My Senator and Me by Senator Edward M. Kennedy

My Senator and Me: A Dog's-Eye View of Washington, D.C. by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 5 stars

Of all the children's books about politics, this is by far my favorite.  I don't mean to judge a book by its cover, but...c'mon, check out that cover.  Aren't you in love with that friendly canine already?  Just admit it...that pup is ca-yooot!

Without a doubt, David Small's fantastic illustrations once again make a good story into a fantastic book.  But the story alone would be pretty good.  Splash, Senator Kennedy's Portuguese Water Dog, is proud to be a senator's dog.  He's happy to explain the ins and outs of politics to readers who are just a little bigger than he is.

"If you want to serve your country, Washington, D.C., is a good place to be.  Washington is the capital of the United States.  The President lives there.  The Supreme Court works there.  The Congress--made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate--meets there.  And they all try to make our country a better, fairer, safer place for people and animals."

The real Splash.
(Oh, and the real Senator Kennedy.)

That's how it starts.  I was already hooked on the cover, but add that dose of patriotism and service...?  I'm a goner.

Just as the book gets a little serious about how a senator is elected, enter a batch of puppies from which the Kennedys select Splash.  And, from that point on (after, I'm guessing, some high-quality obedience training), Splash accompanies Senator Kennedy to his office in the Russell Senate Office Building where he sits through meetings, travelings on the underground tram, attends press conferences (as still as a statue), receives pets galore, and gets the quarreling committee meeting members' attention by howling.  The only place Splash is not permitted to go is on the Senate floor, where the Senators vote on a law to improve the quality of schools.

This is a great book with a few more lessons on our government for kids.  You can even write Splash at his email address (though I wish he wasn't so high-tech...can't he have a "snail mail" address?!), which is splash@tedkennedy.com .

WOOF!

The Library by Sarah Stewart

 The Library by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 4.5 stars

The great Sarah Stewart has written a book to memorialize her late friend, fellow book lover and librarian Mary Elizabeth Brown.  What a great ode to a reader--to have a book written about her!

This is a simple tale about a girl who, above all else, chooses books.  The clever and funny illustrations by Stewart's husband, David Small, are top-notch.  We don't see the gal's face very often as it is usually hidden by a book.

Of her childhood (what flashlights are for!):

She always took a book to bed,
With a flashlight under the sheet.
She'd make a tent of covers
And read herself to sleep.

Of college life (um, I can relate):

Elizabeth Brown
Preferred a book
To going on a date.
While friends went out
And danced til dawn,
She stayed up reading late.

She eventually stumbles into a small town, and her reading habit takes over her house.  So she does what any good reader does: she shares her books.  She signs them over to her town, and her house becomes the town's library.  She moves in with a friend, and reads for the rest of her days.

This is a charming book--a great book for a child, but also a really good book to give to an adult reader, too.

The Quiet Place by Sarah Stewart

 The Quiet Place by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 4.5 stars

Some of the best books help launch kids (of all sizes) into a different creative space.  They teach!  They show!  They inspire!  And, thanks to the great words of Sarah Stewart and the incredible drawings of David Small, The Quiet Place does all of that.

The story: Isabel moves with her mother and older brother from Mexico to America--to some unnamed northern state where it randomly snows in April.  Her mother bakes cakes for little girls' birthday parties, and Isabel gets to tag along.  Sometimes she is offered a piece of cake or goody bag, but she politely declines those and asks for boxes.  She collects boxes--the bigger,the better--and creates her "quiet place" from which she can write letters back home, read books, and just think, dream, be.  By the end, all the little girls in the neighborhood are invited to her birthday party, and they are wowed by the quiet place she's created.

"My quiet place was not quiet, but it didn't matter"

(Check it out in the picture--aren't you wowed, too?)

This book resonates with me for three reasons:

1. Lorelei has two little brothers who are like two puppies from the same litter.  While she can be loud and crazy, too, Ben and Kiefer are almost always loud and crazy.  So she often looks for a quiet place to read and finish an art project.  Her cardboard box house might need a padlock. Or two.
   
2. As an Army brat, my family moved around every 2 or 3 years.  My parents would set aside one room for boxes--for my sister and I to play with.  Just like Isabel, we would create elaborate tunnels that led to higher boxes, with windows and doors, all decorated with our favorite Crayola colors.  I particularly remember the one we created in the bright sunroom in our big brick rental at 25 East 52nd Street in Savannah.  (How I remember the address but not the words to my favorite songs is beyond me.)
   
3. The book is written through letters, from Isabel to her favorite Auntie Lupita back home in Mexico.  Letters are by far my favorite thing to write.  And I don't mean the electronic kind!  I spent a few years in Asia and while email was around then, letters were clearly superior.  I was lucky to have parents who wrote frequently and well, and there are boxes of letters in our houses from each other.  I love that this book shows kids another great reason to read--letters are out there to be written and read, shared and enjoyed.  Pen pals and grandparents, cousins and aunties...hopefully millions of letters will be penned by my trio over their hopefully long and happy lifespan (but soon not delivered on Saturday).

So You Want to be a World Explorer? by Judith St. George

So You Want to be a World Explorer? by Judith St. George, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 4.5 stars

This book has a bunch of my favorite words: Plucky. Thrilling. Adventuresome. Gutsy.  Gusto. Risk. Spunky. Moxie.  These new vocabulary words are reasons enough to bring this book home from the library more than once!

We liked So You Want to be President? but didn't love it.  It seemed a bit disorganized, though the illustrations from the great David Small were too great to linger on that negative.  Judith St. George rectified her mistake and organized this book and So You Want to be an Inventor? and made them great, rather than good.  And the illustrations catapult them into amazing.  These are terrific books for the older picture book reader.  (Younger ones will still get drawn into the pictures, but there is just too much information for kids younger than 5, I think.)

In this book, after a brief introduction, Judith St. George takes one attribute of explorers (for example, they might make a discovery and not even know it; they make mistakes like everyone else; they must be risk takers; they must respect the natives) and gives two examples.  These examples are three to five short sentences, so we're going for breadth not depth here.  This is just to whet a child's appetite, to provide the briefest introduction, to pique their curiosity to this whole explorer stuff.  Or to provide some quality imaginative kid-planned explorations in their backyard, a local park, or even their bathtub.

As someone whose wanderlust led most of my decisions in my twenties, I like the idea of exploring different parts of the earth.  Therefore, I greatly appreciated St. George's broad definition of exploring.  At the end she includes gene exploration, something I would never have thought of.  She ends the book by inviting kids to start and keep exploring--what a way to spend your life!  I might just quit my day job.

I recently reviewed another book on exploring--the never-to-be-topped Lonely Planet has come out with books beyond guide books.  They are really interesting, and we keep our copy of How to be a World Explorer in the car.  It's perfect for long car rides where a kid's attention span might be challenged by a looooong car ride...  Yet another book that will help plant the travel bug in your child (for better or for worse!).

The Friend by Sarah Stewart

The Friend by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 5 tear-jerker stars

Annabelle Bernadette Clementine Dodd is a little girl who seems too small for everything in her house.  Her home, a spectacular mansion, seems to swallow her up.  Next to her fancy-schmancy parents, whom we only see once as she kisses them good-bye minutes after she wakes, she seems unnoticeable.  And the big,wide ocean next to which and into which the story takes place engulfs her.

Since her parents are much too busy for her, they entrust her to Beatrice Smith, also known as Bea, the housekeeper/nanny...  These titles just don't begin to describe the relationship between tiny white girl and sturdy, strong, kind African American woman.  Each day has its own rhythm, with these two ladies dancing their part in a sweet relationship.

First day of the week, they'd wash all the clothes--
Hanging them out in the sun's fullest glow.
Belle would assemble large clothespin bouquets,
While Bea would respond in her singular way:
"Glory be, Lord knows you try, my child!
Now let those clothes just flap for a while." 

Then they'd walk to the beach for a swimming spree--
Belle and Bea, hand in hand, to the sea.

Turn the page to a wordless wonder of an illustration by the uber-talented David Small showing Belle and Bea holding hands in the surf, walking down the dozens of steps from the old mansion into the sparkling water.

Each day of the week is full of chores turned into games, from which they deviate to spend time by the sea.  Near the end, after we know that Belle and Bea are completely inseparable, Belle separates from her.  She decides to go to the beach alone.  With her big red ball.  That floats off in the water.  Belle first feels brave and confident when she paddles in after it, but...then a wave hits.

Back at home Bea realizes in a flash that her little shadow is missing and immediately runs to the sea.  And then into the sea, rescuing the drowning girl.  Bea pulls her out of the water and into her strong, loving embrace.  Grateful, frightened Belle clings to her.  Bea weeps with relief; she would have lost her world had something happened to her.

The book is written in tribute to the author's childhood nanny, and it is a beautiful, beautiful book--both prose and pictures, lessons and reflections.

So You Want to be President? by Judith St. George

So You Want to be President? by Judith St. George, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 4.5 stars

Here's a book to introduce the Presidents to your kids.  Not exactly the Presidency...it doesn't shed light on executive orders or what Commander in Chief means.  For me, the story line is a little disorganized and messy--each page is a different aspect of a President's life, from what he eats to what pets he had, from the jobs he held prior to being President to what states most Presidents are from.  There's a lot going on for kids who don't have a firm foundation of these guys.

But the illustrations!  David Small is one of the best in the business; he makes me think that books should be cataloged in the library by illustrators (yes, I know this is crazy and impossible, but a girl can dream, can't she?).  The Caldecott he won for this book is much-deserved in my opinion.  He's created quirky characters doing funny, memorable things, turning what could be seen as stuffy history into fascinating, fun stuff.

Here are some pictures that are going to stay in Lorelei's mind for a long, long time:

Nixon installed a bowling alley in the basement of the White House.

Teddy Roosevelt's kids brought up a pony to cheer up a sick sibling.

Warren Harding winning the Presidential Beauty Contest.

300 lb Taft and his four-person tub!

I know that there's not a ton of historical information here that is going to be handy on a future Social Studies test.  BUT!  There are funny pictures galore, and the book and its fantastic illustrations make learning about Presidents chuckle-worthy.  Can't beat that!

Elsie's Bird by Jane Yolen

 Elsie's Bird by Jane Yolen, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 4.5 stars

When I first started writing this blog, I remember coming across a book that I read to Lorelei where, in the middle of the story, the mother died.  Lorelei was probably 3.  I kicked myself for not reading the book first, so that I could at the very least plan my editing before making up words on the fly.  Now that she's 5 1/2, I appreciate the greater depth of understanding she now has about how the world works.

I don't want to supply her lots of books with sad topics, but let's face it: there's a lot of stuff that happens to our kids or to their friends that is, as my father would say, un-good.  I can hear his words: It's not what happens to you, great Kate (his nickname, once in a while I live up to it), it's how you respond to it.  And that's it: responding to adversity is a tough thing for a kid to learn.  One way of helping your child learn this necessary skill is by providing a book such as Elsie's Bird and letting them learn about and explore sadness and disappointment--and how to recover from it--from the comfort of your lap.

With that build up, this book really isn't all THAT sad!

"Here there is only grass and sky and silence," Elsie wrote.

Elsie is a happy-as-a-lark girl growing up in turn-of-the-century busy and bustling Boston.  She loves the sounds of the city, but the birds are her favorite.  When her mother dies, her papa longs for something far away from Boston, away from the sadness that resonates for him there.  Her papa takes her far away--to Nebraska.  The busy-ness of the city is replaced by the silence of the prairie, and Elsie is sad and lonely.

Her solace lies in her sweet canary, named Timmy Tune, who keeps her company during her solitary days and quiet nights.  Elsie rarely leaves the house; she isn't ready to embrace her new world.  One day her canary gets out of his cage, and she runs after her only friend.  The little bird returns to her when she sings him his favorite tune, and together they finally open themselves to the sounds of their new home and begin to appreciate them.

Perhaps it's the Army brat in me that identifies with little Elsie--going to a new place is pretty tough on kids.  Add in an extra dose of adversity with a parent dying, and you've got a sad situation.  But Elsie finds her happiness in simple joys: her papa, the animals around her, and nature.  I like that Lorelei has in Elsie an example of quality creature comforts, and as Lorelei faces pint-sized bits of adversity (i.e. losing a game of Monopoly to her little brother), she can learn to cheer herself up a little.

Jane Yolen is a great story-teller, and I found the story of how she wrote the book fascinating--she read an article in Smithsonian of women who moved from their comfortable Eastern homes to the quiet Nebraska farms and went a little crazy.  "It was too big a place," and many walked through the grasses, got lost, and died (this is referenced in the book).  Those who brought canaries from back East seemed to have a higher survival rate. Huh!  Amazing!  And David Small is just fantastic.  Realistic but very, very sweet illustrations, characters with warm expressions and sweeping scenes...these are all his specialties and are featured in the book.

A great book, though for a slightly older crowd.

George Washington's Cows by David Small

George Washington's Cows by David Small

Rating: 3.5 stars

This book really wouldn't appeal to many, but I can't help but throw it out there.  For those of us who live within a drive of Mount Vernon, it might be fun to check out this book before or during the trip...just to see if, in fact, there are cows and pigs and sheep such as Small describes.

When you and your family pull up to his estate, will your kids see cows who are "fed on a diet of jam and cream scones, / Frequently sprayed with expensive colognes" and pigs who are "Eager to serve the honored guests, / Leaping to meet each need expressed?"  You never know.  Will they see sheep who "sorted the stars with a needle / And measured the sea with a stick?"  Hmmm...

(Spoiler alert: I've been there.  They won't.)

Anyway, the amusing rhyme goes on, and your kids will probably think that the animals in the well-drawn, very realistic pictures are pretty hilarious (the sheep in old-school scientist garb, looking studiously and seriously at their measurements and calculations, are my favorite).

But in the end, only the adult will laugh.  Kids just won't get the joke.  Because George, head in hand, with tears in his eyes, says:

"My cows wear dresses, my pigs wear wigs,
And my sheep are more learned than me.
In all my days on the farm I've seen
Nothing to equal such tricks." 

Then bundling into his wool underwear,
He ferried across the cold Delaware,
And muttered in tones of deepest despair:
Sell the farm, I'll try politics!

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach

When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach, illustrated by David Small

Rating: 5 dino-mite stars

This is such a fun book.  Our neighbor got it for Ben, for Lorelei's birthday.  You know you've got a great friend when both of your kids get a gift on one of their birthdays.

The gist of the book is simple:  One day a little boy and his mother go out for their "boring" route of errands and...WAIT.  I have to stop here and tell all children's book authors to stop saying that errands are boring.  Let's call them riveting and fun and exciting, as we pretend they are in our house!

Anyway, at each stop, they get a dinosaur with their purchase.  At the doughnut shop, then leave with a triceratops.  At the doctor, a stegosaurus.  At the barber, a pterosaur.  And on the way home, the little boy can't help but feed a baby hadrosaur that runs alongside his car some doughnuts, so that "little" guy follows the car home, too.

His mother is, understandably, fairly distraught at the thought of keeping four dinosaurs.  But then, crafty as all moms are, she figures out ways for them to help with the household chores.  So, they stay.

The fantastic illustrations of David Small deserve a round of applause, too.  Small makes the dinosaurs giant--check out the image on the right.  The triceratops, and the other dinosaurs, practically leap out on to your lap!  What talent!  The way that he contrasts the exasperated mothers and the delighted kids as mother-kid combos tote around their new dinosaurs is really funny.

I have to say that I feel an affinity towards Elise Broach.  Maybe because she is super educated and started writing children's books when her youngest (of three) kids was a year old.  She points out on her website that she started writing books when she was in grade school, and her "parents, teachers, and school librarians showered me with totally unjustified encouragement, saying they knew my books would be on their shelves one day."  Just goes to show you what some quality, surely justified encouragement can do to child.