Mouse-traps and the Moon

Lewis, lewis bo bewis

2012-01-26T11:34:00.005-04:00

In our house we play a lot of word games. A typical dinner-hour will find us enumerating one food/drink/family member/friend/song/dinosaur/you-name-it for every letter of the alphabet.

A is for Argintinasaurus
B is for Brachiosaurus
C is for Compsognathus ...

A is for cousin Amy
B is for uncle Brian
C is for cousin Carrie...

You get the point.

(Note: if your name begins with "O" or "Q" "W" or "Z" could you please marry one of my relatives? Dating or common-law marriage would suffice. Thank you very much.)

My daughter likes to make up a lot of games of this sort. Last night's was called, "What's your food of heaven?"--except that she said it more like "WHAT'S - YOUR - FOOD - OF - HEAVEN-en-en-en-en!" We then had to, in turn, list ingredients in our favourite dishes while the rest of us guessed what the dish was.

Often this type of game then turns into an exercise in creative rhyming or extempore song composition. "Presto pesto! Eat the rest-o. Lest-o we're left-o with lunches."

This morning my friend Maggie posted a link to a super-duper word game invented by none other than that master wordsmith himself, Lewis Carroll. The game is called doublets and it involves taking a word, changing a single letter to make it another word and continuing on down the line to create quite another concept altogether. From what I can glean, doublets is like a clever, intentional version of telephone.

DRY - CRY - COY - COT - NOT - NET - WET

The link Maggie directed me too is Bookmaking for Kids, a fantastic site rife with all sorts of creative ideas. In today's post they've paid tribute to doublets by posting a handy-dandy pdf that lets you print out a version of the game in small book format. I've now got mine sitting by my desk to play later. Getting from point A to point B in this particular version of the game may be too much of a challenge for my newly minted 7-year-old, but that doesn't mean we can't start at any old point A and see where it takes us.

HEAD-HERD-HARD-LARD-LARK... What a lark, I say!

What about you? Do you play word games at home? If so, tell me what your games are like. Do you play math/numbers games? Please share because we sure could use some pointers in our wordy house on that front.

Summer reading with a purpose

2011-07-04T11:15:00.003-03:00

Last week, I trotted my daughter down to the public library to take part in the kick-off party for our local summer reading club. She danced, ate cake and ... vowed to read 100 books over the course of the summer. She's 6. I quickly checked the fine print and discovered that books that I read to her count as well as those she reads herself. Phew. "A man's reach must exceed his grasp" and all that claptrap, but realistic goals are good too. Together, she and I will rock this challenge.

There's another local kid who has also vowed to read 100 books. He's 8 and he's flying solo on the summer reading challenge for the first time. Such a lofty goal is alone enough to make any parent proud, but Kael's commitment extends far beyond literacy and the love of books. Earlier this spring, Kael's beloved uncle died at the Chalmers Regional Hospital here in Fredericton. Kael and his family spent a lot of time at the hospital during his illness. Now, in the aftermath of his uncle's death, Kael would like to raise money to enhance the hospital's family room so that other members of our community will be surrounded by comfort during their own dark emotional times.

Kael is tracking his progress on a charming and engaging blog. Have a look and consider making a donation. There's a direct link to the Chalmers Regional Hospital Foundation right from his main page. This summer, please take up a challenge to enrich your mind through reading and your heart through community service, as Kael has done.

An Exhibition and a Celebration

2011-05-19T12:52:00.003-03:00

Sea Stacks At Low Tide: An Exhibition of Atlantic Canadian Books For Children

Presented by the Eileen Wallace Children’s Literature Collection and School District 18’s Enriching Visual Literacies Project

May 28th-June 3rd Saturday & Sunday, 1-4pm; Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
Room 415 (The Nan Gregg Room), Harriet Irving Library, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton

Exhibition Launch and Celebration: Monday, May 30th, 2011, 5:30-7:00 pm
Please contact Sue Fisher if you would like to attend the launch and celebration.
A contact email is provided in my profile on the left of the screen.

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The Eileen Wallace Collection at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) is the largest research collection of children’s literature in Atlantic Canada. Its holdings are historically and regionally diverse, with an extensive representation of literature published in, by and about Atlantic Canada. Visit us at www.lib.unb.ca/collections/clc/

District 18’s Enriching Visual Literacies Project saw children from two Fredericton-area elementary schools spend time learning about artistic techniques and the principles of visual literacy before producing their own picture books. A number of these books will be on display alongside a broader sampling of Atlantic Canadian books for children and young adults from the Wallace Collection.

Sea Stacks At Low Tide grows out of a larger collaborative research project among Dalhousie and Acadia Universities and the University of New Brunswick, entitled Sea Stacks: Atlantic Canadian Books for Children and Young Adults, 1978-2011. seastacks.ca/info

We welcome members of the public as well as those attending the Congress of the Social Sciences & Humanities to attend.

Stretching the boundaries of genre

2011-04-11T10:40:00.002-03:00

I was reading The Guardian's Children's Book site this morning when I can across this article about a young-adult novel by Jennifer Egen written entirely in Power Point slides. A one-chapter excerpt comprising 76 slides is included in the article. While I found the chapter compelling, I'm not sure it was because of the use of Power Point or whether it was simply that Egan's characters and circumstances are well-conceived and well-laid out. It's clear that Egan is a talented writer of YA fiction and I look forward to reading the entire book.

But let's get back to those Power Point slides. To my mind, they provided an overly busy sensory distraction from the theme of silence and dysfuntion that runs throughout this chapter (and, for that matter, through most YA fiction). Not only that, they felt gimmicky; and because they felt gimmicky, they became a flashing neon light pointing to all the other clichéd moments
in the book. Teen novels that deal with family dysfunction always rely on cliché to a certain extent. The trick in writing them is to get readers to the originality and art of a work before they can trip over the trappings that took them there. Bullet points and idea pyramids run counter to such aims. And what of the use of Power Point itself? In the age of social media, a book that uses Power Point as a tool for experimenting with genre, seems dated, almost quaint, especially one that's set in the future as Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad is.

So, what does all this mean when it comes to writing fiction with or in the new media? Everywhere I look, writers are anxious about social media--how to build on it, how to channel it for their own artistic or profit motives. Once upon a time, I adapted Pride and Prejudice as a twitter-stream. At the time, the use of Austen's words and characters seemed a fitting way to lovingly mock the puffed-up social media platform and the quirky collection of personality types that inhabit it. In retrospect, my effort was just one of many Austenizations of our contempory world, a trope that now has been done to death. Done to undeath, in fact. But the promise of art, of meaning, of originality is still there, sitting in a pause, waiting for the right artists to redefine us.

What I want to know is, "Is there an app for that?"

Gimme five

2011-03-08T12:32:00.003-04:00

Five is a significant number in Canadian women's history, for it was the Famous Five in Alberta back in the late 1920s who fought tooth and nail all the way to the British Privy Council so that Canadian women could be considered persons. And so, on this International Women's Day, I want to celebrate using the number 5. As you know, I spend a lot of my time working with Atlantic Canadian books for children. Here are 5 + 5 + 5 contemporary creators of such books.

Fiction Writers
Kate Inglis: A promising new writer of enchanted realism for the 8-12 set, Inglis has one book The Dread Crew, with a second companion novel in the works.
Janet McNaughton: One of Canada's foremost writers of children's/YA fiction, McNaughton has written in multiple genres for mulitple ages.
Valerie Sherrard: Sherrard also writes for a broad age range. She has penned picture books, detective fiction and contemporary realism.
Darlene Ryan: Ryan has one book for babies under her belt and four titles of contemporary realism for young adults.
Budge Wilson: Prolific, canonical, literary, Wilson is the grand-dame of children's literature in Atlantic Canada.

Illustrators
Darka Erdelji: Erdelji is a Czech artist, set designer, puppet creator and illustrator who is now based in Saint John's, Newfoundland. Her illustrations for Andy Jones' adaptation of The Queen of Paradise's Garden are magnificent. To see a sample, watch the book trailer: here.
Hilda Rose: Hilda Rose is a Nova Scotia-based illustrator. The gallery on her website has many fine examples of her work.
Heidi Jardine Stoddart: Stoddart's regionally-themed picture books create nostalgia for the Maritime shoreline.
Susan Tooke: Nova Scotia-based Tooke is one of the most sought-after illustrators in the region. Her illustrations for numerous picture books demonstrate her wide artistic range.
Frances Wolfe: Wolfe's Where I Live won the Amelia-Frances Howard Gibbon award for illustration in 2002. She has written and illustrated two books since.

Poets
Karen Davidson: Davidson was the winner of the New Brunswick Born to Read manuscript contest in 2008. The resulting book, published by the Early Childhood Centre at The University of New Brunswick, is a collection of verses called Baby's Garden. A copy, along with several other books, is given by the provincial government to each child born in New Brunswick.
Shirley Downey: The pioneer of New Brunswick's Born to Read Program, Shirley Downey, is a poet in her own right with four fun and fabulous titles to her name.
Sheree Fitch: Poet and fiction writer, Fitch plays non-stop hopscotch with words. From 1987's Toes in My Nose through to 2010's Pluto's Ghost, her titles have been as varied as they are excellent. She is one of Canada best-known and best-loved writers for children.
Shauntay Grant: Grant is a spoken word performer, musician and poet from Halifax. Her two books for children are Up Home and The City Speaks in Drums.
Rita Joe: Rita Joe is known as the poet laureate of the Mi’kmaq nation. A collection of her poems suited to a younger audience, entitled For the Children, was published posthumously in 2008.

May you all find good words and pictures to keep you company on this International Women's Day.

Follow me on Twitter

2011-03-03T13:04:00.003-04:00

For any of you who are interested, I now have a twitter account devoted solely to children's literature. You can find me at @bookmuggins. Thanks to Sheree Fitch for giving me my new handle.

No memory can replace it

2011-03-02T09:41:00.005-04:00

While others were complaining about the lack-lustre hosting of the Oscars on Sunday night, or perhaps being either delighted or mortified by the use of the "F-bomb" in an Oscar acceptance speech*, I was doing a little dance of delight in my living room for Australian author-illustrator, Shaun Tan. Tan won the Oscar for best animated short for the film adaptation of his cross-over picture book, The Lost Thing. If you haven't encountered Tan's work before, please make a point of doing so. His wordless novel The Arrival is a masterpiece. Don't believe me? Go have a look at some of the stills from it and then make a point of tracking down a copy. (note: you might have to click on the thumbnail for the book in order to see the full entry for it.)

And if, like me, you're always a bit disappointed that you never get the chance to see Oscar calibre short films, fear not. You can view The Lost Thing in its entirety here. Now if only there was a way to see fellow nominee and children's book adaptation, The Gruffalo, online as well. I guess you'll just have to settle for the trailer--that is if you didn't catch it on TV last week or in the run up to Christmas.

__________________

* I sometimes marvel at television controversy. While the f-bomb may have no place in an acceptance speech, these are the Oscars for pete's sake. Almost all the films being honoured flaunt that word with reckless abandon. Heck, even the King of England got in on the action. So, maybe there is no need for a tempest in a teapot.

_________________

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss. I hope there is much glee, nonsense and rhyming wherever you may be.

Sheree: exciting and new

2011-02-21T13:07:00.002-04:00

Climb on board, she's expecting you.

Maritime writer, poet, children's author, public speaker, award winner, tongue-tripper and all-around ball of energy, Sheree Fitch, has started a blog as part of her professional website. You can pay her a visit here, right after you've put down your copy of Pluto's Ghost or have finished reading Sleeping Dragons All Around and/or Mabel Murple out loud for the 100th time. She's smart, she's fun, and today's post has the prettiest darn pictures: Words on Art: The Wheel Deal. Way I Feel. Weee of Letting Go.

Say "hi" while you're there, because she's awfully friendly to boot.

Excellent resource: Picturing Books

2011-02-10T09:47:00.003-04:00

Over the last few years, I have given several workshops on visual literacy and the picture book. I've also written quite a bit about it on this blog. It's one of my favourite topics to discuss with students and educators because it's one of my favourite pastimes to pursue. When new picture books come into the library, first I do a little happy dance in my office and then, more often than not, I am the first to sign them out.

A couple of months ago I stumbled upon this excellent website that's devoted to the picture book. The most interesting part of the site, from an academic standpoint, is The Palette section that's listed on the left-hand side bar. Here you will find numerous slide shows that explain in detail the complex sophistication of the picture book form. One of the slideshows, this picture book timeline, makes for a perfect coffee- or lunch-break escape.

Feminist books for children and young adults

2011-02-07T10:54:00.002-04:00

There was a big hullabaloo in the book blogging world last week when Bitch Magazine published a list of 100 Young Adult titles for the Feminist Reader. I won't go into the drama here but I will sum it up briefly: there were a few reader complaints about the list which lead to Bitch removing three titles and admitting to the fact that maybe they hadn't necessarily read all the titles on the list in the first place, and then a whole lot of people got upset at the removal of the titles in question and-- well, if you want to lose a day to following the drama, you can, but I'm not going to perpetuate it here. Suffice to say, some very interesting debates arose around this issue and some very smart people furthered the discussion in fascinating ways. Sure, I have an opinion on the whole affair but, really, I'd rather be reading the books at this point in the game.

One thing that came out of the hullabaloo is that I learned about a long-standing blog/list that I'd never heard of before. It's called The Amelia Bloomer Project: Recommended Feminist Literature for Birth through 18. If you want to print out the project's 10 year collection of annual lists, click here. Keep in mind, you can also nominate books yourself, so don't be afraid to become part of the conversation. Now I am off to do a bit of list reading myself, with my library card at the ready.

December 24th: Seussville

2010-12-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Well then, I would be nothing short of a Grinch if this site were not the grand finale, door #24 on my Advent calendar. Are you ready for it?

At Seussville.com, you can learn all about Theodor Seuss Geisel, follow a timeline of his life and publications, watch classic video clips from 70s and 80s adaptations of his books, play numerous games and engage in a wide range of activities. Heck, you can even plan a Seuss-themed birthday party complete with a Seussian cake. The site is fun, child-focussed and deep. Keep digging because there is always more to discover. Because today is Christmas Eve, might I recommend starting your tour of the site with a game of How the Grinch Saved Christmas? Please make sure you help the Grinch get my present into his sack. Thanking you in advance.

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There you have it: 24 great book-based, children's websites in 24 days. I hope you all have fun exploring them well into the New Year and beyond, and, no matter how you celebrate the holidays, my wish for you is that your time be peaceful and your days and nights be jammed full of quality books.

December 23rd: Aaron Shepard

2010-12-23T10:16:00.002-04:00

Picture book, picture book, poetry, fiction. Picture book, picture book, poetry, fiction...

Sometimes I sound like a broken record. What's missing from this list? Let me see. How about folktales, storytelling and theatre? At Aaron's World of Stories, you will find all three. Aaron Shepard is a long-time American storyteller whose adaptations of several folktales have been published in picture-book format. On his website, you will find the full-text for numerous folktales, fairy tales, myths, legends and personally authored stories. Each story comes with comprehensive metadata to make your inner librarian happy, or, rather, to help you search the site and determine if a story is appropriate for your needs before you read it. In addition to providing the full-text of the stories, Shepard has also adapted many as reader's theatre scripts, which makes them ideal for staging with children. And did I mention that each story makes a great read aloud? The folktales aren't just Grimm either. They come from many traditions and are global in scope.

December 22nd: Reading is Fundamental

2010-12-22T14:41:00.003-04:00

Because the library is as dead as the grave right now, my 5-year-old daughter is coming to visit me at work today. We will mound up stacks of Christmas books, cuddle up in a chair and do what comes naturally.

"Naturally?" OK, reading is not natural. It is the product of learning and dedication. If you have a toddler, pre-schooler or a child who is just learning to read, visit this website created and maintained by an organization called Reading is Fundamental. Although the site's main characters, Riffy and Rita, are, ahem, quite annoying for an adult audience, there is a lot of wisdom and fun scattered across the site. Make sure you work your way to the Read page where your child can have a number of fine books read to them in an interactive manner. My favourite is This is the Tree by Miriam Moss.

December 21st: Ed Emberley

2010-12-21T11:33:00.004-04:00

In lieu of a mug or gift card, this year my daughter and I gave a book to the classroom for her holiday teacher's gift. The book was The Little Red Hen as adapted by Ed and Rebecca Emberley. The fact that Ed Emberly is still publishing fantastic children's books almost 50 years after he first started out--43 years after winning the Caldecott Medal for Drummer Hoff--is astonishing, really, given how transient fads in children's literature have become. The added fact that he now publishes with his equally talented daughter makes me reflect on the importance of tradition and family--because, you know, it is a time to reflect on those very things.

What could be more traditional and seasonal than a child-focused website? Ha! At edemberley.com, you can have no end of drawing and crafty fun. Emberley is a master of teaching the basic principles of drawing (shapes, line, colour) by breaking them down into their fundamental components. And when I say "fundamental," I really mean "FUNdamental." Try doing some thumbprint drawings, for example, or maybe make a garden scene using only 3 identical circles. Be diverted by the Holiday Activities section of the website. In short, enjoy. According to the home page, the site is currently being revised so make sure you come back again in the new year to see what other goodies might be in store.

And if you still have a little holiday shopping to do yourself, let me recommend The Little Red Hen or last year's Chicken Little.

December 20th: Jack Prelutsky

2010-12-20T12:09:00.003-04:00

Jack Prelutsky: so much fun
Poking fun at everyone
Baked a pizza the size of the sun
Hotgogs fly in unflappable buns
Read his poems? Go read one.

And while you're there, please, please pretty please delve into the "Letters to Jack" section of his website. Here is just a sample of the hilarity in store for you there:

"Dear Mr. Prelutsky,
I'm not the funniest person but I like your poems. They make me laugh. Every body in my family is serious. Because we're vegetarian.
Your Reader, Annsley."

Sincerely yours,
The vegetarian librarian who eats no carrion and is sometimes a contrarian, even an authoritarian disciplinarian but is she serious? Never.

December 19th: Tra-la-la!

2010-12-19T22:11:00.003-04:00

I know a lot of people who poo-poo Captain Underpants. Frankly, those people deserve a good wedgie administered by Miss Anthrope. While Dav Pilkey's comic-inspired chapter books starring 4rth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, may not be high literature, they are funny as hell and offer any kid a clinic in punning and word play. Go to Scholastic's Captain Underpants website where you can have lots of laffs and play a few rounds of click-o-rama. Tra-la-la!

December 18th: Beverly Cleary

2010-12-18T10:32:00.003-04:00

Thank heavens for the recent film, Ramona and Beezus. Unlike so many children's book adaptations, this one is well-written, well-acted, and, more or less, remains true to the spirit if not the letter of the original books. What's more, it has put the marvellous books of Beverly Cleary back into the hands of a whole new generation of children. I hope.

Who can help but fall in love with Ramona Quimby or Ralph and his motorcycle? In a world where so much fiction for 6-10 year olds has devolved into poorly written, formulaic, series tripe, Beverly Cleary's books still shine. That's not to say there aren't great recent titles for that age group. There are. Beverly Cleary's books, however, still carry a unique magic.

On the Beverly Cleary website, kids can hang out in the neighbourhood of Klickitat Street and see where Cleary's key characters live and go to school. There's also a handful of fun and educational games to play with names like "Spelling Beezus" and "Retrieving Risby." If you play well enough, your name can be added to the online leader board. The film is mentioned on the website but it hasn't taken over in the way that so many other film adaptations eventually efface the textual history that gave them roots--which is good, because for me, Ramona will always look just like this:

December 17th: 10 Minutes 'Til Bedtime

2010-12-17T12:27:00.002-04:00

When my daughter was 3 years old, she fell head-over-heels in love with Peggy Rathmann's 10 Minutes Till Bedtime. Truth be told both of us have lost our hearts time and again to Rathmann. We think she is the bees knees and we really, really, really wish she would publish another book. It's been far too long since The Day the Babies Crawled Away (2003) landed on my desk.

But getting back to 10 Minutes Till Bedtime--I recently stumbled upon the website for the book and I fell in love with Rathmann's wit and charm all over again. On the site you can play shockwave games, learn how to make a hamsterscope, and (my favourite) make yourself a snack fit for a hamster. I would really like it if someone were to make me this snack right now and deliver it to my office door. Thank you.

Once you're done on the 10 Minutes Till Bedtime site, you can pop on over to Peggy Rathmann's author website to learn more about her and her books. Accompanying her biography is her photograph, a picture that solidifies my desire to one day be her friend.

December 16th: You Read Like Betty White

2010-12-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

Lately it seems as if Betty White is the new black. She premiers Superbowl commercials, co-stars with People's sexiest man alive and hosts Saturday Night Live. Golly gee, that naive Sue Ann Nivens certainly has come a long way. Have you ever wondered, though, what it would be like to have Betty White as a Grandma at story time? Or maybe you'd like give a listen to Frodo or Sam Gamgee reading from a contemporary picture book classic? How about Darth Vadar reading a moving, poetic account of African American history?

Thanks to the Screen Actors' Guild Foundation, you can do all of this and more. At Storyline Online, you will find video clips of prominent Hollywood actors reading stories for children. Betty White takes on Gene Zion's classic, Harry the Dirty Dog, Sean Astin reads one of his daughter's favourites, David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes, Elijah Wood tackles Satoshi Kitamura's Me and My Cat?, and just in time for the holidays, Lou Diamond Phillips gives an excellent rendition of Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express. It's James Earl Jones' reading of To Be a Drum by Evelyn Coleman that impressed me most. Go, have a listen. It's definitely worth the trip.

December 15th: Canadian History

2010-12-15T10:23:00.000-04:00

Sometimes literacy feels a bit like the toy ailse at Toys'r'us: girl's books to the right, guy's books to the left and never shall the two meet in the middle. This gender divide is prevalent and it definitely makes me uncomfortable. And for some baffling reason, this great divide seems to have heightened in the last few years instead of receding. That's not to say there aren't worthy and sometimes even great books written specifically with a female or male audience in mind. But, but, but... I do get frustrated sometimes. I digress. It's just that yesterday's post along with today's has put this issue at the front of my mind.

In the last decade, three excellent historical fiction series have emerged in Canada: Our Canadian Girl (Penguin), Dear Canada (Scholastic) and I am Canada (Scholastic). Penguin and Scholastic were smart in that they recruited some of the nation's best writers for children to pen these books which means the final product is definitely worth it. The websites for each, chock full of recipies, crafts and other activities, aren't too shabby either. Check them out and then promise me you'll encourage cross-gender reading as much as you can.

December 14th: Guys Read

2010-12-14T11:24:00.002-04:00

I can't really remember when I first heard about Jon Scieszka's project Guys Read but I think it was in 2003. The project itself got started in 2001 and over the last near-decade, Scieszka, his friends and colleagues have done considerable work towards lessening the early literacy gap for boys and teens. Command centre for Guys Read is the website, but there's also 2 anthologies (with 4 more in the works) and a (not-often-updated) Twitter feed. On the website, you will find all manner of great titles for guys recommended by guys. There are also reading lists provided by author guys as well as a guys news blog. Guys, guys, guys. You get the point.

December 13th: Book Wink

2010-12-13T09:51:00.003-04:00

So many of the links so far on this advent calendar have been for younger children. Perhaps there's something about picture books that lend themselves to web extension. I'm not sure what that might be, though, because for me, picture books are all about the luxury of slow reading while the web is all about excitable, frenetic clicking.

Today's link, however, is pitched to slightly older children. Book Wink is a child-focussed book talk and book review site. Here you can listen to informative video podcasts, each of which showcases one or several contemporary children's books for children in Grades 3-8. Follow the links from these video pages to get lists of read alikes, or simply access the long list of authors, titles, or subjects from the home page. Enjoy.

December 12th: Little Critter

2010-12-12T20:21:00.002-04:00

Note to self: in future be wary of commitments to post 7 days a week during the month of December. Phew. Now onwards.

Today's link is to the Little Critter World-Wide Network. Here you will find all sorts of games and activities centred around Mercer Meyer's beloved books. There's colouring pages, dot-to-dots, interactive games, story-time movies, sing-a-long song sheets and Shockwave-enabled read-to-learn pages. If you have a little critter yourself, he or she will be kept well-occupied on this website.

December 11th: The Magic School Bus

2010-12-11T20:44:00.002-04:00

I think we've likely all spent enough money on Scholastic books and merchandise to have earned a few fun rewards. Today's is The Magic School Bus website where you can play games, download printables and just hang out with the Fritz and her gang. There's lots of learning to be had when you ride on the Magic School Bus--which is all fine and dandy if learnin's your thing, but, me, I'm in it for the bad puns.

December 10th: Story Woods

2010-12-10T11:23:00.002-04:00

I was all set to use a different, book-based entry for the Advent calendar today when my librarian friend, Heidi, shared this link with me on Facebook. The site combines almost all of my passions: photography, blogging, and visual narratives. Story Woods may not be book based, but it is a 2.0 treat: the picture book as adapted for the web. I love it and I am sure you will too.

Here are a few of my favourite posts:
Hank makes a friend
Hank finds an egg
Hank's dream
The Box

December 9th: Mrs P

2010-12-09T11:36:00.002-04:00

Now, here's a marvelous, fulsome, odd and at times perplexing website. On it, Mrs P, a kindly Irish grandmother figure played by actress Kathy Kinney, offers up her own storytelling wrapped around the reading of such public domain stories for children as Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, and Cinderella. You may remember Kathy Kinney as a character actor on numerous television shows. Most notably, she played the over-the-top yet often subtly complex Mimi on The Drew Carey Show. In 2008, Kinney moved on to this internet-based experiment in storytelling. When you visit Mrs P's library, you will find books, stories and poems all classified according to age. Click on a link and the video will zoom you into Mrs P sitting in her rocking chair. She then recounts a humorous anecdote from her life before opening the book to read. Kinney is a very talented woman and her delivery is compelling but, let's just say that, well, the romantic polar bears who turn up at the end of Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter, are a tad baffling given the context of the site. Please do go check it out and tell me what you think.

December 8th: Jan Brett

2010-12-08T09:47:00.002-04:00

I don't think there's an author-illustrator out there who more comprehensively captures the holidays and the richness of winter better than Jan Brett. With 37 titles to her credit including classic illustrated adaptations of The Mitten and The Night Before Christmas, Brett has been a significant figure on the picture book landscape for just over 30 years. We're fans of the Gingerbread Boy and Gingerbread Friends in our house. Reading those books always makes me hungry.

Brett's also got one the best and most generous websites going. Are you thinking of giving a 2011 wall calendar to your child for Christmas? Why not make a free one that features Brett's intricate artwork from her latest book, The Three Dassies. Alternatively, you could put on a pageant with your kids using Brett's stage adaptation of the same book. There's even a link to masks that children can print out and colour before donning them for the show. The Hedgie's Holiday Workbench link features 60 additional colouring pages, Christmas card pdfs, recipes, board games, computer games, iron-on transfers, and even a cross-stitch pattern. Whew. And that's not all. If you're not keen on getting your hands sticky, why not decorate Brett's interactive gingerbread house? Or maybe you'd like to make bookmarks for all your friends. See what I mean about this being a generous website? Please make sure that you and all the children you know have fun with it over the holidays.

December 7th: The Children's Poetry Archive

2010-12-07T11:20:00.002-04:00

Those of you who know me realize that I simply could not get through 24 days of children's book sites without focussing on poetry for at least one (or more) of those days. Today's link is to The Children's Poetry Archive, a site that was established by former British Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. It was his wish to record and make publically available the voices of living poets reading their own work. The site features samples from many noted children's poets including Michael Rosen, Margaret Atwood and Andrew Fusek Peters. There's also recordings of 19th and 20th Century poems but the likes of Robert Browning, William Butler Yeats, and Langston Hughes whose own voices have been lost to history. In all, the work of 48 poets can be heard alongside brief textual biographies of the poets themselves. For those of you whose interests extend beyond children's poetry, you can delve deeper into Motion's broader project at www.poetryarchive.org/.

December 6th: how to turn hungry tissue paper into a butterfly

2010-12-06T10:52:00.003-04:00

So tell me, did you get a case of the warm fuzzies last year when Google changed its home page design for a day to honour the 40th birthday of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar? I sure did. In an instant, I was transported back to Mrs. Smith's Grade 1 class, when Mrs Kite, the librarian, came in to read it to us for the first time. Have you ever wanted to make art just like Carle's? I've tried but the best I've been able to muster is tissue paper collage using lots of glue. It was a sticky mess of a business (especially when done with a 5-year-old), and no matter how hard I tried my creations never looked right. They never looked--dare I coin an adjective?--Carlesque. Which is why I was thrilled a few weeks ago when I discovered Eric Carle's website. Here, he offers up a slideshow that details exactly how he gets the fantastic results he does. Now my art (and my daughter's) will still not look like Carle's, because we clearly do not have his talent, but it will be a lot better than it was. You and yours should give it a try too. The site also offers other up other helpful slideshows that detail his creative process further. Just check the Photo and Video Gallery to access them.

And if you ever find yourself in western Massachusetts, make sure you visit The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. It's a dream of mine to get there.

December 5th: Chris Van Allsburg

2010-12-05T11:35:00.002-04:00

Oh, you all know The Polar Express and Jumanji, and I'm sure that many of you have pored over the beauty of author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg's other works as well, but have you ever been to his website? Here you will find interactive games, such as simple puzzles, more challenging block puzzles and memory games. There' s also online colouring pages--as opposed to the more common printables that you find at most sites. While you're there, send someone you love a postcard, print out a bookmark, or download one of Allsburg's stunning illustrations as computer wallpaper. This website will satisfy a range of ages. Me? I just like to look at the pictures.

December 4th: Choosing a good book

2010-12-04T14:26:00.002-04:00

Whether you're a parent or loved one looking to select a classic book as a Christmas gift or whether you're a child just wanting to learn more about great books you can read, School Library Journal's Fuse #8 countdown lists are for you. In 2009 Betsy Bird, a librarian at the New York Public Library, conducted a web poll to determine the top 100 picture books of all time. Over the course of several weeks, she unveiled the results along with a detailed discussion of each book. This past winter, she did the same for novels for the 8-12 set. The lists can be found here: picture books and novels. If you click on any individual title, you will find her write-up for that particular book.

Last spring, I got quite caught up in this countdown, agreeing with many titles but flying off the handle whenever I felt her readers got it all wrong. By the time I discovered the countdown, I had missed the deadline to vote. I'm pretty sure she's going to be taking on YA Lit after Christmas, so if'n you have strong opinions on the best books ever for 12-18 year-olds, keep your eyes peeled to the Fuse #8 blog following the New Year.

Oh, and if it's brand new books you're looking for, you can check out the blog's list of 100 Magnificent Children's Books from 2010.

December 3rd: Barbara Reid

2010-12-03T09:50:00.004-04:00

Barbara Reid is one of Canada's preeminent author illustrators with nearly 20 books to her credit. Her medium is plasticine and I don't think any other illustrator working in that meduim today matches her craft, humour, or level of detail.

On her home page, you can learn all about her and her books while catching up on the history of plasticine. It's the Portfolio and Students and Teachers links, though, that will provide hours of entertainment. Why? Because not only does Reid encourage kids to tell stories themselves with plasticine, she actually encourages them to plagiarize her work in the process. OK, not really, but she does offer up samples of her art as models to learn by. There's a good deal of student art showcased on the site which means that kids can explore and learn from the styles of other kids. I know that I plan to put a plasticine starter's kit in someone's stocking this year. You're never too young to start your artistic career, right?

December 2nd: The ICDL

2010-12-02T10:48:00.002-04:00

"Children and their families deserve to have access to the books of their culture, as well as the majority culture."

This is just one sentence from one of the most eloquent, progressive and noble mission statements on the Internet. It comes from the International Children's Digital Library; the full text of the mission statement can be read here. The library itself contains roughly 4,500 books in 54 languages. There are plenty of English language titles represented in the collection, from picture books through to more complex chapter books. Finding books could not be more simple, as the ICDL has one of the best, most child- and adult-user friendly search interfaces out there.

The mission statement for the ICDL places much emphasis on the primacy of language and one's mother tongue when it comes both to learning in a new culture and to discovering the depth of one's own cultural heritage. While this is certainly true, I would also argue that the works represented in the ICDL go a long way toward teaching cultural diversity through visual literacy. For example, I have no knowledge of Persian or Farsi but just looking at the illustrations in this book gives me a strong sense of Iranian cultural history and the art of visual representation.

So, go now. Read some books or just browse the pictures. Compare a Finnish picture book to one from Serbia. Get lost--in all the right ways. The main search page can be found here.

_________________________
By the way, Kyla mentioned Tumblebooks and The Capstone Library in the comments section yesterday. These are both excellent eBook resources, but they are licensed databases. If your public or school library does not subscribe to them, you cannot access them. FYI, the New Brunswick Public Library System recently acquired TumbleBooks so if you live where I do, then you and your child can read Tumblebooks from the library's home page. With this advent calendar, I am trying to showcase web resources that are freely available to all. It amazes me that the ICDL remains a free resource and I hope it always will remain so. Should you be looking for a good cause to support this holiday season, I notice the ICDL has a home-page listing of ways that you can contribute whether it be with expertise or money.

The Countdown Is On!

2010-12-01T11:37:00.005-04:00

Last year at this time I offered up an advent calendar of sorts: 24 links to quality animated picture books available on YouTube. That calendar was a huge hit and so I've decided to do something similar again this year. Rather than sharing YouTube links, over the next 24 days I plan to take you to some of the best child-focused book sites on the web. You can visit one each day between now and Christmas, find an activity or two, and learn more about the wealth and breadth of children's literature in the process. Alternatively, you can come back on some dull January afternoon and work your way through the links. There's hours of enjoyment to be had.

December 1: Peter Rabbit

At peterrabbit. com you can create your own personalized puppet show, complete with a photograph of your child if you choose to upload one. You can also make old fashioned crafts such as a pom-pom mouse or a spinner. There are colouring pages to download and interactive games to play. Make sure you try your hand at A Winter's Tale Game in order to receive a free background and screensaver. You may think screensaver downloads are so 1998, but trust me this one will make you feel calm while you smile a broad smile.

Don't forget to come back to open tomorrow's calendar door. I can't promise chocolate, but I will feed your soul.

Remembrance

2010-11-08T09:29:00.004-04:00

If you're looking for excellent Canadian non-fiction to share with elementary-aged children this Remembrance Day, please seek out the works of Linda Granfield. In numerous books over a 15 year span, Granfield has brought forward lives and losses from the First and Second World Wars and has provided historical insight into two key war poems that were penned by young men serving Canada.

In In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae (1995), Granfield intersperses biography, historical account and archival photographs/artifacts with a picturebook retelling of McCrae's famous WWI poem (illustrated by Janet Wilson). Despite its heavy subject matter, the book is suitable for younger children, ages 7-11.

High Flight (1999) is an illustrated biography of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., a pilot for the RCAF who died in a training exercise in World War II when he was just 19 years old. Few know about the teen who wrote the poem, but most have heard "High Flight's" opening lines: "Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth/ And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings." The poem is not about war but about the joy of flight. That its author died in a fiery crash to earth at such a young age is one of the bleak ironies of war. The book is illustrated by Michael Martchenko and is also suited to an elementary-aged audience, 8-12.

Where Poppies Grow (2001) provides an overarching background to WWI from the Canadian perspective. Rather than going into the details of individual battles, the book focuses more on the day-to-day lives of the soldiers and many of the socio-cultural experiences of war, such as the role of propaganda and the child's experience of war. Once again, Granfield makes excellent use of archival photographs and artifacts from the time period.

The Unknown Soldier (2008) looks at circumstances in individual 20th Century conflicts that lead to the burial of unidentified soldiers on the battlefield. The book then outlines the efforts of many different countries to repatriate these soldiers either literally, symbolically or both.

In Remembering John McCrae: Soldier, Doctor, Poet (2009), Granfield uses her now familiar visual archival retelling to take a more in-depth look at the biography of the man who penned "In Flanders Field," from his childhood in Guelph, Ontario, to his death from pneumonia while serving as a military doctor overseas in 1918.

While not specific to the war experience, Granfield's Pier 21 (2000) tells the story of Canadian immigration as it flowed through Halifax's Pier 21 from 1928-1971. The historical scope of this book extends beyond 20th-century conflicts, but much of the material does focus on people who have fled international wars to make a home in Canada.

Granfield also has a work of non-fiction for the adult reader entitled Brass Buttons and Silver Horseshoes: Stories from Canada's British War Brides (2002)--you know, if you simply need to read more for yourself.

Book trailers

2010-08-12T11:36:00.005-03:00

I've stumbled upon a couple of book trailers recently for children's books that have an Atlantic Canadian connection.

The first is for the evocative and whimsical A Flock of Shoes by Sarah Tsiang, illustrated by Qin Leng, and published by Annick Press. Tsiang lived the better part of the last decade in Fredericton before moving to Ontario to study creative writing and to pursue her career as a poet and writer of children's fiction. Her fantastical tale of a young girl whose sandals fly south for the winter has been charming both me and my daughter for the last few weeks.

"She wondered if they were making little white hearts in the sand. She thought about how the warm wind liked to tickle the open spots. She hoped they were getting enough exercise."

The second trailer is for The Queen of Paradise's Garden, a Newfoundland folk tale adapted by actor-comedian Andy Jones, illustrated by Darka Erdelji, and published by Running the Goat Books and Broadsides of St Johns. I had the book in my hands on the weekend and was delighted by its image-laden Newfoundland vernacular:

" Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, not in your time, indeed not in my time, but in olden times when quart bottles held half a gallon, houses were papered with pancakes, and pigs ran about with forks stuck in their backs seeing who wanted to have a slice of ham..."

In my mind's eye, I could just imagine Andy Jones reading it aloud. Erdelji's illustrations bring to mind Marc Chagall; there's a dream-scape magic to them that never lets the tale feel too grounded in reality.

But the point of this post is not these two fine books; the point of this post is book trailers. As a librarian, I get a kick out of them here and there, but I must admit I never use them as a selection tool either in my personal or professional life--which got me to wondering just how many people do rely on them. If you are a reader, teacher or a librarian, do you use book trailers, and, if so, in what capacity? If you are an author, illustrator or publisher, do you have book trailers made for your products? How costly are they to make? How well are they received? Are they created simply to leverage social media advertising channels? Are book trailers becoming a must-do in the publishing industry?

My interest is partly sparked by my role as a special collections' librarian. Increasingly, there is so much video ephemera accumulating on the Internet. Do people see book trailers as an art in and of themselves? (Because many are.) Do they seem them as an archival record for posterity? (Think of all the added information about the tale provided by Andy Jones in The Queen of Paradise's Garden trailer.) If they are all these things, what kind of preservation measures should be put in place to ensure they survive as an artifact to accompany the book itself?

And now, I leave you with this: it's a book ... trailer.

The livin' is easy

2010-07-14T13:50:00.003-03:00

Good golly, Miss Molly, it's been a while since I posted. That's what happens when summer comes: the mind and body slow to appreciate the length of days, the stillness of the heat.

Summer is also a time of reading, and I have been gnawing my way through that big stack of books by my bed: Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, Shaun Tan's The Arrival, Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Chronicles, Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief, R. L. LaFevers' Theodosia novels, Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small Quartet, and Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light. There hasn't been a dud in the pack. My daughter is currently, lovingly lost in Ann Martin's Doll People books, but our reading was slow going for a bit because she was spending most evenings at her dad's production of Macbeth in Odell Park. Last night, she loudly proclaimed: "A drum. A drum. Macbeth dot com." When you're 5, comprehension of Shakespeare can be a tad limited.

I haven't much to say other than to let you all know that I am still here and to show you through two short quotations from Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light that great writing is great writing no matter what audience it's aimed at.

First off a simple metaphor used to describe the shy, reserved sister, Abby:

"Our Abby is a sprigged dress that's been washed and turned wrong side out to dry, with all its color hidden."

And this, on the single mother of seven in the plank house up the road:

"Emmie Hubbard certainly was crazy, and I was pretty sure the county would take her one day. They'd almost done so on one or two occasions. But I couldn't say that to Tommy. He was only twelve years old. As I tried to figure out what I could say--to find words that weren't a lie but weren't quite the truth either--I thought that madness isn't like they tell it in books. It isn't Miss Havisham sitting in the ruins of her mansion, all vicious and majestic. And it isn't like in Jane Eyre either, with Rochester's wife banging around in the attic, shrieking and carrying on and frightening the help. When your mind goes, it's not castles and cobwebs and silver candelabra. It's dirty sheets and sour milk and dog shit on the floor. It's Emmie cowering under her bed, crying and singing while her kids try to make soup from seed potatoes."

Or as Lady Macbeth puts it, "hell is murky."

__________________

So you tell me, how is your summer? More to the point, what are you reading? And whatever it is, does it have passages that make you stop to reread because you simply cannot help yourself?

Twilight, Breaking Dawn A Fine Day for a Good Book

2010-06-08T15:38:00.001-03:00

A while ago I wrote up a list of alternative titles for teen and tween girls who got stuck in the Myers' mire. Elaine, one of my readers, has asked me to repost it here. I've updated it a bit too with even more great reads.

Books for older teens (i.e. they feature sex, sexual assault, pregnancy or drugs or they're simply sophisticated from a narrative standpoint)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: let's start with first principles, here, folks. Published in 1948, this book pretty much invented the YA genre. It's still crackles with sexual energy and naive despair after all these years. The 2003 film version wasn't bad either.

Before Wings by Beth Goobie: A 15-yr-old girl who has an aneurysm in her heart goes to summer camp where she engages with spirits who haunt the lake at night. Goobie is one of the most insightful and lyrical YA writers out there. She should be giving writing lessons to every aspiring novelist.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: Melinda is raped at a party during the summer before high school and spends her freshman year as a social outcast. What might otherwise be yet-another-problem-novel is made rich by the depth of Melinda's character and the cutting authenticity of the high school environment.

Seven for a Secret by Mary C. Sheppard: Set in a Newfoundland outport in 1960, this book tells the stories of three teen cousins as they unearth the secrets of their pasts and face the sometimes harsh realities of their futures. The narrative voice of 15-yr-old Melinda is spot on with the warmth of the Newfoundland dialect. The book is part of an ongoing series based on the "One for Sorrow" nursery counting rhyme.

The Corner Garden by Lesley Krueger. I reviewed this novel a few years back and loved it. Toronto author, Krueger, stitches together the life of a troubled teen with that of her aged neighbour who has not yet come to terms with her own teen regrets as a Nazi sympathizer in 1940s Holland. This novel is a YA/Adult cross-over.

Feed by M.T. Andersen: A YA dystopia that actually has the courage to be a dystopia rather than carrying a saccharine message of hope. The characters in the novel receive everything they need through the feed that is implanted in their brains. They can order and buy any kind of experience they want. The only problem is the "they" gets lost in the "want."

Sights by Susanna Vance: How's this for a first sentence: "I was in the womb eleven and one half months, came out fat, durable and gorgeous." Baby Girl was born with the Sight but it doesn't let her see her own future. She and her Momma have fled her dad and now she's starting high school all sore-thumbish in a new town. Reading this book is ticklish, like drinking icy ginger ale on a hot day.

Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty: Jessica spends a year missing her best friend Hope. No, it's not quite an allegory. It is, however, a smart, sassy look at high school written by a writer for Cosmo Girl. Like the Twilight series, it also includes an irrational attraction to a bad boy, but this love interest is sorta-kinda ok in the end and, most importantly, he doesn't want to eat anybody or read their thoughts. Some may lump Sloppy Firsts with other teen fluff like L.B.D: It's a Girl Thing or Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging but I found it to be a cut above. So did ole Whatzernamenow, the Harvard freshman who infamously plagiarized it a few years ago. Second Helpings, the sequel isn't so bad either.

True Confessions of a Heartless Girl by Martha Brooks: This, from the epigraph attributed to John Gardner: "There are really only two plot lines: a stranger rides into town and a stranger rides out of town." In the book, a community nurtures a pregnant teen who lands in their midst. Sometimes the setting feels like a throw back to, uh, I dunno, a combination of Leacock's Mariposa and a the estrogen-laden bear-hug novels of Carol Shields. In the end, it proves twice over that it takes a village to raise a child ... and that it takes a child to bind a village unto itself.

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly: This historical murder mystery won the Printz Prize in 2004. It's engaging and literary and I am not quite done it yet, so I can't say more.

Saving Grace and Rules for Life are two exceptional YA titles written by Fredericton author, Darlene Ryan. Both are gritty works of realism and feature heroines struggling with major life events that have fractured their identity and have limited their choices.

Books for your 11 and 12 year old girls who are reading Twilight despite your admonishments
Before Wings by Beth Goobie: See above. I love this book so much I accidentally gave it to my niece two Christmases in a row.

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt: It's short, simple and, oh-so, profound.

Everything on a Waffle, The Canning Season or just about anything written by Polly Horvath: Do you know the novels of Horvath? She's crackles with dark humour and creates some of the most memorable supporting characters out there.

The Emily Series by L.M. Montgomery (need I say more?)

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan: A pro-(quirky) family, pro-creativity, pro-happiness book for emerging teens. Imagine. It's also great, whacky reading for the home-schoolers out there.

Howl's Moving Castle or Witch Week or just about anything by Diana Wynne Jones. Diana Wynne Jones is round about one of the best fantasy writers for children ever but let's not get into that now, shall we? We could alway save fantasy and sci-fi for another list, another day.

Stravaganza: City of Masks by Mary Hoffman. OK, so I have a thing for fantasy when it comes to my late, middle readers. I put this one on the list because of the love interest in it--you know, in order to appeal to the Twilight readers.

Speaking of fantasy, the novels of Tamora Pierce are fantastic reading for tween girls. I've read the Protector of Small quartet, but I have a young friend who can recommend all her novels. Another author of girl-centred fantasy is New Brunswick writer K.V. Johansen. Her Torrie Quests series will initiate the tween reader into her richly developed other world.

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That's it for now. Care to share any Twilight tonics? That's what the comment box is for.

The newest chapter in my life

2010-06-03T14:50:00.004-03:00

In addition to being the Curator of the Wallace Children's Literature Collection, I am also the mother of a 5-year-old girl. This past winter, the two of us made the leap from Potter, Milne and Lobel to add chapter books to our nightly reading ritual. He's a sampling of what we've read together so far.

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
This book won the Newbery Medal in 1949 and remains a perfect first chapter book to read aloud with a child, boy or girl. The chapters are short, there are frequent illustrations, and the story is sharp and engaging.

Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry
The Gooney Bird Greene books (there's four of them now) are a delightful alternative to the more pedestrian Junie B (First Grader) series. Gooney Bird is a born storyteller who never, ever lies. Not only will she entertain both parent and child, she may even teach both a little something about the craft of writing.

Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little by E.B. White
I like the cut of Stuart's jib, but my daughter (well both of us, really) preferred Charlotte's Web by a long shot even though I feared it would be too mature for her. She loved it to pieces despite her attention wandering a bit in some of the descriptive bits. I, of course, bawled like a baby when Charlotte died (the chapter in which she dies is some of the best writing ever in a children’s book). My daughter wasn’t affected by Charlotte’s death per se, but she became frantic when Charlotte’s babies fly away and leave Wilbur.

Ivy and Bean by Annie Barrows
The seventh book in this series of best-friend adventures will be out this fall. My daughter and I have read the first two together and, while we both like them a lot, I would prefer to have her wait until she is comfortably reading chapter books on her own to finish the series. In my opinion, their humour is more suited to the child as solitary reader than in the read-aloud context.

Daisy Meadows' Fairy books
There's what, a million of these books? My daughter got one for her 5th birthday which we read together. She has since insisted on reading three more with me. She loves them and I am all for her devouring them, but I will, however, happily consign the rest of the series to her independence as a reader. Life's too short for predictable, gender-typed series fiction that gives nothing back whatsoever to the adult reader.

Iggy and Me by Jenny Valentine
There's two books in this series about sisters, Iggy and Flo; a third one will be available this fall. Unlike the previous two series I mentioned, Valentine's books make excellent read-alouds. They're also wry, British and as funny as all get out. My daughter loved LOVED them. So did I.

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart-Lovelace
These books were written in the 30s and are the historical precursors to best-friend books like Ivy and Bean. The first one begins at Betsy’s 5th birthday party when she meets her new neighbour, Tacy. By the time the series is done Betsy is married off and Tacy is starting a career. My daughter and I have read the first 2 books, Betsy-Tacy and Betsy-Tacy and Tib. We love them. They are smart and gentle and perfectly paced for 5-7 yr-olds.

Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones
Another chapter book from the 30s. Twig is a little girl who befriends a little boy Elf in the garden of her tenement house. My daughter and I both liked it but not as much as we liked the Betsy-Tacy books.

My Naughty Little Sister Stories by Dorothy Edwards
Just as Ivy and Bean owes a debt to Betsy-Tacy, Iggy and Me is a modern retelling of the My Naughty Little Sister stories from the 1950s. The short-story format of these books makes them easy to read with a young child because you can easily pick them up and put them down: there is no need to sustain narrative continuity from one story to the next. They are definitely a hit in my house despite the sometimes stilted voice of the narrator. And you won't even believe what happens in "The Naughtiest Story of All." Suffice to say, my daughter let out an audible gasp that woke the neighbours when she learned the awful truth.

The End Of the Beginning: Being the Adventures Of a Small Snail (And an Even Smaller Ant) by Avi
Avi is a master of puns and wordplay and the humour that comes from multiple, unintended layers of meaning. While I acknowledge the craft of this book, its simple sophistication was beyond my daughter even if the plot-line wasn't. She found it a dull slog and I kept wishing it were just me reading it by myself.

What's in the pile by the bed?
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Hundred Dresses and The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
The Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
The Clementine books and Stuart Goes to School by Sara Pennypacker
The Doll People books by Ann Martin
All those wonderful Ramona and Henry books by Beverly Cleary
...and, of course, stacks and stacks of picture books because one format does not give way to another.

Anyone care to add to our reading list? What chapter books have you shared with your not-quite-reading-yet or recently-learned-to-read child?

30 Days of Poetry: your library/book store cheat sheet

2010-05-14T11:28:00.000-03:00

As promised, here is the complete list of the poetry collections I featured in April with an extra one added in for good measure. I split the list into single-author collections and edited compilations. For each category I ordered them roughly according to age-appropriateness--with the books for younger children near the start of each list and those for older children/teens near the end of each list. Doing so is not a precise science, but i hope it aids you in finding books for a particular age group, such that you can do a closer evaluation for your particular context.

Single-Author Collections
Alligator Pie, poems by Dennis Lee; pictures by Frank Newfeld. Key Porter Books, 1974.

The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems by Mary Ann Hoberman; illustrated by Betty Fraser. Harcourt, 1998, published in paperback in 2006.

Raining Cats and Dogs, written by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Jane Street. Harcourt, 1993.

Beneath a Blue Umbrella, rhymes by Jack Prelutsky; pictures by Garth Williams. Greenwillow, 1990.

If I Had a Million Onions by Sheree Fitch; illustrated by Yayo. Tradewind, 2005.

A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear. originally published in 1846.

When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne, (illustrations by Ernest Shepard). I have a reprint of the first Canadian edition, McClelland and Stewart, 1925.

Now We Are Six, by A. A. Milne with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. I have the first Canadian edition, McClelland and Stewart, 1927.

Something I Remember: Selected Poems for Young Children by Eleanor Farjeon. Edited by Anne Harvey. Blackie, 1987.

See Saw Saskatchewan: More Playful Poems from Coast to Coast, written by Robert Heidbreder; illustrated by Scot Ritchie. Kids Can Press, 2003.

Twimericks: The Book of Tongue-Twisting Limericks by Lou Brooks. Workman Publishing, 2009.

Where the Sidewalk Ends, poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein. Evil Eye Music, 1974.

The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, alphabet animal poems by Langston Hughes; illustrated by the students of the Harlem School of the Arts. Oxford UP: 1994.

There's an Awful Lot of Weirdos in Our Neighborhood & Other Wickedly Funny Verse, by Colin McNaughton. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1987.

Making Friends With Frankenstein: A Book of Monstrous Poems and Pictures (Candlewick, 1994)

Bing Bang Boing, poems and drawings by Douglas Florian. Harcourt, 1994.

Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah. Puffin Books, 1994.

Carver: a life in poems by Marilyn Nelson. Front Street: 2001.

Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janeczko. Orchard Books, 1991.

This Delicious Day: 65 Poems, selected by Paul Janeczko. Orchard Books, 1987.

19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye. Greenwillow, 2002.

Edited Compilations
Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry, selected by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters; illustrated by Polly Dunbar. Candlewick, 2007.

Lavender's Blue, compiled by Kathleen Lines; illustrated by Harold Jones. Oxford UP, 1954.

The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry, edited by Bill Martin Jr. with Michael Sampson. Foreword by Eric Carle; Afterword by Steven Kellogg. Illustrated by Ashley Bryan, Lois Ehlert, Steven Kellogg, Chris Raschka, Dan Yaccarino, Nancy Tafuri, and Derek Anderson. Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2008.

Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids, edited by Jen Hamilton; Illustrated by Merrill Fearon. With a foreword by P.K. Page. Subway Books, 2005.

The Wind Has Wings: Poems From Canada, compiled by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson; Illustrated by Elizabeth Cleaver, Oxford UP, 1968.

The New Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada, compiled by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson; Illustrated by Elizabeth Cleaver, Oxford UP, 1984.

Monster Poems, edited by Daisy Wallace; illustrated by Kay Chorao. Holiday House: 1976.

Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child's Book of Poems, selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Eva Moore, Mary Michaels White and Jan Carr. Illustrated by nine Caldecott Medal artisits: Marcia Brown, Leo and Diane Dillon, Richard Egielski, Trina Schart Hyman, Arnold Lobel, Maurice Sendak, Marc Simont and Margot Zemach. Scholastic, 1988.

No Hickory, No Dickory, No Dock: Caribbean Nursery Rhymes, written and remembered by John Agard and Grace Nichols; illustrated by Cynthia Jabar. Candlewick: 1995.

Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems, edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols; various illustrators. Candlewick: 2002.

A Child's Treasury of Animal Verse, compiled by Mark Daniel. Dial Books for Young Readers, 1989.

Poetry By Heart: A Child's Book of Poems to Remember, compiled by Liz Attenborough. Chicken House: 2001.

The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Meilo So. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Arnold Lobel, 1983.

The Kingfisher Book of Children's Poetry, selected by Michael Rosen, 1985.

The Oxford Book of Poetry for Children, edited by Edward Blishen; illustrated by Brian Wildsmith, Oxford UP, 1963 (reissued in paperback format as late as 1996).

The Oxford Book of Story Poems, edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark. Oxford University Press, 1990, republished in paperback, 2006.

_____________________

Happy reading!

When the cane gave way to cane sugar

2010-04-30T10:00:00.002-03:00

Poetry Month, Day 30. When it comes to general poetry collections for children, I can't help but wonder when the sanitization of children's poetry began in earnest. Sure, we all expect to be shocked by the violence of Hoffman's Struwwelpeter (1845)

from "Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb"

and stunned by the colonial mindset and racism that constitute the weeds in Stevenson's otherwise fragrant, A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). The nursery rhyme collection, Lavender's Blue, was published in the 1950s and is pretty tame, all things considered. Sure there's the odd "don't walk on thin ice" or "don't play in the cinders" verse, but, by and large, the cautionary tone of the verses is minimal.

As I was diving through edited collections of children's poetry to create this 30 day, 30 title feast, I was intrigued by just how much stamina verses involving corporal punishment had with editors. While you'd be hard pressed to find a recent collection of poetry that references corporal punishment or that reprints some of the more gruesome cautionary verses of old (such poems are increasingly relegated to academic tomes for the study of children's literature), just 20 years ago such poems were commonplace in edited editions.

The 1963 Oxford Book of Poetry for Children (Edward Blishen, editor; Brian Wildsmith illustrator) that was reissued in paperback format as late as 1996, includes a short chapter of cautionary verses including Hilaire Belloc's "Matilda (Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death)" and this gem from Lewis Carroll:

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! Wow! Wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! Wow! Wow!

Similarly, The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Arnold Lobel) first published in 1983 includes Hoffmann's "The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup" and this tribute to spanking from Charles Henry Ross:

That's Jack;
Lay a stick on his back!
What's he done? I cannot say.
We'll find out tomorrow,
And beat him today.

The Kingfisher Book of Children's Poetry, selected by Michael Rosen (1985) includes Hoffmann's "Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb," albeit with a slightly less sinsiter illustration than the original. It also includes this more contemporary poem by Britain's Allan Ahlberg (of Peepo and Jolly Postman fame), which I find intriguing and refreshing, for there is a perverse pleasure in wondering about the unknown, isn't there?

The Cane

The teacher
had some thin springy sticks
for making kites.

Reminds me
of the old days, he said;
and swished one.

The children
near his desk laughed nervously,
and pushed closer.

A cheeky girl
held out her cheeky hand.
Go on, Sir!

said her friends.
Give her the stick, she’s always
playing up!

The teacher
paused, then did as he was told.
Just a tap.

Oh, Sir!
We’re going to tell on you,
the children said.

Other children
left their seats and crowded round
the teacher’s desk.

Other hands
went out. Making kites was soon
forgotten.

My turn next!
He’s had one go already!
That’s not fair!

Soon the teacher,
to save himself from the crush,
called a halt.

(It was
either that or use the cane
for real.)

Reluctantly,
the children did as they were told
and sat down.

If you behave
yourselves, the teacher said,
I’ll cane you later.

--Allan Ahlberg

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

__________________

Well, there you have it: 30 days of poetry collections all wrapped up. Ta-da! If any of you would like me to post all the collections I mentioned in a single post, let me know in the comments and I will put it up early in May. It never hurts to have a wallet-sized list to take to the library or to the book store.

As comfortable as a cotton dress

2010-04-29T10:00:00.000-03:00

Poetry month, Day 29: I love Eleanor Farjeon's poetry and I bet you will too--that is if a little cat hasn't already whispered its worth into your ear.

A Morning Song
For the First Day of Spring

Morning has broken
like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
   Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
   From the first Word.

Sweet the rain's new fall
Sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall
   In the first hour.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
   From the first shower.

Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light
   Eden saw play.
Praise with elation,
Praise every morning
Spring's re-creation
   Of the First Day!

Pencil and Paint
Winter has a pencil
For pictures clear and neat,
She traces the black tree-tops
Upon a snowy sheet.
But autumn has a palette
And a painting brush instead,
And daubs the leaves for pleasure
With yellow, brown, and red.

Cotton
My wedding-gown's cotton,
My wedding-gown's cheap,
It's crisper than sea foam
And whiter than sheep,
Printed with daisies
In yellow and green,
A prettier wedding-gown
Never was seen!
Light-heart and light-foot
I'll walk into church
As straight and as slim
As a silvery birch,
And after my wedding
I never will lay
Like ladies my wedding-gown
Lightly away.

I'll wash it in soapsuds
As fresh as when new,
And rinse it in rainwater
Softer than dew,
And peg it on Saturdays
High on the line,
And wear it on Sundays
Full of sunshine.
My wedding-gown's cotton,
It cost me a crown,
Was ever girl wed in
A commoner gown?--
As birds on the branches,
As flowers on the green,
The commonest wedding-gown
Ever was seen!

--Eleanor Farjeon

from Something I Remember: Selected Poems for Young Children by Eleanor Farjeon. Edited byAnne Harvey. Blackie, 1987.

How can you be a poet when your last name rhymes with historian?

2010-04-28T10:00:00.000-03:00

Poetry Month; Day 28: Douglas Florian is one of several poet/artist combinations I've featured this month. To see his artwork, you can go to his artist's website; alternatively, you can check out his poetry books, Beast Feast and Dinothesaurus, the next time you're at the library. The poem I'm featuring today comes from a different collection altogether:

Commas
Do commas have mommas
Who teach them to pause,
Who comfort and calm them,
And clean their sharp claws?
Who tell them short stories
Of uncommon commas
And send them to bed
In their comma pajamas?

--Douglas Florian

from Bing Bang Boing, poems and drawings by Douglas Florian. Harcourt, 1994.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

I love it when the words 'big' and 'poetry' appear together in a title

2010-04-27T10:00:00.001-03:00

Poetry Month: Day 27: When this month ends, I do sincerely hope that none of you come back asking for a recommendation for a general purpose poetry anthology, 'cause I think I've now sent a stack of 'em your way. Today's entry was compiled by Bill Martin Jr before his death in 2004 and was brought to fruition by his collaborator, Michael Sampson.

To My Valentine
If apples were pears,
And peaches were plums,
And the rose had a different name,
If tigers were bears,
And fingers were thumbs,
I'd love you just the same!

--Anonymous

April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops,
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night--

And I love the rain.

--Langston Hughes

from The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry, edited by Bill Martin Jr. with Michael Sampson. Foreword by Eric Carle; Afterword by Steven Kellogg. Illustrated by Ashley Bryan, Lois Ehlert, Steven Kellogg, Chris Raschka, Dan Yaccarino, Nancy Tafuri, and Derek Anderson. Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2008.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

What rhymes with Shel? Swell.

2010-04-26T10:00:00.002-03:00

Poetry Month, Day 26: One mustn't ignore Shel Silverstein, must one? Not if one likes humour and whimsy.

Hat
Teddy said is was a hat,
So I put it on.
Now Dad is saying,
"Where the heck's
the toilet plunger gone?

Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich
A hippo sandwich is easy to make.
All you do is simply take
One slice of bread,
One slice of cake,
Some mayonnaise,
One onion ring,
One hippopotamus,
One piece of string,
A dash of pepper--
That out to do it,
And now comes the problem . . .
Biting into it!

--Shel Silverstein

from Where the Sidewalk Ends, poems and drawings by Shel Silverstein. Evil Eye Music, 1974.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

He's a funny, lefty, enviro, poet-guy

2010-04-25T10:00:00.000-03:00

Poetry month, Day 25: British poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, is all that and a whole lot more besides.

Solidarity
An army of militant greens
In bio-degradable genes
Shout 'Give peas a chance
And lettuce all dance
In unity wid butter beans.'

Who's Who
I used to think nurses
Were women,
I used to think police
Were men,
I used to think poets
Were boring,
Until I became one of them.

--Benjamin Zephaniah

from Talking Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah. Puffin Books, 1994.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Poetry Month, Day 24: Personal ... Political

2010-04-24T10:00:00.000-03:00

I love this collection. It carries in its pages the beauty of fig trees and lemons, as well as the indigestible truth of olive pits.

Red Brocade
The Arabs used to say
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he's come from,
where he's headed.
That way, he'll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you'll be
such good friends
you don't care.

Let's go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That's the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.

All Things Not Considered
You cannot stitch the breath
back into this boy.

A brother and sister were playing with toys
when their room exploded.

In what language
is this holy?

The Jewish boys in the cave
were skipping school, having an adventure.

Asel Asleh, Palestinian, age 17, believed in the field
beyond right and wrong where people come together

to talk. He kneeled to help someone else
stand up before he was shot.

If this is holy,
could we have some new religions please?

Mohammed al-Durra huddled against his father
in the street, terrified. The whole world saw him die.

An Arab father on crutches burying his 4 month girl weeps,
"I spit in the face of this ugly world."

*

Most of us would take our children over land.
We would walk the fields forever homeless
with our children,
huddle under cliffs, eat crumbs and berries,
to keep our children.
This is what we say from a distance
because we can say whatever we want.

*

No one was right.
Everyone was wrong.
What if they'd get together
and say that?
At a certain point
the flawed narrator wins.

People made mistakes for decades.
Everyone hurts in similar ways
at different times.
Some picked up guns because guns were given.

If they were holy it was okay to use guns.
Some picked up stones because they had them.
They had millions of them.
They might have picked up turnip roots
or olive pits.
Picking up things to throw and shoot:
at the same time people were studying history,
going to school.

*

The curl of a baby's graceful ear.

The calm of a bucket
waiting for water.

Orchards of the old Arab men
who knew each tree.

Jewish and Arab women
standing silently together.

Generations of black.

Are people the only holy land?

--Naomi Shihab Nye

from 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye. Greenwillow, 2002.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Who doesn't like popcorn?

2010-04-23T10:00:00.000-03:00

Poetry month, Day 23: Today's collection day dates back to 1988 and is dedicated to the memory of the great Arnold Lobel.

from
Knitted Things
There was a witch who knitted things:
Elephants and playground swings.
She knitted rain,
She knitted night,
But nothing really came out right.
The elephants had just one tusk
And night looked more
Like dawn or dusk.

--Karla Kuskin

Mice
I think mice
Are rather nice.
   Their tails are long,
   Their faces small,
   They haven't any
   chins at all.
   Their ears are pink,
   Their teeth are white,
   They run about
   The house at night.
   They nibble things
   They shouldn't touch
   And no one seems
   To like them much.
But I think mice
Are nice.

--Rose Fyleman

from Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child's Book of Poems, selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Eva Moore, Mary Michaels White and Jan Carr. Illustrated by nine Caldecott Medal artisits: Marcia Brown, Leo and Diane Dillon, Richard Egielski, Trina Schart Hyman, Arnold Lobel, Maurice Sendak, Marc Simont and Margot Zemach. Scholastic, 1988.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

On the cusp of adulthood: Poetry Month, Day 22

2010-04-22T10:00:00.000-03:00

Paul Janeczko is committed to bringing poetry to children and young adults. I'm going to feature poems from a couple of his earlier, edited collections, poems that speak to a young adult audience. Please make sure you check out some of his more recent work. I'll list a few additional titles at the bottom of this post. You might also be interested in this clever, short biography from his website.

Teresa's Red Adidas
(for T. G.)
I think that I shall never view
Shoes as nice as those on you.
They're red and soft with stripes of white.
One goes left, the other right.
I hope they let you run quick fast;
I also hope they last and last.
Shoes are made for feet like those,
And I just love the ones you chose.

--Paul B. Janeczko

Small, Smaller
I thought that I knew all there was to know
Of being small, until I saw once, black against the snow,
A shrew, trapped in my footprint, jump and fall
And jump again and fall, the hole too deep,
the walls too tall.

--Russell Hoban

and here is one in the form of a riddle

Stone
Hard bu you can polish it.
Precious, it has eyes. Can wound.
Would dance upon water. Sinks.
Stays put. Crushed, becomes a road.

--Donald Justice

from This Delicious Day: 65 Poems, selected by Paul Janeczko. Orchard Books, 1987.

Sister
Younger than they,
and not the same.
Girl growing amid
a grove of brothers.
They took my dolls
one day into their
forbidden circle
in the woods,
drove sticks
into the cleared dirt,
and burned them at the stake.

--H. R. Coursen

If you are weak of heart or stomach, don't read this next one. If you do and find it disturbing, don't say I didn't warn you.

Boy, Fifteen, Killed by Hummingbird
Bent low over the handlebars,
Arms arced and legs pumping
As his father had taught him
When he was five,
The boy struggled to pedal
Up Camelback Hill,
But he didn't mind
Because he knew that,
Once there, he could relax
And coast the rest of the way home.

He didn't see it hanging there
Dead ahead in the air,
Its tiny wings whirring invisibly,
Until it was too late.
The hummingbird poised iteself
So that when the boy,
Speeding downhill,
Met the bird,
Its greedy bill
Exploded his right eye
Like a ripe cherry tomato
Skewered at a barbeque
And sent the liquid
Streaming down his cheek.

People said the father
Refused to accept the coroner's report
That the bird,
Seeking nectar,
Had pierced the boy's brain,
Abloom with youth,
And lodged there,
Draining it dry.
But a week later,
A neighbor watched the father
In his backyard
Hover over the hollyhocks
And, wielding a long knife,
Sever their heads.

--Linda Linssen

from Preposterous: Poems of Youth, selected by Paul Janeczko. Orchard Books, 1991.

More Janeckzo books:

For a delightful foray into concrete poetry, check out A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems, edited by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Rashka, Candlewick, 2001.

Janeczko and Rashka have two more children's poetry collections that, if I had had them to hand, I would have included as one or more of my days of poetry. They are A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms (Candlewick, 2005) and A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout (Candlewick, 2009).

Do you know an aspiring young poet? Why not pass along Janeczko's Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets (Candlewick 2002)?

Two different ways to fly

2010-04-21T10:00:00.001-03:00

Poetry Month, Day 21: This seminal work of collected Canadian poetry was first published in 1968, in the golden afterglow of Expo '67. It reads like a who's who of Canadian poetry: A. M. Klein, Milton Acorn, Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carmen, James Reaney, Isabella V. Crawford, P. K. Page, Al Purdy, Achibald Lampman... You get the idea. I'm using the expanded 1984 edition for today's poems.

Balloon

a s
big as
ball as round
as sun . . . I tug
and pull you when
you run and when
wind blows I
say polite
ly
H
O
L
D
M
    E
      T
        I
          G
            T
              L
                Y.

--Colleen Thibaudeau

I, Icarus
There was a time when I could fly. I swear it.
Perhaps, if I think hard for a moment, I can even tell you the year.
My room was on the ground floor at the rear of the house.
My bed faced a window.
Night after night I lay on my bed and willed myself to fly.
It was hard work I can tell you.
Sometimes I lay perfectly still for an hour before I felt my body rising from the bed.
I rose slowly, slowly until I floated three or four feet above the floor.
Then, with a kind of swimming motion, I propelled myself toward the window.
Outside I rose higher and higher, above the pasture fence,
above the clothesline, above the dark, haunted trees,
beyond the pasture.
And, all the time, I heard the music of flutes.
It seemed the wind made this music.
And sometimes there were voices singing.

--Alden Nowlan

from The New Wind Has Wings: Poems from Canada, compiled by Mary Alice Downie and Barbara Robertson; Illustrated by Elizabeth Cleaver, Oxford UP, 1984.

The original edition had the more simple name, The Wind Has Wings: Poems From Canada (1968).

Fredericton's finest

2010-04-20T10:00:00.000-03:00

Poetry month: Day 20

There's no way I could showcase a month's worth of poetry collections and not feature Fredericton's own Sheree Fitch. It's not the first time I've mentioned her on this blog and I'm certain it won't be the last. She's among the best poets for children in Canada and beyond. I've had the great pleasure of working with Sheree and her colleague, Anne Hunt, this past year as they conduct research for a collection of Atlantic Canadian poems for children they plan to edit. The spirit of poetry emanates from her. I've taken this poem from a recent collection, but make sure you dig deeper because you will find much gold.

Argentinosaurus
Argentinosaurus
Is a tenor in the chorus
In an opera that is playing on a stage inside his head.
He's the biggest dinosaurus
He's humongous!
He's enormous!
And his voice is such a roarus he could scare awake the dead!
Figaro! Figaroo!
I am not a kangaroo!
Figaree! Figurah!
Sol la ti do re mi fa!

Argentinosaurus
Shakes the cities and the forests
Every time he takes a step and sings a score
He is bowing to the tourists who bring flowers from the florists.
And his dinosaurus chorus is so glorious! Encore!
Figaro! Figaree!
Would you take a look at me!
Figaro! Figara!
Prehistoric opera!

--Sheree Fitch
from If I Had a Million Onions by Sheree Fitch; illustrated by Yayo. Tradewind, 2005.

Psst: If you don't have a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of Fitch's poetic picture book, Sleeping Dragons All Around (Nimbus, 2009), you should.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Dilly Dilly

2010-04-19T10:00:00.001-03:00

Poetry Month, Day 19: I promised myself I wouldn't spend too much time showcasing nursery rhyme collections this month, because if I were to walk down that road, I could easily do a full month's worth without even thinking twice. And yet, I also didn't want to leave nursery rhymes off the list altogether. I don't suppose there's a National Nursery Rhyme Month, is there?

My daughter and I like this 1954 stand-by. It's been reprinted many times since its first publication, and, in 2004, a 50th Anniversary edition was published that is still available in trade paperback. I'll give you the titular song:

Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly,
Lavender's green;
When I am a king, dilly, dilly
You shall be queen.
Call up your men, dilly, dilly,
Set them to work,
Some to the plough, dilly, dilly,
Some to the cart.
Some to make hay, dilly, dilly,
Some to cut corn,
While you and I, dilly, dilly,
Keep ourselves warm.

--Traditonal (English)

(and you can all keep singing the Burl Ives version in your head, just as I do every time I read/sing it to my daughter)

from Lavender's Blue, compiled by Kathleen Lines; illustrated by Harold Jones. Oxford UP, 1954.

A Bleary, Leary Legacy?

2010-04-18T10:00:00.000-03:00

Thanks to Edward Lear, there's no shortage of limericks for children. This recent small collection is part tribute to Lear and part homage to the verbal play of Seuss's Fox in Socks. To wit:

Which Witch Was Which?
Two witchy witches in a Wichita ditch,
One witch with a twitch caused the witches to switch,
The spell they were under,
Caused people to wonder,
Which Witchita witch switched was which?

--Lou Brooks

There's even a Twimericks website.

from Twimericks: The Book of Tongue-Twisting Limericks by Lou Brooks. Workman Publishing, 2009.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Poetry month, Day 17: A Biography in Verse

2010-04-17T11:13:00.001-03:00

The remarkable life of George Washington Carver is rendered with intelligence and sensitivity by Marilyn Nelson in the collection I'm featuring today. Take these two samples from early in his life, after he's left home but before he attends the Iowa State College of Agriculture.

Washboard Wizard
Highland Kansas, 1885
All of us take our clothes to Carver.
He's a wizard of the washboard,
a genie of elbow grease and suds.
We'll take you over there next week;
by that time you'll be needing him.
He's a colored boy, a few years older
than we are, real smart. But he stays
in his place. They say
he was offered a scholarship
to the college. I don't know
what's happened, but they say
that's why he's here in town.
Lives alone in a little shack
filled with books
over in Poverty Row.
They say he reads them.
Dried plants, rocks, jars of colors.
A bubbling cauldron of laundry
Pictures of flowers and landscapes.
They say he
painted them. They say
he was turned away when he got here,
because he's a nigger. I don't know about
all that. But he's the best
washwoman in town.

Four a.m. in the Woods
Darkness softens, a thin
tissue of mist between trees.
One by one the day's
uncountable voices come out
like twilight fireflies, like stars.
The perceiving self sits
with his back against rough bark,
casting ten thousand questions into the future.
As shadows take shape, the curtains part
for the length of time it takes to grasp,
and behold, the purpose of his
life dawns on him.

--Marilyn Nelson

from Carver: a life in poems by Marilyn Nelson. Front Street: 2001.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Poetry Month, Day 16: It's a Real Treat

2010-04-16T10:00:00.000-03:00

Mary Ann Hoberman may well be my favourite, living children's poet. Rhyme, assonance, wordplay, wide-ranging subject matter: you name it, she has it all. Here are two small gems but whatever you do, don't stop with these.

My Sister Saw a Dinosaur
My sister saw a dinosaur.
At least she said she saw one.
I said that dinosaurs are dead.
She said she saw one in her head.
A dinosaur inside your head?
"Remarkable!" my mother said.

Brother
I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.

But she said don't be a bother
So I took him to my father
And I said this little bother
Of a brother's very strange.

But he said one little brother
Is exactly like another
And every little brother
Misbehaves a bit, he said.

So I took the little bother
From my mother and my father
And I put the little bother
Of a brother back to bed.

--Mary Ann Hoberman

from The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems by Mary Ann Hoberman; illustrated by Betty Fraser. Harcourt, 1998, published in paperback in 2006.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

More Home and Native Poems

2010-04-15T10:00:00.002-03:00

Poetry Month, Day 15. Here's a collection of poetry from a variety of fine Canadian poets. The poems aren't particularly Canadian in their subject matter--even if this one does have a down-homey Maritime feel to it:

When Grandpa Gets to Fiddling
When Grandpa lifts his violin
And props it 'neath his chin,
I can hardly hold my horses
For the dancing to begin.

My fingers snap, my knuckles knock,
My toes begin to tap.
My shoulders shrug, my elbows bend,
My hands begin to clap.

And very soon I'm whirling, twirling,
Jumping to the beat.
I hop and bounce, I somersault,
And land back on my feet.

I samba, stomp and jitterbug,
I mambo, jig and spin,
When Grandpa gets to fiddling
And plays his violin.

--Robin Patterson

from Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids, edited by Jen Hamilton; Illustrated by Merrill Fearon. With a foreword by P.K. Page. Subway Books, 2005.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Poetry Month, Day 14: Baa, Moo, Meow, Arf

2010-04-14T10:00:00.000-03:00

Here's a collection for those who feel a kinship with the critters.

A Farmer's Boy
They strolled down the lane together,
The sky was studded with stars--
They reached the gate in silence
And he lifted down the bars--
She neither smiled nor thanked him
Because she knew not how;
For he was just a farmer's boy
And she was a jersey cow.

--Anon

from A Child's Treasury of Animal Verse, compiled by Mark Daniel. Dial Books for Young Readers, 1989.

Whee! It's Dennis Lee

2010-04-13T11:26:00.000-03:00

Poetry month, Day 13: Dennis Lee is not only one of the greats of children's poetry, he's one of the great poets period. Plus, he's Canadian. There a lots of Lee collections to choose from, but I'm going to rock it old school here because my favourite Lee poem is in the book that started it all:

Bouncing Song
Hambone, jawbone, mulligatawney stew,
Pork chop, lamb chop, cold homebrew.
Licorice sticks and popsicles, ice cream pie:
Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla!!!

--Dennis Lee

from Alligator Pie, poems by Dennis Lee; pictures by Frank Newfeld. Key Porter Books, 1974.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Day 12: The best of a century

2010-04-12T10:00:00.001-03:00

Speaking of Jack Prelutsky, he selected all the poems in this collection and he made some very fine choices indeed. Take these three, for example:

Cats
Cats sleep
Anywhere,
Any table,
Any chair,
Top of a piano,
Window-ledge,
In the middle,
On the edge,
Open drawer,
Empty shoe,
Anybody's
Lap will do,
Fitted in a
Cardboard box,
In the cupboard
With your frocks--
Anywhere!
They don't care!
Cats sleep
Anywhere.

--Eleanor Farjeon

Eletelephony
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant--
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone--
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)

Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee--
(I fear I'd better drop this song
Of elephop and telephong!)

--Laura E. Richards

Sick
I god a liddle code doday;
id isend bery pleasand.
Da docda cape an gabe a shod,
but butha gabe a presend.

I think I'll be in bed a dime,
ad leased dill Bunday borning.
Don't wawg in buddles in da rain--
led dis be a warding!

--Marci Ridlon

from The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Meilo So. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

__________________________

You may recall a post I put up in February about the top 100 novels for children aged 6-12, a countdown being featured on the School Library Journal Fuse #8 Blog. Well, today they reached number one. Go see for yourself and then work your way back through the list by following the recent post links on the sidebar or by clicking on the links at the end of the post. The write-ups are fascinating and insightful. And the winner? Well let's just say I recently cried my eyes out while reading it with my 5 year old.

A Laureate, no less

2010-04-11T10:00:00.002-03:00

America's first Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky's verse is wide-ranging and fun. There are 50 or so Prelutsky collections to choose from, but my daughter was extremely fond of this one when she was younger so it still holds a special place in my heart.

Beneath a blue umbrella
a melon seller sat,
selling yellow melons,
succulent and fat.

A huge and hungry hippo
made the melon seller mad
when he swallowed all the melons
that the melon seller had.

--Jack Prelutsky

from Beneath a Blue Umbrella, rhymes by Jack Prelutsky; pictures by Garth Williams. Greenwillow, 1990.

If you haven't seen any of his collaborations with illustrator, Peter Sis, track them down. The Dragons Are Singing Tonight (1993), Monday's Troll (1996), The Gargoyle on the Roof (1999) and Scranimals (2002) are all published by Greenwillow.

For more fun and poetry, you can visit Jack Prelutsky's web site.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

The Glory of Nonsense

2010-04-10T10:00:00.000-03:00

Day 10 of Poetry Month

You've no doubt read The Owl and the Pussycat and you've likely read The Jumblies as well, but have you jumped whole-heartedly into Edward Lear's nonsense verse? In the mid-19th Century, he popularized the limerick and combined verse with cartoonish art in a way that still makes me swoon. The best way to read the poems is in the context of Lear's own art (click images to enlarge):

--Edward Lear

from A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear. originally published in 1846.

Note: A Book of Nonsense was first published in 1846 but exists in multiple editions and reprints. Most libraries should have at least one version of it. I am currently looking at a 1981 facsimile reprint of the Frederick Warne edition that's held by the Osborne Collection. I also have a selected edition in front of me that was published by J. M. Dent and Sons in 1980.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

N is for Nine and Narrative

2010-04-09T10:00:00.005-03:00

Today's poetry collection contains many 19th Century standbys: Tennyson's Lady of Shallot, Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin and Arnold's Forsaken Merman to name just a few. It's easy to imagine Anne Shirley glomming onto this book in order to prepare her recitations. There's also more contemporary narrative verse as well. I like the decidedly English tone of this one:

Uncle Alfred's Long Jump
When Mary Rand
Won the Olympic Long Jump,
My Auntie Hilda
Paced out the distance
On the pavement outside her house.
'Look at that!'
She shouted challengingly
At the dustman, the milkman, the grocer,
Two Jehovah's Witnesses
And a male St. Bernard
Who happened to be passing.
'A girl, a girl did that;
If you men are so clever
Let's see what you can do.'
Nobody took up the challenge
Until Uncle Alfred trudged home
Tired from the office
Asking for tea.
'Our Mary did that!'
Said Auntie Hilda proudly
Pointing from the lamppost
To the rose-bush by her gate.
'You men are so clever,
Let's see how near
That rose-bush you end up.'

His honour and manhood at stake,
Uncle Alfred put down his bowler
His brief-case and his brolly
And launched himself
Into a fifty yard run-up.
'End up at that rose-bush,'
He puffed mockingly,
"I'll show you where I'll end up.'
His take off from the lamppost
Was a thing of beauty,
But where he ended up
Was in The Royal Infirmary
With both legs in plaster.
'Some kind of record!'
He said proudly to the bone specialist;
While through long nights
In a ward full of coughs and snoring
He dreamed about the washing line
And of how to improve
His high jump technique.

--Gareth Owen

for more information on Mary Rand, click here

from, The Oxford Book of Story Poems, edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark. Oxford University Press, 1990, republished in paperback, 2006.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

There's something great at number 8

2010-04-08T10:00:00.001-03:00

This month will yield all sorts of classics including the these two, single-author collections:

Politeness
If people ask me,
I always tell them:
"Quite well, thank you, I'm very glad to say."
If people ask me,
I always answer,
"Quite well, thank you, how are you to-day?"
I always answer,
I always tell them,
If they ask me
Politely. . . .
BUT SOMETIMES

I wish

That they wouldn't.

--A. A. Milne

Halfway Down
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the satir
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
And isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

--A. A. Milne

from When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne, (illustrations by Ernest Shepard). I have a reprint of the first Canadian edition, McClelland and Stewart, 1925.

A Thought
If I were John and John were Me,
Then he'd be six and I'd be three.
If John were me and I were John,
I shouldn't have these trousers on.

from When We Were Very Young, by A. A. Milne with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. I have the first Canadian edition, McClelland and Stewart, 1927.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

2010-04-07T10:00:00.000-03:00

For Day 7, I thought I'd turn to one of the more prolific children's poets out there, Colin McNaughton.

An adapted bit of fun:

Monday's Child is Red and Spotty
Monday's child is red and spotty,
Tuesday's child won't use the potty.
Wednesday's child won't go to bed,
Thursday's child will not be fed.
Friday's child breaks all his toys,
Saturday's child makes an awful noise.
And the child that's born on the seventh day
Is a pain in the neck like the rest, OK!

And an inspired original:

The Lesson
"Blether, blather, blah-blah, bosh.
Claptrap, humbug, poppycock, tosh.
Guff, flap-doodle, gas and gabble.
Hocus pocus, gibberish, babble.
Baloney, hooey, jabber, phew,
Stuff and nonsense, drivel, moo.
Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, banter.
Prattle, waffle, rave and ranter.
Rubbish, piffle, tommy-rot, guff,
Twaddle, bilge, bombast, bluff.
Thank you."

--Colin McNaughton

from There's an Awful Lot of Weirdos in Our Neighborhood & Other Wickedly Funny Verse, by Colin McNaughton. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1987.

When Hallowe'en comes around you can also take a peek at his Making Friends With Frankenstein: A Book of Monstrous Poems and Pictures (Candlewick, 1994) in which you'll find this brief gem:

Speak of the Devil,
Meet Cousin Neville!

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Canadian poetry: as concrete as the escarpment

2010-04-06T10:43:00.000-03:00

It's Day 6 of poetry month. Here is one of several Canadian collections I'll feature during April. And it won't be the only concrete poem on the list, either--that is if Blogger doesn't eat all my spacing.

Niagara Falls
Kapuskasing sings
             Cornwall calls
                    Thunder Bay storms
                                And Niagara
                                                 FALLS!

--Robert Heidbreder

from See Saw Saskatchewan: More Playful Poems from Coast to Coast, written by Robert Heidbreder; illustrated by Scot Ritchie. Kids Can Press, 2003.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Poetry month: #5

2010-04-05T10:00:00.001-03:00

The Monster's Birthday
Oh, what a party!
They all ate hearty
of elegant bellyache stew.

Then came the cake
In the shape of a snake
and trimmed with octopus goo.

The balloons all went BANG!
And everyone sang,
"Happy birthday, dear Monster, to you."

--Lilian Moore

from Monster Poems, edited by Daisy Wallace; illustrated by Kay Chorao. Holiday House: 1976.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

More, more, bring on four.

2010-04-04T10:00:00.001-03:00

There was a pigeon,
A mighty flier,
His friends all called him
Pigeon McGuire.

But he perched upon
An electric wire--
And that was the end of
Pigeon McGuire!

--Langston Hughes

from The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, alphabet animal poems by Langston Hughes; illustrated by the students of the Harlem School of the Arts. Oxford UP: 1994.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Two by two leads to number three

2010-04-03T10:00:00.002-03:00

Poetry month continues. And now for #3.

Ar-A-Rat
I know a rat on Ararat,
He isn't thin, he isn't fat
Never been chased by any cat,
Not that rat on Ararat.
He's sitting high on a mountain breeze,
Never tasted any cheese,
Never chewed up any old hat,
Not that rat on Ararat.
He just sits alone on a mountain breeze,
Wonders why the trees are green,
Ponders why the ground is flat,
O that rat on Ararat.
His eyes like saucers in the dark--
The last to slip from Noah's ark.

--Grace Nichols

from No Hickory, No Dickory, No Dock: Caribbean Nursery Rhymes, written and remembered by John Agard and Grace Nichols; illustrated by Cynthia Jabar. Candlewick: 1995.

Might I also suggest: Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems, edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols; various illustrators. Candlewick: 2002.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Two for day two

2010-04-02T10:00:00.006-03:00

Poetry month continues. Here are two for day two:

It's Hard to Lose your Lover
It's hard to lose your lover
When your heart is full of hope
But it's worse to lose your towel
When your eyes are full of soap.

--Anonymous

Keep a Poem in Your Pocket
Keep a poem in your pocket
and a picture in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you
the little picture bring to you
a dozen dreams to dance to you
at night when you're in bed.

So---
Keep a picture in your pocket
and a poem in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.

--Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

from Poetry By Heart: A Child's Book of Poems to Remember, compiled by Liz Attenborough. Chicken House: 2001.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

A poem a day keeps the tedium away

2010-04-01T13:03:00.006-03:00

April is poetry month. To celebrate I will post one children's poem a day for 30 days straight. Each poem will let you know just what book you can find it in. By the end of the month, I will have given you a list of 30, count 'em 30, books of children's poetry. No foolin'.

Raining Cats
It's raining cats,
A cataract,
A waterfall,
With felines stacked.
One, two, and three--
Catastrophe,
They're purring down
On top of me.

--Jane Yolen

from Raining Cats and Dogs, written by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Jane Street. Harcourt, 1993.

(Note: when quoting poems online, always include a full citation for the collection from which the poem originated. If the poem is not in the public domain (i.e. is still in copyright) abide by the principle of Fair Dealing in your use of the work.)

Brother, can you spare a BeaverDime?

2010-03-16T15:28:00.006-03:00

"Once upon a time, the University Press of New Brunswick had a division called Brunswick Books. This was long, long ago in the great age of the automobile, when babies boomed and families took to the open highway with the windows down. This was, in fact, the dawn of what is now known as the road trip vacation. The cunning folks at Brunswick Books soon realized that the youngin's in the back seats needed diversion and what better diverting pursuit for a developing mind than a good book? Thus the BeaverDime Book was born. Sold in gas stations for a dime, these illustrated retellings of children's classics found their way, dog-eared, across the country. ..."

This makes for a great story but the truth is I don't really know for sure why or how BeaverDime books came into being. I do know they were sold at gas stations because a colleague who saw them in the collection once reminisced about buying them there as a child. Despite the prominence of Brunswick Press on the cultural landscape of the province, there is no published history of the organization nor is there any ready way to gain insight into why the University Press would have been interested in publishing children's books in the first place.

Here's what I do know. In 1953, Brunswick Press published Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, illustrated by Milada Horejs. The book, a petite soft cover measuring 4 1/2" x 5 1/4" bore the imprint "A BEAVERDIME BOOK" with "10c" printed above it.

Wynken, Blynken and Nod followed, illustrated by Karel Rohlicek.

(detail from Wynken, Blynken and Nod)

Others followed too for a total of 18 titles in the 1950s. These were:

The Walrus and the Carpenter (no 3) (illus: Rohlicek)
My Shadow (no 4) (illus: Horejs)
The House that Jack Built (no 5) (illus: Rohlicek)
The Duel (The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat) (no 6) (illus: Rohlicek)
How the Bird Chose a King (no 7)
The Pitter Patter Pot (no 8)
The Negro and the Antelope (no 9)
The Man of Stone (no 10)
The Bird Princess (no 11)
The Wonderful Ship (no 12)
The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup (no 13)
The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin (no 14)

(detail from The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin)

Little Red Riding-Hood (no 16)
The Land of Counterpane (no 15)
The Mock Turtle's Song (no 17)
The Spider and the Fly (no 18)

Only the first six titles acknowledged the illustrator by name, which is a shame, really:

(cover illustration from The Mock Turtle's Song)

Early books in the series had plain back covers, but later ones bore a complete listing of the series' titles:

(back cover of The Mock Turtle's Song)

The books that do acknowledge the illustrator bear a standard copyright verso page, whereas later titles replaced this standard page with an opening, illustrated spread:

(inside cover of The Mock Turtle's Song)

In 1965, the # 1-6 and #13-18 titles were reissued and twelve more titles were added to the series. Nos 7-12 appear to have been issued only in the 1950s, as evidenced by the title list that appears on the back of the 1965 and following editions.

(click on any of these images to increase the size/level of detail)

You will also note in this image that over time the series title altered. Some of the books published in 1965 were still called "BeaverDime" books, but others were called "A BeaverBook for Young Canadians." In 1975, there was another reissue, only now the series imprint was "A Brunswick Book for Young Canadians."

These remaining 12 titles, #18-30, are:
The Spider and the Fly (no 18)
Snow White and Rose Red (no 19)
Cinderella (no 20)

(detail from Cinderella)

The Sleeping Beauty (no 21)
Hansel and Gretel (no 22)
Mother Holle (23)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (no 24)
Thumbelina (no 25)
The Twelve Travellers (no 26)
The Flying Trunk (no 27)
The Swineherd (no 28)
The Nightingale (no 29)
The Wild Swans (no 30)

Despite the ephemeral nature of these books, UNB Libraries and the Eileen Wallace Collection have, over the years, managed to acquire 17 0f the 30 titles including multiple versions of some of them. We still need the following:

How the Bird Chose a King (no 7)
The Pitter Patter Pot (no 8)
The Negro and the Antelope (no 9)
The Man of Stone (no 10)
The Bird Princess (no 11)
The Wonderful Ship (no 12)
Little Red Riding-Hood (no 16)
Snow White and Rose Red (no 19)
Hansel and Gretel (no 22)
The Twelve Travellers (no 26)
The Flying Trunk (no 27)
The Swineherd (no 28)
The Wild Swans (no 30)

If you have a copy of any of these titles, hidden away on a book shelf or in a box in the attic, we'd love to have you pass them along. We'll take good care of them.

And in case you're wondering, The Beaverdime Books were not the only children's titles published by Brunswick Press. From the 1950s through to the early 1980s, Brunswick Press published a wide range of children's books, regional history titles and creative writing by New Brunswickers.

____________________________

"Ephemera" is such a fascinating word and concept. Even though these books were published and widely circulated, very few copies still exist. The National Library of Canada has a complete set and The Wallace Collection, The Osborne Collection in Toronto, and McGill University have partial sets. Individual titles are scattered here and there across various world libraries. Despite their scarcity, when I show them to colleagues of a certain age--those who were raised here in New Brunswick--I get in return a warm smile of recognition and often a childhood memory.

Tell me, do you have a memory of these books you'd like to share? If not, what childhood ephemera has made you smile? Are you worried that it too may one day be lost to time?

Books that Inspire

2010-03-11T12:57:00.001-04:00

During the month of March, an online showcase of books is being hosted by UNB Libraries. These are all books that have, over the years, inspired faculty here at the University of New Brunswick. The complete list is a fascinating box of chocolates from which I encourage you all to sample.

For me, picking a single book was torturous. In the end, I narrowed it down to three: Maurice Sendak's Higglety Pigglety Pop!, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and the title I finally chose in the end.

Alan Garner

The Owl Service
London: Collins 1967

“She wants to be flowers and you make her owls and she is at the hunting.”

I have Huw Halfbacon to thank for it, really: for the realization that children’s books are far more sophisticated than my young mind had ever imagined them to be and for the knowledge that I would pursue children’s literature as a vocation no matter what my paid employment turned out to be. Huw is the half-crazed conduit of mythological lore in Alan Garner’s young-adult classic, The Owl Service (1967). He speaks of the past in the present tense and provides an eerie anchor to this contemporary telling and retelling of the Blodeuwedd myth from the Welsh Mabinogion.

The myth is that of a fatal love triangle between a man, a wife who has been crafted for him out of flowers, and a second man the flower-wife chooses to love instead. The novel recasts the myth with three teenagers who are each broken in some way–dysfunctional families, class barriers, regional prejudices, and the secrets of the past all frame the narrative. Trapped in a Welsh valley where myth repeats itself, generation after generation, and where the main characters’ ancestors have died or gone mad trying to escape their fate, the teens must learn to overcome their prejudices and hatreds in order to survive.

The Owl Service scratches with owl claws at your intellect for a very long time, but it is the unnerving figure of Huw Halfbacon that never really leaves you. If you’re lucky, he’ll make you flowers, not owls.

_________________
Now tell me: if you had to pick one and only one book that inspired you, what would it be and why?

A Valentine-sized love of children's fiction

2010-02-10T10:58:00.002-04:00

School Library Journal is counting down the top 100 Children's Novels of all time right now. Yes, it's yet another list, but I am very much enjoying watching this one unfold. SLJ blogger, Elizabeth Bird, asked readers to submit ranked top 10 ten lists of middle-grade novels. Each novel was assigned a score and now the countdown has begun. What I like about this countdown is 1) that it is reader-oriented--these are books we LOVE--and 2) that Bird, who works as a librarian in the New York Public Library system, has taken great pains to tell us about the books and why people have fallen in love with them. You can't read this list and not want to add to the pile beside your bedside table.

The countdown started Monday. #100-91 are here, #90-86 are here, and #85-81 are here. You can also check out last year's Top 100 Picture Book Poll or if you want to get in on some voting, you can still take part in Comic Book Resources Top 100 Comic Books Poll. I'm betting that this time next year, SLJ will be counting down YA. I can hardly wait.

So, tell me, what some of your all-time favourites when it comes to novels for the 8-12 set?

In which I 'fess up

2010-02-02T12:47:00.002-04:00

When I was a kid I didn't read very many books at all. I was poor and lived in the middle of nowhere. The local library was 5kms away and, with 1 car and a whack of kids in tow, my mom didn't get a chance to take us there very often. The few book shelves we had at home were lined with Reader's Digest Condensed Books and several "A-B" volumes of encyclopedias that were free sample give-aways at the grocery store. It wasn't until I was in Grade 11 that an inspiring English teacher really showed me what it meant to get lost in a book. I haven't quite found my way out yet.

Back then, the not-yet grown-up me devoured Dickens, Bradbury, Huxley, Tolkien, Salinger and John Fowles. A few years later I found myself in the second year of an undergraduate degree. I registered for what I hoped would be an easy elective for an English major: Children's Literature. That class and its instructor, Stan Dragland, changed my life. First off, the course was not at all easy. The reading load was heavy and we were required to submit weekly written assignments in addition to weighty term papers. Over the course of the year my writing improved, my critical thinking skills sharpened and, for the first time in my life, I learned that children's literature is rich, diverse, and complex. Heaven forbid anyone call it a lesser literature in my presence. Ursula Le Guin, Alan Garner, E.B. White, T.H. White, Natalie Babbitt, Lewis Carroll, Patricia MacLachlan, Louise Fitzhugh and L.M. Montgomery were all on that syllabus. There's nothing diminutive about them.

Since taking that life-changing class, I have read, literally, thousands of children's and young adult books. I do, however, have a shame-faced confession to make.

Gulp.

I've never read The Wizard of Oz.

I've never read Pippi Longstocking.

Nor have I read Little House on the Prairie.

In fact, I've not read any Baum, Lindgren, or Wilder whatsoever. There are others too--gaping holes in my knowledge of the genre that has given me my livelihood. And so this year, I vow to read at least one work by the following:

Avi
Lloyd Alexander
Frank Baum
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Peter Dickinson
Ann Fine
Virginia Hamilton
Rumer Godden
Julius Lester
Astrid Lindgren
Tamora Pierce
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Would any of you like to suggest the best individual titles from any one of those authors to get me started? Alternatively, would you like to confess your dirty, secret lapses in reading? C'mon, you can do it. That's why the comment section is there.

Before you grow up

2010-01-12T23:23:00.002-04:00

Look at the lovely bit of lovely I picked up over the holidays:

1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, Universe, 2009

Edited by Julia Eccleshare, children's book editor for The Guardian, with a preface by Quentin Blake, this is not a reference tome to be brushed aside lightly. And, oh my, the list provided is rich indeed. It's also quite detailed. The book is divided into 5 age categories from birth to young adult. Each book mentioned is accompanied by a meaty, signed annotation, all of which are written by prominent writers, reviewers and academics of children's literature.

As with all list books, it is one part canon-formation and one part springboard for discussion and dissent. My heart leapt so see favourite titles like Shirley Hughes' Dogger and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle on the list, but I was baffled by many other choices and omissions. Why, for example, does the book have 6 titles by Italo Calvino and none by Gerald McDermott? As much as I love William Steig, Alan Garner, John Burningham, Mo Willems, Phillipa Pearce and Quentin Blake (along with many others), why do they have multiple titles represented to the exclusion of key voices such as Nancy Farmer, Peter Spier, Diana Wynne Jones and David Macaulay?

Where for art thou, Farmer Duck?

Come back to the Five and Dime, Iona Opie, Iona Opie?

And, ahem, might I mention that the Caldecott award is named after a pretty influential fellow?--you know, the kind of guy you might want on a list like this. In fact, you might want to choose him over, say, Stephanie Meyer.

I could go on, but I won't because I do think the list that is provided is pretty darn good. Marketed as a popular reference source, it is likely to end up in many households as well as most public libraries. May it lead to more reading and more varied reading for all ages.

Eccelshare makes an effort to provide international, English language representation, which I do applaud, and I notice that there are some fine Canadian writers included in the list: L.M. Montgomery (natch), Elizabeth Cleaver, Monica Hughes, Robert Munsch, Tim Wynne Jones, Deborah Ellis and Margaret Atwood all caught my eye. In the spirit of expanding discussion rather than critique, I would like to provide you with a list of even more Canadian books for children that you should read before you grow up. Print off this list, slip it into the back of 1001 Books, and think of it as an appendix.

In rough age order from birth to adulthood here are

30 31 32 Additional Canadian Books for Children That you Should Read Before You Grow Up

1. Kathy Stinson: Red is Best, 1982
Robin Baird Lewis' simple use of primary colours makes Stinson's story of a toddler's favourite colour flower on the page.

2. Roslyn Schwartz: The Complete Adventures of the Mole Sisters: 10 Stories, 2004
I know I am cheating by picking a collection but the mole sisters' quiet appreciation of the natural world around them grows on the reader, small perfect story after small perfect story.

3. Gilles Tibo: Simon and His Boxes, 1992
Simple text, evocative drawings. Tibo's magic realism for the very young instills a sense of wonder in child and adult alike.

4. Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon: An Illustrated Comic Alphabet, (1859) 1966
Believed to be the first Canadian picture book, this 1859 work was not actually published until 1966. The illustrations look to be part of a strong tradition of 19thC children's book illustration but they pre-date those by Caldecott, Brooke and Greenaway. Only in Canada you say? Pity.

5. Marie-Louise Gay: Stella: Star of the Sea, 1999
For whimsy, poetic language, and masterful character depiction, any Stella and Sam book will do, but the first one, published originally in French as Stella: étoile de la mer, has its own special magic. Oh, just read everything Gay writes/illustrates. You won't regret it.

6. Barbara Reid: Two By Two, 1992
Reid's incredibly detailed clay models speak to her commitment to her craft. Two By Two is a sing-a-long retelling of the story of Noah's Ark. It's my personal favourite of hers but my 4-yr-old daughter is quite keen on The Subway Mouse as well. Reid has also created illustrations for other prominent Canadian children's authors: Jo Ellen Bogart's Gifts and Kenneth Oppel's Peg and the Yeti are standouts for me.

7. Tomsom Highway: Dragonfly Kites, 2002
Tomson Highway's children's book are told in English and Cree and tell of young native children who have a strong link to their cultural heritage. Brian Deines' muted watercolours complement Highway's sparse, imagistic language.

8. Dennis Lee: Alligator Pie, 1974
Alligator Pie started the conversation about poetry for children in Canada. Now we are a nation rich with children's poetry. Enough said.

9. Phoebe Gilman: Something From Nothing, 1992
The woman who penned the very popular Jillian Jiggs books has so many other wonderful stories to her credit. My daughter's long-time favourite is The Gypsy Princess. I, however, don't think anyone retells the Jewish folktale of Joseph and his overcoat better than Gilman does in Something From Nothing. Don't forget to watch the mouse family under the floor boards.

10. Jean Little: Pippin the Christmas Pig, 2003
Jean Little is a fixture of Canadian children's literature who writes for a broad range of ages. I am partial to this contemporary retelling of the Christmas story through the eyes of a small, seemingly insignificant pig.

11. Tom King: A Coyote Columbus, 1992
Lovers of The Dead Dog Comedy Hour on CBC radio will love King's irreverant take on first contact. William Kent Monkman's neon illustrations can be a bit much on the eye but they are well suited to the sass of Coyote, the baseball cheat.

12. Sheree Fitch: Sleeping Dragons All Around, 1989 (2009)
No other Canadian writer for children delights in language quite the way Sheree Fitch does. Her poetry explodes with rhyme, image and assonance, and she is always doing her utmost to expand a child's vocabulary in the most precocious manner possible. Sleeping Dragons was recently republished by Nimbus Press in a 20th anniversary edition. Get it before it's gone.

13. Dominique Jolin: Old Thomas and the Little Fairy, 2000
Despair, hope, love and death: Jolin's fable of an old man who nurses a wounded fairy back to health is anything but simple. Stéphane Poulin's evokative and moody illustrations are exactly what the story demands.

14. Ian Wallace: The True Story of Trapper Jack's Left Big Toe, 2002
This list wouldn't be complete without a tall tale. I like this one from the Yukon rendered with ease and wonder by CanLit mainstay, Ian Wallace. Just what is in that empty tobacco tin in the Sourdough Saloon? Read this book and maybe, just maybe, you'll find out.

15. Nan Gregory: How Smudge Came, 1995
Cindy finds a puppy and wants to keep it. Can a children's story be more cliché than this? Ah, but if you tell that story with just the right combination of words, and if you combine that story with illustrations that round it out with complexity and nuance, then what you're left with is a work of art. Ron Lightburn, illustrator.

16. Roch Carrier: The Hockey Sweater, 1984
It's a classic, sure, this tale of the young Canadiens' fan who mistakenly receives a Leafs' jersey from the Eaton's catalogue. I personally don't think it's a particularly good children's story per se--more of a nostalgic adult reminicence--but you can't really be a Canadian and not read it. It's become part of our cultural lexicon.

17. Mordecai Richler: Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, 1975
Jacob Two-Two is two plus two plus two years old and has a habit of saying everything twice in order to be heard above his two older sisters and two older brothers. A funny, surreal chapter book that's wonderfully Richler all the way. Psst: there are two sequels.

18. Janet Lunn: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, 1979
Lunn's adaptation of of this French folktale, expertly illustrated by Canada's premiere folklore illustrator, Laszlo Gal, is a must. It's also just one of many examples of quality Canadian contributions to the illustrated folklore tradition.

19. Paul Yee: Ghost Train, 1997
A dark story about a dark chapter in Canada's history, Ghost Train tells of Choon-yi, a young Chinese girl and artist, who emigrates to Canada to join her father. Only when she arrives does she learn that he has been killed while working to build the national railroad. Illustrations by Harvey Chan.

20. Gordon Korman: This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall, 1978
This novel was written when Korman was in the seventh grade and was published when he was 14 years old. 60+ novels later, Canada's wunderkind is all grown up and still publishing fun, funny, and sometimes dark novels for children and young adults.

21. Brian Doyle: Angel Square, 1984
An honour book for the Children's Literature Association's Phoenix Award in 2004, Doyle's Angel Square does indeed have staying power. Religion, class and the long shadow of World War II are all mixed up in Angel Square, the neighbourhood where Tommy first enters the world of really knowing.

22. Bernice Thurman Hunter: That Scatterbrain Booky, 1981
Set in The Great Depression, Hunter's series of Booky novels combine an endearing heroine with detailed historical realism. These books are an unacknowledged pre-cursor to the more recent historical fiction series, Our Canadian Girl and Dear Canada.

23. Joan Clark: The Moons of Madeline, 1987
Madeline, on the cusp of her teen years, travels to Calgary to visit her cousin. Feeling homesick, one night she dons a moon mask that was made for her by her friend, Old Angus. The mask is a portal to a fantastic world where Madeline encounters a society of priestesses. The Moons of Madeline is a cornerstone in the Canadian children's fantasy genre. It's also a little slice of old school girl power, dated but delicious.

24. Polly Horvath: Everything on a Waffle, 2001
Whacky, dark and filled with memorable characters who have even more memorable names--that's what Horvath's novels are. I particularly liked this one and The Canning Season, 2003, wherein a character actually manages to decapitate herself. Despite the dark overtones to Horvath's writing, the novels are filled with love and deep, meaningful human connection.

25. Arthur Slade: Dust, 2001
A positively creepy tale set in enchanted-reality version of depression-era Saskachewan. The first chapter had me hyperventilating in fear, and I simply could not exhale or put the book down until I was done. Winner of the Governor-General's Literary Award.

26. Budge Wilson: Fractures, 2002
Thanks to Alice Munroe, Canada is known as a literary powerhouse in the short story genre. For the young adult set, I like this collection of dysfuntional domestic tales by Nova Scotia's Budge Wilson.

27. Beth Goobie: Before Wings, 2000
I think Beth Goobie is one of the best, most literary writers for young adults alive. In Before Wings, 15-year-old Adrien learns to live in the face of death (she's suffered one brain aneurysm and fears she may suffer another). She does this by spending the summer at her aunt Erin's camp, where she slips between past and present, uncovering a mystery that has haunted both the camp and her brittle aunt.

28. Kevin Major: Ann and Seamus, 2003
What? You thought I had forgotten poetry when I left the books for young children behind? Ann and Seamus is a series of poems that tells the historical account of Ann Harvey, a Newfoundland girl who helps to rescue passengers from the shipwrecked Despatch in 1828. The poems recount her courtship with one of the passengers, Seamus, and her ultimate decision about whether to follow him or stay in Newfoundland.

29. Kenneth Oppel: Airborn, 2004
Canada's other wunderkind, Kenneth Oppel, was discovered by Roald Dahl when he was fourteen years old. He has numerous great books for children of all ages but is most famous for his Silverwing series and his Airborn series. I must confess that I have not yet read the former but I loved the Airborn series with its hot air balloons and fantastically distorted version of the world we live in. Steam punk has recently become all the rage in YA. The market and my tastes may be reaching surfeit point, but Airborn somehow remains fresh six years later.

30. W. O. Mitchell Who Has Seen the Wind, 1947
Reading this novel about growing up on the prairies, about learning of God, love, nature and death, is a mandatory rite of passage isn't it? Isn't it?

31. Martha Brooks: True Confessions of a Heartless Girl, 2002
A young woman whose need is great is taken in by a caring community. This novel is the all-grown-up version of Pippin the Christmas Pig, for it reveals how we transform ourselves when we have the courage to accept and nurture others without fear.

32. Joy Kogawa Obasan, 1981
Naomi, a teacher in her mid-thirties, visits her aging aunt in order to care for her. During her visit she relives her childhood experiences during and following WWII when her family was forcibly moved from BC to Alberta to work on a sugar beet farm as interned Japanese Canadians.

Must stop now. The trouble is I keep thinking of others that could and should be added to this list (Bah! Teddy Jam's Night Cars, Zeman's retellings of Gilgamesh, Sheppard's Seven for a Secret...). And don't forget I haven't included any works by Canadian authors that were included 1001 Books.

Ah, but the best thing about my list is that you and you and you can keep on adding to it in the comment section. Have a title you know must be here? Let me know and write your own brief annotation.

A down-home Christmas

2009-12-21T14:20:00.000-04:00

One of the earliest copies of Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas" or "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" resides right here in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It was handwritten by Moore and sent in 1825 to his godfather, Jonathan Odell, a prominent resident of Fredericton. Over the years, this bit of literary trivia has captured the city's imagination to the point where you'd sometimes think that this is what Christmas must be: an artifact shipped in from afar, a bit of fame whose coat-tails must be clung to.

And yet, this region represents a picture-perfect Christmas postcard all on its own. Juliana Horatia Ewing knew this when, in 1867, she wrote the region's first Christmas story while living in Fredericton with her husband, Captain Alexander Ewing, an officer in Her Majesty's 22nd (Chesire) Regiment. The story, "The Three Christmas Trees", was published in the collection The Brownies and Other Tales (1886) and can be read online here. One hundred and fifty years later, Ewing's prose stills delights and the picture of that "small town of a distant colony" remains quaint, sure, but fits snugly into this spiritual narrative of the link between our world and the world beyond.

Flash forward to the 1950s where you will find these three hidden Nova Scotia gems: In The Wee Folk: About the Elves in Nova Scotia by Mary Alma Dillman (1953), the first story is "Xmas Eve in Teaberry Hollow" wherein Santa and Mrs Claus rescue Peter, the young elf who gets caught in a blizzard and becomes frozen solid; Alice Dagliesh rounds out her collection The Blue Teapot (1959) with the tale of a family who get their first set of electric Christmas lights; and Julia L. Sauer's 1951 novel, The Light at Tern Rock, tells of an eldery woman and a young boy who spend their Christmas tending a lighthouse off the coast of Nova Scotia.

For an non-Avonlea take on Christmas in P.E.I. try David Weale's picture books, The True Meaning of Crumbfest (Acorn Press, 1999) and Everything that Shines (Acorn Press, 2001). In the former, a young mouse sets out to discover the origins of the plentiful crumbs that come to his people each year in late December. The latter is not so much a Christmas book, but rather a book about dealing with grief that happens to be set in the holiday season.

Newfoundland's Kevin Major has penned two contemporary Christmas classics: The House of the Wooden Santas (1997 Red Deer College Press) and Aunt Olga's Christmas Postcards (Groundwood, 2005).

The House of the Wooden Santas is an advent book with one vignette a day for the 24-day lead up to Christmas. As you can see from the illustration above, Imelda George's wood carvings add to the quirky yet lush feel of the book.

Aunt Olga's Christmas Postcards is a tribute to holiday picture postcards from all over the world. Images of hundred-year-old cards are combined with contemporary illustrations from Bruce Roberts as the tale (and poetry) of Aunt Olga and her family unfolds.

Finally, from Newfoundland is David Budge's The Mummer's Song, illustrated by Ian Wallace. This picture book is a simple rhyming tribute to the practice of mumming between Christmas and New Years' in rural Newfoundland. An afterword by Kevin Major explains the tradition to novices.

For additional Christmas books from the region, click over to the Portolan Bibliography where you can search "Christmas" and so much more besides.

An advent calendar of sorts

2009-12-01T12:31:00.000-04:00

The holidays are upon us, a time of family, giving, quiet reflection and ... the shameless Hollywood exploitation of picture books. Quick, clear your mind of images of Mike Myers' Cat or Jim Carrey's Grinch; you'll only soil the grey matter. Instead I offer you a YouTube-inspired Advent Calendar for you and all the young children you happen to know.

These animated picture book adaptations are fun and sophisticated. What's more, they are true to the original text. Most were developed by Weston Woods Studios and many are available through the Scholastic Video Collection which I strongly encourage you to buy.* A goodly number were produced in the great Czech animation studio under the direction of Gene Deitch. Enjoy one a day until Christmas or save them for a slow January Saturday. Oh, and don't forget to pick up each of these classic picture books the next time you're at your local library.

December 1st
Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins, 1968

December 2nd
Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, 1969

December 3rd
The Foolish Frog by Pete Seeger from Pete Seeger's Storytelling Book, 2000; also published on its own in 1973.

December 4rth
Changes, Changes by Pat Hutchins, 1971

December 5th
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, 1989

December 6th
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, 1947

December 7th
Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, 1993

December 8th
Bill Martin Jr. reading his book Brown Bear, what do you see? published 1983

December 9th
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, 1960

December 10th
Dr. De Soto by William Steig, 1982

December 11th
Happy Birthday Moon by Frank Asch, 1984

December 12th
Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, 1965

December 13th
There Was An old Lady by Simms Taback, 1997

December 14th
Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman, 2001

December 15th
The Zax by Dr. Seuss in The Sneetches and Other Stories, 1961

December 16th
Mercer Meyer telling his story There's An Alligator Under My Bed published 1987

December 17th
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight by Jane Yolen, 2000

December 18th
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food by Jane Yolen, 2005

December 19th
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, 1963

December 20th
The Caterpillar and the Pollywog by Jack Kent, 1892

December 21st
Pete's A Pizza by William Steig, 1998

December 22nd
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955

December 23rd
A Picture for Harold's Room by Crockett Johnson, 1955

December 24th
Harold's Fairy Tale by Crockett Johnson, 1956

Bonus holiday offer
These three Hans Christian Andersen adaptations used to appear on TV all the time in the 1970s. I remember them distinctly from my childhood. The subject matter is heavy, so make sure you watch them first before you decide whether or not to share them with a child.

The Selfish Giant

The Little Match Girl

The Happy Prince

And here's a final link that is definitely fun but I know it would frighten my four-year old. Slightly older kids will definitely enjoy the shivers.
What's Under my Bed? by James Stevenson, 1980

_____________
*Not a paid advertisement. The Scholastic Collection has far more videos than are linked to here.

Shiver me timbers

2009-11-13T11:48:00.002-04:00

There's no shortage of Atlantic Canadian pirate stories. The Portolan Bibliography lists 20 held in the Eileen Wallace Collection alone. There's historical pirates, modern-day pirates, fantasy pirates and, heck, even space pirates. This week saw a new edition to the regional pirate canon (or cannon, if you will): The Dread Crew by Bluenose Kate Inglis.

Inglis' pirates never set foot nor sail in water; they are pirates of the backwoods roaming about rural Nova Scotia in a giant barrow, pillaging all they can find in search of the junk they need to satisfy themselves and their bureaucratic labour union. The Dreads, as they are called, are all spit and vinegar with names like Screemin' Meena and Funky Phezekiah. They stink. One is known for the maggot colony that lives in his beard. Fear and intimidation are their bailiwick. And when the Dreads speak, ... this book jumps out of convention and into pure, silly fun. Each of Inglis' pirates has a distinct voice; none relies on tired, swashbuckling cliché. My favourite is, perhaps, Ill Willie Cusson, the Acadian Huckster whose chiac masterfully blends intimidation and charm.

In many ways, The Dread Crew is an anti-pirate story dressed in the trappings of piracy. For whither the gold, the jewels, the doubloons? Inglis herself lives within spitting distance of Oak Island. She was no doubt raised on Oak Island lore and knows that any self-respecting pirate thinks of nothing but gaining and hoarding treasure. For a true pirate, any means justify a wealthy end. And yet, Inglis' Dreads are accidental environmentalists. They pillage the land looking for junk that can be refurbished and reused. Under the tutalege of gentle Joe, a retired jack-of-all-trades and the heartbeat of this novel, the Dreads learn that they can gain more by investing in community than by running rampant over top it, or as Inglis'--and my long-dead granny--put it, "you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar." Yes, there is a strong message to this book, but the imaginative scope, slapstick humour and overall joyful noise of the whole package runs counter to any dread didacticism.

The illustrations by Sydney Smith are both playful and other-worldly. They are the perfect match for Inglis' belching, romping, refreshing words. The illustrations remind me at times of Barry Moser and Chris Van Allsburg with just a hint of cartoon caricature thrown in for fun.

When you are done storming the ramparts of The Dread Crew, be sure to dig up some of these other Atlantic Canadian buried treasures:

Ben Peach and the Pirates by Evelyn M. Richardson
Set in the 1840s, this novel tells the story of Ben Peach who sails from Halifax Harbour at the age of fifteen for the West Indies on a ship named the "Vernon."

The Black Joe by Farley Mowat
This historical novel set in the 1930s tells the story of two boys from a small outport community in Newfoundland who are taken on board a ship named the Black Joke and find themselves swept up into rum-running and treachery on the high seas when a gang of thieves arrives on the ship.

The Hand of Robin Squires by Joan Clark. 1977
In this illustrated historical novel, based on the Triton Alliance Company's November 23, 1971 discovery at the Oak Island site, fourteen year old Robin Squires tells the story of his family's involvement with the mystery of the island.

Pirates of the North Atlantic by William S. Crooker, 2004
Each chapter in this illustrated collection of short stories chronicles the world’s most notorious pirates and how they visited the North Atlantic from Newfoundland to Boston and Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy. The Atlantic Canadian adventures of famous pirates such as Blackbeard, William Kidd, John Phillips, Thomas Pound, Edward Low, Bartholomew Roberts and the pirate couple of Edward and Margaret Jordan are all revealed as well as the mystery of the Isle Haute, the Saladin, and the suspicious story of the Mary Celeste.

The Secret Treasures of Oak Island by J. J. Pritchard, 2002
This mystery novel tells the story of Emma and Jake Morgan who spend their summer visiting travelling with their uncle to Oak Island, Nova Scotia and try to discover the truth behind the treasure of the Oak Island Money Pit.

Torrie and the Pirate Queen by K.V. Johansen, 2005
Torrie, a magical being and the oldest Old Thing of the Wild Forest, tells the story of an adventure aboard a pirate ship. The captain, a twelve-year-old girl named Anna, plans to use her grandfather's hidden treasure to rescue her father, who has been kidnapped by the Pirate Queen, Nevilla.

The Trouble with Jamie by Lorrie McLaughlin, 1966
This historical illustrated chapter book tells the story of charismatic Jamie, a young boy growing up in Liverpool, Nova Scotia in the 1800s. Jamie thirsts for adventure and finds just that when he accidentally stows away on a ship named the Rover.

The Wizard's Eye by Andrew M. Scott, 1993
This illustrated chapter book is an adventure story about cousins Paul and Marie from East Sable on Nova Scotia's South Shore who are researching the pirate Red Randall when they meet a mysterious Major with a particular interest in the man.

And although it's not Atlantic Canadian, the 1922 collection, Great Pirate Stories edited by Joseph Lewis French and published by Tudor Publishing Co. of New York is a must for any aspiring deck-swabber.

Mum's the word

2009-11-09T14:50:00.002-04:00

There are numerous, excellent wordless or near-wordless picture books out there that foster solitary reading for the pre-literate child or, better yet, that enable children to interact with an adult whose sole focus can now be on pictures instead of words. Wordless picture books help to level the playing field between adult and child, and they give imaginative children free reign in building their own stories. They're not just for young children either; many are aimed at older children specifically. Others are acutely aware of the adult reader. No matter what the target audience, though, good art is never meant for any one category of person alone.

You can't go wrong with any of these:

The Carl books by Alexandra Day wherein a beloved Rottweiler minds the baby, while the baby's mother gets on with her errands and her life. There's at least a dozen in the series now.

Eric Rohman's wordless or near wordless picture books:

Time Flies depicts the journey of a bird through a prehistoric, dinosaur-laden landscape. It's a must for any dinosaur-crazed kid.

My Friend Rabbit should've been left alone as a book. The TV show knock-off is all talk, talk, talk. Who needs words when the pictures say it all?

Peter Spier's Noah's Ark and Rain, Raymond Briggs' The Snowman and Quentin Blake's Clown are classics in the genre,

as are Pat Hutchins' Changes Changes and a personal favourite of mine, Picnic, by Emily Arnold McCully.

Both these works have been adapted into excellent short films that have now become part of the Scholastic video collection.

More recent works include several of the books by David Wiesner. My daughter loves Tuesday, Flotsam and especially Sector 7.

There's also Australian Jeannie Baker's Window

And finally, here are two that are colour-themed:

Jae-Soo Liu's The Yellow Umbrella and Barbara Lehman's The Red Book.

There's also books like Chris van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and the Imagine a Day/Night/Place books that use the paintings of Rob Gonaslaves. These books are neither wordless nor do they tell a continuous narrative; instead, they provide an evocative caption for each illustration that prompts the reader to take control of the storytelling. It's like having 10-20 individual stories per book.

There's plenty more books in the wordless genre than the ones I've listed here. Do you have a favourite? Have you read any of these with children? Did you enjoy the experience or did you find yourself awkwardly sputtering, trying to fill in the story? Do you leave them lying around for kids to stumble on? Pack them in the car for long road trips? Use them as prompts for crafts or writing assignments? Tell me. I'd like to know.

Beyond the Veil

2009-10-31T21:47:00.001-03:00

This Sunday at the Fredericton Playhouse, Quebec dance company Bouge de là will be performing a choreographed version of Old Thomas and the Little Fairy, the 2000 picture book by Dominique Jolin, illustrated by Stephane Poulin.

I've got my tickets. Last Saturday, as a tie-in to the upcoming performance, the Fredericton Public Library hosted a reading of the picture book. The audience mainly comprised the 5 and under set while parents and grandparents sat in the seating at the back. Loralie Boyle from the children's department led the children through a series of actions wherein they mimicked the ocean and various creatures within it. She then read the book accompanied by Alex Bailey on guitar. The combination of words and music was mesmerizing. Yet, how could any reading of this book not draw the listener in? The themes of life and death, love and loss, and anger and redemption flicker behind this deceptively simple tale about an old man who nurses a fragile, ailing fairy back to health.

This book got me to thinking about the sub-genre of children's books that carry a strong undertow of maturity and meaning, books that many would argue are not children's books at all--except for the astonishing fact that many children love them deeply and come back to them time and again.

In our house, three such books have become obsessive favourites:

Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book is nothing more than a series of highly descriptive prose poems. It begins with a simple object:
"The important thing
about a spoon is
that it you eat with it."

Each page then describes a different object or phenomenon--an apple, snow, wind, a shoe--in an effort to crystallize its essence. The illustrations by Leonard Weisgard are simple and suggestive. They politely step back and allow the cadence and visual images provided by the words to explode inside the mind of the young reader.

The last page of the book moves into the metaphysical:
"The important thing about you is
that you are you.
It is true that you were a baby,
and you grew,
and now you are a child,
and will grow,
into a man
or into a woman.
But the important thing about you
is that
you are you."

Rather than a straightforward illustration of a child on the page, the accompanying illustration simply shows the words "you are you" written in script--for part of what makes you you is the ability to frame the abstract world around you, as you grow, through language.

Jan Andrews' Pumpkin Time is an odd book. The illustrations by Kim LaFave create an expectation for light, seasonal whimsy. Instead, this picture book is, I think, an extended metaphor for maternal depression. When three children wake one morning to discover their mother has transformed into a pumpkin, they take the situation in stride. They go about their lives hiding their new reality from the world and making do as best they can. Their strength and independence call forth a sweet music from the pumpkin. But the burden of caring for themselves and the loneliness of being without their mother begins to wear on them. At the point where they become overwhelmed by their new lot, the children wake up to have their mother restored.

The first time I read Pumpkin Time to my daughter, I had no idea what it was going to be about. As I read along, I anticipated anxiety, fear or even boredom on her behalf. Instead, she was completely drawn into the story and has insisted on having it read over and over again for weeks on end. I think it helps her work through her fearful fours and the new awareness of how independence can and is tied up with abandonment issues. (As a companion book to Pumpkin Time, re the theme of maternal depression, check out Liz Rosenberg's Monster Mama. It is less ethereal and is decidedly cheeky.)

The most beloved book in our collection is, without a doubt, Arnold Lobel's Uncle Elephant.

This easy reader by the author of the Frog and Toad books is a masterpiece of literary minimalism. When the young narrator's parents get lost at sea, he is taken in by his aged Uncle. The book playfully explores youth vs age and naivety vs wisdom. It is a testament to grief and a quiet tribute to the love that can grow from mutual loss. The nonesensical elephant song that serves as the emotional climax of the book makes both me and my daughter very happy.

Now, tell me, what are the books in your collection that show a more complex world beyond the veil? Do you enjoy reading them? Alone? With children? What is the response of the children you read them to?

Poetry and Folklore for the Kindergarten Set

2009-10-21T14:35:00.000-03:00

I had the pleasure of talking with 50 or so local kindergarten teachers a week and a half ago. The focus of my talk was poetry and folklore. Why single out these genres? Because of the dominance of the story-oriented picture books in kid culture today. Now, you'll find no bigger fan of the picture book than me, but many picture books (and tv shows and movies) tend to privilege certain kinds of storytelling over others. Key among these are tales of adventure or conflict resolution. But if the adventure story, the quest motif, or even the simple age-related problem/resolution story becomes not just the dominant form of narrative that children are exposed to but the only one, then a child's ability to imagine art, the self and the broader world beyond that genre becomes limited.

The Nursery Rhyme tradition, poetry and folklore are three forms of literature for young children that can help break the stranglehold of genre. They are older forms of telling that have evolved from oral traditions. Nursery rhymes and poerty help children peg down the natural cadence and rhythm of a child's mother tongue. Folklore, at its best, offers astute insights into human nature without being trite or didactic. There is also a wealth of international folklore available for young children.

The following is a list of the books I lugged along to the workshop. This isn't a definitive list, just a glimpse at some of the material that may be available at your public library.

Nursery Rhyme Collections
The Little Dog Laughed and Other Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Lucy Cousins, 1989
Mother Goose Remembers, illustrated by Clare Beaton, 2000
My Very First Mother Goose (1996) and Here Comes Mother Goose (1999), edited by Iona Opie; illustrated by Rosemary Wells
A Day of Rhymes selected and illustrated by Sarah Pooley, 1987
The Glorious Mother Goose, selected by Cooper Edens with illustrations by the best artisits from the past, 1988
Gregory Griggs and Other Nursery Rhyme People, selected and illustrated by Arnold Lobel, 1978.
Lavender's Blue, compiled by Kathleen Lines; illustrated by Harold Jones, 1954 (reissued in facsimile edition, 2004, facsimile paperback, 2007)

Poetry
Here's a Little Poem, selected by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters; illustrated by Polly Dunbar, 2007
The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Meilo So, 1999
Poetry by Heart: A Child's Book of Poems to Remember, compiled by Liz Attenborough, 2001
Poems by A. Nonny Mouse, selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Henrik Drescher, 1989
The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems, by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Betty Fraser, 1998
Alligator Pie (1974), Garbage Delight (1977), Jelly Belly (1983) by Dennis Lee
Sleeping Dragons All Around by Sheree Fitch, 1989/2009 (an example of excellent, stand-alone poetry held together in a quest-centred picture book)
Toes in My Nose (1987) , I am Small (1994) by Sheree Fitch
For Laughing Out Loud: Poems to Tickle Your Funny Bone selected by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Marjorie Priceman, 1992
Beast Feast: Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian, 1994

Sylvia Vardell maintains an excellent children's poetry blog called Poetry for Children. Along with excellent reviews and discussion, she provides numerous author links.

Folklore and Fables
The Helen Oxenbury Nursery Story Book, 1985
Anansi the spider : a tale from the Ashanti adapted and illustrated by Gerald McDermott
Tomie de Paola has numerous folktale adaptations for young children. The two titles I brought to the workshop were Strega Nona, 1975 and Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato, 1992.
The Three Little Pigs adapted and illustrated by Marie Louise Gay, 1994
The Travelling Musicians of Bremen retold by P. K. Page, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton, 1991
Cinderella (1989) and Red Riding Hood (1987), retold and illustrated by James Marshall
Belling the Cat and other Aesop's Fables, retold in verse by Tom Paxton; Illustrated by Robert Rayevsky, 1990
Fables, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel, 1980
How the guinea fowl got her spots : a Swahili tale of friendship, adapted by Barbara Knutson, 1990
Something From Nothing adapted by Phoebe Gilman, 1992
The House that Jack Built, pictures by Jenny Snow, 1992
This is the House that Jack Built, adapted and illustrated by Simms Taback, 2002
The Seven Blind Mice adapted and illustrated by Ed Young, 1991

Visual Literacy and the Picture Book, pt 3

2009-10-13T12:25:00.000-03:00

This three-part series explores the role of picture book art in creating a foundation for visual literacy. In writing these posts, I have relied on The On-line Visual Literacy Project at Ponoma College for my terms of reference in defining the 11 basic design components of all visual communication. I have grouped these components into 4 broad categories:

Part 1. The building blocks (dot, line, shape, and texture)
Part 2. Movement (motion and direction) and Perspective (scale and dimension)
Part 3 (today's post). Colour (hue, value, and saturation)

Colour has become a dominant design principle in illustrated books for children over the last several decades. Classics, such as Johnson's Harold books and McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings or Blueberries for Sal, however, are evidence that illustration can be divine on a monochromatic scale.

From Blueberries for Sal (1948)

Other books, such as Richard McGuire's Orange Book (1992), which uses only the complementary colours of orange and blue, or Cathy Stinson's Red is Best (1982), which emphasizes the narrator's preferred colour, or the wordless picture book Yellow Umbrella (2001) by Jae Soo Liu deal in the essence of hue.

Hue is plucked straight from the colour wheel and comes in the infinite combinations of those three primary colours: red, blue and yellow.

Bob Staake's The Red Lemon (2006)

from Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On by Lois Ehlert (1990)

A picture can comprise mainly warm hues:

a cross-section of the old white cabin in Delicious by Helen Cooper (2007)

Or cool hues:

From Rob Gonsalves' Imagine a Place (2008)

Sometimes the lifeblood of the image is a pocket of warm colour lying in a sea or sky of cool:

Marie-Louise Gay's Stella: Star of the Sea (English language version) (1999)

Christopher Myers' Wings (2000)

Value refers to the amount of light or dark in an image and the interplay between them.

From Peggy Rathmann's The Day the Babies Crawled Away (2003)

From Creation by Gerald McDermott (2003)

Whereas Beatrix Potter uses value to show the warmth of the hearth in winter,

Chris Van Allsburg plays with value to eerie effect in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984), a suggestive, imaginative picture book for elementary aged children.

Ed Young's mice sparkle against their black backdrop in Seven Blind Mice (1992), and

Ted Harrison's depiction of the Aurora Borealis feels like stained glass, so filled with light are his colours. From O Canada (1992).

Saturation deals with the amount of grey that influences a colour.
In Janell Canon's Stellaluna (1993), the contrast of the bats who lack colour saturation with the highly saturated night sky provide maximum visual impact. The resulting ultra-realism emphasizes the vulnerability of the bats, creatures that the reader may not normally sympathize with.

In Knuffle Bunny (2004), Mo Willems splashes highlights of mid-saturated colours over top of black and white photo stills of a Brooklyn neighborhood to add a family atmosphere to the city backdrop. His illustrations often look like animation stills.

The use of water colours produces a canvas of lightly saturated colours.

In many books, and Barbara McClintock's Dahlia (2002) is a fine example here, such illustrations have a rural or old-fashioned feel to them, no doubt because they hearken back to the 19th and early 20th styles of early masters in the genre:

Randolph Caldecott

Kate Greenaway

Leslie Brooke

and Beatrix Potter

And then there is Norton Juster's Hello, Goodbye Window, illustrated by Chris Raschka, that conjures up a rustic nostalgia by using mid-saturated, high value colours.

If you want to see what Rashka has to say about his approach to illustrating this book, read the engaging caption he put on one of his pictures that was reproduced for the New York Times.

Raschka uses a similar style for a cover of the Horn Book Magazine.

Highly saturated colours often, but not always, suggest an urban or contemporary setting, partly because contemporary printing technology allows for the mass reproduction of rich colours.

Here is Raschka again with Yo! Yes? (1993)

Vera B. Williams' A Chair for My Mother (1982).

Then there's the tropical feel of Dayal Kaur Khalsa' My Family Vacation (1988):

Highly saturated colours also feature prominently in many folk tales. Different colour combinations can be suggestive of different cultures or ethnicities:

Leo and Diane Dillon's Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale (1975)

Ricardo Keens-Douglas' The Nutmeg Princess; illustrated by Annouchka Galouchko (1992) (a folk tale from Grenada)

Gerald McDermott's Raven: A Trickster Tale From the Pacific Northwest (1993).

______________________________________

In regaling you with examples of how the 11 design principles work in picture books, it was my hope that you would see how smart illustrations, when combined with visual literacy skills on the part of the reader, can contribute to the overall experience of reading a book. Do I kid myself that my daughter sees all this when she is looking at books?

No. Not for a second. But she does see a lot of things in illustrations that I don't catch right off. We also spend a lot of time talking about the pictures in her books in an effort to tease out both our ways of seeing. Books that are flatly illustrated don't allow us to open up the conversation. They don't influence our mood or emotions as we are reading. The really good books do, though, and each time I come back to those books to figure out why, the answer is usually right there in front of me in their finely crafted illustrations.

__________________
The images in this post have been used as part of a work of criticism and under the clause of "fair dealing" in the Canadian Canadian Copyright Act. I have not used more than 10% of any given work.

Visual Literacy and the Picture Book, pt 2

2009-10-08T12:55:00.001-03:00

This three-part series explores the role of picture book art in creating a foundation for visual literacy. In writing these posts, I have relied on The On-line Visual Literacy Project at Ponoma College for my terms of reference in defining the 11 basic design components of all visual communication. I have grouped these components into 4 broad categories:

The building blocks (dot, line, shape, and texture) (the subject of my last post in this series)
Movement (motion and direction)
Perspective (scale and dimension) and
Colour (hue, value, and saturation)

The rest of today's post will look at movement and perspective. The final post in the series will focus on colour.

From utter stillness, motion emerges:

Rob Gonsalves holds stillness and motion in tandem in this surreal illustration featured in Imagine a Night (2003). His paintings have been pulled together in three separate picture books, Imagine a Night, Imagine a Day, and Imagine a Place, all with text provided by Sarah L. Thomson. The text doesn't shine so well as the illustrations but the books are stunning eye candy for all ages.

Picture book artists create motion on a fixed, 2-dimensional plane by using using multiple techniques, and, unlike the Gonsalves illustration would you have you believe, the motion created is most often pure silly fun.
David Shannon's title character from No David! (1998) makes a mad dash from his bath. The oversized sidewalk seems to spit him out, limbs extended and body soaring skyward.

Barry Moser's rabbit leaps above the title of this book: Jump!: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris, Van Dyke Parks, Malcolm Jones (1986). The torn blue backdrop that is slightly akimbo reinforces the motion suggested by the image.

Moser again on the cover of Margie Palanti's Earthquack! (2002). Even the letters in the title are subject to seismic upheaval.

Lane Smith's retro, space-age tumble into the abyss on the cover of Scieszka's Math Curse (1995).

And now, a few motion-centric illustrations that bring me joy:

Candace Fleming's Smile Lily, 2004

Helen Cooper's continuation of the Pumpkin Soup story, Delicious, 2007.

Me and My Sister, Ruth Ohi, 2005.

Linda Bailey's Stanley's Party illustrated by Bill Slavin, 2003.

While motion suggests movement on the page, direction prompts the movement of your eye over the page.

In this illustration from Barbara Reid's Sing a Song of Mother Goose (1987), Jack and Jill are pure motion; their tumble down the hill, though, directs the reader's eye straight to the page turn, for one does not linger in the verbally tripping land of the nursery rhyme.

Harold's policeman also points to the page turn with his arm and his eyes. (Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955) In the illustration from No David! above, the sidewalk forces our eyes to follow David's streak to freedom.

Peggy Rathmann's heroic quest, The Day the Babies Crawled Away (2003), features a driving, rhyming cadence that is accompanied by illustrations that move the reader's eye from top corner left to bottom corner right. As such, the story tumbles along until the pattern stops abruptly when our hero and his infant charges get trapped at the bottom of a cliff. At this point in the story, the black frame of the page surrounds them on three sides, effectively holding them captive.

Anthony Browne's Willy is a nose-in-the book sort of fellow. No so, his friend Hugh, who attracts the annoyed stares of the other library patrons. The entire meaning of this illustration from Willy and Hugh (1991) is told by following the direction of the eyes.

And finally, here's one more marriage of motion (the font, the girl with arms uplifted) and direction (the buildings) acting in harmony. Robert Neubecker's Wow! City! (2004)

Perspective
Next, we come to perspective and the two visual techniques that help to determine it: dimension and scale.

Dimension refers to the level at which a reader's eye encounters an image. Are we viewing the scene from on high? Are we looking up from the ground? Or are we meeting the image at eye level?
Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry (1999), shows the child reader what a temper tantrum looks like from a child's eye view.

When Sophie explodes, the dimension is eye level. When Sophie runs away and feels very small, the reader sees her as a speck on the landscape. By carefully manipulating dimension, the artist aligns the reader's sympathies with her character. Throughout the book we identify with Sophie and can therefore better empathize with her situation.

Now you tell me, in this illustration from David Wiesner's Tuesday (1991) are we meant to identify with the people who inhabit the town or the town's mysterious night time visitors?

Scale is similar to dimension but it is intrinsic to the picture itself rather than relying on the reader as viewer. Scale can simply let us know the size of one object relative to another as is the case in this picture from Wiesner's June 29, 1999:
And scale can sometimes make you smile:

From David Shannon's Duck on a Bike (2002)

Alternatively, scale can convey the emotional crux of a situation. Take for example the day Willy the Wimp accidentally bumps into Hugh:

From Anthony Browne's Willy and Hugh (1991)

________________________________
The remainder of this series can be found here:
Part 1. The building blocks (dot, line, shape, and texture)
Part 3. Colour (hue, value, and saturation)
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The images in this post have been used as part of a work of criticism and under the clause of "fair dealing" in the Canadian Canadian Copyright Act. I have not used more than 10% of any given work.

Visual Literacy and the Picture Book, pt 1

2009-10-04T22:29:00.007-03:00

What is the role of pictures in books for young children? Is it simply to illustrate the text? Having spent so many years as readers, we adults tend to privilege text at the expense of illustration. Library users are always asking me for a good story, a funny story, for a tale about trucks, ballerinas, or animals, for a book that teaches manners or what have you, for a book that will help a child learn to read, or one that fosters a desired "learning outcome". I only rarely have users come to me looking for a certain style of art or expressing a desire to teach visual literacy.

I remember reading simple vocabulary books to my daughter in that year where language hit her like a tidal wave. Words. Words. Words. Words were what she needed and words were what I gave her. Invariably, I found my word-centred self pointing to the black squiggle of text as I was reading and not to the picture she was looking at. Young children see the world differently, though. They acquire visual literacy long before they can decipher those black marks on the page. Good children's writers and illustrators know this. Good children's writers and illustrators design their books to cater to a child's need for aural, verbal, visual and, eventually, written literacy.

The most common form of book for young children is the picture book: 32 pages that most often contain text and pictures, although the former can be absent. In a good picture book, the text and art complement each other. I use the word "complement" on purpose, as it comes from the root "complete." In a good picture book neither the text nor art is complete without the other. Oftentimes the story can stand alone in a less rich form, but many innovative picture books depend on their illustrations to tell part or all of the story.

Take for example, Pat Hutchin's Rosie's Walk published in 1967. It is usually acknowledged as the first picture book in which the words deliberately leave out part of the story. The words tell in brief, literal detail what happens when Rosie, the hen, goes for a walk around the barnyard. Only the illustrations show what happens to the ill-fated fox who chooses to follow her. Page after page, the fox gets his comeuppance and Rosie? Well, she gets "back in time for dinner". End of story.

This style of integrated storytelling is quite prevalent in contemporary picture books. One of my favourite renderings of it is the Caldecott medal-winning Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann.

I wish I could find pictures online to show you Gloria the police dog's outlandish enactments of Officer Buckle's safety tips. Better yet, I wish I could show you the climax illustration when Officer Buckle realizes he's been had by his best friend. You'll have to go check it out to see for yourself if you haven't read it already.

How does the 10 dollar expression "visual literacy" differ from the 10 cent version "looking at pictures"? A lot can be said for how pictures themselves invite the reader in and promote an interpretive framework. A few basic design principles provide the foundation for all visual communication. How these principles are employed by the artist acting in tandem with the writer determine the degree of engagement a reader can have with a picture book. To explain, I am relying on the The On-line Visual Literacy Project at Ponoma College. The article, which outlines the 11 fundamental components of design, is well-researched and well-cited. I highly recommend it, should you wish to pursue these issues further. I plan to tackle the basic design components here by dividing them into four groupings and looking at those groupings through the lens of picture book illustration. They are:

The building blocks (dot, line, shape, and texture)
Movement (motion and direction)
Colour (hue, value, and saturation), and
Perspective (scale and dimension)

The rest of today's post will look at the building blocks. My next post will cover movement and perspective. A final post will look at the use of colour in picture books.

The Building Blocks
The dot and the line are fundamental to all artistic creation. The dot is a stable, grounding force: a moon in the sky or an object in the distance that your eye is drawn to. Lines create while dots merely are. The exception to this rule is in contemporary visual technology whereby all images are expressed through a series of dots. The genius of Roy Lichtenstein was to turn our way of looking at a screen or a comic book back on us and to make us aware of the visual make-up of new technology as a series of dots.

from Roy Lichtenstein's ABC by Bob Adelman, 1999, a book for adults as much as it is for kids.

The line creates all movement, direction, and perspective. The line, when used cleverly, is an object lesson in how art works.

from Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson, 1955.

Straight lines, particularly diagonals suggest activity. Curved lines sooth and rock with a gentle motion.

From lines, shape emerges. The comforting, rolling circle is a big ol' dot that depends upon line for its movement.

Richard McGuire's Orange Book, 1993

Kevin Henkes' Caldecott-winning Kitten's First Full Moon, 2004. Notice the grounding circles in the moon, in the fireflies and in the kitten herself. Then notice how the angled line of the tail directs your eye to the moon so that we look at they very thing that has caught the kitten's attention.

The claustrophobic square and rectangle...

from Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson, 1955.

...with their promise of escape.

from Jeannie Baker's Window, 1991.

Is it any wonder that Sendak's masterpiece, Where the Wild Things Are, begins in Max's house bounded by a white, square frame on the page. With each page, the frame gets smaller and smaller until Max sails off to the land of the wild things. At this point, the frame disappears altogether and the image becomes a full-page bleed. In fact, the wild things themselves would burst the bounds of the book if they could.

The manic triangle is all lines and angles scarcely bound. It keeps your eyes always moving.

from Stephen T. Johnson's Alphabet City, 1995

from Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun, 1974.

Triangles, because they contain at least two diagonal lines, represent energy and movement, particularly when they are sitting on their angles instead of their base.

An aside:
If a child has moved past the random scribble in fine motor skill development, check out the books of Ed Emberly. Alternatively, go to his website where you will find countless drawing exercises that let kids turn the dot, the line, and the fundamental shapes into just about any object under the sun. Voila:

Child readers discover texture early on: pat the bunny, pop-up, and crinkle-paper books abound in our tactile, catered-to-baby culture. An image does not need faux fur or sandpaper to convey texture, though, and different illustration techniques can often make a one-dimensional image seem 3D.

Canadian Barbara Reid models her illustrations out of clay before they are transferred to paper for printing. This illustration is from Effie, 1999. The computer screen does not do justice to the level of detail in her art. Take, for example, this image from her version of Noah's ark entitled Two By Two, 1992.

If you haven't read a book with Barbara Reid illustrations, hurry out and do so immediately. As an aside, there is a wonderful detail in this illustration: Noah's wife (dressed in green on the middle deck) has just realized that she's stepped in dung and is looking at the bottom of her shoe in disgust.

Wallace Edwards supplements detail with competing colours and patterns to create a textured look.

from Wallace Edwards' Alphabeasts, 2002.

Eric Carle creates texture by using multi-coloured tissue paper in his art. It's always fun to read a bunch of Carle books and then have your kids create tissue paper art. You can give them colouring page image outlines, if you want, and then let them do the rest.

from The Very Quiet Cricket, 1990.

Barry Moser, Chris VanAllsburg, and Christopher Bing have all used woodcuts or pen-and-ink in the style of woodcuts to create texture.

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Out of 11 design fundamentals, I have now covered 4. The remaining 7 will follow over the next two posts. In the meantime, ask yourself as you read stories to children, "does this picture add something of value to the book? Does it create mood, set tone, establish character? Is the image energetic or peaceful? Does it extend the mind in interesting ways beyond what is conveyed by the words on the page? How does it accomplish its task?"

The continuation of this series can be found here:
Part 2. Movement (motion and direction) and Perspective (scale and dimension)
Part 3 Colour (hue, value, and saturation)

______________________________
The images in this post have been used as part of a work of criticism and under the clause of "fair dealing" in the Canadian Canadian Copyright Act. I have not used more than 10% of any given work.

Tips for finding good books and making the most of your local library

2009-10-01T14:28:00.000-03:00

1. Ask your children's librarian for recommendations: Whether you're a teacher, education student or parent, a good children's librarian is yours and your student's/child's best friend. She/he will be able to recommend books that are pitched to your child's interests and abilities. She/he will know other books that are like titles your child already loves. She/he will know if a new dinosaur book has just come in or if the latest Stella and Sam book is about to be published. If Christmas is coming, ask him/her about what books to buy vs borrow for your child or other children. Ask her what tools and resources are available at the library to help you self-select materials. Shop around for a librarian or library staff person that you mesh with. Just because you had a bad experience with one person at the help desk doesn't mean that another person in the organization won't be more up your alley.

2. Use your library catalogue: Find out how to use your library catalogue well and then use it often. In my library, I can limit search results to just children's books (and sometimes depending on the search I can limit to just the picture books in the collection). Setting such limits makes it easy to perform targeted searches on subjects a child is currently interested in: elephants, dinosaurs, farms and the like. Library catalogues may also allow you to limit your searches by date of publication or language as well. For example, I often get language students coming to me looking for French children's books to help them as they learn the language.

3. Read reviews: Does your local paper write reviews of children's books? If so, read them and then ask for recommended titles at your library. Does your library subscribe to a reviewing service like the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD)? If so, you can quickly and easily look up reviews of books that you might be considering to find out if a) they are recommended and b) if they would be appropriate for the particular child/class you have in mind. If your library does subscribe to the CLCD, you can generate subject specific book lists that are pitched to a particular age range or reading level.

4. Devour award winners: Read your way through the extensive lists of award winners and honour books that are now posted all over the internet. If you find a book you especially like, then find every other book that author wrote. Keep in mind that award books can span age ranges so make sure you've got an age-appropriate book in your hands before you start reading aloud at bed time. Here are some lists of award winners to get you started but there are plenty more out there:

US-based awards
The Caldecott Medal: Awarded to the best picture book by an American citizen or resident published in the US in any given year. The current winner and honour books are listed here. A complete listing of past winners is here.

The Newbery Medal: The oldest, ongoing prize for children's literature in the world, the Newbery medal is awarded to the most distinguished work for children published in the US in any given year. The current winner and honour books are here. Past winners are listed her e.

The Michael L. Printz Award: An annual award that recognizes literary excellence in young adult literature. The current winner and honour book are listed here. The full listing of past winners and honour books is here.

The Coretta Scott King Book Award: This annual award is given to African-American writers and illustrators of books for children. The current winner is listed here (and is sitting by my bedside) along with the 2008 honour books. A full listing of winners and honour books can be found here.

The Boston-Globe Horn Book Prize is presented annually in three categories for prestigious picture book, fiction and poetry, and nonfiction published in the United States. Here's the current winners and the full listing of award winners.

The New York Times Best Illustrated Books for Children is an annual listing. Here is a slideshow for the 2007 edition of the awards.

Canadian Awards
The Governor General's Literary Awards: Awarded annually, one for children's text and one for children's illustration with categories in both English and French. Here's the 2008 shortlist. Here is the list of past winners.

The Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award: Awarded to the outstanding illustrator of a children's book published in Canada. The complete list of winners is here.

The Canadian Children's Book Centre maintains a listing of Canadian book awards. Rather than reprinting it all here, you can find the full list on their website.

British Awards
The Kate Greenaway Medal: Awarded annually for children's illustration. It's the UK's equivalent to the Caldecott Medal. Current short list is here. Past winners are here.

The Carnegie Medal: Awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book for children. It's the British equivalent of the Newbery Medal. Current short list is here. Past winners are here.

Smarties Prize (renamed Nestle Book Prize): A recently discontinued UK prize for various age categories of children's literature. The Smarites Prize was sometimes considered controversial because of its affiliation with Nestle and their practice of promoting infant formula use in developing countries. 2007 winners are on the main page. Past winners are listed here.

International Distinction
The IBBY Honor List: a biennial listing of excellent books for children put out by the International Board on Books for Young People.

5. Make sure you cover off as many genres as you can. There are so many kids today who never hear poetry or who don't receive grounding in oral folk-tale culture. That grieves me. In Dewey classification systems, the picture books and easy readers are catalogued separately from poetry, folklore, non-fiction, music, biography and the like. You have to go hunting to move beyond picture books.

6. Give a child free range in the library and work by trial and error. A child needs to know that he/she has some agency when it comes to selecting books. I have read some real howlers to my daughter but I respected the fact that she chose the books. This is where all those dreadful movie spin-off books come into play. There's also a number of didactic or messagey books out there that I flat-out disagree with, but I suck it up and read them anyway if my daughter has taken a fancy to them. I try to not pass judgment while I'm reading a book but I will often discuss my likes and dislikes after the fact. Take, for example, The Rainbow Fish. I personally don't like how preachy that book is. I don't like the message that in order to be liked you must give up all of what it is that makes you unique. I do, however, like fostering notions of sharing and consideration for others and so my daughter and I have talked about what we both did and didn't like about the book. She's a fan but I think her love of the book has more to do with the brightly coloured illustrations than the book's message.

Big Fish and Bigger Fishermen

2009-09-08T14:22:00.000-03:00

Who doesn't love a tall tale, a well-spun yarn of daring and determination?

I've recently fallen in love with Kenneth Oppel's Peg books:

Peg and the Whale (illustrated by Terry Widener; Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2000)

Peg and the Yeti (illustrated by Barbara Reid; Haper Collins, 2004).

In them, strapping young Peg sets out to conquer the world. She's pushing seven when her story begins and, well, that Peg, "she want(s) big, she want(s) better, she want(s) best." And what could be better than to catch a whale or to climb to the top of Mount Everest?

Peg hails from Newfoundland, if we are to go by her penchant for salt cod and pork scruncheons. Her narrator definitely has a down-home, east coast lilt. In fact, Oppel's prose sits on the tip of the tongue like it was meant to live there. Reading these books aloud to children is nothing short of a delight. The warmth and whimsy of Oppel's language is matched in the illustrations by Widener and Reid, both of whom use warm oranges, reds and yellows to set Peg off from the daunting cool blues, blacks and whites that surround her. No matter how great the threat to Peg (and that Yeti is some fearsome), the reader can't help but feel the warm comfort that both narration and illustration afford.

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If you're looking for tall tales with regional flair for teens, look no further than New Brunswicker Stuart Trueman's Tall Tales and True Tales from Down East (McClelland and Stewart, 1979.) Trueman won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1969 and it shows in his easy narration of understated wit:

"But the laughing ringmaster, clad in green satin suit, was none other than the dentist Painless Parker. He had bought a marooned circus for 50,000, and was putting it to work advertising him up and down the Pacific coast.

Most surprisingly, he wasn't an American at all. He was a member of a northern race notorious for innate conservatism, stolidity and shyness.

He was a Canadian."

The 22 stories that comprise this collection include Acadian folklore, Mi'kmaq-Malliseet legend, and various bits of Maritime history, personality and lore. If you want to know the full story behind Fredericton's famous Coleman Frog, for instance, you need look no further.

Tall Tales and True Tales from Down East is appropriate for older children, teens and adults alike. The book is out of print but copies abound in Maritime libraries and used copies can be found for purchase online.

It's fall, it's fall. Come one, come all!

2009-09-03T11:27:00.010-03:00

The Fredericton fall fair opens this weekend, FREX as it's known around town. I'll be there-- with wet wipes for cotton candy fingers and a camera to capture that perfect wide-eyed merry-go-round moment. Before you head out to your local fall fair, I recommend hitting the library first to find a copy of Merry-Go-Day written by Fredericton native Sheree Fitch and illustrated by long-time Fredericton artist Molly Lamb Bobak (Doubleday, 1991; no longer in print).

The inspiration for the book comes from FREX, specifically, but it is suited to any old fair-going experience. Laid out as a series of poems that walks the reader through the sights and sounds of a day at the fair, the book is as crisp as a McIntosh apple. If you've never read Fitch's tongue tantalizing verse out-loud, Merry-Go-Day is a must for this Labour Day weekend. Here's an excerpt:

"Sam Sam
The hammer slammer
Always rings the bell
When Sam
The hammer-slammer
Hammers
Everybody yells:

Slam that hammer
Sam the slammer
Hammer-slamming Sam
Sam the hammer-slamming
Slamming
Hammer-slamming
Man"

Merry-Go-Day is a perfectly indulgent day out. Fitch takes us on the bumper cars, a roller coaster, and the Ferris Wheel; she feeds us hot dogs, ice cream and cotton candy; we get just a little spooked in the Haunted House; and we play a game of chance. The question is, will we win that purple parrot our heart's desire? You'll have to check the book out to know.

About Mouse-traps and the Moon

2009-09-03T11:17:00.008-03:00

I, lucky librarian that I am, get to spend my day with children's books. The collection I curate is the largest of its kind in Atlantic Canada, with holdings that are diverse, as well as serendipitous, built up over time by collection founder and benefactor, Eileen Wallace. A significant collection strength is historical and contemporary Atlantic Canadian Books for Children.

On this blog, I will showcase material from the collection as well as ramble on about children's and YA literature and some of the cultural issues that impinge upon them. As the mother of a pre-schooler, I will also share some of my daughter's lists of favourite books.

As for the title of this blog, it is taken from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and is spoken by the Dormouse at the Mad Hatter's tea party: "mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness-- you know you say things are 'much of a muchness'--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?"