Lately I’ve been experiencing something I haven’t experienced for a long time. I think I’m suffering from reading burnout. My motivation to read anything is next to nil except for parts of gardening books and skimming through books that look interesting. It’s been almost three weeks that I’ve been experiencing this but I hope to get my motivation back soon. I am still listening to audiobooks so I am reading something, in a sense.
Hold Still by Nina LaCour
In January, I had the privilege of participating in a Mock Caldecott Award at the Johnson County Library. Librarians from the metro area and the public were invited to participate. We read quite a few great picture books. I’m just getting around to getting this post published.
Our winner was Alphabeasties by Sharon Werner with honors going to The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney, Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett, Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Rosenthal.
Here are all of the books we read to prepare for the Mock Caldecott.
Alphabeasties by Sharon Werner
A very cool alphabet book of animals all made out of different fonts. Each letter is shown in different fonts and makes pictures out of the type.
Definitely a cool book! I found myself looking at it over and over and being fascinated by the different fonts.
The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
A beautiful wordless retelling of Aesop’s fable done in amazing watercolor. This year’s Caldecott Medal Winner.
Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
A beautifully illustrated poetry biography of Coretta Scott King.
Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett
Billy won’t clean his room. His parents threaten to get him a blue whale if he doesn’t clean his room. One day the FedUp truck (according to the side of the truck delivers punishment worldwide) delivers a blue whale to Billy’s house. His parents obviously weren’t kidding. So Billy has to take the blue whale to school with him, putting the blue whale on a skateboard and pulling it with his bike. The whale causes some big problems for Billy at school. After school when the bus breaks down, Billy gives all the kids a ride home on the back of the whale but not without some minor problems. Feeding the whale becomes a real problem when Billy has to gather hundreds of gallons of seawater. Finally Billy comes to terms with owning this blue whale.
This is a picture book for early grade school kids. The artwork is great and in Charles Schulz fashion you never see any of the adults’ faces. A few times in the book there is a scale of the blue whale and common things for kids to compare the whale. The added little things make this book even funnier for school-age kids.
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Rosenthal
Two off-page characters argue over a creature they see. Is it a duck or a rabbit? Definitely one to keep in mind for gifts. The more I see and read this book, the more I like it. I love how the author really plays with the illustrations.
You? by Vladimir Radunsky
A little girl and a stray dog watch lots of other people (owners) and their dogs go by in the park. Then the dog and the little girl see each other and are instantly connected. They’ve found their rightful owner and pet.
The drawings are gouache on handmade paper. An interesting little book. The owners and dogs are drawn so wonderfully here with many dogs looking like their owners or owners like their dogs.
Chicken Little by Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley
An absolutely hilarious retelling of Chicken Little. This book had me laughing out loud. The artwork is so silly and the names of all of the characters are silly too – Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, Loosey Goosey and Turkey Lurkey. The narrator even comments – “Honestly, with names like these, it is any wonder?” One observation that I found particularly funny is that Chicken Little is warning everyone that the sky is falling and she’s carrying around a sky-blue umbrella with white clouds that looks just like the sky.
Dog and Bear: Three to Get Ready by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
Three little stories about Dog and Bear. A cute book for preschool-age children. In the first story, Bear gets a bucket stuck on his head, the second Dog is jumping on the bed and the third is about a sock monkey that gets lost after Bear organizes Dog’s toys.
Birds by Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
A cool book about birds – their color, size, sounds, their movements and things we all notice about birds on a wire or a bunch of them in a tree. A little girl likes to pretend she’s a bird though she can’t fly, she can sing.
All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee
A lovely book about how we’re all connected. A part of the scene from the previous page appears on the following page. The artwork is soft but striking colors. The illustrations are nostalgic.
Button Up! by Alice Schertle, illustrated by Petra Mathers
Poems from the clothes’ perspective. Shoelaces, undies (every kid’s favorite word), dress-up clothes, a hand-me-down sweatshirt and jammies are a few of the clothes that have poems. Each clothing item is worn by cute and beautifully illustrated animals.
Pouch! by David Ezra Stein
A cute little book about Joey, a baby kangaroo who wants to explore his world but each time he meets something new he gets scared and wants to get back in mom’s pouch. Then he meets another kangaroo, they both get scared and want their pouches until they realize how funny they are. Then they want nothing more than to hop around together.
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
I loved this book the first time I read it in October 2009. It’s such a neat story about a garden that with a little bit of nurturing grows to take over an old elevated train track and it eventually grows across the entire grey city.
Upon second and third readings, I noticed more things in the book. At the beginning of the book there are just the grey buildings and no people except for Liam, the gardener. As the book progresses so does the garden and the people.
The Lion’s Share by Matthew McElligott
A rare math-related picture book.
Ant is invited to dine with Lion. The other animal guests are rude and behave unruly. When dessert is served each animal takes 1/2 of the remaining piece of cake. When it gets to Ant, she struggles to half the crumb leaving nothing for the lion. The animals all accuse her of being selfish (except for Lion). To make up for the fact that Lion didn’t get any dessert, Ant offers to bake him a cake. Not to be outdone each animal vows to make double what the previous animal promised with Elephant realize he has to make 256 cakes. The next day as the other animals struggle to make their cakes, Ant delivers her cake to Lion. And they share a nice cake together.
The Longest Night by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ted Lewin
A beautiful book with all but three spreads done in only three colors – blue, brown and a green-blue. On the longest night of the year as the bear and mice are sleeping, a crow, moose and fox think they can bring the sun back. The wind knows that only a chickadee can bring the sun back after a long night.
Finn Throws a Fit by David Elliott, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering
I’m not sure who will enjoy this book more, the kid or the parent. A book that any parent or child-care provider will understand maybe more than the child.
Finn throws a fit and on this day the fit is lightning in the kitchen, avalanches, tidal waves through the living room, hurricanes in the dining room and blizzards in the bathroom. It’s an earth-shattering fit until it ends and Finn wants his peaches.
Hook by Ed Young
A beautifully illustrated book about an abandoned egg that hatches into an eaglet. They call the strange chick “Hook”. The adoptive mother hen and a young boy help Hook learn to fly until finally after many failed attempts Hook soars.
A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis
Edna is a penguin who notices that the world is black, white and blue. She decides there must be more, so she sets off on a journey with a packed lunch of a fish. When she finds something orange, she races home to tell the other penguins about the orange that she’s found. Then they all find out that the orange Edna found is a scientists’ camp. Edna loves that there is something else in her world now that isn’t black, white or blue. And she begins to wonder what else may be out there.
Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young
An old wealthy farmer feels an earthquake as the village is celebrating the harvest. This doesn’t feel like a normal earthquake to the farmer. As he watches the sea pull out from the beach, he tells his grandson to set the rice fields on fire. The fire draws the villagers up the mountain. When the tsunami hits the village all of the people are safe. They are so grateful to the old wealthy farmer that they build a temple in his honor.
The artwork is collage with lots of cool paper and I found myself studying the illustrations to see what each piece was.
Lousy Rotten Stinkin’ Grapes by Margie Palatini, illustrated by Barry Moser
Fox devises a plan to get some grapes hanging from a tree. With the help of bear, then beaver, then porcupine, then possum Fox isn’t able to reach the grapes. Finally possum ends up tossing the grapes down from the tree after many failed attempts.
After by Amy Efaw
So good! I’ve been recommending it to everyone.
An excellent audiobook narrated by Rebecca Soler, who also narrated Lock & Key by Sarah Dessen. Devon was an honors high school student until the morning that everything changes. The police find a newborn baby abandoned in a trash dumpster near Devon and her mother’s apartment. Devon is home sick that morning. It’s obvious that she’s just given birth.
What Devon never expected that morning was that she would be considered an attempted murderer. The book follows Devon through her life in a juvenile detention center and as she recounts to her attorney how she came to where she is today.
A sometimes heart-wrenching story of a girl who never expected to be in the situation she finds herself in. We don’t hear a lot about the dumpster babies as much as we used to but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t happening.
Efaw has obviously done her homework here, especially in regards to the juvenile detention center.
Numbers by Rachel Ward
Published February 2010 by Chicken House/Scholastic Inc. Review copy provided by publisher.
What if you knew the day that someone, everyone would die? Could you live with that secret?
Jem lives with the burden of knowing everyone’s numbers. She’s known about the numbers since she was a little girl. In her stroller, she used to tell her mom everyone the numbers but it’s not until her mother dies that she knows exactly what the numbers mean. When she looks someone in the eye, she sees the numbers in her head.
Knowing people’s numbers, Jem avoids friendships and relationships until she meets Spider. Spider is an outsider just like Jem.
When Jem and Spider are out and about one day in London, Jem sees a chilling chain of events in people’s eyes. She and Spider must deal with the aftereffects of what Jem saw.
This book has had me thinking a lot about whether or not I would want to know my family and friends’ numbers. I honestly don’t think I would want to know.
The first half of the book is action-packed and full of drama, I couldn’t put this book down. About 2/3 of the way through a few things getting a bit strange and don’t seem to fit the tone of the rest of the book. I think that fans of realistic-supernatural books will enjoy Numbers. Ward is supposedly at work on the sequel, Numbers 02: The Chaos.
How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
Published October 2009 by Scholastic Press. Review copy provided by publisher.
The pink cover is deceiving. There are some girls who will really like this book that won’t pick it up because of the pink cover.
This is the story of Bea and Jonah. They become friends when they are seated next to each other at their school’s morning assembly where they are seated alphabetically. Everyone calls Jonah “Ghost Boy” because he acts a bit standoffish and strange. His twin brother died when they were in third grade.
Bea is the new girl in school and finds Jonah interesting despite how standoffish he seems. Then he leaves a note on Bea’s locker about a late-night radio call-in show. That night when she listens that night and hears a call from “Ghost Boy” she thinks they could be friends.
This is a good story with Bea and Jonah meeting some odd and interesting adult characters that add some flair to the story that isn’t essential.
Bea is a very likable character because she has the opportunity to be popular but decides to hang out with Jonah instead. She has a lot of internal conflict but doesn’t come off as whiny. After moving around a lot as a kid, she’s string to connect with someone who understands her but I think she’s afraid to get too close and is pleasantly surprised that she connects with Jonah.
Seeing Sky-Blue Pink by Candice F. Ransom
Maddie is eight and she and her mother have recently moved out to the country to live with her step-father. At first Maddie isn’t so sure she’s going to like living in the country. Her stepfather takes her on hikes through the woods, builds her a tree house and she soon loves the country as much as he does.
The title comes from the color that appears just as the sun is going down on certain nights with the right clouds. It’s the color that they decide to paint Maddie’s new bedroom.
This is a great book for kids who have graduated from first chapter books. There isn’t a lot of action just a nice story with each chapter being short and easy to read one at a time.
William Allen White (Kansas William Allen White Children’s Book Award) Nominee 2009-2010.
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip M. Hoose
A moving and fascinating biography about Claudette Colvin, a woman whose name has been overshadowed by Rosa Parks in the Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid-1950s Claudette refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama for a white passenger and was arrested. She was arrested and dragged by her wrists and ankles off the of the bus by the police. But Claudette was 15 years old and lived in the lower class neighborhood of town. Shortly after her arrest she became an unwed pregnant teenager and wasn’t considered by the local civil rights leaders as an appropriate person to use as an example for the movement. Nine months later, Rosa Parks would refuse to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger beginning the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Hoose carried out extensive interviews with Colvin and we get to know her story and her rightful place in history. Black and white photos and newspaper articles are included in the book.
This is a great information book for middle grade and high school students with bibliography information in the back.
Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and a 2010 Newbery Honor.
Pitch Black by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton
A powerful biographical graphic novel about Anthony, a homeless man, who lives in the subway tunnels under New York City. In the tunnels, he creates amazing works of art. Youme and Anthony begin talking one day in the subway about art. This is an amazing book about Anthony, Youme and the rough world in the subway tunnels. A book not to be missed.
Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians by Jarrett J. Krosoczka
When new juvenile graphic novel series come into our library, I like to read them just to see which kids will like them. The Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians is the second in the Lunch Lady graphic novel series for middle grade school readers (3rd, 4th and 5th graders). The artwork is three colors – yellow, black and white in the same sense as Babymouse being three colors.
The school librarian, high school media specialist and the public librarian are all set to take over the world. They want “world domination” and to stop the shipment of all of the newest gaming system.
Lunch Lady to the rescue. Of course, Lunch Lady and her accomplice get in over their heads and the kids come to save the day.
This is a silly book with the librarians as the bad guys and 3rd and 4th graders will find it funny. The humor wasn’t as smart for me as Babymouse.
