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Thunder-Boomer! by Shutta Crum, illustrated by Carol Thompson
A summer afternoon story, magnificently paced as a storm builds and then crashes over a farm family, onomatopoeia out the wazoo, and Dad's underwear flying around the farmyard. Scooter's scared! He hides his head beneath
the couch,
but the rest of him won't fit.
Lovely rhythm, homespun imagery, powerful watercolor paintings. Ahhh. A perfect peach of a summer book.
Bring me some apples and I'll make you a pie: A story about Edna Lewis, by Robbin Gourley
As soon as warm weather comes to Edna's family's farm, good things are ready to be harvested, one after the other. First, it's wild strawberries, which Edna and her sister gather (and eat - "One for the basket and one to taste"), excitedly anticipating the strawberry shortcake they'll prepare. Next, they gather the first wild greens of spring with Auntie, as Edna recites:
But I have never tasted meat,
nor cabbage, corn or beans,
nor milk or tea that's half as sweet
as that first mess of greens.
As Spring turns to Summer, Edna helps gather food that the family has grown (beans, melons, corn) and food that has grown wild (sassafras, honey), all the way to the apples and nuts of autumn. Each time, she and her family sample the goods as they're picking, but also talk about all the pickles, jelly, pies, and bread they'll make, and often quote some few lines of a song or rhyme.
This book is so seamless and languid and pleasant, even though everyone's doing a whole lot of work. The folk rhymes, the foods, and the seasons are woven together in a sunny, smooth, shining braid. And what a pleasure it is to read about the real Edna Lewis, who grew up to be a famous chef, in the Author's Note. We even get a recipe for that shortcake.
Mrs. Muddle's Holidays by Laura F. Nielsen, pictures by Thomas F. Yezerski
I read this a while ago, liked it quite a bit, kept it out for a good while thinking I'd get to reviewing it soon, but never felt like I had a nice chunk of time and attention that I could devote to it.
I still don't.
But whatever. I just have to sack up and review the book: Mrs. Muddle's Holidays is great. I have to remember to buy it for the school library. It's all about inclusiveness, and community, and being outside. Mrs. Muddle brings life and color and fellowship to the street by celebrating such things as the Birthday of the Inventor of the Roller Skate and Let's Pretend It's Summer Day. The multicultural neighbors (Hassan, Jen-Mei and Rosa, along with Alicia, Katie, Jim and Tony live in Mrs. Muddle's street) are drawn in semi-realistic, friendly watercolors and pen and ink. Especially engaging are the big spreads with lots of detail. You really want to live on Mrs. Muddle's street, and I'm tempted to try to think up a few seasonal traditions of my own.
There, I didn't have any time, and this review kind of sucks, but I think I said what I wanted to. The book is good.
to be like the SUN by Susan Marie Swanson and Margaret Chodos-Irvine
I love picture books about plants and gardening. This time of year, I always like to bust them out. Some of my favorites:
Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow
How Groundhog's Garden Grew
Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide!
Bud
The Gardener
A Seed Is Sleepy
And now, To Be Like the Sun
. I love the bold, textured illustrations, "created using a variety of nontraditional printmaking techniques and materials." I'm not positive, but I think that may mean that a lot of tissue paper and maybe even a couple of potatoes gave up their chance at happiness for this book. "This is a good death," as Chiwitel Ejiofor says in Serenity
.
And I adore the prose. I plant a lot of seeds, and I'm 42 years old and NOT prone to spiritual thoughts, but when I push a seed in the ground I am almost always dubious that such a small thing can suck up a bunch of water and minerals and make a whole plant. It is one of life's enduring sources of amazement for me. The little girl in this book, planting a sunflower seed, thinks to herself:
Hello, little seed,
striped gray seed.
Do you really know everything
about sunflowers?
Yup, that sums it up for me. She continues observing the sunflower through the seasons, as it grows, develops a bud, creates its own seeds and sheds them. In the winter we see that she has saved some seeds and will plant them next year.
It's the nearest thing to a miracle that I know, and now I have this book, to explain that to my kids better than I could.
Leaves by David Ezra Stein.
Also I have an imagined kinship with David Ezra Stein. I grew up with a David Stein, a misunderstood genius who played the cello - and I have a close family member named Ezra. So, again, I'm going to be prejudiced toward this book.
BUT. Oh, this is a winner by anyone's lights. It's a young bear and his relationship with the seasons, specifically, with the leaves. The bear is inked so expressively, you can feel yourself stretch when he stretches. And there are 9 or 10 pages of the same view of the tree under which the bear is hibernating, during which we see the small changes brought about by the changing seasons. That sort of flip-book approach almost always works for me.
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