You know the awesome blog, GeekDad? Meet GeekDad’s better half, GeekMom, started by GeekDad’s editor Ken Denmead along with all of the female contributors to GeekDad: Natania Barron, Kathy Ceceri, Corrina Lawson, and Jenny Williams. And I’m pleased as punch to be a contributing geek. Please go check it out!
I recently received a copy of William Wondriska’s A Long Piece of String, a lovely dichromatic wordless picture book from Chronicle Books. This book was originally published in 1963 and it shows – the black string winds through gorgeous, simple orange illustrations typical of the graphic design of that time.
As I flipped through the book, I delighted at the randomness of the images that the string wound itself around… a castle, a gas pump, an octopus, a rake, a volcano. In my favorite spread, the string winds itself around three nuts: two of the nuts-and-bolts variety and one walnut. As I got to the end, I saw the page that summarized the book:
Alligator Bird Castle Dog Elephant…
… and realized DUH! It’s an alphabet book! Apparently, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. As you can imagine, the next reading of the book was even better. It was great reading it with Olive, having her name what the alphabetic images are.
I loved it when I thought it was a random collection of images, but I love it more as an alphabet book. This is a great addition for your wordless library.
When Mitali Perkins spoke at the Children’s Author Breakfast at BookExpo, she talked about how books can be both windows and mirrors: windows in the sense that they let you look in on other people’s lives and cultures, and mirrors in the sense that you can see yourself reflected in the characters. This is a wonderful approach to writing, especially when writing for young readers.
Mitali’s latest book is Bamboo People, a simultaneously tragic and uplifting tale set in modern-day Burma. Half the book is told from the perspective of Chiko, a scholarly Burmese boy that gets forced into military service. The other half is told from the persective of Tu Reh, a Karenni refugee living with his family on the Thai border. Chiko’s experience is shaped by the fact that his father, a doctor, is imprisoned for resisting the government. Tu Reh’s experience is colored by his thirst for vengeance after Burmese soldiers burned his home. The story of Bamboo People is how these two boys came to meet, and what happens once they do.
Sounds heavy, right? And yet I couldn’t put this book down. Not only did I learn a lot about a part of the world that I’ll admit I never give any thought to, but I found the characters to be so fully painted I couldn’t help but project myself into their world – a great window into Burma. Mitali Perkins’ writing is totally accessible, and kids will find themselves learning not just about the world, but about the human spirit and the choices that we have the power to make. They may even see a bit of themselves mirrored in these characters half a world away.
We’ve read a number of chapter books to Olive, but thanks to the recommendation of a friend I picked up a copy of The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Never before has a book been in such high demand. We finished it tonight, but Olive spent the last week asking for us to read it all throughout the day – while she’s eating breakfast, while she’s getting dressed, while she’s observing her ants, and yes, at bedtime.
I’ve always been a sucker for the movie, down to the ruby red slippers. As a kid, when it made the annual network appearance I would always try so hard to stay awake through the whole thing. The friend who recommended it said the book is WAY better than the movie, something I didn’t think was possible. But sure enough, it is better. You start the book thinking it’s not, but then, once you’ve gotten over some major differences (silver slippers?!) you realize that it is indeed way better.
One of the major differences is the absence of the Wicked Witch of the West as a pervasive threat. Sure, she’s a part of the book, but not the overarching nemesis that she is in the movie. Instead, the journey to Oz is met with a wide array of amazing creatures. Some are animals, like mice, tigers, a stork, and Kalidahs, beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers. Others are people: the munchkins, of course, but also the Winkies in the west, the Quadlings to the south, and the crazy Hammer-Heads, armless people that can shoot their heads off their bodies. The book is so much more about the perils of the various legs of the journey rather than the simplified good/evil story of the film. It engaged our whole family and sparked many a conversation about the book even when we weren’t reading it.
Lizzie is used to capturing everyone’s attention with her stories, stories of slaying dragons and rockets to the moon, until her baby brother, Marvin, came along. Soon, only the family dog had time for her stories. Lizzie starts writing Marvin into her stories, as he becomes the ugly prince or the Marvinosaurus or even the nastiest pirate that ever sailed the sea. But when Marvin goes to visit Gramma, Lizzie is stricken with writer’s block just as she needs to make a comic book with a character that will have lots of adventures. Hmm… who, oh who, will that character turn out to be? I won’t spoil it for you.
The art by Tricia Tusa is extremely cute, especially the spreads showing Lizzie’s stories and comic books, though perhaps the cutest bit of art is Marvin’s tush crawling off the side of the page. You can spot it at the end of the book trailer:
This book couldn’t be more perfectly timed for our family. The age difference between Lizzie and Marvin is similar to that between Olive and Ozzie, and Olive has been making a book about the adventures of her baby brother. I love that this book fans Olive’s desire to tell stories, and that it has very little of the negativity found in so many other big sibling books. Sure, Lizzie gets frustrated with Marvin, but it never crosses that line into hating the baby or insisting he go back where he came from. Olive is still a blissful big sister, and this book supports that. It’s a great one for all new big siblings.
Today my sweet little girl turns 5, marking the year she’ll be off to Kindergarten. Last year I started a new tradition, interviewing her about her favorite things on her birthday. Though she still likes some of last year’s favorites, it’s interesting to see what’s changed.
Favorite TV Show?
“Superfriends because it’s funny and all the monsters look weird.”
“Dinosaur Train because there’s a new game and that game is really fun. The one where you get to learn about dinosaurs, it doesn’t only have dinosaurs. It has frogs, turtles, and birds (because birds ARE dinosaurs). One of them has a dinosaur footprint pattern and I like making patterns.”
“Bat girl because she is the toy I like to play with and the games I play with her are really funny.”
Hmm. Your guess is as good as mine on this one. 5-year-olds are weird.
Favorite Movie?
“Shrek because it’s funny and Shrek makes candles out of ear wax. I like all the Shreks, but I like Shrek 4 the best. My other favorite is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs because of the spaghetti tornado and the talking monkey.”
OK, I may have prompted her here after she answered Shrek, which is our most recent movie adventure. But it’s Cloudy that’s been watched no fewer than 50 times this year, with no end in sight.
Favorite Book?
“Shrek because the princess is so ugly!”
I can’t argue with this one.
Favorite Music?
“Recess Monkey because I like the space elevator one because it has a little talky part at the beginning and it’s funny.”
The Final Funktier is played every night before going to bed. Funny, they were her favorite band last year, too.
Favorite App?
“The dinosaur game because I like making puzzles and it’s match-up puzzle dinosaurs.”
She’d talking about a great little sliding puzzle called DinoMixer.
Favorite Museum?
“The helicopter museum because I like the color green and the helicopter in it is big and green. And it has a carousel with funny creatures in it, and I like watching the creatures go around.”
MOMA takes this category the second year in a row (named the “Helicopter Museum” for the helicopter hanging in the lobby). The carousel Olive’s talking about was part of this year’s mega show, the Tim Burton exhibit.
Favorite video game?
“Mario. I like the racing one because I sometimes win.”
She’s slowly entering into the world of Mario, with Mario Kart and Super Mario. Hooray!
I can’t wait to see what the next year brings! Happy Birthday, Olive!
I’m taking advantage of all of my quiet baby-feeding time by catching up on books that I feel like I should have already read (though this plan may be shot now that I have a giant stack of BEA books to read.) First up is Neil Gaiman’s Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book. Much like Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, this is a book that I read about all the time without actually reading what it was about. It’s fun entering a book with high expectations on quality, but no expectations on content.
The Graveyard Book tells the story of Nobody Owens, or at least, that became his name when he started to live in the graveyard. How Nobody, or Bod for short, came to live in the graveyard is a gruesome tale. As a toddler, he wandered out of the house and up the hill to the graveyard just as his family was being murdered by the man Jack, a mysterious malevolent figure. Bod was meant to be murdered as well, and so the ghosts of the graveyard took him in for his protection, and it is there that Bod grew up.
Through much of the book, the chapters felt very episodic, owing I presume to the fact that The Graveyard Book is Gaiman’s take on The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling’s collection of short stories. Here’s a chapter with a witch, here’s one with ghouls, etc., etc., sort of like a kidlit X-files or Buffy. In fact, I started thinking that this book would make an excellent basis for a TV show. I’d watch it. Toward the last quarter of the book, though, everything started knitting together, and by the end I found myself weeping for the characters.
I came to own a copy of The Graveyard Book by buying it from a kid in the neighborhood who set up a stand in the park to sell the books he’d already read. (He was selling it for $1.50, but I insisted on giving him 2 bucks. What a steal.) He called the book “really awesome” and I’d go along with that.
Yesterday I kissed my baby and headed out to a grown-up day of looking at children’s books at BookExpo America. I began the day over ridiculously watered-down coffee at the Children’s Author Breakfast, featuring Cory Doctorow, Mitali Perkins, Richard Peck, and a scandal-ridden Sarah Ferguson (though, honestly, as royal scandals go, this one is pretty weak). Whereas last year’s breakfast was all fun and fantasy, this one was more serious and political. Cory Doctorow, great champion of Creative Commons on Boing Boing, talked emotionally about how under the Creative Commons license, people are translating his novel Little Brother into local languages in Iran and Burma and circulating the text underground.
Mitali Perkins, whose new book Bamboo People is set in Burma, reflected on books as windows into other worlds and as mirrors, full of things to with which to identify. She talked about how her books full of different cultures are able to find a mainstream audience because of this identification. Richard Peck based his new horror novel on a real-life car crash tragedy. I’ll have more on these authors as I read and review their new books.
Then I walked the floor and set about to meet some of my favorite authors. The first goodie I found was J. Otto Seibold’s Other Goose. I read about this book and set very high expectations for it, all of which were exceeded. This book is so gorgeous that the fine people in the Chronicle booth had to pry it out of my clenched fingers. Sadly, it’s not available until the fall.
How’s this for a power duo? Judith Viorst and Lane Smith have teamed up for the new book Lulu and the Brontosaurus. I stared reading the ARC to Olive this morning and she was in a fit of giggles by page 3. Lulu is a demanding little Veruca Salt type, who gets everything she wants from her parents, until they tell her that she can’t have a Brontosaurus as a pet. So, stubborn girl, she sets out to find her own Brontosaurus. The hilarious asides from the narrator along with Lane Smith’s always-fabulous illustrations make this one an extra treat. (Releases September 2010.)
I am a big Edward Gorey fan, and the Pomegranate Books booth was chock full of Gorey goodies. The best is The Utter Zoo: An Alphabet, full of fantastical creature and lovely, strange rhymes. This is one of those books that adults will enjoy having as much a kids. (Releases July 2010.)
I made sure to swing by the Candlewick booth for a copy of David Ezra Stein’s latest, Interrupting Chicken. Papa tries to read Chicken bedtime stories, but Chicken keeps interrupting, creating his one quickie versions of classic stories. Chicken interrupted Little Red Riding Hood with a “Out jumped a little red chicken, and she said, ‘DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS!’” With the sweet humor and luscious illustrations, this is my favorite DES book yet. (Releases August 2010.)
The last book I knew I had to get my hands on is Volume One of the official Guys Read library, Funny Business, a collection of ten stories from the likes of Jon Scieszka, Kate DiCamillo, Adam Rex, and Jeff Kinney. If you don’t know about Guys Read, please, at once, go check it out. (Releases September 2010.)
Gah! So many great things to read. Where should I start?
The Mac Daddy surprised me last week with a combination Mother’s Day/Anniversary/Thank you for carrying a 15 pound baby around for 12 months present: the iPad. This, just as I had convinced myself that it was a luxury item I didn’t need, nothing more than a larger version of my iPhone. For size comparison, I submit to you:
Boy howdy, it’s a fun luxury item to have. The basic apps are nice on the large screen. Working on gmail from the couch is a pleasure. Olive took to it immediately and intuitively. She enjoyed playing sized-up versions of her favorite iPhone games. “Mom, can I play giant Dizzy Bee?” or “Mom, can I play giant Peggle?” It soon became the world’s most expensive Etch-a-Sketch.
There are two apps on this lovely big screen that are rapidly reducing my skepticism about eBooks. The first is the much-touted Marvel Comics app. I’m no expert on comics, and I don’t have any sentimental feeling for paper comics, so perhaps it’s easier for me than comic die-hards to buy into digital comics. The screen format is perfect for comics, and the saturated colors look fantastic. I’m on an Iron Man kick, having seen the movie earlier this week (fabulously entertaining, btw) so it’s fun visiting its comic origins.
Even more spectacular is the Alice for the iPad app. I had been impressed seeing this preview of it, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the first-hand experience with it.
I’m taken with this one because of the loving artistry given to it. It’s gorgeous. What was even more interesting was trying this out with Olive. Though you might expect it, there’s not interactivity on every page. When there’s animation or objects to be manipulated, it highlights specific details in the story. I found Olive asked more questions and made more observations while we read because of these touch points. It also gave my fidgety 4-year-old something to play with as I read. Die-hard Alice fans have noted that the text is abridged, so while it may not be the quintessential version of this particular book, it’s a huge step forward for me in making eBooks interesting for children. You can get a good look at it with the free lite version, but I personally didn’t mind paying $8.99 for the full version.
Nancy and Karen from Kidsmomo are back, with more great books that you should know. I’m very thankful to Kidsmomo for writing about all of the books I’ve been meaning to blog about for ages.
In part 1, we brought you up to speed on the big children’s book franchises that every parent should know. (Not to mention, you got a crash course in Nancy’s taste in men. Lucky you.) Today, our focus is on lesser-known books that we personally love – and we’re making it our mission to spread the word about how great they are. One Instant Message at a time, naturally…
Karen: So, now I think we wanted to recommend less well-known books that we both love.
Karen: I have two personal favorite obscure children’s books that I always recommend: Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater and Secret Letters From 0 To 10by Susie Morgenstern.
Karen: Both of which you’ve heard me go on and on about before.
Nancy: I don’t think I’ve heard that much about Buffalo Brenda
Nancy: But Secret Letters 0 to 10, many, many, MANY times
Karen: Well, it’s just THAT good!
Karen: For our readers, think Amelie as a children’s book — with an orphaned boy as the main character who’s opening up to the world through meeting a variety of lively, eccentric, wonderful characters.
Karen:Buffalo Brenda is totally different: a dialogue-driven comedy about two girls making their mark in high school through a series of what some might call “pranks” but which Brenda (the ringleader) would characterize more as social statements.
Karen: (Btw, even though it’s about high school, I wouldn’t say it’s YA. More for a middle school audience. That’s when I read it!)
Nancy: I think Buffalo Brenda sounds more intriguing to me than Secret Letters 0 to 10
Karen: That may be, but you should really read both. Let’s recall that you resisted Percy Jackson despite all my nagging, and now you know you were missing out!
Karen: Remember the moral there? Always listen to me.
Nancy: yes, yes, yes
Nancy: Although, I was shocked to learn you just read Rascal by Sterling North recently
Nancy: I mean, c’mon! RASCAL!
Karen: I guess the raccoon book genre never really struck my fancy before.
Karen: But now, I’m all over it. Any other books with raccoons? Bring ‘em on!
Nancy: RACOONS ARE AWESOME
Nancy: evidence:
Nancy: Anyway, back to books that are almost high school/YA, I wanna throw The Murder Of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty in the ring
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, a lovely dichromatic wordless picture book from 
by L. Frank Baum. Never before has a book been in such high demand. We finished it tonight, but Olive spent the last week asking for us to read it all throughout the day – while she’s eating breakfast, while she’s getting dressed, while she’s 
.
. Much like 
by Jill Pinkwater and 
by Susie Morgenstern.
by Sterling North recently
by Jaclyn Moriarty in the ring
