Banned Books Week FTW!

There are few holidays I enjoy celebrating more than Banned Books Week. To me, banning a book is just such a brilliant way of acknowleging its power and encouraging young people to read it.

People challenge books in school and public libraries all the time, everywhere. bannedbooksweek.org, in addition to their list of Banned Book Week events, now has a map of book challenges in the United States. Here's what they say about it:

There are hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008. But the total is far larger. 70 to 80 percent are never reported.

I took a look through the ALA's list of challenged and banned books for 2008-09 and I was happy to see books that I've reviewed on this blog, and more importantly, books that I've bought for the two school library collections that I manage.

Here is just a sample of the books that people have felt most threatened by in the past year. If I've reviewed it, the link is on the title. Get threatened! Read these books!




Alexie, Sherman. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.




Brannen, Sarah. Uncle Bobby's Wedding





Colfer, Eoin. Supernaturalist. This book had me on the edge of my seat, though I never reviewed it here. Dystopic YA fiction oh yeah!




Green, John. Looking for Alaska. Nobody writes realistic teen stories, with all their real drama and real humor, like John Green. Apparently somebody objected to all the real.




Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. Oh sure, it's harsh. It's graphic. But for any girl going through mental torment, it is a warm port in the storm.




Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. ...but remember, it's a sin to ban a classic.




de Haan, Linda and Stern Njiland. King and King.





Harris, Robie. It's Perfectly Normal. It's perfectly predictable for a book with the word "sex" in the subtitle to get some people's panties in a twist. Reading the word isn't going to give your kids chlamydia, you know.




Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass




Parnell, Peter. And Tango makes three. Gay! Gay penguins! Indoctrinating our children with their cuddly gayness! AAAGH!




Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels. One of the very few books about modern war for teens, and people complain about the language.




Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. Yup, people are still objecting to the depiction of nosepicking in this book.




Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Every year. Every year somebody gets worked up about it. As if our children would never learn the n-word if it weren't for that rascal Huck.

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.

You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien - review and interview

You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien

2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. Did you know that? Yeah maybe the astounding array of commemorative books tipped you off. We've had books by everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Norman Mailer hit the shelves this year. Many, if not most, of these books have been inspiring and beautiful. Many, if not most, have made me cry.

But while I am fully aware of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission as a concrete example of the highest heights that can be achieved - by man and by mankind - I have wondered just how engaging this story is for young people. My own children are mystified and a little alarmed when I get all choked up reading them Brian Floca's atmospheric and detailed Moonshot or try to explain to them the unique perspective represented by former astronaut Alan Bean's paintings in Mission Control, This is Apollo.

That's why I think Patrick O'Brien's work of "speculative non-fiction" is so important this year. For my kids, and for their friend Alex, who is the model for the kid in the book (disclosure: Pat's family and mine have been friends since our 3rd-grade boys were barely walking, much less traveling the solar system), space travel is not something that happened on a tiny black-and-white TV set in the kitchen forty years ago. Space travel is not even the - let me take a deep breath and try to use an adjective that is not pejorative - somewhat tepid space shuttle program.

Space travel is "huge ships shaped like pine cones with lots of little sonar devices and everyone wears goggles that can switch from night vision to underwater vision to sunglasses!" (I asked.) They think the future will involve "a permanent space colony on the Moon as big as Texas!" "Or maybe at one of the Lagrange points!"

But ok, that's my kids. Not every kid knows that the gravitationally stable Lagrange points are good spots for a space station. But I will argue that my kids are representative of many kids when they think that space travel is part of their future. And Patrick has done our kids a service by writing and illustrating, with his usual blend of meticulous research and stunning art, a reasonably plausible conception of travel to Mars. His journey includes a space elevator up to a geosynchronous orbit point, a nuclear thermal ship that gradually accelerates to 75,000 miles per hour as it covers the 35,000 miles to Mars, and a Mars lander that bombs through the Mars atmosphere before parachutes drop it gently to the dusty red plain.



The friendly, explanatory second-person narration contrasts nicely with the giant grin on the face of the kid as he bounds across the Martian surface. Makes it feel like the book is being narrated by a teacher chaperoning a really good field trip, trying to keep from letting on that she is just as excited as the kids are.

Anyone familiar with O'Brien's previous books (on topics like sailing ships, extinct mammals, knights, and, er, dinosaurs in space) will know that the man researches like a maniac. Marianne Dyson, herself an author of numerous kids' books on space, picked apart every fact presented in You Are the First Kid On Mars when she reviewed the book, but revised her opinion when the author emailed her, addressing her objections and supporting his every phrase. It is really nice to know that the book stands up to that kind of scrutiny.

The artwork in this book was done on a computer, a departure for O'Brien, who, in addition to illustrating his own books, paints large oils of ships under sail. His mastery of the software and techniques involved is impressive - many of the illustrations look like they could be photos, which is important for those kids who want things to be above all else "real".

We had the delightful O'Brien family over for dinner this weekend, and after my husband's excellent fish tacos, I had the chance to ask Pat some questions about the book.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: What was your inspiration for writing You Are the First Kid on Mars?

Patrick O'Brien: My editor, Tim Travaglini, was really into the whole space idea. It was his idea to do a speculative book about going to Mars. My books usually come from my ideas, but this one came from him.

YNL: Was there anything different about writing about future science vs. your usual subjects?

PO: All of my other books are about historic and prehistoric nonfiction subjects. It is fiction, because it hasn't actually happened, but I was treating it as a nonfiction book. The reason that it’s in the second person is I read some books like that as a kid. You will go to the Moon is the one that I remember most clearly. And they had it all wrong, it’s really funny to see all that. Presumably, my stuff will be all wrong.

YNL: What was your research process? Do you regularly read science periodicals like Wired or Scientific American? Or was this a new area for you?

PO: I’ve always been a science guy, I was a biology major in college, but my son is really into space. We watch a lot of space stuff on TV. When Alex was really young, he liked real space more than the fictional movies. We'd watch NOVA together, and his toys were Apollo models, not Star Wars toys. I read a lot about space with him, and on my own.

I used the most up to date, most accurate information that I could find about what it would take to get to Mars. I went through the NASA website, books on space travel.

YNL: Is this your first work created digitally?

PO: This is the first book I illustrated on the computer.

YNL: You're such a good painter though - why did you decide to do it using techniques that are new to you?

PO: Well, for fun, as a change. It was different, and I just thought it was appropriate to the subject matter. The thing about using the computer to do the art, a lot of people who don’t do it think you just push the spaceship button and you get a spaceship. You push the astronaut button, and you get an astronaut, and then you make it do what you want. But you still have to draw it, you still have to paint it. It’s just one more medium. When they invented watercolors, it didn’t put the oil painters out of business.

But there are advantages. You can make infinite changes - with watercolors, pretty much once it's down, it's there. You can make a certain amount of changes with oils, but with the computer, you can keep adjusting it until it's just what you want. I used Corel Painter X and a tablet, so it’s a lot like painting. It wasn't hard to learn.

YNL: Did you find it hard to stop making changes? Was it tempting to keep touching it, trying out variations?

PO: No. A little. I know what I’m going for, I have a picture in my mind, and when I've made that, it’s done.

There you go, folks. I made it, it's done. You will go to the Moon was, not surprisingly, on my shelf as a kid too.

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.

How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals by Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson, illustrated by Ward Jenkins - review

How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals by Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson, illustrated by Ward Jenkins
Oh my gosh do I need this book!

When you select books for school libraries, you are always on the lookout for sports-related books. It's a fact that some people - usually gentleman-type people, although there are ladies who fit this description too - just won't read anything that's not about sports. So we need sports books for every assignment: we need sports fiction, sports poetry, sports science project books, and lots and lots of sports biographies.

Most of that stuff is easy. Dan Gutman and Tim Green can carry a lot of water for a school librarian (especially Gutman - guy, if I ever meet you, I'm gonna kiss you right on the mouth!). But then there are the bios. Now, when you select biographies of athletes, you want to cater to local tastes. I mean, of course, we're all going to buy LeBron and A-Rod, but you might not plonk down your school system's hard-earned $17.95 on, say, Troy Polamalu unless your school is full of Steelers fans. Even if he is an athletic polymath with fabulous hair. Which, yeah, no Steelers fans in Baltimore.

So there's my problem. Baltimore. Which is in Maryland. We play things like lacrosse here, and do you know what I have to offer the young ladies looking for biographies of outstanding female lacrosse players? Zip. Also, our football team is the Ravens, whose players are famous not only for their athletic prowess, but also for their arrest records. So, no juvenile biographies of famous Ravens. (Way to go, JAMAL.) And? we don't even have a basketball team.

So, here in the kids' sports biographies aisle in Baltimore, we've got Johnny U, who played for a team that doesn't even live here anymore, and Cal, who the kids are kind of rapidly forgetting. Thank heaven, then, for Michael Phelps. Can I make little sparkly fireworks shoot out of his name? Blogger? Help me? No? Ok then you have to imagine them.

Michael Phelps is a hometown boy. Born, raised, learned to swim, went to school here... heck, the kid even uses the library where I work (when he uses a library, which, well... after all, you can't read in the pool, regardless of what the condition of a lot of our Large Type books might seem to indicate). Michael Phelps is a bona fide sports hero. Unprecedented achievement. Also, accessible to the point of goofy. Ok, there's the pot thing, but as far as I'm concerned, that just proves he's a real guy. It's not like he tortured dogs or beat up his girlfriend. He just got - one has to imagine - really, really high. Seriously. The lungs on that guy? Bad decision though. Bad. Say no to drugs.

Say yes to How to Train with a T.Rex though! Michael gives us a quantitative look at his Olympics training - in 6 years, he swam 12,480 miles, napped for 273 days, ate half a ton a year, leg-pressed 9 tons per workout... you get the idea. These figures are given scale in multiple ways: we see Michael sitting down to eat half a car, swimming the length of the Great Wall, and lifting a NYC subway car (the W, my old line!) with his legs. Curriculum connection to measurement and scale lessons - niiice! The illustrations are perfect - as loose-limbed and friendly as our hero himself. Although rendered digitally, they have a very nice, tactile, watercolor-y feel. Colors are both bright and earthy. I feel like I've seen the work of Ward Jenkins before (but apparently I haven't), and I like it.

Eight gold medals to this fun new book!

The Day-Glo Brothers: The true story of Bob and Joe Switzer's bright ideas and brand-new colors, by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani - revie

The Day-Glo Brothers: The true story of Bob and Joe Switzer's bright ideas and brand-new colors, by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani

One of the things I do, as I state in my sidebar over there, is manage the collection for my kids' school library. I buy the books. The school is opening a new school next year, and they've asked me to select all the books for the new school's library. It's a labor of love, believe me. It may sound like fun, spending $30 grand on kid books, but when you think about covering the entire span of human knowledge, for children aged 5 to 14, it's kind of brain-melty. Just when I think I have assembled a nice, even collection, I smack myself on the forehead and go, "I FORGOT ANCIENT CHINA!" or "CRAP! THE CIVIL WAR!"

There's also the problem of picking lots of nonfiction without relying too heavily on series books. Now, lots of fine authors write series books, and I'm not saying that all series suck... but it's a fact that all series should be scrutinized carefully before purchase. Publishers do not always put their best design teams on series books, for one thing. For another, the pictures on the cover may be, er, AWFUL.



AAAA!

Which is why, when possible, I will always snatch up stand-alone juvenile biographies instead of series biographies. I read 94 series biographies this winter for an assignment - and exactly 8 of them made me say, "Oooh!". (I will not count the number that made me go, "Aaack!") For example: there are 176 biographies of Ella Fitzgerald written for children, but I will pick the one by Andrea Davis Pinkney every time - because I believe that Andrea Davis Pinkney sat around and thought about Ella Fitzgerald while she wrote the book, that Brian Pinkney had some Ella playing in the studio while he did the paintings, that they put a little heart and soul into that book.

The Day-Glo Brothers is another of these books. Chris Barton's author's note reminds me of that scene in Working Girl when Melanie Griffith hauls out a Page Six clipping to explain just how she got the idea that the Big Investor might be interested in buying a radio station. Barton read Bob Switzer's 1997 New York Times obituary and realized that the story of Day-Glo paint was one that he wanted to tell.

You get the feeling that he had to explain that in some detail to the publisher when he proposed this, his first book. I would bet that Day-Glo, to most people, is just kind of an annoyance that we've learned to live with because it saves lives, and as long as we avoid Spencer Gifts, we don't have to deal with it much. Just saying: it might not seem like the most captivating subject at first blush.

And there we would be wrong. Not only is this biography chock-full of arresting details: a fluorescent angel food cake, a headless Balinese dancer, a flaming billboard, and a terrible accident involving a railcar full of ketchup, but also... oh come on, do I really have to finish this sentence? With facts like that, who needs skill?

But. If I had a checklist of Things To Look For In Kid Nonfiction (and I kind of do), every box would be checked (except for the "photo" box - I think kids always want an author photo and a subject photo, just to prove it's really nonfiction).

Barton sets the context swiftly, helps us distinguish Bob from Joe with a few easy-to-remember character illustrations, documents the process of discovery, provides lots of examples, and follows through on the applications of their inventions. As befits a mid-century success story, the illustrations are swingy and hep. The color palette is all black and white and grey at the beginning of the book, and as Bob and Joe embark upon their lurid journey, the colors get more and more intense - clever! Back matter and web content expand the science documentation, and Barton shares his own process of discovering the Switzer family story, in the above-mentioned author's note.

Of the things that I want the students at our school to take away from a book, this last may actually be the most important to me.

The Day-Glo Brothers is a real winner. Assignments for Chris Barton: the story of Mike Nesmith's mom, the lady who invented Liquid Paper; and the story of Hedy Lamarr - seriously? the screen siren who invented a torpedo guidance system? I want our new friend Chris to be the one to tell those stories.

Life-size zoo by Teruyuki Komiya - review

Life-size zoo by Teruyuki Komiya
Quivering, wet noses. Fluffy red panda fur and coarse capybara hair. Soft brown anteater eyes. Sharp tiger teeth. These oversized, luscious photographs of many of our favorite zoo friends show ever aardvark whisker and elephant eyelash in bright, sharp detail. Yum!

As advertised, each animal is shown life-sized. Majiron the armadillo takes up about half a page, while Lulu the giraffe gets a double fold-out. The right-hand border of each page gives information about the animal: name, age, interesting facts (tapirs can open and close their nostrils!), and details to look for in the photo.

Gonna be a storytime favorite and a very popular item in the school library. It might even end up my default birthday present for the summer.

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka, by Jon Scieszka - review

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka
Jon Scieszka has five brothers. Jon Scieszka is a funny writer. Ergo, Jon Scieszka's stories about growing up with his five brothers = funny. Oh yeah - I laughed out loud. I read bits aloud to the librarians in the workroom who wanted to know just what was so damn funny, and they laughed out loud. But we're moms. Moms of boys. We have to think boys are funny, or else go googoo and end up carted away in a van.

And I also believe that Knucklehead will make children laugh out loud. There is fire, there is urination. There is getting away with stuff, and there is not a single one of those Peruvian hats with the pigtails down the side that make everyone - EVERYONE - look like Luke Wilson making his very best confused face.

Sorry. Distracted. Been writing in a coffee house lately while my house gets some work done. ("While we're in there fixing the deviated ceiling, how about we give you a whole new kitchen at the same time? Wouldn't you like your kitchen to look like... THIS?" I believe that's also how my mother's cousin Margaret got Patty Duke's nose.)

Back to Knucklehead. Funny, definitely funny. Very reminiscent of Bill Sleator's Oddballs, also a collection of funny stories from the author's childhood, many involving mud. And while the author packs in plenty of forbidden fruit, like how to construct a mortar ("Don't try this at home" - yeah thanks, Mr. Ambassador. My kids get ahold of this and we can say bye-bye to the attic window! (If we're lucky.)), there are also tons of positive messages about the joys of playing outside, the glories of Go, Dog. Go!, the good things about grandparents, Reading Is Fun, and... the value of military academy. Also, the chapters are short enough and the reading level low enough to hand it to, oh, grade 2 and above.

But the thing is, I have never successfully gotten a kid to read Oddballs. The fault in the case of that book may lie with the cover, which is I think more appealing to grownups who like Joseph Cornell and Robertson Davies than it is to kids. But it may be the nostalgia. It may be that kids just aren't as interested in true-life stories that aren't recognizable to them.

If it's the cover, the Scieszka book is going to go better: the cover of Knuckleheads resembles a pulp comic book, with 9-year-old G.I. Jon popping out of a tank turret. But if it's the nostalgia... listen, I'm only ten years younger than our Ambassador, but the world described in Knuckleheads already feels like my parents' generation. Men in skinny ties, nuns in habits with full wimple.

On the other hand, the family that took us in and fed us last night mentioned that they are reading Knuckleheads together, and laughing their butts off. Specifically, the Crossing Swords chapter was mentioned, and I'll say this: "Crossing Swords," in which Scieszka describes how he and his brothers could turn even going to the bathroom into an opportunity for imaginative play (and hoo boy is that the most sedate description you'll ever read for that particular activity!), may well establish this book as the passed-around page-marked Diary of a Wimpy Kid for this year. I'll even go so far as to call those few pages Jon Scieszka's ticket to immortality, and that's saying something.

Certainly we'll be mentioning his name as we mop up the bathroom floor - here's to you, Mr. Ambassador!

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.

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald - review

all the wrong people have self-esteem by Laurie Rosenwald

OH. MAGAD! This book includes:

1. a DIY update on the Ian Dury song "Reasons to be Cheerful"
2. an advice-for-teens Mad Lib
3. some French and
4. thru 122. many many more useful and funny and brilliantly colored things

PLUS it starts out by saying that nobody interesting ISN'T plagued by doubt. Yeah. Word. This is the NUTS.

Now, you couldn't let it be said that Laurie Rosenwald, the artist who brought us the color book And to Name but Just a Few: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, which I also loved - isn't clever, and doesn't know she's clever. A native New Yorker who teaches a workshop called "How to Make Mistakes on Purpose," she reports in her author (auto)biography that "by the time she was 35 she had to go to Sweden just to calm down." And she peppers this smart, cranky, deep book with plenty of examples of her own wit: after she blow-dries her hair by sticking her head out the car window, a friend asks, "But isn't that city air - dirty?" To which Laurie mentally replies, "Where do you think the air in your blow-dryer comes from - the Swiss Alps?"

But that doesn't mean she's NOT clever. Look at me: I just found out I am incapable of putting a space between the words "go" and "to" as a result of having learned to code when I was about ten - and people still hang out with me, too.

So give Laurie Rosenwald 45 minutes. Do the Mad Lib. Crack yourself up, and let her crack you up. She may be just a little smug, but she's right.

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