Bad Bye, Good Bye by Deborah Underwood

Bad Bye, Good Bye by Deborah Underwood, illustrated by Jonathan Bean
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Rating: 4 stars

My kids' school has assemblies on most Friday mornings. The kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade classes take a turn presenting to the rest of the school about some topic of interest. There's a wide variety, of course; over the years I've watched speeches about important African American, the concept of Venn diagrams (with two kids holding hula hoops--it was so cool), and plays about impact versus intent. I'm amazed at how often these little skits stay alive through conversations with my kids.

One of the most memorable was a presentation about inferring. The Infer Song encourages kids to be "book detectives" and look for clues in the pictures and text. Click HERE for a video and for the words. 

And, even if you don't click THERE, you know what inferring is and how important it is while reading. After this class's presentation, all the kids did, too. Well...at least the ones paying attention. And I'm guessing you do this at home (or in your class) with your kids already.

This is one of the steps of reading: looking at the pictures and inferring what's going on. Kids can guess what the words are by using their eyes and brains as a team to figure it out. This process can and should start really young. And it continues with little and big chapter books.

I bring this up with Bad Bye, Good Bye because it is a picture book with a lot going on: it has a heavy story line but very few words. I counted: only 80 words! Deborah Underwood has created a sparsely-worded story about a family moving, and the emotions that come with moving.

The rest is left to Jonathan Bean, one of my favorite illustrators. He fills in the gaps with rich pictures jam-packed with action and emotion. The words don't take long to read, but my kids and I lingered for minutes on each two-page spread to talk about and figure out what was going on. We needed to infer the action from the pictures. There were some clues in the text, but the bigger clues lay waiting in the illustrations.

As someone who moved every two to three years as a kid with my Army family, this book definitely struck a chord with me. My parents (who read each and every blogpost--aren't they great?) can correct me if my memory is wrong, but I don't remember ever sobbing or throwing a tantrum when the movers came like the boy and girl do in this book. I do remember being sad--the hardest move for me (you'll laugh) was when we moved from Georgia to Hawaii. The decision came early, and my sister and I were fully entrenched in a barn in Savannah, so paradise didn't look so great to us.

Like the boy and girl in the book, though, our perspective gradually changed. I love how the kids in this book show how upset they are--they cry and look so sad! But, once the tears stop, they manage to enjoy themselves on the drive to their new home. And they arrive with an explosion of emotions: fear, curiosity, excitement, and finally...contentment.

This is an unusual book, but an important one to remember if your family is moving, or if you just want to sing the infer song and practice it a little!

Big Snow by Jonathan Bean

Big Snow by Jonathan Bean

Rating: 4 stars

Last week when I should have been zipping to my yoga class, I stopped at the library to pick up this book.  It was recently released, and I was on a long hold list, so I was pretty excited to see that it was en route to our local library earlier than I expected (yup, you read that right: nerdy me checks the status of holds to see when exactly I'll be getting my hands on certain books I'm nerdily excited about).  So after the kids were tucked in bed and before my yoga class, I ran into the library to check this out.

We are huge, huge fans of Jonathan Bean--especially of Building Our House.  I follow his blog so I'd heard a lot of chatter from him and kidslit critics about Big Snow.  My hopes were high!

And he did not disappoint.

Small flakes fell softly, white and fine.

Young David (my guess is he's about 4) lives in what seems to be one of the many small towns off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  You laugh, but drive along there and look out, and you'll see the same image as what's in Bean's book--a modest, nondescript town at the foot of rolling hills that sure looks like a solid, safe place to slowly wonder, dream, and grow up.

He is really, really excited about the fact that it's going to snow today, yet he impatiently wants the snow to have fallen five minutes ago while simultaneously wanting information about why the snow isn't falling, if it'll be big snow, and how much snow big snow will entail.  I have another such question-asker in my house, so...I admire David's mother's patience in answering her son and providing distractions for him.

Yet he's so snow obsessed that the flour he's adding to the cookies makes him think of snow.  The suds in the tub he's cleaning make him think of snow.  The white sheets on the bed make him think of snow.

He tried to shovel away the drifts,
but the snow just fell heavier.

In a bit of literary unrealistic-ness (at least in my naps-ain't-cool house), David manages to gulp down his impatience and excitement and take a nap.

His dream combines his reality of helping his mom clean the house and his hope of big snow: there's a blizzard-like big snow inside their house, and David helps shovel it out while his mom tries to vacuum it up (love that image!).  Then his father's stomping feet coming home from work early wake him, and his father invites David to check out the big snow for himself.

The small family of three dresses for the big snow and goes to explore it, together.  Simple stuff--that's what the rich fabric of life consists of.  Little moments, thoughtful conversation, modest explorations, quiet hand-holding.  Once again Jonathan Bean gives us a tiny, rich slice of the good stuff of life.

The Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson

 The Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Jonathan Bean

Rating: 4 stars

There's something so very special about the bond between father and daughter, and books that showcase this oh-so-important relationship are welcome on my shelf.  In this book, the father is a gentle and strong (such an important mix) farmer, who can both drive horses and bake a pie.

Using a cumulative rhyme, Lauren Thompson lists the ingredients of apple pie.  But it's not the obvious ones that my kids could list after baking pies for years with me--cinnamon, butter, lemon juice, cornstarch, apples.  Nope.  The ingredients in the book go deeper.  Here's what I mean:

This is the rain, cool and fresh,
that watered the roots, deep and fine,that fed the tree, crooked and strong,
that grew the apples, juicy and red,
that went in the pie, warm and sweet,
that Papa baked.

The wonderful illustrations by Jonathan Bean add a whole lot--the smiley sun shines down on the apple tree, the girl, and her father.  They are warm, comforting, beautiful--in a not-so-traditional way.  The story and illustrations make me think of John Steinbeck's novels, and the descriptions of farming in them.

Just a simple tale about a man baking for his daughter--and a little reminder that a gift from the heart, made with your hands, and shared with one you love, is definitely the best.

(And in case you now want to bake apple pie, click here for the best recipe around.)

At Night by Jonathan Bean

At Night by Jonathan Bean

Rating: 4 stars

When we find a book we love, we find all the books by that author that we can get our book-crazy hands on and read them ALL!  So it is with Jonathan Bean, the author of the new and wonderful Building Our Home.   And so we had the pleasure of reading At Night.

It's a simple book, and I've found myself thinking about it and wondering of the meaning of it when I really should be focused on more important stuff like those things that are on my to-do list.  But this is a quirky book full of magic; check it out and let me know what you think.  Its quirkiness begins with its size: the book is small and square, setting it apart from traditionally sized picture books right away.  I think I loved it from the beginning, though I really do try not to judge a book by its cover!

The story:

After her brother and sister went to bed, a girl lies in her dark room, still awake.  "She lay thinking alone and couldn't close her eyes and couldn't sleep."  She feels the breeze from her open window, gathers her pillow and sheet, and goes to meet the breeze on the roof of her apartment building.  Creating a makeshift bed for herself, she lay there.  "She thought about the wide world all around her and smiled."  Breathing in the night and the moon and the breeze, she fell asleep.

(In case you're concerned, her mom followed her up and sits quietly next to her.)

As someone who suffers from but often enjoys bouts of insomnia, I can hear the quiet of the night that Bean writes about and illustrates.  I appreciate the need to get out of bed and go to a different place, perhaps a calmer place.  I think the girl in the book climbs up to be closer to nature, to God, to some comforting place.

The story is sweet; the illustrations are amazing.  While I still think that Building Our Home is his best stuff, the illustrations are magical.  I love that he says, when asked why his work often includes landscapes: They "tend to work themselves in.  I don't fight it."  (Read neat-o article about him here.  Thank you for sending it to me, Elaine!)  I love that art has a mind of its own, as if his arm is a mere layperson to a scene grander than himself.

We are huge fans of Jonathan Bean!

Building Our Home by Jonathan Bean

Building Our Home by Jonathan Bean

Rating: 5 stars

Everyone in our house likes this book, but Ben is the most smitten.  Here is a book that has the potential to stay in his head and work its magic through childhood and into adulthood.  Can one children's book do that?  I sure do think so.

Or maybe he's just trying to shove the pictures in his brain through osmosis; he fell asleep with his head on the last page of this book.  I think there's a little pile of Ben drool still there...

Anyway, this book is a gem.  Based on the true story of his parents moving out to the country and building their own home with the help of all kids big enough to wield a hammer, Jonathan Bean writes a simple tale of building his family's home.  His core family--at the beginning of the book, four people, but by the end there's an additional baby--is the work crew.  Each page shows them working hard, together.  "Dad lays the rocks one on top another while we fill the loud mixing machine."  Later, Grandpa visits with his backhoe (Ben: "Does Grand-Dad have a backhoe, Mommy?"  Me, thinking of how my father doesn't even have a tool box: "I don't think so, Ben, but we can call and ask. You never know.")

But this year the first frost arrives early.

But more people are needed to build this house, of course, and they throw a frame-raising party where extended family comes to help as well as workers from the quarry and sawmill.  Everyone pitches in then, and for the moving in party at the end of the book.

The last pages of the book, after the story is complete, is the wonderful Author's Note.  Bean shares six pictures of his family constructing "the Bean Homestead" that he helped build and then grew up in.  He lauds the "wise love of two parents, the companionship of three sisters, and a practically lived faith."  He also says that in real life the house didn't take just 18 months like in the book.  It took five years.  I'm glad he admits to fictionalizing his childhood a bit, lest we dreamers get any crazy ideas to build our own homes in a year or two.

But we who are lucky only remembers the good times from childhood.  A house--a home--was built, and that's what the author remembers.  The New York Times rightly praised this book last week, read it here, (I should be reading this week's paper instead of typing this...).  I love that the Times fit Building Our Home in among two other books about America.  It doesn't scream out patriotism, but it does imbibe the pioneer spirit that is oh-so-wonderfully American.

I really do wonder if, for Ben, this is one of those books that really captures his imagination in a great, great way.  Time will tell, as it always does.

(As if this post isn't long enough.  So I found out on his blog that the author lives in Harrisburg, PA, and had an open house at THE house from the book.  Man!  I might have driven the two hours to attend with my book in hand.  Dorky confession, I realize...  Hmmm, do you think the author might do it again sometime?)