Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Penguin Cha Cha by Kristi Valiant

Penguin Cha Cha by Kristi Valiant

Rating: 5 stars

Julia loves the zoo. She watches the daily performances from a tree branch--she has a good vantage point from which she can spot some black fins grabbing random items from performers on the stage. These black fins belong to a group of penguins that are obviously up to something.

Julia wants to know what they're up to.

She follows them back to their penguin cove, but they just stand around acting and looking like "penguin popsicles"--they aren't doing anything when they know she's around.

This is what Julia sees through her binoculars.
So she does what any kid would do: she spies on them. She goes up high and, with some good binoculars, she spots those penguins DANCING! With the stolen props from the performance, they dance around the cove like nobody's watching. Julia wants to not just watch, she wants to join in! But every time she tries, she gets the same: penguin popsicles.

So she does what any kid would do: she dresses up like them. Her costume is hilarious and spot-on, and she waddles in with her pillow-as-white-tummy doing its best to disguise her human-ness. It doesn't work. The penguins still stand around like big popsicles.

So she does what any kid would do: she puts on her fanciest outfit and aims to dazzle them with her cha cha. She juts out her chin and puts back her shoulders and reaches out her arms and cha cha chas with such enthusiasm and joy and grace that the penguins can't resist joining her. Finally, she gets what she wants: she gets to dance with the penguins!

The penguins can't resist: Tap, flap, cha cha cha!
My kids and I are blown away by this book. It is sweet, it is funny, it is cool. Valiant's illustrations are drop-dead gorgeous. I want to sit and study every single illustration because there are so many great details, so much joy sketched in young Julia's face and arms and movements!

But my kids and I also want to know: will there be another story, similar to this one, about monkeys doing magic in their monkey house?  We hope so, because we've enjoyed Penguin Cha Cha so much...we want more!


Monday, December 15, 2014

The Baby Tree by Sophie Blackall

The Baby Tree by Sophie Blackall

Rating: 5 stars

It's an age-old question most parents dread: Where do babies come from?

Sophie Blackall takes a stab at answering this question, taking the load off our parental shoulders for a bit. This beautiful book is on many (most?) of the year-end "best book" lists, and there's a reason why: it's a sweet story with an important message, told with sweet words and incredible illustrations.

Here's the story (and a few illustrations to give you an idea of how great they are):

At breakfast, a little boy's parents break the news to him: there's a baby on the way! He's going to be a big brother. As he quietly eats his oatmeal while the hubbub of the morning swirls around him, he only has one thought: Where are we going to get the baby?

Teenage neighbor Olive answers his question as they walk to school: "You plant a seed, and it grows into a Baby Tree."

Hmm. He's not sure about that. He still wonders, so he takes his question to school.

Mrs. McClure the art teacher replies: "From the hospital."

Okay...he can picture a hospital, because his Grandpa had stuff removed (gall stones) there. But he's still unsure, so...

He asks Grandpa, who tells him: "A stork brings your baby in the night and leaves it in a bundle on your doorstep."

What??!!?
Everyone was right. Except for Grandpa.

Maybe the mailman can clear things up: "Babies come from eggs."

At the end of this long, confusing day, the boy asks his mom and dad where babies come from. The simple, succinct answer includes: "They begin with a seed from their dad...which gets planted in an egg inside their mom...the baby grows in there for nine months...until it runs out of room...and it's ready to be born."

So everyone was a little bit right. Except for Grandpa and that stork thing.

There's more information in the back about where babies come from, with recommendations on how to answer the question based on the age of your child. The information also includes twins and adoption and c-sections in very brief but still-honest ways.

This is a great book for many reasons: it's wonderful to look at, great to read aloud, and a fantastic teaching tool. What more can you expect from a book? (Please don't tell her, but we are giving this to Lorelei's teacher--she has a toddler at home and is expecting her second baby in January!)


Thursday, December 4, 2014

Draw! by Raúl Colón

Draw! by Raúl Colón

Rating: 5 stars

Last month the New York Times published their annual list (and I'm a lover of all lists, especially when they are lists of books, not to-dos) of Best Illustrated Books for 2014. Click HERE to access this great list. But watch out! Raúl Colón's gorgeous book Draw! is the first one, and when I looked at the illustration from it I knew I needed to see all of it. So don't expect to just look. Expect to buy. At least one. (I already owned Shackleton's Journey, or else I would have purchased that, too.)

Anyway.

Raúl Colón suffered from severe asthma as a child. Frequently, he'd find himself locked up indoors--for days on end--in order to hide from the pollen that made breathing difficult. But he endured those many hours on those many days away from the world by escaping into books and his own drawing (and sometimes comic books he wrote and illustrated himself). This wordless picture book is inspired by the hours he spent as a child trapped in his room but free in his imagination...

In Draw!, a boy is sitting on his bed, absorbed in a book about Africa. He puts the book aside and grabs his sketchbook, and draws himself walking, walking, walking into the book. (This transporting-into-a-book is something my kids talk about all the time. Are they alone? Do your kids do this?) The boy walks and walks until he sees an elephant. Gladly, it is a friendly elephant that poses for him and then gives him a ride rather than charges him.

The elephant becomes his guide as he walks around the grasslands, meeting and drawing giraffes, lions, gorillas, water buffalo, and a rhino that is the least friendly of the bunch (check out the cover, above left). His eyes and heart soak up the experience and he draws and draws and draws all these animals...until suddenly he is transported back to his original world, where he is presenting his animal artwork to his class.

The wordless story is fine. But the illustrations! They are inspirational works of art, each one.

I loved reading more about Raúl Colón and his technique in an interview on the fabulous School Library Journal blog. Here's what he has to say about how he draws each and every illustration in this book, and his others:

Usually I use colored pencil over watercolor wash. In this case, with the African images, I bought Pantone color papers, and I went straight onto the paper with Prismacolor pencils. The paper has a nice grain to it. If you’re going to use color pencils, it’s good to use a grain paper. 
I found the etching instrument by accident—something [a former] boss purchased when I worked at a  TV station in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It’s like a giant flat coin with prongs sticking out. First I sketch onto the paper. The boy’s pants may look brown, but there are actually layers of greens, purples, and blues, which make the colors appear much more vivid. (I learned this from the Impressionists, who put colors next to each other to enhance images.) After I know where everything goes, I start etching with this instrument—wherever I think I need movement or volume.
We're fans of this author/illustrator for sure. I'm embarrassed that this is the first time I've mentioned him on this blog! If you're curious about his work, definitely check out more books by him. (Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates is my personal favorite.)

Dirty Rotten Pirates by Moira Butterfield

Dirty Rotten Pirates: A Revolting Guide to Pirates and Their World by Moira Butterfield, illustrated by Mauro Mazzara

Rating: 4 stars

This review was first published on the Washington FAMILY Magazine website:

Be forewarned: After reading this book, your kids might call each other “matey” and threaten to make you walk the plank if you feed them spinach and broccoli. Then again, you might cook them fish- and onion-filled salmagundi for dinner if they don’t mend the ship’s sails or ropes…

Dirty Rotten Pirates: A Truly Revolting Guide to Pirates and Their World is not for the faint of heart. The illustrations alone might give a child (or grown up!) the shivers. There are illustrations—and text to go along with—of a pirate looking up in fright at a “doctor” about to saw off his injured limb and another deceased pirate left to hang in the gallows for years after he took his last breath. Gruesome for sure, though what else would you expect from a book about pirates? These chaps were not known for their high-quality manners and impeccable oral hygiene! 


Therefore, it is appropriate that the target age range for this book is slightly older than the normal picture book range. The publisher recommends this book for 8 to 11 year olds. 


That said, Dirty Rotten Pirates delivers on its promise to teach your child about dirty, rotten pirates in a pretty revolting way. Each chapter showcases a different aspect of piracy, and each page is jam-packed with information about the history and life of pirates. I found myself spending the time to read all the facts, fascinated by the band of brothers that existed on each ship. This book, especially because of those gruesome illustrations mentioned above, is highly entertaining. 

To read the rest of the review, please click HERE.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Elephant and Piggie: Waiting is Not Easy! by Mo Willems

Elephant and Piggie: Waiting is Not Easy! by Mo Willems

Rating: 5 stars

We've loved Elephant and Piggie for a long, long time. I've written about them a few times before (most recently HERE and before that HERE). They are the best easy reader series that exists, and if you are working on reading with your kiddo, you need to check out every single one of them from the library. Really, you do.

But this book. Waiting Is Not Easy. This one take the cake.

This is the best!  The best book in a fantastic series! Do you REALIZE what this means?! This is one spectacular book!

Perhaps I've read it so many times that I am now beginning to talk like Gerald and Piggie? There could be worse things.

SO! The book!

Piggie has something to show Gerald. But he has to wait for it. And Gerald has a waiting problem. I know a waiting problem when I see one because I have serious waiting problems, too. Gerald and I (and my kids, like most kids) have serious deficiencies when it comes to patience. It's really a bummer that Target doesn't sell patience, really. It'd be so handy to have an extra six-pack of patience sitting around...

ANYWAY! The book!

So Gerald does his best to wait--which Piggie insists he must do, he has no choice, the surprise is not ready yet--and finally he does wait until the final few pages of the book, when the reader turns the page and together with Gerald we gasp in appreciation.

Gerald learns he has to wait some more.
(I do the same thing.)
It's a starry, starry night in Gerald and Piggie's world, and they both look up at it, in awe. They are both dumbstruck at the view.

And Gerald says, simply and quietly: "That was worth waiting for."

What a great book to put in the hands of our children! Geesh, what a great book to put in the hands of our friends and partners and siblings, too! In this world of now-now-NOW, where we want what we want yesterday, not months or years from now, it is even more important to teach kids that waiting is difficult and worthwhile.

Some things are worth waiting for.

Isn't that true?