The Thin Red Line

The powers that be are conspiring to prevent me from posting today.    I spent over an hour on a long post about Herb Boyd’s We Shall Overcome and Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s favorite words.   My DSL failed at the moment I pressed publish and the post disppaered  into the ether.

The DSL came back up after a bit and I wrote a new post about my problem with the disappearing post and how hard it is to write an article a second time when you have no access to your first draft.    It wasn’t Really a book review but I did include all the links.    Then I clicked publish, the connection failed and the computer ate my post.   Again.

Clearly the powers that be do NOT want me to promote these two books today.    Want to join me in thwarting them?  Go over to Worldcat and order these books from your library, even though I have included NO links.    Or type the titles in the Powell’s search box and buy the new Carle cuz it’s so cool and to show those powers that be that didn’t let me put a link for your to do so in this space.

The gods willing, The Thin Red Line will return to regular publication tomorrow.

Share This

I don’t usually post about books that are not in English but this Spanish language children’s book I came across today is so unusual and a lot of fun even if you do not comprehend Spanish at all.   Animalario Universal  is spiral bound at the top rather than on the side and except for a few introductory and concluding pages, each page is cut in two places, creating three ‘mini pages’ or frames which can each be flipped independently.   The first image shown is an elephant.   As you flip each of the three segments over one by one the elephant becomes a pig, then the pig becomes an armadillo and so on until finally after the last three flips a camel becomes a fish.   The Spanish words for each animal are displayed beneath the pictures and as best I can tell the book is intended as a fun vocabulary/animal names lesson for the Easy books crowd.   Though it will certainly also appeal to anyone who admires clever and artistic books.  Even it they no hablo Espanol.

Share This

Today’s Christmas book is a bit unusual.  It includes a history lesson. Christmas In The Trenches by John McCutcheon with illustrations by Henri Sorensen (who was also the illustrator for The Old Shepard’s Tale, another Christmas book I reviewed) relates the tale of a grandfather and his  in England on Christmas Day.   After the presents and the meal the little girl remarks to her grandfather that this has been her favorite Christmas ever.   She asks if Grandpa has a favorite Christmas.   He does and this is the story.

(more…)

Share This

Last week I got called in to work a shift  at Sumner Library.   I had worked at that branch once before and they had been very nice to me so when they said they were really desperate for someone to come in from 5–9 pm I agreed.   Since I’d only been there once before I was not as clear as I might have been on the driving directions, and was at the point of wondering if I had made a wrong turn when I realized the library was just ahead on the left.   Since I was in the right lane, I eased over so that I would be able to turn into the driveway, quite failing to notice the big SUV already occupying the left hand lane. 

Luckily it was quite minor as collisions go.   The Jeep SUV’s rugged side panels showed no damage at all and the scuffs on my driver’s side doors will buff right out.   I did knock the side view mirror off, but re-attaching it proved easy and inexpensive.    The other driver was very nice and after re-assuring each other we were fine and that no damage needed to be reported to police or insurance,  I wandered into the staff lounge at Summer,  sat down at the table,  broke into my emergency Pop-Tarts and picked up the first book at hand to distract myself so I could calm down and work my shift.   

(more…)

Share This

Good Night, Gorilla is a delightful picture book, written and illustrated by Peggy Rathman. The security guard at the zoo goes around telling each of the animals "Good Night", unaware that the gorilla has snatched his ring of keys from his back pocket and is following him around, open the cage of each animal after it has been wished good night. The animals all follow the zoo keeper home, startling his sleeping wife who leads them all back to the zoo. A very cute story with excellent illustrations.

(more…)

Share This

Having enjoyed a very positive response to my previous post about Poop–A Natural History of the Unmentionable, I knew as soon as I came across it while checking in returns this afternoon that I would have to blog about The Gas We Pass– The Story of Farts.

No polite grown up language like “flatulence” in this Easy Non Fiction book. Shinta Cho writes frankly and tastefully about the how’s and why’s of passing gas in a very cutely illustrated volume that would surely have a classroom of kindergarteners giggling madly in no time at all. I’m certain the kids will love it and refrain from Highly Recommending it only because I don’t want their parents to blame me when the kids won’t stop making fart noises and jokes long after the cute value of it has passed for the adults in the room.

Share This

This week’s Easy Picture Books round up is for Nikon, who was very enthusiastic about last week’s selection If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and suggested one I wasn’t familiar with, A Bargain For Frances. This Easy Reader is the delightful story of two furry little girls of indeterminate species who both really enjoy having tea parties with their dolls and both long for a fancy china tea set. The story by Russell Hoban does a wonderful job of entertaining at a true Easy reading level while the delightful illustrations by Lillian Hoban add charm that cause adults to remember this book fondly decades later. Highly Recommended.

(more…)

Share This

The latest Easy Picture Books to catch my eye are a mixed bag. Tana Hoban’s 26 letters and 99 cents is exactly what the title specifies and nothing more. Open it from the front and you will see the alphabet presented in both upper and lower case in a plastic toy-claymation style that is distinctive but not especially impressive and illustrated by a picture of something beginning with the letter–from an airplane to a zipper. A useful but not special book for pre-reading alphabet drills.

Older toddlers who’ve already learned the ABC’s can open the book from the back and see the numbers 1 through 99 displayed with pictures of pennies, nickels dimes and quarters making up the number specified, from a single penny to three quarters, two dimes and four pennies in the final frame, this could be useful in teaching to count money. Recommended only if you happen upon it at the library and don’t have to buy it.

I should no longer be surprised when I find yet another example of a celebrity or public figure who has penned a children’s book, I’ve certainly run across and written about them before. But this one, by former US President Jimmy Carter, illustrated by his daughter Amy Carter, sadly reinforces the impression I got from Pete Seeger’s The Deaf Musicians– that celebrities generally don’t know much about writing children’s books and use illustrations that are downright ugly. The story, which is sweet if a bit oversimple and bland, is told in far more words than a toddler would ever likely read for herself so the book seems intended for an adult to read to a child. But I doubt the poor quality illustrations would hold the child’s attention long enough for the adult to get through the wordy story. Not Recommended.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie is the best of this bunch. A very cute story about things the mouse will subsequently want and you’ll subsequently have to give him. The illustrations are cute and appealing. Felicia Bond, the illustrator, apparently didn’t get the memo about mandatory ugly drawings and author Laura Joffe Numeroff deftly tells the tale at a true Easy reading level. A very pleasant story book suitable for bed time or quiet time. Recommended.

Share This

One of my duties at the library is to go around just before we close and gather up any stray books that have been left here, there or wherever. Just before closing time Sunday afternoon I came upon a small stack of books in the Children’s area. I was about to check them in and put them on a cart to be re-shelved when I happened to take a look at them. And found that all three were really neat books that I was not already familiar with. So I decided to bring them home instead to read them and share them with you.

It is very unusual to encounter a book that does not have the title or any other writing on the front cover. Which is just one of the very striking things about Walter Was Worried, a pre-school book by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. This book illustrates the emotions different children experience in response to the weather. While the drawings are in a somewhat primitive style, Seeger deftly manges to communicate the stated emotion in each child’s facial expression as the book moves from worried (when the sky grew dark) to ecstatic (when the sun came out). If you have pre-schoolers in the house, this one is Recommended.

I was very intrigued by the title The Deaf Musicians. As someone who is severely hearing impaired but nonetheless loves music (the net result of that is that I am mostly into music that was popular when I was a teenager before I lost most of my hearing) this seemed like it would be my sort of thing. Sorry to say it wasn’t. Pete Seeger’s attempt to jump on the ‘popular musicians put out children’s books’ bandwagon falls flat. The illustrations are, well, kind of ugly and the story line of a musician who goes deaf and then begins performing “music” in sign language with other deaf people on the subway made little sense. Not Recommended.

I’ve long been a Maurice Sendak fan, particularly of his iconic Where The Wild Things Are but had some how managed to miss this delightful little gem. From Alligators All Around to Zippity Zound, Sendak presents the alphabet. With charming alligator illustrations and inventive alliterations (juggling jellybeans, making macaroni, quite quarrelsome) this is a fun way to review the ABC’s. For the pre-school set, this one too is Recommended.

Share This

Just a short post today, before heading back to the library to work my Friday–Monday week and discover lots of new and interesting books and re-discover a few old favorites to share in this space.

The cover illustration sadly does not do justice to the charming juvenile science book titled POOP: A Natural History of the Unmentionable. Written by zoologist Nicola Davies with clever and clear illustrations by Neal Layton. It is as advertised everything you might want to know and then some about the old ‘number two’.

With wit and humor Davies and Layton tell the story of poop, from an illustrated guide to identifying various varieties of animal feces (hold your nose!) to odd and important facts– such as birds and bats pooping seeds that bring vegetation to a new area or that Blue Whale poop is the biggest– at ten inches wide and several yards long.

If all of this was more information than you really wanted from me over your morning cup of coffee, I apologize. But do stop by the library and check out POOP. The kids will love it and learn something and who knows, maybe you will too.

In the library POOP can be found at 573.49. Thanks everyone for a great week, and hope you have a festive weekend. I will post again on Monday.

Share This

Kevin Clash and Elmo

Most of the time a book’s genre dictates its format. Mysteries typically begin with murder followed by investigation and then solution. Cookbooks start with appetizers and end with dessert. And biographies usually take a birth to death (or birth to present) approach. But Kevin Clash, the man behind (or more accurately when performing on Sesame Street beneath) my favorite Muppet is different. The chapters in his biography, My Life As A Furry Red Monster, are arranged by emotional virtues: Love, Joy, Creativity, Tolerance, Courage, Friendship, Cooperation, Learning and Optimism.

More often than not when books step outside the established format, they fall flat on their faces. But this one works. Largely ignoring chronology, Clash relates anecdotes of growing up in a small house in Baltimore filled with kids, love and laughter as a shy child obsessed from a very early age with creating puppets and performing with them for the neighborhood kids, then later at local events and on a local television show and finally with Jim Henson’s team on the mega-hit PBS children’s show with each vignette illustrating the chapter’s particular theme. The tone is light and engaging and the less than 200 page book is a quick, easy read. Recommended.

***

I’ve recently added a few new site to my blogroll on the right and am proud to recommend:

Eavesdrop Writer by Vienne is a wonderful blog in which the author relates snippets of over-heard conversations as grist for the creative writing mill. Her powers of observation are remarkable as is the skill with which she presents scenes she has witnessed in public. Her blog features a very active Comments section in which Vienne is charming and truly gracious to all of her visitors.

Jim Bashkin is a scientist and book-lover whose blog Nearly Nothing But Novels focuses mostly on crime fiction with a few literary classics thrown in. Jim’s detailed book reviews are intelligent and informative, his site well worth a daily visit.

And finally, Jim Murdoch is a novelist whose blog The Truth About Lies features observations on language, literature and the writing life. His tone and style are very engaging. I greatly enjoyed his posts about owning 27 dictionaries and musing on the assignment of gender to neutral nouns in the romance languages. A real treat.

Share This

For me, one of the great things about working at the library is getting to enjoy children’s books in the course of the day. As a non-parent, I would never have occasion to be exposed to what we call Easy Books at the library. So today I decided to feature four of my all time favorites, and invite you to remember along with me that very special time in your earliest life when you were first exposed to the magic of books. I hope you enjoy it.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst was written back in 1972, when I was eight years old and had moved on to reading Juvenile fiction but I was lucky enough to discover Alexander when I worked as a book store clerk in New Orleans in the late 1980’s and it has been my all time favorite children’s book ever since. Poor Alexander wakes up with gum in his hair, and the day just goes downhill from there. From the breakfast table to the carpool, from school to the doctor’s office, nothing goes right for Alexander on his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I am painfully aware that the beloved children’s classic was disastrously made into a movie a few years back, but even that outrage can not dim for me the enduring appeal of Theodore Geisel’s pseudonym Dr. Seuss. By my count Dr. Seuss is easily the most prolific author ever of Easy Readers and is almost certainly the first poet most children have read and memorized since The Cat In The Hat first stepped in in 1957.

That these books were carefully designed to use a strictly limited vocabulary, repeated numerous times as an aid to children learning to read is largely obscured by the delightful poems and highly imaginative and playful illustrations that are indelibly stamped upon our memories. Who among us does not know I do not like Green Eggs and Ham, I do not like them Sam I Am or has not counted One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.

If you do not have children, or even if you do, and have not recently been around these classic books, stop by your library soon and pick them up and pass a few minutes visiting with Dr. Seuss. As the ACOA people always say It’s Never Too Late To Have a Happy Childhood. (Alexander is shelved with Easy Picture books, look in the V’s for author Judith Viorst. The Dr. Seuss titles are all Easy Readers, filed in the D’s for author Dr. Seuss.)

Share This

Hope it was a Happy Labor Day. I celebrated my paid holiday by staying home and doing not much of anything apart from reading and watching most of the fifth season of The West Wing on DVD. Yesterday I had a follow up doctor’s appointment. My blood pressure is improved, though still too high and they are starting me on a statin drug and a second BP medicine, though I will not be able to fill the scrips and start taking them until pay day on Thursday.

Meanwhile an e-mail from Earthlink indicates that our phone service will be switched over and our DSL turned on on September 1oth, which we are all looking forward to.

Homo Domesticus is one of Ron’s selections that I ended up reading as well. David Valdes Greenwood, a writer and writing teacher in the Boston area has penned a memoir of his marriage to his husband, Jason and their adoption of a daughter, Lily. The writing is quite funny at times, though Ron seemed to laugh out loud at it rather more than I did. It was nice to read a first person account of one of the few legal gay marriages, though frankly I got the impression that even if I were still living in Boston (shudder) this is not a couple I would care to hang out with. They are of a younger generation who talk a great deal about being "sex positive" but seem to have very little actual sex. They also seem to be the sort of new parents who talk of little other than their new baby, which is really only interesting to others in the same circumstance. Half heartedly recommended for some of the humor and the historical value.

I’m not quite sure how I managed to previously miss reading Fast Food Nation, which was published several years ago, though I believe I may have confused it with a book I read about the (lack of) nutrition in fast food. While this book certainly did talk a great deal about the poor nutritional value of fast food and the resultant world wide impact on health, it is a thorough examination of the subject including a detailed history of the industry and a behind the scenes look at how the fast food industry has transformed other industries such as meat packing and potato farming. The chapter detailing the author’s visit to a slaughterhouse was almost enough to dissuade me from ever eating another hamburger. This book was especially timely for me in that Ron and I have been attempting to eat more along South Beach Diet lines since I have resumed treatment for diabetes and are indeed avoiding fast food.

In the course of checking in and shelving books at work I frequently come across slim, hardcover Young Adult titles devoted to some drug or another and am just as frequently appalled by the propagandist "Reefer Madness" tone these books invariably seem to adopt. So I was pleasantly surprised at the genuinely balanced treatment this YA title brings to the highly emotional and controversial issue of legalizing drugs.

I have long been thoroughly convinced that the "War On Drugs" is a misguided mistake (look at how well alcohol prohibition worked out in the 1920’s) largely pursued by crass politicians (who can never seem to keep their own kids from trying drugs) and implemented by police, lawyers and "treatment" providers who are pursuing their own economic benefits rather the oft-repeated non-sense about "protecting the children".

None of the reporting about the negative consequences of pursuing this "war", nor the arguments and activism of legalization proponents was news to me, but I was very impressed by Meryl Loonin’s ability to explain the reasoning and motivations of the drug war proponents who are not economically benefiting from the "war" which had previously quite escaped me. If nothing else, having read this book will serve me well the next time I find myself in one of those utterly exasperating arguments that inevitably can be reduced to the logical fallacy "drugs are bad because they are illegal and drugs are illegal because they are bad".

(Climbing down from my soap box and hoping the DEA won’t be soon knocking at my door to punish my perfidy in believing that questions of what drugs people take should be a matter for individuals and their doctors and that the police truly have more important things to do.)

Share This

Work is, well, work. Somehow I let a week slip away from me without posting, and really only one book caught my eye during that time. I did finally get my copy of Pan’s Labyrinth, a movie that Nina mentioned on her blog awhile back. I played it and sat through it, but it never did grab me and was mostly background. On my day’s off I did watch the entire seventh season of The West Wing on DVD. I always liked that show and enjoyed it, though 24 episodes at once is past the OD point. I also watched three episodes from season 5 of The Sopranos, and have another three episodes waiting to watch.

Share This

So it’s Sunday and I am off and I should be doing laundry but am blogging instead. I always thought of audiobooks as being for the old and blinding, the Large Print crowd and am always at little amazed at audibooks for children. Yesterday I checked in the audiobook of this children’s classic, From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, then went over to the shelf and retrieved the original and brought it home.

I remember reading this as a child and being so taken with the idea of running away to live in a museum. Re-reading it last night was not a disappointment at all, it was every bit as good as I remembered. Thirteen year old Claudia, a bored honors student in Greenwich, Connecticut and her nine year old brother, Jamie, catch a train to Manhattan and move into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They sleep in antique beds in the French furniture collection, bathe in the fountain where they also collect change to pay for food and other expenses and get a lot out of the museum tagging along with various school groups, including at one point Jamie’s own class.

The children are very taken with a new statue on display, an angel, believed to be a Michaelangelo but the provenance still up in the air. They become fascinated with this mystery and set out to learn for sure who created the angel. Their sleuthing leads them to the Fairfield, Connecticut estate of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, an eccentric and curmudgeonly old lady and the narrator of the tale who is most interested in the children’s story of running away to live at the Met.

Initially Mrs. Frankweiler refuses to tell them where the statue cames from but offers to allow them an hour to search her files (described as rows and rows of metal filing cabinets) for the answer. But, she warns them, her filing system is unique and things are placed where they make sense to her, so they are unlikely to find anything by looking in obvious places. In the nick of time Claudia thinks to look under Bologna, for Bologna, Italy and there finds a note, preserved in glass, in Michaelangelo’s hand that makes clear he sculpted the angel.

Mrs. Frankweiler has the chauffer drive the children home, and Claudia returns to Greenwich feeling changed inside, which she realizes is what she wanted all along.

Share This