Category Archives: ..Children/Picture Books
It’s a Big World, LIttle Pig! by Kristi Yamaguchi, illustrated by Tim Bowers
Introduced in last year’s bestselling, award-winning Dream Big, Little Pig!, tenacious little Poppy did just that and proved that pigs can indeed fly … especially on the ice! Her creator, of course, is the legendary skater Kristi Yamaguchi (whose skates and skating dress have found a home in the Smithsonian – click here to check out those Olympian boots, click here to see her dress). Once again, illustrator Tim Bowers imbues Poppy with charming energy to spare – and might that sparkly teal and purple “Dream Big” backpack with the little yellow flower closure be hitting stores sooner than later?
After such an auspicious skating start in Dream, Poppy’s now on her way to Paris to compete in the World Games: “‘Reach for the stars, little pig!’” encourages the official invitation. As talented as Poppy is, she’s a bit nervous about traveling so far from her home in New Pork City (snort, snort), but with the encouragement of her family and friends, Poppy finds herself meeting the world’s best athletes.
“Would they speak the same language? Would she make any new friends?” she wonders. Soon enough, adorable Poppy is exchanging “ni hao” (hello) with Li from China, sharing pasta and gelato with Gianna from Italy, promising “ganbatte kudasai” (good luck) with Kiyomi from Japan, and waving “hooroo!” (goodbye) to Zoe from Australia. By the time Poppy glides onto the ice, she’s filled with “the joy of new friendships and discoveries.”
Not to be too terribly nit-picky, but I confess I did wonder how Poppy managed to have such detailed conversations with her international buddies without a common language – about check-in booths, maps, lucky charms, music, even fashion design. That requires vocabulary far beyond the simple greetings they teach each other … but perhaps I’m overthinking and just need to enjoy the porcine fun. After all, as Poppy learns, in spite of any differences, “‘everyone smiles in the same language!’”
Tidbit: DC area folks – you can go meet Kristi herself in person this afternoon, Saturday, March 10 at 4:30 p.m., at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library! Click here for details.
Readers: Children
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Japanese American
Beatrice’s Dream by Karen Lynn Williams, photographs by Wendy Stone
At 13, Beatrice is sure of her dreams: ” … to pass my exams, go on to secondary school and study nursing. Then I will help people who are sick or on their own, like me.” In Beatrice’s world on the other side of the world in Kenya, what seem like achievable goals come with a whole different set of prodigious challenges.
Beatrice lost her father to a car accident and her mother to tuberculosis when she was just 9. “Since then I have always worried about being alone and wondered who will take care of me.” For now, she lives with the oldest of her brothers and his wife, behind his tiny shop. Enhanced with international photographer Wendy Stone’s outstanding, colorful photographs, Karen Lynn Williams uses Beatrice’s voice to guide young readers through Beatrice’s day – her half-hour walk to school through the mud and garbage that litter her path, the people who “move around everywhere like ants,” her day in the school building constructed of tin, her favorite subjects of English and Kiswahili (Kenya’s official language) in her Class Seven “small room crammed so full of desks that we can hardly squeeze past them to get to our seats.” Once school is finished, she returns home “before it gets dark” to help prepare the family’s meal, iron her clothes, and “if we have enough paraffin in our small lamp, I read.”
The place Beatrice calls home is Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, located in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi. It’s just 618 acres, and yet over half a million people live there, explains the book’s creators in the final pages. “There are no roads and few of the residents have modern toilets, clean drinking water or electricity. The crime rate is high and disease spreads rapidly.” Against such tremendous odds, just staying in school is an enormous accomplishment, and yet ” … most children see education as the best way to escape from the slum.”
Beatrice’s story continues in the book’s final pages – but no spoilers here! [Her story has definite echoes to Voice of a Dream by Ugandan author Glaydah Namukasa.] What so many children in other parts of the world take for granted proves to be an immense, difficult-to-achieve privilege in Kibera. Don’t wait until your youngsters whinge about having to go to school to share Beatrice’s inspiring narrative … read with them now: forewarned is forearmed!
Tidbit: Kibera was made temporarily famous in the West when parts of John le Carré’s novel, The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, were filmed there. The cameras left, but the crew set up the Constant Gardener Trust in 2004 to thank and help the community, although no updates seem to be available since 2010.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Biography, .Nonfiction, African
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
Happy 280th birthday to George Washington today, even if his official federal holiday (since 1879 by an Act of Congress!) always falls on a non-birthdate: by the Julian calendar, GW was born February 11, on the Gregorian February 22 [those colonials changed calendars in 1752], but the official holiday is designated to recur annually on the third Monday of the month, which means the holiday will never actually fall on GW’s natal day! Since the 1980s, a nod to Lincoln (birthday February 12) was added, to make it Presidents’ Day – although for families with children, this nebulously named holiday has become an excuse for mid-winter break. Hope the long holiday was good for all. Oh, but I have digressed …!!
In the splendiferous Heart and Soul, the original George W. appears on page 12: he’s looking straight ahead, mounted on the back of a sleek horse on the banks of what is presumably the Potomac River … and standing beside him is a slave, with hat in hand, head slightly bowed, his profile filled with grave consternation.
Kadir Nelson, this year’s author award winner and illustrator honoree of the Coretta Scott King Book Award, is not rewriting history: George Washington’s life clearly would have not been George Washington’s life without slaves, either at home or on the battlefield. “Through the fruits of our labor and our volunteer soldiers, we had helped free America from England, and yet we were stuck in a country that kept most of us as slaves.”
Taking the welcoming, storytelling tone of an aging grandmother who has seen too much, Nelson has history to share: “No parent wants to tell a child that he was once a slave and made to do anther man’s bidding. Or that she had to swallow her pride and take what she was given, even though she knew it wasn’t fair. Our story is chock-full of things like this. Things that might you cringe, or feel angry,” the knowing elder explains. “But there are also parts that will make you proud, or even laugh a little. You gotta take the good with the bad, I guess. You have to know where you come from so you can move forward.”
From the early 1600s to the founding of a new country, from the horrors of plantation life to Lincoln’s War, from the failure of Reconstruction to the hopes for building freer lives in the Wild West, our storyteller recounts African American struggles and contributions to the founding, building, and growing of a country in flux. She wanders north with the Great Migration and to Harlem for jazz, glamour, and the vote for women. She survives the Great Depression and World War II, celebrates equal rights and the death of Jim Crow, and listens on the National Mall to “”I have a dream …’”
As thorough and personal as the story is, Kadir Nelson’s extraordinary pictures are what will linger and enlighten. Every page holds wonder and admiration: the tiny little boy in his tattered shirt standing in front of the slave quarters against a sky so impossibly blue; the searing portrait of Harriet Tubman, tired but determined against the rich hues of the falling dusk; a young woman standing behind her father in near-darkness, her encouraging hands on his shoulders as if gently willing him to read; the portrait of a southern family migrating north, dressed in their Sunday best with all their worldly possessions piled into and onto a dilapidated jalopy, the sheer joy of making magical music of a Harlem big band; and perhaps the most touching of all – the gnarled, wizened hands cradling a stars-and-stripes “I voted” button offered up as proof of survival and celebration.
“We have come a mighty long way, honey, and we still have a good ways to go, but that promise and the right to fight for it is worth every ounce of its weight in gold. It is our nation’s heart and soul.” AMEN to that …
Readers: Children, Middle Grade
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, African American
Migrant by Maxine Trottier, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
Here’s an immigration story that took me by total surprise: German-speaking Mennonites from Mexico who work as migrant laborers in Canada. To understand just how many levels of peripatetic displacement that involves, you have to read this fascinating (mega-award-winning!) book backwards.
“Canada and the United States were built by people who valued freedom and opportunity. That is part of the reason so many came to North America in search of a fresh beginning in spite of the challenges,” writes Maxine Trottier in the story’s afterword. Those opportunity seekers include seasonal laborers, also called migrants, who remain a controversial part of today’s North American labor force.
Among those migrants are Mennonites who left Canada in the 1920s and moved to Mexico: “There they hoped to farm, withdraw from the modern world and find religious freedom.” They kept their Canadian citizenship, which allowed them to return to Canada to work when their Mexican farms could not sustain them. That migration continues today … because “[t]heir farms in Mexico, while no longer successful enough to support them, are still their homes.”
Anna is her family’s youngest child. She “feels like a bird,” as her family travels north in the spring and back south every fall, “chasing the sun, following the warmth.” She wonders what a “stay in one place”-sort-of-life might be like, but she knows she’s more like a jack rabbit who makes homes in abandoned burrows just as her family moves into farmhouses “filled with the ghosts of last year’s workers.”
Too young for labor, she watches over her worker bee family. She sleeps curled like a kitten with her sisters, while her puppy-like brothers snooze in another room. Her large family endures the local stares, while Anna peeks through the apples in the grocery store filled with people and things she doesn’t understand. She imagines feeling the solidity of the trees around her, which stay grounded through the fall and snow, but when the geese fly away, “with them goes Anna … like a feather in the wind.”
Illustrator Isabelle Arsenault who also brought her whimsical magic to one of my favorites, Spork by Kyo Maclear, imbues Anna with innocent curiosity in her little red dress with her matching red cheeks. Moments of Anna’s imagination come vividly to life, as the geese sport various headscarves and hats just like her family, the giant jack rabbit bounds out the door with last year’s ghosts looking on, the kitty-sisters are sleepily dazzled by the moon and the stars, while the puppy-brothers lie sprawled every which way on a “blanket that barely covers them all.”
The final spread – especially touching – of the large departing family, some of them already off the page, captures Anna mid-air as she jumps from a tree swing in answer to a sister’s wave to go: Anna and her family, closely reassembled, begin their unified journey back home.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Canadian, Latin American
Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome
The award-winning wife-and-husband children’s book team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome capture Frederick Douglass’ early years from his slave birth to his first escape attempt as a teenager. Using Douglass’ autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave and pulling quotes directly from Douglass’ own memories, author Cline-Ransome presents the book in first person, immediately drawing in young readers to intimately share this story.
Illustrator Ransome deftly balances the tragedy (little boy Frederick in an oversized shirt grasping his grandmother’s hand, the youngest slave children eating at the trough “just like the animals in the barn,” Frederick cowering under the master’s looming angry shadow) with Frederick’s resilient hope (his straight-backed wonder as he looks out onto big city Baltimore even with his small hands bound behind his back, his attention at the Missus’ instruction sitting side-by-side in the library, his dirt-scratched letters in the secret “school among the trees”).
Before he became the legendary Frederick Douglass, young Frederick was a slave, the son of a slave woman named Harriet Bailey. “They say my master, Captain Aaron Anthony, was my daddy.” Raised by his grandmother, he only saw his mother in the middle of night when she managed to visit. Harriet Bailey’s arduous 12-mile trek to see her son is lovingly, achingly captured in last year’s Love Twelve Miles Long by Glenda Armand, which makes a fine companion title to Words.
Frederick spends his childhood being shuffled from master to master. At 6, he’s separated from his grandmother. At 8, he’s “rented out” to the mistress’ brother-in-law in Baltimore. His new Missus greets him with “the first friendly white face I had ever seen.” She teaches Frederick to read – illegal at the time – but her pride in his learning soon turns to shame when the master finds out: “‘If you teach him to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.’”
When Frederick is sent back to his birthplace plantation, he “was not the same [boy] who had left years earlier. That young boy was replaced with a fifteen-year-old who was free on the inside but not yet free on the outside.” With new knowledge and new friends, Frederick daringly attempts his escape: “I always knew that somehow words would set me free.”
Although the “Author’s Note” on the final page reveals the failure of Frederick’s first escape plan, Cline-Ransome also provides an achievement-filled overview of Frederick’s later life. As tragic as the circumstances were of his youth, Cline-Ransome highlights Frederick’s tenacious determination throughout her narrative, an inspiring reminder to her readers of his future accomplishments to come.
Readers: Children
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Biography, .Nonfiction, African American
Wild Rose’s Weaving by Ginger Churchill, illustrated by Nicole Wong
As her name suggests, Wild Rose is no wallflower. She’s too busy running through the meadow spooking the sheep, avoiding lightning, whirling in the wind, splashing in the rain’s leftover rivers, to answer her grandmother’s call to come learn to weave. While Wild Rose enjoys the storm outside, Grandma’s fingers finish a rug with “life in its colors … peace in its pattern.”
As Wild Rose recognizes the meadow, sky, and sunshine beams of Grandma’s creation – “‘A rug is not just a rug … It’s a picture of life,’” Grandma explains – she too is finally ready to learn … although not before taking Grandma’s hand and dancing under the rainbow.
Author Ginger Churchill, herself a weaver, is the third generation (at least) of women artists in her family. “As a child, Ginger came to the conclusion that art is an essential part of life,” her author bio shares. “It is Ginger’s hope that each person will find joy in expressing pieces of themselves and their lives through whatever art they choose.” The art of weaving, she adds at book’s end, “binds us together across the world … [and] also ties us to centuries past.” Churchill reminds us that like Grandma and Wild Rose, to bequeath these traditional arts to younger generations is a precious gift to embrace and cherish.
Illustrator Nicole Wong (who also gently captures Andrea Cheng’s Only One Year and Brushing Mom’s Hair, just right) imbues Churchill’s sweet story with winsome whimsy. Wong’s signature delicate lines and softly glowing colors move effortlessly between Wild Rose’s whirlwind adventures and Grandma’s patient artistry. The effect is indeed a “picture of life” – an inviting celebration to join in.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Crouching Tiger by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Yan Nascimbene
Celebrate the lunar Year of the Water Dragon with Ying Chang Compestine‘s latest picture book which reminds us all again (gently and poignantly) about the value of patience and perseverance (especially relevant in this Dragon year!), the wisdom of elders, and the importance of cultural connections.
Ming Da greets his grandfather upon his arrival from China with a bow, just “as Mom had told me to.” When he sees his grandfather practicing tai chi the next morning, he immediately wants to join in, but not before he shows off his own version of kung fu “kicks and punches.” Tai chi is slow, and makes Ming Da’s legs and arms heavy and wobbly. “As the weeks passed, I felt cheated,” Ming Da complains. “Maybe Grandpa didn’t know real kung fu.”
Ming Da’s disappointment leads him to avoid Grandpa: he reads on the bus on the way to school, hides in his room, even resorting to headphones to shut out his grandfather. But one morning, Ming Da watches Grandpa avert a serious accident, saving two people on the street: “In a smooth motion, Grandpa crouched like a tiger, swept up a leg and kicked the board, breaking it neatly in half.” Ming Da’s shocked reaction – ”‘Wow, Grandpa, how did you do that?’” – is met with the expected answer: “‘Lots of practice,’” followed by “‘I started at your age.’” Finally Ming Da is ready to train.
When New Year arrives, Grandpa gives Ming Da “a red silk jacket embroidered with dragons.” [That mythical beast had to pop up somewhere!] Ming Da’s embarrassment over “this silly jacket” eventually becomes beaming pride as he experiences quite a memorable night, filled with tasty treats, hóng bāo (red envelopes with lucky money), and an unexpected, unforgettable starring role in Chinatown’s traditional lion’s dance.
Ming Da’s journey toward recognition of his grandfather’s accomplishments which leads him to honor his own dual heritage is gloriously captured in the soft watercolors of veteran illustrator Yan Nascimbene‘s full-page panels: Grandpa in his traditional suit with Ming Da side-by-side in his jeans and perpetually untied high-top sneakers; dozing, shoe-less Mom reading her Chinese magazine while wild-haired, booted Dad delves into a thick English book, a Picasso-esque Cubist canvas hung next to a floral brush painting on the back wall; the diverse, overflowing (literally onto the facing page) crowds of New Year celebrants scattered like confetti throughout Chinatown. From the mini-Ming Das demonstrating tai chi poses on every left page, to the aquarium rug, to the bus ads, to the pigtailed neighbor and her dog peeking over the fence, Nascimbene makes sure that Compestine’s story of youthful self-discovery is wonderfully enhanced by his many delightful, surprising details.
To check out more of Ying Chang Compestine’s titles on BookDragon, click here.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Chinese American
Which Side Are You On? The Story of a Song by George Ella Lyon, artwork by Christopher Cardinale
If you’re an American of a certain age, and went to public school when music class was still considered relevant and mandatory, you’ll most likely recognize this historical song. Here’s the link to legendary folk singer Pete Seeger’s rendition.
“What’s going on here?” the front book flap asks. “Let Omie, the eldest, tell it – eighty years after it happened.” That 80 has since become 81, but the story’s power doesn’t age. Welcome to Harlan County, Kentucky in 1931 where the men work long, dangerous hours in the coal mines: ”We live in a coal company house on coal company land, and Pa gets paid on scrip that’s only good at the company stores. He says the company owns us sure as sunrise. That’s why we’ve got to have a union.”
But Pa’s views don’t make him popular with the controlling coal company, nor with the local sheriff and his “gun thugs.” With mounting threats, Pa goes on the run. Ma stands firm, announcing “‘We need a song’” to her frightened children hiding under the bed. “‘This ain’t easy, but sometimes you’ve got to take a stand,’” she insists. “This is how the night goes: bullets through the walls, talk under the bed, words on the page.” When Pa returns, he recognizes that Ma’s newly composed rallying cry will “bring folks together … And it still does.”
Harlan resident George Ella Lyon tells the remarkable story of how Florence Reece wrote “Which Side Are You On,” the song that “has been sung by people fighting for their rights all over the world.” The broad strokes of graphic artist and muralist Christopher Cardinale (who imbued magic realism onto the pages of Luis Alberto Urrea’s Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush) add a sense of urgency, the firm depictions emphasizing the determination to survive and succeed.
After the story — which came to Lyon via “Bev Futrell, a member of the Reel World String Band, who heard it from Reece herself” – Lyon’s informative “Author’s Note” is not to be skipped. “Whenever one side has all the power in a relationship something needs to change,” she writes, while also acknowledging that “[l]ike anything we humans make, unions are not perfect.” Greed and power plague unions, too, but unions can play a positive role in improving work conditions and establishing fair workers’ rights, she explains.
Like the song’s rallying cry, Lyon’s storytelling is ultimately a powerful call to seek social justice at any age: “It’s never too soon to become informed, decide what you think, and speak out. You have a choice. You have a voice. We are how change happens.” Great advice for the 18+ set, too, especially in this election year …
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific
Freedom’s a-Callin Me by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Rod Brown
From the power duo who created We Troubled the Waters comes another memorable volume detailing the African American experience – this time, re-imagining the death-defying, life-saving journey from slavery to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
Combining powerful verse and richly textured paintings, Ntozake Shange and Rod Brown begin in the fields, where the horror of “that whip bouncing off somebody’s back” means a momentary “chance to get / right out of here” while the brutal overseer is otherwise engaged. In spite of attack dogs, hunger, and exhaustion ahead, the mere possibility of “ah may may be free” drives the dangerous journey onward.
Season after season, brave souls attempted freedom by “followin the north star,” relying on “this one good white man [who] got a clue for me,” choosing “death or freedom,” outrunning the slave trackers, mourning the “one of us [who] didn’t make it north,” and doing anything and everything possible to get to “freedom’s land” … until “finally ah am ridin through free air.”
From the legendary Sojourner Truth to “treacherous” slave hunters, to a wealthy abolitionist who may “look jus’ like mastah / oh but he aint,” to all the brave heroes – black and white – who never gave up on the promise of freedom regardless of personal cost: “Lawdy Lawdy we been blessed / Glory Hallelujah”!
As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. today, we must also remember the heroes whose names did not survive history, but whose selfless deeds helped ensure a better future. Freedom’s a-callin’ us all: listen carefully and ensure that the courageous, all-too-often anonymous struggle for equity and justice continues throughout the world …
Readers: Children
Published: 2012 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Poetry, African American
Only the Mountains Do Not Move: A Maasai Story of Culture and Conservation by Jan Reynolds
Surely this is one of the most dramatic before-and-after reading experiences I’ve ever had: I read Mountains last fall when it first landed on my desk and then again just recently after I landed back from East Africa. What a difference a few thousands of miles and a couple of weeks make …
Globetrotting author/photographer Jan Reynolds takes young readers on a tour of a traditional Maasai village – an enkang – in Kenya, introducing some of the smiling inhabitants, their enkaji (traditional huts) and their prized cattle and goats, explaining their wandering, herding lifestyle which remains virtually unchanged over many hundreds of years.
In spite of their long history, today’s Maasai –predominantly living in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania – face new 21st-century challenges. Global warming makes their lands dry and barren. Tourism is encroaching into Maasai tribal lands, denying their herds necessary grazing space and unbalancing already delicate cycles of survival. In spite of the hardships, “the next generation of Maasai are also learning ways to adapt to a changing environment,” Reynolds assures near book’s end.
Without a doubt, Reynolds’ story is informative, the photographs striking, and her ultimate message inspiring and hopeful that the traditional Maasai way of life will continue. It’s also kiddie-age-appropriate in introducing the very real dangers of animal extinction, environmental threats, and cultural challenges.
And yet … oh, and yet. On the book’s final page, Reynolds offers a link to a helpful Maasai reference website: http://www.maasai-association.org. Here’s the last few sentences from their “Maasai People” page: “The level of poverty among the Maasai people is beyond conceivable height. It is sad to see a society that had a long tradition of pride being a beggar for relief food because of imposed foreign concepts of development. The future of the Maasai is uncertain at this point.”
That, unfortunately, is the Maasai experience we had. Tourism has tragically fueled a beggar society, where the sound of a vehicle brings children running with outstretched hands shouting for money, food, water. A visit to an off-the-beaten-path-but-tourist-approved (!) Maasai boma (or enkang) little resembled Reynolds’ Maasai adventure: from the comparatively minor (children encrusted with flies and other bugs), to the brutal (women bearing the heaviest physical labor), to the shameful (a teenaged third wife of a much older village ‘leader’ whose back bears both a young child and the purple marks of repeated abuse).
To echo the title, only the book did not change … but certainly my reading did. From a guiltily overprivileged ‘after’-vantage point, I wonder if in a future edition, the final single page might become a more robust appendix to help educators and parents share this cultural experience at a deeper level with younger readers. The “Children Helping Children” section that is just two lines now hints at both need and possibility; it could surely provide further opportunities to engage – and enable – children both here and there.
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, African
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