Taro Gomi Squiggles and Doodles Creativity Contest

Our copy of Scribbles:  A Really Giant Drawing and Coloring Book by Taro Gomi (Chronicle, 2006) is filling up really fast.  Leo draws in it occasionally, but now that Milly has discovered it, we might need to buy a copy of Doodles, too.  I think Taro Gomi's open-ended drawing and coloring books are the best:  thick-and-thin line drawings accompanied by picture prompts (Who is looking out the windows?), sometimes arranged in a series (It's a beautiful day today/Today it's not so nice/Today there's a thunderstorm!).  There are some things to color and cut out (masks; stationery and envelopes), and a few puzzles and games, too; but most of Scribbles' 368 pages, like those of Taro Gomi's other coloring books, are made especially for drawing.

You can print out some sample pages from Scribbles and Doodles here.  And fortunately for us, Chronicle Books is releasing two new Taro Gomi drawing and coloring books:  Squiggles and Doodle All Year (in a smaller, square format featuring spring, summer, fall, and winter scenes).  Be sure to check out Chronicle's Taro Gomi Squiggles and Doodles Creativity Contest celebrating the release of the new books, too.  You'll need to print out one of four pages from Squiggles and follow the prompt to complete the picture.  I like Let's play in the mountains! best.  Good thing the contest is open to scribblers and doodlers of all ages, so Leo and Milly--and maybe even me and you!--can enter.

Apples in winter

We read most of our apple books in the fall, but somehow we've managed to read four in the last week.  I love this kind of reading coincidence and am always on the lookout for it: it's the idea behind bookstogether.  In this case, the apple books aren't about picking apples or making them into apple pie (both good things that happen a lot in apple books), but about making apple friends (slightly more unusual).  Here are two of them:

   

• In A Friend for Dragon by Dav Pilkey, a snake tricks Dragon into thinking a shiny red apple is his friend.  The two spend a wonderful day together ("You are a good listener," says Dragon).  But Dragon becomes concerned when the apple won't talk to him the next morning ("Maybe it's a crab apple," suggests the doctor).  What happens next is tragic and hilarious and ultimately very satisfying.  This is the first of five early readers featuring Dragon; we love them all, but A Friend for Dragon is my favorite.
• In The Apple Doll by Elisa Kleven (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007), Lizzy is worried that she won't make any friends at school.  She turns an apple from her favorite tree into a doll she names Susanna, but her new friend isn't welcome at school, either (no food or toys allowed during class, except on sharing day).  Lizzy keeps Susanna at home, until she finds a way to make her into a real doll--and make new friends at school, too.  Instructions for how to make an apple doll are at the back of the book (thankfully, because both Leo and Milly now want to make one.  So do I!).  And I love the endpapers in this book:  apples in the front, apple dolls in the back.

In the other two books, Miss Hickory's body is made of an apple twig, and Little Little Sister grows from an apple seed.  Really, how many books about apple people can there be?

Poetry Friday: If You'll Be My Valentine

I think the best Valentine is a poem.  Preferably one written just for you.  The little boy in this book by Cynthia Rylant (illustrated by Fumi Kosaka; HarperCollins, 2005) writes a simple Valentine poem for everyone in his family, plus the cat, the dog, his teddy bear, and the bird that sings outside his window.  Each of the poems (there are ten of them) has the same format:  they all begin with "If you'll be my valentine" and go on to say, in four short lines, what the little boy will do with or for the recipient in return.  The one he writes to his mother is (not surprisingly) my favorite:

If you'll be my valentine
I'll pour our tea at three.
Spicy cookies
and an orange
just for you and me.

Okay, it's a simple poem (a little boy is supposed to have written it, after all).  But I love the specificity of it:  tea is at three (the illustration of the boy and his mother having tea shows the clock in the background); the cookies are spicy.  Also that the boy is doing something with his mom that she would particularly like, although he is certainly enjoying it, too.  This is true of all the poems:  in another, the boy promises to pull his little sister in the wagon so "we can sing and talk."  Milly, a little sister herself, likes that one best.

I had planned to write an acrostic poem for each of the kids and my husband this Valentine's Day.  I still might (even though my husband's name has an X in it, and it's hard to work an x-ray or a xylophone into a Valentine).  Or maybe I'll write these instead:  5 lines, first line "If you'll be my valentine," last four lines ABCA and a promise to do something special together.

Poetry Friday: Mother Earth and Her Children

The illustrations in this rhyming picture book won an unusual award:  Best in Show at the 2006 International Quilt Festival in Houston.  They began as a single quilt inspired by quilt artist Sieglinde Schoen Smith's favorite children's book, Etwas von den Wurzelkindern ("Something About the Root Children"). Written by Sibylle von Olfers, it was originally published in Germany in 1906.  Mother Earth and Her Children:  A Quilted Fairy Tale (Breckling Press, 2007) is the English translation of that book, illustrated entirely with details from Smith's award-winning quilt.  Yes, that cover image is from the quilt.

Renowned fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes translated von Olfers's short text about the changing seasons into English rhyming verse for the first time.  Here are the Root Children getting ready for spring:

"All are quick and ever ready
To sew spring clothes. Their hands are steady.
With needles, scissors, spools of thread,
They measure and cut, full steam ahead.

And when the children's clothes are done,
Kind Mother Earth admires each one."

I like the way these lines now recall Smith's work "with needles, scissors, spools of thread" as well as the Root Children's.

[This is the English edition with the original art by von Olfers (Floris Books, 1980) that inspired Smith; plus an article about copyright responsibility re: Mother Earth and her Children.  In case you're inspired to recreate your favorite picture book in some other medium.]