensemble, including the dead guy who wanted to be a doctor. His characters are by turns terrible and silly, mystical and silly, adorable and silly, crabby and silly, and... silly. PLUS we get extremely Adams-y silly stuff like"

"She ran past a cat's ears that were lying on the pavement and a cat's nose and whiskers that were lying on the pavement and a cat's body and tail and legs and eyes and claws that were lying on the paveme -- in fact it was all just one cat, lying on the pavement."

And don't look for any Special Bonus Features on this CD, or in the book, because there AREN'T ANY.

Or... that's me lying again.

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger
I grew up in Maryland. Which means that every third field trip was to some vast undulant green field that once played host to one of the big bloody shindigs of the Civil War. Bull Run, Appomattox, Antietam. Harper's Ferry, Yorktown. Gettysburg if you were lucky, because at least then there was a side trip to the farmers' market, where all the bad kids bought bullwhips which the teachers confiscated for the bus ride home.

Ohhh, god that stuff was boring to me. Whatever visualizations the Park Service dreamed up: films, dioramas, 3-D maps with little lights, rangers in uniform... I never could get it up for the Civil War. Still can't. Seriously, I'm a full-on adult - a librarian, a photo archivist, a reader - who has never given a rat's rosy rumpus about the American Civil War. It's embarrassing but true.

Which is why Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run has me SO IMPRESSED. Twelve-year-old Stonewall (named after the general by his obsessed parents) shares my outlook - he's been frog-marched to Civil War re-enactments every weekend since he was six, and he knows enough about the Civil War to know that he is not interested in it in the least.

I have to say, I was a little dubious at first. Those obsessed parents are pretty monolithic in their disdain, disregard, and disapproval of Stonewall, and Stonewall is good and sick of weekends without his PlayStation. I wasn't looking forward to, say, a father-son adventure during which they Learn To Appreciate Each Other's Skills And/Or Outlook.

Luckily, when Stonewall is catapulted back in time to the real Battle of First Manassas (aka Bull Run, the first battle of the Civil War), his parents are left behind, presumably to putter around pretending to shoot other History Channel addicts in the twenty-first century. No more jerky dad 'til the very end.

Instead, we get the entire Confederate Army, such as it was at this point in the war: barefoot and smelly, raggedly armed and freshly learning the terrifying and painful realities of battle. And Stonewall's reaction is even more visceral - no matter what words Stonewall uses in his fast-paced, detailed narration, you know that he is really saying "Holy crap!"

The action is easy to follow, though the decision to include a map of the battlefield is a good one. The supporting characters, though a bit broadly drawn, satisfy. The conclusions that Stonewall comes to - about war, slavery, freedom, and bravery - are strongly supported by the events that he witnesses. No murky philosophizin' here:

Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it? (italics mine)

By the end of the book, Stonewall has a mission that reverberates into his own time, a pretty girl to share it with, and most importantly, a reason to attend next weekend's reenactment. Which I assume is also a reason for these authors to write another book. I hope so, because Stonewall Hinkleman humanizes the Civil War like nothing I've ever read.

National Geographic Investigates: The Ancient Celts by Jen Brown - review

National Geographic Investigates: The Ancient Celts by Jen Brown

In beautiful photographs and well-written text, this entry in the very readable National Geographic Investigates series makes a thorough presentation of the most up-to-date knowledge about this ancient European culture, from its origins in 800 BC through 500 AD, and the echoes of Celtic traditions in our lives today.

Aerial photos, timelines, informative sidebars, and National Geographic's famous maps augment text that asks and answers interesting questions ("Why did the Celts make human sacrifices?" "What happened when the Romans came?"). Rigorous in its distinction between theory, supposition, and proven fact, the book features a minimum of illustration, in favor of photos of artifacts, sites, and physical remains - including close-ups of Celtic "bog people" showing details such as manicured fingernails and hairdos. Scale is scrupulously noted for all objects and structures in both English and metric units.

Numerous explanations of techniques and processes - both those of the Celts and those employed by archaeologists - inject an element of how-to, a canny addition that will hook the attention of the reader fascinated by how things work and how we figure things out.

Previous books about the Celts for this age group have concentrated on the Celtic presence in the British Isles, or have focused on Celtic myths or daily life. In sixty-plus pages, Ancient Celts is a balanced, scientific account that doesn't stint on the mummified remains. Sure to appeal to a broad range of learners.

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, read by Cherry Jones - review

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, read by Cherry Jones
I loved these books as a kid - loved the simplicity, loved the ingenuity, thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't entertain myself for hours (days! months!) playing with wood chips and/or grass. Begged my parents to tap the maple trees out front of our suburban house. Sigh.

Recently, I thought I'd pull them out and see if my boys would be as spellbound as I had been. Well, they are. My copy of Little House in the Big Woods is inscribed "To [Your Neighborhood Librarian], on her eighth birthday -- Love, Granny and Sam," and that was as fascinating to my sons as the Nazca lines are to conspiracy theorists. I can't imagine their ideas of me as a child.

What I didn't expect, however, was that my husband and I would become spellbound as well. After we read Little House in the Big Woods aloud, we switched to audio. Cherry Jones (the president on 24 and Matt Damon's mom in the Ocean's Eleven movies), is the perfect reader for these books. Her voice is both warm and dry - though she sometimes reads with a smile in her voice, she never, ever gets sugary. There's just enough astringency there to give a hint of the extraordinarily isolated and precarious life Pa has signed the family on for, and her slightly measured pace is just right for young listeners. A frequent reader on NPR's Selected Shorts, Ms. Jones has a voice you want to listen to.

That's a real plus, because these books have so much to offer beyond the narrative. The choices that Mrs. Wilder made when she wrote them reveal the changes that she observed in her lifetime. She wrote the books in the 1930's, when she was in her 60's, and took care to scrupulously document such processes as building a log house (with only hand tools and two people) and packing a covered wagon. She takes the time to describe food and objects that, by the 1930's, were no longer in use, like the three-legged iron pot that Ma cooks in over the campfire.

However, many frightening or dramatic events are recounted without much comment and without echo. When the entire Ingalls family is so sick with malaria that none of them can get up for a cup of water, Laura narrates the incident, mentions that it was awfully lucky that one of their (distant) neighbors happened by, and moves on. But - says the adult reader - those people could have died! How many little houses on the prairie ended up little mausoleums on the prairie? And later the adult listener gradually realizes that the family has eaten nothing but meat and cornmeal for the better part of a year. No eggs, no vegetables, no wheat products. If I were Pa, I'd have taught those girls to steal eggs from the prairie chickens.

At the end of the book, Pa learns that they must vacate the land that they have settled and plowed. Without discussion, despair, or dithering, and with a minimum of planning, Pa announces that they are leaving the next day. The family gets up in the morning, puts all their things into the wagon and leaves behind those extraordinary structures that Pa built with his bare hands, seemingly from thin air: the house, the well, the stable, and the plowed field full of seed. That's just what they did, and through the level-headed offices of Mrs. Wilder and Ms. Jones, we hear it, we understand it, and, like Pa and Ma and the girls, we move on.

I don't know if historical fiction will ever get better than this.

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith - review

African-American girl-powered WWII historical fiction? Hell, this book would get the thumbs-up from me on the strength of its demographic and seasonal usefulness alone! I'm going to be passing this baby out right and left when historical fiction season is upon us. But I'm going to feel good about doing so on the strength of the unusual story and interesting characters.

Taught to fly by her late father, a farmer with a sideline in crop dusting, all Ida Mae wants is a life among the clouds. But after she graduates from high school, she's stuck cleaning houses and living at home with her mom, little brother, and grandfather, because not only is Ida Mae a girl, and a farm girl at that, she's a black farm girl in the American South in the 1940's.

When the United States enters World War II, and later creates the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, Ida Mae grabs at her chance to fly and to serve her country. However, her race is still a barrier, and she enters the WASP "passing" for white.

So many terrific topics are brought up here - gender and racial discrimination, of course, but also the friction of maintaining a falsehood in order to attain one's true potential.

Flygirl is maybe not the most fluidly-written book - many characters appear to express emotion either by blushing or grinning - but it's one I can recommend with my head held high, and one I'll enjoy discussing with some of my more thoughtful young friends.

Gifts for girls

Girls can be hard to buy for. They're picky! We're picky - us girls. Here are some things to think about when you're buying for girls.




Is she an animal lover?
Korgi by Christian Slade. For anyone age maybe 5 or 6 and up, up, up. Wordless, but not toothless. Unbelievably adorable little corgi dog and his girl (who has wings but I wouldn't call her a fairy) get into trouble with monsters and squidlike aliens and scrap their way out. Black and white, but that doesn't seem to be a problem with this title. And Korgi Book 2 is even better than the first.




Does she like action?
Rapunzel's Revenge by three Hales. Mmm, call this 10 and up. There are bullets and a hint of romance. Also wit. And BEAUTIFUL, detailed color art. I think this is one of the best graphic novels of the year.

The Lost Island of Tamarindby Nadia Aguilar. Age 10 and up. Reviewed earlier.




Any interest in cooking?
The Spatulatta Cookbook. Age 7 and up, but you might be able to push it younger if there is an interested grownup in the house. This is last year's excellent cookbook for kids, but nothing this year tops it. It's two sisters doing the cooking, and they're in most of the pictures, fooling around, demonstrating, having a good time. It's spiral bound, which is so great for cookbooks. And the pictures make the food look appetizing, not weird. The best kid cookbook I've seen this year is Southern Living Kids Cookbook, which kind of surprised me.




Into mysteries?
Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell. Age 7 and up. Heavily illustrated, this is kind of a bridge book between First Chapter type books and regular chapter books. A lot of the clues are in the crinkly, detailed pictures, which is super fun.

The Far-Flung Adventures series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Age 9 and up. Not as heavily illustrated, super sense of humor. I know an entire class of seven year olds who pushed their reading ability so that they could read one of these books together, and they all loved it.

The 39 Clues. Age 9 and up. Ok ok it's gimmicky as all get-out, with the cards, and the online thing, and the actual prizes, but kids are lapping it up and the authors that are participating are first-rate. Plus the characters are interesting and strongly-written, and the plot is respectably labyrinthine.




Is she curious about the world?
What the World Eats. From the team that brought us Material World: A Global Family Portrait back in 1995 - you know, the book that showed families all over the world in their houses, and with all their stuff brought outside for a picture? Holy crap, we should do that with our house, and see what we can leave out on the curb. But anyway. The new book has the same lush, colorful, giant pictures, the same potent juxtapositions, and results in the same sense of insight about wealth, and health, and opportunity.




And once those insights have been attained, there's Give a Goat, a picture book for kids maybe first grade and up that's all about Heifer International. The kid in the book organizes his class to raise money so that they can purchase a goat via Heifer. Touches on teamwork, responsibility, compassion, arithmetic, and economics. A terrific accompanying gift if you yourself give flocks of chicks for the holidays.

Oh, you've got a teen girl to buy for?
Sorry, you're screwed. Can't make a teen happy. Amazon gift card, baby. That way, if she spends it on The Twilight Saga: Slipcased, you don't have to know about it.

Ahem. Did you really think I was going to leave you in the lurch like that? Naw... here are just a couple ideas for teenage girls.

Crafty crafter?


Get her to make me one of those mohawk hats, will ya?


Not so adeptly crafty, and not as much of an anarchist?


Cute but not kawaii.


Writer?


Ignore the stupid title, this one is an excellent how-to for self-expression, covering technical aspects as well as inspiration.


Artist?


Buy her art supplies, but throw in this one for inspiration.


I'd be tempted to buy actress/mathematician Danica McKellar's new book, Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss, for a middle school or teen girl, but I'd be afraid it'd look like I was being all preachy. If you can get away with it, you should. The book is legitimately funny and helpful and hard to put down! Who'd'a guessed?

And if she sometimes feels the pressure:


It's wonderful. It's a year in the life of several high school students in Chicago - it's like a reality show with a writer.

Stay tuned for the boy books.
Your pal,
your neighborhood librarian

There are cats in this book by Viviane Schwarz - review

There are cats in this book by Viviane Schwarz
I'm a pretty big Scrooge, it's a fact. I jumped up and down and kissed everyone within reach when I realized we didn't have to put up a Christmas tree this year because we're going out of town. And anyone who knows me knows I hate our cats. Cat. I keep forgetting the one died. See? Isn't that terrible?

But the cats in There are cats in this book can come and hang out with the children at my house any time.

The book first grabbed me with its understated title. Running across the bottom of the front cover, "There are cats in this book" is a whisper from a kid who has something to show you. Does not hurt that the book is bound in that super-matte, sort of toothy ivory paper that makes you want to stroke it.

On the page facing the endpaper, the book tells you, "The cats aren't on this page." On the next page we're told, "The cats aren't on this page, either. They're on the next page. They'd love to play with you. They're very friendly."

And do you know what? Those cats - Moonpie, Tiny, and Andre - play with the reader! SO cleverly, the cats encourage the reader to turn pages: "Could you turn a whole PAGE?" "Because there's YARN on the next page. LOOK!" Flaps and page cuts assist the cats in their efforts to play. Oh, it's fun. AND it's an amazing teaching tool, demonstrating page order, sequence, even dimensionality. I am kind of done with the "i" word, but when the cats get you to blow on them to dry them off after they are caught in a tidal wave... that's interactive, baby.

Nice swooshy brushy drawings are augmented by brightly-patterned bits of collage to keep There are cats in this book as fun to look at as it is to play with and read. I'd give this book to the littlest kids, to medium-size kids, and I think even older kids would be charmed by these fourth-wall-busting kitties. If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone!

Oooh! Oh God, Viviane Schwarz has patterns so you can knit your own cats! There's still time before Christmas, you crafty crafters!

The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar - review

The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar
Oh, boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! For kids who like their adventure with a little adventure thrown in, with a shot of adventure in a test tube shoved down in the middle to add in later after the adventure gets diluted by the melting ice!

No, wait, that's a Key West piña colada - there is no ice in this book. BUT - the Lost Island in question, somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle, IS vivid and unpredictable, full of characters who are lost, or found, or looking for their lost shaker of salt... just like Key West. Instead of Hemingway's six-toed cats, there are flying fish and giants and thuggish apes.

And not only is the setting marvelous - with a fabulist retro vibe reminiscent of Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, or Edgar Rice Burroughs - but the characters are full, modern, and believable. Our heroes are Maya and her younger brother Simon, who have been stranded on the island after their marine biologist parents were swept overboard in a storm. In some ways they are your typical brother-sister team (think Cryptid Hunters, The 39 Clues, The London Eye Mystery), sometimes chafing against each other, sometimes working together as smoothly as only family can. But these characters have an astringent emotional core: their mom and dad are missing, and Maya and Simon are worried. Too many books and movies get the parents out of the way so that the plot can proceed, and you could almost forget that there ever were parents. Not so here: Maya's anxiety wafts through The Lost Island of Tamarind like acrid smoke through the jungle.

In addition, the kids are carrying and caring for their baby sister, who, although a remarkably easy-going nine-month-old, is not some super-baby à la Sunny in A Series of Unfortunate Events. The hardships faced by these young people ring true, and they surmount them using skills consonant with their background and age. Having grown up on a boat, they both can read a ship's log and navigate (and change a diaper), and Simon is a star at knots, but neither is a genius, and they each have their flaws.

I have been pressing The Lost Island of Tamarind into the hands of every eager reader who has come my way recently. There are enough ooh-aah moments (mermaids!) to satisfy the fantasy readers, but not so many as to put off the anti-swords contingent. It's astonishing to me that this is Nadia Aguiar's first book: the sweet, lush setting and the sharp, clean characters make one fine tropical cocktail. I want another.

Manjiro: The boy who risked his life for two countries, by Emily Arnold McCully - review

Manjiro: The boy who risked his life for two countries, by Emily Arnold McCully
Beautifully illustrated. Packed with detail. A suspenseful story. I'm not too sure what else to say, except that it's a shame all of the preceding phrases have been completely leached of meaning by overuse, like a beautiful cotton kimono that has grown faded and fragile after six months on the back of a teenage Japanese fisherman stranded on a rocky island eating albatross eggs and drinking rainwater to stay alive.

Detail. Suspense. Beautiful illustrations. More information. I'm gonna find something to nominate it for. Wow.

Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson - review

Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson
Oh, I love Halloween. It's got to be my favorite time of year. The weather is getting nippy but not too cold yet, and there's nothing more satisfying to me than kicking though the dry leaves on the sidewalk. Plus, the iconography is exciting and adaptable - black cats can be adorable or scary, witches can be gruesome or slinky, spiders can be big and hairy and icky... or tiny and delicate and fascinating. Let's not forget the color scheme. Does not orange and black beat red and green any day? Christmas takes one tone: heartwarming... while Halloween has endless variations. Your Halloween might be all naughty nurse-y; Martha Stewart's Halloween is classy; and my Halloween is... well, it's different every time.

Which might be why I loved Magic Trixie so much. Jill Thompson has drawn up a set of monsters, witches and ghosts that are hip and fabulous, from Trixie's grandma Mimi, with her green fishnets, peacock-feather broom, and wide purple snakeskin belt cinching her coy black minidress... to Trixie's goofy school friend Stitch, who looks just like any cool second-grade boy, with unruly black hair and long cargo shorts, except for the fact that he's stitched together from parts of corpses and can unzip his head and show off his brain when it's his turn for show and tell.



(Or it might be the pink hair.)

This first book in the Trixie series glories in introducing these characters. There's a nice little plot involving Trixie accepting her baby sister, but the real joy is in learning about spitfire Trixie and finding out what fresh visual fun is waiting on the next page. Jill Thompson, a multiple Eisner winner, knows her craft. Page layouts flow seamlessly, making this one of the smoothest graphic novel reads I've ever seen. Colors balance, with Trixie's wild orange / pink hair and acid green hatband contrasting beautifully with her black clothes and generally subdued backgrounds.

And every page holds a treat, whether it's a glimpse of Grandpa's dragon tattoo or Trixie's fly backpack.

I am delighted to find that Trixie has her own blog, full of extra pictures and Trixie's own observations.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George - review

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
When was the last time you read this book? It might be time to do it again.

My Side of the Mountain was published in 1959, one of Jean Craighead George's first books. I must have first read it in maybe 1972. But last week, when I slotted it into the CD player in the minivan and we heard Sam Gribley describe his first attempts to catch a fish, start a fire, and spend the night outside, it was as if Sam was sitting right there with us. We hung on his every word. Cheered when he caught that fish. I checked the rearview mirror when he described shivering under his makeshift canopy of hemlock boughs, and all three boys (my camp carpool) were listening with their eyes wide, worried expressions on their faces.

The descriptions are so concise and yet so atmospheric. Sam's feelings are so unambiguously rendered. The whole book is as clear and bracing as the stream that runs down the mountain.

Are there some dated aspects? Well, certainly it is a little odd that Sam's dad is supportive of him running away from home to live in the Catskills. Then there's the hitchhiking. And I'm here to tell you that no librarian nowadays would allow some kid to leave the library if she knew that he was fixing to live on his own outside. Consequences are thin on the ground on Sam's side of the mountain. I think the author makes clear, however, that Sam's good experience is due to planning, research, and a hefty slab of luck as much as his native perseverance and resourcefulness.

On our daily drive to camp, we often see big birds over the highway. Usually they're carrion birds - black vultures or buzzards - but from time to time we see the distinctive silhouette of a raptor. The other morning, I noticed one of those, pointed it out to the kids and said, "Think that's Frightful?" And a clear, distinct memory came to me - of wondering that exact thing whenever I saw a hawk or falcon when I was a kid.

Every kid deserves the door to the imagination that is this book.

Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin - review

Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin
Feeling picked-on and underappreciated in your own family? Surrounded by people who don't understand you? What you need is a one-inch-tall identical twin brother. Really!

Daniel lives with his three sisters, his mom, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother, and he feels a little overlooked. One day, he shrinks to the size of his fourth toe. Yes, he does. He grows back to normal size, though. Perplexed to say the least, he turns to his great grandmother, Granny Nanny, who reveals that the tendency to shrink is a well-kept and little-understood family secret. Another secret is Pablo, his twin, whom even his mother has never known about. Granny has been raising Pablo in secret all these years. She suspects it's her goulash that makes people shrink.

Pablo, or "The Pablo" as he calls himself, is The Bomb. Nobody can hear him, so he is free to make wisecracks about the women of the house. He can give voice to the opinions and comments that Daniel would get SO beat up for. He can pick and choose what he wants to learn about - Granny homeschools him, but he hitches a ride to school with Daniel whenever Daniel's class is studying something interesting. Pablo can watch TV in the daytime. Pablo has lots of good ideas about how to have fun.

This is a super-funny, super-cool book for kids at about a 3rd grade reading level. The illustrations are slouchy and hip, and the cover is a can't-miss. So glad it's a series!

How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest by Adrian Forsyth - review

How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest by Adrian Forsyth
What an interesting book! Forsyth, a senior biodiversity researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, explores relationships between animals and plants in rain forests throughout the world. He draws examples from his own travels and experiences, doesn't dumb down the botany for the young reader, and contextualizes his facts in a friendly, accessible way. The book even uses some of Forsyth's own photos.

What a shame about the design, though. Textbook-y and choppy, the design actually makes the photos and text appear to be generic, like placeholders. You'd have to be pretty committed to even give it a try.

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry - review

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
I just finished this book, sitting on the front porch drinking lemon soda and giggling out loud. Summer is so great.

The Willoughbys is a tour de force. In this short novel (174 pages, and that's including the glossary and bibliography), the estimable and thought-provoking Lois Lowry presents her own idea of a nice activity for a fine summer afternoon: she fires up the grill and roasts the living crap out of some of the most ludicrous and unpalatable tropes of classic children's literature.

• She takes the baby left on the doorstep, shears its angelic curls, and pawns it off on a neighbor.
• Her brave orphans are neither orphans, nor brave (at least at first).
• The long-lost relative is not particularly missed.
• The Swiss are by and large insufferable.

At least none of the characters manage to convince a wheelchair-bound pal to get up and walk again. That's one plot nugget too awful to be rehabilitated, even with barbecue sauce and hickory smoke.

And what emerges from the smoke, caramelized and juicy, is a story as lovable and appealing as it is wry and twisted.

The Willoughby children (there are four of them, plus two more that they pick up along the way), who are old-fashioned yet unsentimental, remind me of the kids in the Nurse Matilda stories. Or the Penderwicks. Roald Dahl will also come to mind. The children themselves frequently cite classic children's literature. But despite all these references and echoes - some explicit, others deliberately implied, and at least one sniffed out by a perSnickety fellow author - The Willoughbys stands on its own.

Will there be parents who recoil from the Willoughby children, who wish their (hilariously) detestable parents dead? "I'm wondering," Jane said, "would a crocodile eat a person in one gulp? Or in chunks?" Or who recoil from the Willoughby parents, who are indeed detestable (though hilariously so)? "Two tourists were eaten in huge gulps but it was not sad at all because they were French." I hope not. Because, you know, "hilarious" means "just joking, you dolts!"

My kids are off with their aunties and uncles splashing in rivers and having scavenger hunts in the woods. But when they get back, I am reading this book to them as soon as possible. And as long as Bob and I don't run off on a vacation of our own and try to sell the house out from under them, I won't worry about them getting any ideas!

Vacation reading

Ah! We are back from two weeks in various cities and beaches in the American Southeast, and did we have time to read? We did!

I read:



So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld
Loved it! The whole "cool hunter" thing is a bit nineties, but you gotta love a good mystery, and a good mystery that is full of cool stuff is even better. Also, Westerfeld's examination of the co-opting of youth trends for mass consumption is straight out of Commodify Your Dissent, a compendium by the folks at The Baffler that every teenager should read before cracking that next can of Monster Mixxd Energy Juice.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
(reviewed while I was on vacation in New Orleans, thank you very much)

Farthing by Jo Walton
Technically a grown-up book, I would recommend Farthing to any young adult reader interested in speculative fiction, history, or mystery. It's an illuminating "what-if" novel set in an England that has accepted Hitler's "Peace with Honor" - disguised as an old-fashioned English country house mystery: Gosford Park meets Brazil. There are many discussions involving sexuality, i.e. who is homosexual and who is not, but no sex.

The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony Bourdain
Essays by the author of Kitchen Confidential and The Bobby Gold Stories. I recommend the crap out of Tony Bourdain - but not, typically, for kids. There's the language, not to mention the extremely frank talk about sex and drugs. There are some teenagers, though, especially the ones considering restaurant careers... hey, they should know what they're getting into!


My rising 2nd grader read:



Black Lagoon adventures, books 1-7 by Mike Thaler ; illustrated by Jared Lee
The kid is giggling to himself as he goes through and then reading passages out loud to his younger brother. I'm taking that as a thumbs-up.


My husband read:



How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
Recommended road trip reading. At every state border, as we hollered out "Good-bye, Georgia!" and "Hello, Alabama!" Bob would have some anecdotal treasure to relate about battles, topography, bureaucratic snafus, and the duplicitousness of Virginia. Luckily, he kept most of them to himself. (I kid! I kid!)

Also, he read The Economist. Also the newspaper. On the beach. I swear, one of these days I'm going to strap him to a chair and force Robert Ludlum down his throat. Or... eww.


On audio:
Our faithful minivan transported us a grand total of 2875 miles. And did we listen to books in the car? We did!



We spent most of our time in the car with Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. We got through The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Titan's Curse.

My boys, who are 5 and 6 years old, now know the traits and attributes of all the major Greek gods and a fair number of the minor ones. They cried out for "more Percy" every time we got into the car. Unfortunately for my husband and I, the narrator, Jesse Bernstein, is... well. In addition to a gritted-teeth Queens accent that would make Archie Bunker proud (shtreet, frushtrated, firmiliar, foward, bedgeroom), the guy continually misplaces the emphasis in sentences and phrases. Also? A word to audio book producers? When your narrator encounters the word "ichor" and pronounces it "icker"? Stop the tape and look it up. He does animal voices really well, though.


And at bedtime:
Since the boys share a room, I can read to them both at bedtime, usually a long chapter book, while they fall asleep in their beds. I have read Nurse Matilda, The True Meaning of Smekday, and A Hat Full of Sky in this way. My Boov voice was irresistable, as I predicted, but the Nac Mac Feegles nearly did me in.



On the road I started reading the second Skulduggery Pleasant book, Playing with Fire. I am pleased to report that it is starting out just as sardonic and action-packed as the first book, and I am proud to say that I am working Skulduggery's deep velvet voice almost as well as Rupert Degas, who read that first book so amazingly well that we replayed sections again and again.

Here's to beach chairs, lounge chairs by the pool, couches in shady living rooms. Anywhere you get a chance to just sit and read. That's vacation, baby.