Mouk and Moomin

Publisher's Weekly recently reviewed Around the World with Mouk by Marc Boutavant (Chronicle), describing Mouk's world as a "Richard Scarry/manga mashup" (Children's Book Reviews, 11/23/09)  There's more, including international travel to Finland and reusable stickers, but really, what else does one need to know?  It's on the list.  I also like the Boutavant-illustrated All Kinds of Families! by Mary Ann Hoberman (Little, Brown).

Speaking of Finland, PW also reviewed (same date) the reissue of Tove Jansson's The Book About Moomin, Mymble, and Little My (Drawn and Quarterly).  A Moomin picture book?  Oh...my.

Elizabeti and Fanny

An article in today's KidsPost about children making their own toys ("Creating Toys with Their Own Two Hands," 11/11/09) reminded me of two otherwise very different books about girls making their own dolls.  I'm very fond of Elizabeti's Doll by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (illustrated by Christy Hale; Lee and Low, 1998) -- of all the Elizabeti books, really.  In this one, Elizabeti has a new baby brother and wants to take care of her own baby, so she picks up a rock that's just the right size, kisses it, and names it Eva.  Stuve-Bodeen's text and Hale's illustrations evoke the Tanzanian setting beautifully, but the focus of the book is squarely on Elizabeti's relationship with Eva.

Holly Hobbie's Fanny (Little, Brown 2009) is a very different book, and despite its more familiar setting and concerns--Fanny's mother doesn't want her to have the Bratz-like Connie doll Fanny has her heart set on, so Fanny makes her own doll--I haven't warmed up to it (we own it).  I wonder if it has something to do with why Elizabeti and Fanny are motivated to make their own dolls?  Or could it be the mere presence of the Connies?  If you've read Fanny, I would love to know what you make of it.  And if you haven't read Elizabeti, I highly recommend it!  The two make an interesting comparison.

Picture books with chapters

Why aren't there more of them?  These picture books feature three or four related stories, but the ratio of picture to text is still high.  Perfect for preschool-aged kids (and their smaller siblings) who are ready to listen to more or longer stories but still inclined to wiggle off the couch.  Here are some of our favorites:

What James Likes Best by Amy Schwartz (Atheneum, 2003).  A classic in the bookstogether household.  James lives in the city and goes on four outings, to visit family, friends, and the fair.  At the end of each story, Schwartz asks "And what do you think James liked best?"  I still ask my kids this question after every outing, too.

Don't Let the Peas Touch by Deborah Blumenthal; illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering (Arthur A. Levine, 2004).  Gets sibling (and parent) dynamics just right.

Welcome to Zanzibar Road by Niki Daly (Clarion, 2006).  Mama Jumbo reminds me of No. 1 Lady Detective Mma Ramotswe.  This one gets bonus points for its South African setting.  We love it.

These are more recent examples, but not necessarily our favorites.  You might like them, though.  At least as long as they keep your little ones on the couch.

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo and Harry Bliss (HarperCollins, 2008).  Adventures feature pirates and the circus, neither of which we like.

The One and Only Marigold by Florence Parry Heide; illustrated by Jill McElmurry (Schwartz and Wade, 2009).  How does Maxine stand her?

Can you think of any picture books with chapters to add to the list?

A Birthday for Bear (at last!)

Bear and Mouse (small and gray and bright-eyed, of course) are back, just in time to celebrate Bear's birthday--whether Bear wants to or not, in A Birthday for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (Candlewick, 2009). We first met Bear and Mouse in last year's picture book A Visitor for Bear, which won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award. Now the unlikely pair returns in an early reader from Candlewick Sparks.

The early reader format makes sense for Bear and Mouse, who are literary descendants of Frog and Toad, and it suits Becker's storytelling here as well. While I miss the spaciousness and surprises of Visitor, Mouse's attempts to deliver balloons, a present, and finally a chocolate cake to Bear in Birthday fall nicely into short chapters. Spoiler alert:  The cake succeeds!  I'm not sure about the present, though.

Interestingly, the next Bear and Mouse book, A Bedtime for Bear (Spring 2010), will be another picture book. From Becker's website: "Bear has Mouse over for Bear’s first ever sleep over. But in order to sleep, Bear must have quiet, absolute quiet. To Bear’s great frustration and growing annoyance, Mouse is far from quiet as a…well, you know." I sort of wish that everyone involved had chosen one format or the other and stuck with it. My vote would be for the picture book, but A Birthday for Bear is a great choice for newly independent readers...and you can read it aloud, too.

Happy birthday, Tomie dePaola!

It's Tomie dePaola's 75th birthday today, and I'm celebrating it by ordering a copy of the just-released Strega Nona's Harvest (Putnam Juvenile).  I wish I were celebrating it by visiting the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art's retrospective of his career, Drawings from the Heart, but that's in Northampton.  Someday!  In the meantime, I'll have to host my own in-house retrospective.

Do you have a favorite Tomie dePaola book?  Please share!

Firebirds

Milly and I read lots of retellings of the Russian fairy tale Firebird prior to seeing the Center Dance Company's performance of the ballet this afternoon.  You might want to put on some Stravinsky and read them, too.

Best before the ballet:  The Firebird by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Vladimir Vagin (Harper Children's, 2002).  Yolen's retelling follows the Balanchine ballet, so if you see a performance inspired by Fokine (as we did), you might be surprised by the business with the magical egg.  I really like the way Vagin illustrated the story at the top of the page and its performance on stage across the bottom.  N.b., Jane Yolen trained at Balanchine's School of American Ballet.

Lovely to look at:  The Tale of the Firebird by Gennady Spirin; translated by Tatiana Popova (Philomel, 2002).  So the Firebird looks like a peacock: Spirin's illustrations, full-page watercolors and delicate, detailed borders, are exquisite.  This is an original version of the Firebird story adapted from three Russian fairy tales and features a gorgeous gray wolf and our old friend Baba Yaga as well as Koshchei and, of course, the Firebird herself.

Milly's favorite.  The Firebird by Demi (Henry Holt, 1994).  If you like Demi (and we do), you'll love her Firebird. It's all red and gold and there are little animals everywhere.  The art doesn't feel Russian to me, but the text is based on Ransome's translation of Afanasiev, and it reads aloud nicely.  The paperback edition of this book was for sale at today's performance; we didn't buy it, but Milly did get to bring home one of the Firebird's red feathers [thanks, Brenda!].

What's your favorite Firebird?

Picture Book Poll

Betsy Bird (Fuse #8) announced The Top 100 Picture Books of All Time Poll on her blog at School Library Journal earlier this week. Details and deadline here; but in a nutshell, she's looking for your top ten personal favorites, in order of preference, by March 31. You can submit a justification for each book if you like. Then she'll tally up the totals and count them down from 100 to 1.

I've been thinking about what to include on my list (I haven't even gotten around to ordering it) and have decided to stick to personal or family favorites.  That is, I'm not concerning myself with objective or even relative merit.  Here's what I've come up with so far (in no particular order):

• Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinsky
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
• Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent
• Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola
• The Maggie B. by Irene Haas
• The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
• Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington
• Peek-A-Boo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
• The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
• Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
• The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein
• Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban
• Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

Yes, there are more than ten of them!  Still, I would love to know what you would add to (or remove from) my list.  Have you made yours yet?

The Magic Rabbit

Milly was fascinated by Annette LeBlanc Cole's The Magic Rabbit (Candlewick, 2007) earlier this fall.  It's a story about a street magician (Ray) and his white rabbit (Bunny), who are separated during a performance; that night, Bunny follows a trail of gold stars (and popcorn) that leads to a reunion with Ray.  A perfectly nice book; but I wasn't sure right away what it was about it that fascinated Milly.

We borrowed it from her preschool teacher and read it countless times over a long weekend.  It held up to repeated readings well, thankfully; but it was the artwork, I think, that did it:  elegant pen-and-ink illustrations, most of them of the city (Cambrige, MA?) at night--lit up by many magic yellow stars.  There don't seem to be many picture books illustrated in black-and-white, but it works wonderfully well here.

The Magic Rabbit inspired a lot of art projects at home, too:  Milly made her own magicians with silver crayon on black construction paper, and rabbits with gold on white.  We cut out a handful of yellow stars and scattered them around the house.  I even made a black magician's cape with a high stand-up collar just like Ray's, and a magic wand (I didn't get to the hat, though).  We gave the cape, wand, and stars to the preschool when we returned the book, so everyone could pretend to be a magician.

[See also The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson; illustrated in black-and-white scratchboard with touches of "marigold" by Beth Krommes (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) and one of PW's Best Children's Picture Books of the Year.  It's a beautiful bedtime book, based on a cumulative poem found in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book.  I love the way the marigold highlights objects that are familiar yet fascinating to a preschooler--a key, a book, a bird, the moon.  And I've always loved Krommes's work; this post on Grandmother Winter is from this time last year.]

Poetry Friday: Los Gatos Black on Halloween

From Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marisa Montes; illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Henry Holt, 2006):

Los gatos black with eyes of green,
Cats slink and creep on Halloween.
With ojos keen that squint and gleam--
They yowl, they hiss...they sometimes scream.

This book won the 2008 Pura Belpre Medal for Yuyi Morales's richly atmospheric paintings, which reflect the traditions of both Halloween and the Mexican Day of the Dead.  It also won a Pura Belpre Honor for Marisa Montes's rhyming text about a monster's ball on Halloween night that is interrupted by the arrival of [spoiler alert!] trick-or-treaters.

Montes incorporates some spooky Spanish words: see above as well as, for example, la bruja (witch), el esqueleto (skeleton), la calabaza (pumpkin), and medianoche (midnight).  I like that the Spanish words are specific to the Halloween context; this helps integrate them into the text.  The text itself is sometimes redundant (I don't think the English word is always required, especially when there are context clues, illustrations, and a glossary), but that doesn't seem to bother the kids.

What does bother them are those gorgeous, glowing paintings.  Too scary!  Maybe next year.

[The Poetry Friday Round-up is at Becky's Books Reviews today.]

PF: Someday When MY Cat Can Talk

I suppose I should be pleased that the cat in Caroline Lazo's charming picture book Someday When My Cat Can Talk (illustrated by Kyrsten Brooker; Schwartz and Wade, 2008) made it to Spain on his European adventure at all.  But here's what he has to say about it:

He'll talk about events in Spain--
like bullfights every spring.
And he'll praise himself for stopping one
by jumping in the ring.

At the back of the book, Lazo notes that "[b]ullfighting is Spain's best known and most-unusual spectacle, but today many people think it is cruel to kill bulls--or any animals--for sport, and hope it will end soon."  While I'm not accusing Lazo of perpetuating the leyenda negra in picture book form, I'm disappointed that she chose bullfighting to represent Spain.  No other country is represented negatively.  Next time, may I suggest that the cat make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, read Don Quijote, dance flamenco or visit the Alhambra instead?

[Disclaimer:  No bulls were harmed in the writing of this post.  And the Poetry Friday roundup is at author amok.  Thanks!]

Poetry Friday: James Marshall's Owl and Pussycat

My favorite picture book edition of Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat is, not suprisingly, James Marshall's.  I love that the "beautiful pea-green boat" is a cruise ship, the S.S. Dorabella.  The watercolor sketches for this book were Marshall's last work.

Lear himself did not finish "The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat," portions of which were published posthumously.  Here are the opening lines:

Our mother was the Pussycat,
our father was the Owl,
And so we're partly little beasts
and partly little fowl.

The brothers of our family
have feathers and they hoot,
While all the sisters dress in fur
and have long tails to boot.

We all believe that little mice,
For food are singularly nice.

[Poetry Friday roundup at Biblio File.]

Stick Man gets his own book!

The most endearing detail of Axel Scheffler's art for The Gruffalo's Child by Julia Donaldson (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005) is the stick doll that she carries thoughout the book.  You can see her clutching it on the cover.  The year The Gruffalo's Child came out, I made Leo a small stuffed gruffalo, complete with stick doll, and gave it to him together with the book for Christmas (believe me, it was much easier to make than the gruffalo costume he wanted for Halloween that year would have been).  The stick doll has since been lost, but I suspect we will be making more once we read Donaldson and Scheffler's latest book:  Stick Man.  It's available now in the UK (Leo, as a member of The Gruffalo Gang, heard about it first).

I wonder whether Donaldson and Scheffler collaborated at all on this new book?  The text of The Gruffalo's Child doesn't say anything about the stick doll (there are some stick animals, too), so I assume that was originally Scheffler's idea, and Donaldson ran with it.  At any rate, the kids and I love Donaldson and Scheffler's work, and it seems that kids and parents in Great Britain do, too:  two of their books (The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom) made this top ten list of Britain's favorite bedtime stories (scroll down; from The Scotsman, 9/4/2008).  Check out The Snail and the Whale, too:  highly recommended.

[N.b., at our house we pronounce it GROO-ffa-lo.  Don't you?]

G is for Goat

I got an email from Milly's preschool teacher this morning alerting me to the plight of neighborhood goats Carne (a Nigerian Dwarf) and Leche (a French Alpine).  It seems that the county considers them livestock and their owners to be in violation of local zoning ordinances; find out more at www.SaveOurGoats.com.  To be fair, we do live in Arlington, VA; just outside of Washington, DC; but my primary concern is that if the county allows it, the kids will want a pet goat, too.  Or two.

We're going to visit the goats on Saturday morning (the owners are hosting a goat-petting party).  In the meantime, we're reading Patricia Polacco's alphabet book G is for Goat (Philomel, 2003).  It has bouncy rhymes and bright illustrations, and it passes the Q test ("P is for push, when goats just won't go.  Q is for quit, when goats just say no").  Polacco's goats (they're in a lot of her books, come to think of it) are Nubians; read more about them in Oh, Look! (Philomel, 2004), the sequel to G is for Goat.  Are there any other good goat books?

What Happens on Wednesdays

We read everything Emily Jenkins writes (for kids; she also writes for adults, but I haven't read all of that. Yet).  What Happens on Wednesdays (illustrated by Lauren Castillo; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007) was of particular interest to Milly, who is starting to pay more careful attention to the days of the week and the routines that correspond to each one.  WHoH is as much about the preschool-aged narrator's (urban) neighborhood as it is about what she does there, and Lauren Castillo's mixed-media illustrations of Brooklyn in winter are warm with just the right amount of detail.

Jenkins writes (on her amazon.com blog) that "[her] hope is that readers and families will map their neighborhoods and write down their schedules, focusing not only on the events and locations that are important to the adults for navigation and structure, but on the things that matter to the children as individuals."  And that's exactly what the kids started working on, without any prompting from me, as soon as we finished this book.

[Two new Jenkins books not to be missed: Skunkdog (pictures by Pierre Pratt; FSG, April 2008); and Toy Dance Party (pictures by Paul O. Zelinsky; Schwartz and Wade, forthcoming in September 2008).]

Happy Birthday to Milly from Angelina and Lily

Yesterday (May 13) was Milly's 4th birthday.  Even the sun came out in her honor, after days (and days) of rain.  If you knew her this would come as no surprise.  Anyway, it was a day in which all of the ordinary things we did (make breakfast, go to school, play outside, read books together) were somehow extra-special.  And there were presents, too.

Milly loves Angelina Ballerina, so for her birthday this year I gave her a copy of Angelina's Birthday by Katherine Holabird; illustrated by Helen Craig (Viking, 2006; originally published as Angelina's Birthday Surprise, 1989).  It's nice to share a birthday with a friend from a book.  Sort of like reading a book about London while in London (unless, of course, you already live in London).  Angelina's birthday is a particularly nice one, too (book and birthday, actually); after Angelina crashes her bicycle, she helps earn money to buy a new one by doing odd jobs for neighbors like Mrs. Hodepodge, but she doesn't make quite enough for a new bike in time for her birthday picnic.  I like the way that Holabird emphasizes Angelina's growing sense of independence (she is allowed to ride her bike to the village on important errands) and responsibility in her birthday story.  And Craig's delicate, detailed illustrations of the village and the countryside in spring make me want to ride my bike to Chipping Cheddar, too.  Happy birthday, Angelina!

And happy birthday, Milly!  I'm sorry I couldn't get you the Polly doll you wanted (I blame the eBay snipers); but you should note that Angelina's baby sister (book and baby, actually!) doesn't arrive until 1991.  You seem happy with your consolation Henry, though.

[N.b., last year I gave Milly Happy Birthday to You, Blue Kangaroo by Emma Chichester Clark (Andersen, 2006), in which blue kangaroo feels left out of Lily's "I want everything to be pink!" birthday party.  Both are highly recommended for preschool birthday girls who love pink, ballet, and birthdays.  Maybe you know of one?]

Poetry Friday: Los zapaticos de rosa

The poem in my pocket yesterday was a childhood favorite: "Los zapaticos de rosa" by Cuban poet Jose Martí (picture book edition illustrated by Lulu Delacre; Lectorum, 1997). I chose it in honor of my mother, whose birthday was yesterday, too. When I was little I used to make her recite it to me every night before bed. She knows it by heart; the way, I suspect, many Cubans (and Cuban-Americans) do. These are the opening lines:

Hay sol bueno y mar de espuma
Y arena fina, y Pilar
Quiere salir a estrenar
Su sombrerito de pluma.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Mami!

[This week's Poetry Friday roundup is at The Well-Read Child (which also happens to be one of my favorite kidlit blogs).]

A Spree in Paree

[We're celebrating April in picture book Paris.  Please comment with your favorite picture books that are (even remotely) about Paris, and I'll add them to my list and post them next week.  Merci!]

Thank you to Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect for recommending A Spree in Paree by Catherine Stock (Holiday House, 2004); we checked it out from the library last week and have toured the city alongside Monsieur Monmouton's farm animals many times since.  The animals are typical tourists:  the sheep go shopping on the Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honore, the goats enjoy the flowers in the Luxembourg gardens, the cows gaze at paintings of cows in the Louvre (that one cracks the kids up), and at the end of the day the pigs take everyone to dinner at a three-star restaurant.  It's absolutely delightful, and you can read it right here courtesy of Lookybook:

Do the animals go to New York next?  Yes, they went last year.  A Porc in New York (Holiday House, 2007), is also available on Lookybook: note the parallels between the animals' trips to Paris and New York (this time the sheep go shopping at a famous New York department store, the goats ride the carousel in Central Park, and they all have dinner in Chinatown); and the promise that next time we see them, they'll be back on their farm with an American visitor for Monsieur Monmouton.

[I was just thinking I might like to see more of Monsieur Monmouton's little farm myself (with my husband and children, of course) when I noticed that author and illustrator Catherine Stock is essentially his next-door-neighbor.  We might even rent her cottage in Rignac.  Someday!]

Miscellaneous Picture Books Now Organized by Color

This is the miscellaneous picture books shelf in our living room.  Yesterday there were about twice as many books all haphazardly jammed onto it; these are the ones that didn't get sorted into some other, more logical place or category.  I never (never!) thought I would organize books by color, but now I think it actually makes sense--for the miscellaneous picture books, at least.  The kids love the new arrangement, too: Leo helped me line the books up; and even three-year-old Milly can put them back (when she wants to, that is).

[If you think I'm crazy:  I saw this brilliant and beautiful book, Apples for Jam: A Colorful Cookbook by Tessa Kiros (Andrews McMeel, 2007) at Williams-Sonoma today.  The recipes are organized by the color of the food.  Thankfully, there's also an index (I checked).]

Favorite Easter Books

Our favorite Easter books are of the bunny-and-egg variety, with the glorious exception of Brian Wildsmith's The Easter Story.  We own all of these (except for the Max and Ruby books), but we also like to look on the Easter shelves at the library: it seems to me that the best Easter books are the older ones.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward; pictures by Marjorie Flack (1939).  A classic.  I loved this book when I was a little girl, especially the spot illustrations of Cottontail's twenty-one children doing the housework.

The Easter Egg Artists by Adrienne Adams (1976).  "There are Abbotts and there are Abbotts.  These Abbotts are rabbits.  The rabbit Abbotts make the designs on Easter eggs."

The Bunny Who Found Easter by Charlotte Zolotow (1959); re-illustrated by Helen Craig (1998).  Lovely to look at and read aloud; lots of seasonal details.

The Birds' Gift: A Ukrainian Easter Story by Eric Kimmel; illustrated by Katya Krenina.  A folktale about the origin of pysanky; gorgeous illustrations.

The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen; illustrated by Sally Anne Lambert (2005).  The kids really like it!

Max Counts His Chickens by Rosemary Wells (2007).  So much nicer than Max's Chocolate Chicken (the one where he steals the chicken and eats it all up).  In this one he and Ruby are hunting for hot pink peep-like chicks all around the house.  "Chick! Chick! Chick!" says Max.

And The Good Master, written and illustrated by Kate Seredy (1935), Chapter 4, "Easter Eggs."  I happily read this middle-grade novel and its sequel, The Singing Tree (A Newbery Honor book), many times; this year I read the Easter chapter, always my favorite, to my own little ones.

Happy Easter!  Happy spring!

Weslandia in Virginia

Yesterday Leo announced that he wanted to start a new civilization.  This didn't come as a complete surprise to me:  he's studying ancient civilizations at school; and, more importantly, he thinks big.  There's probably no better book for him to read as he embarks on this project than Weslandia by Paul Fleischman; illustrated by Kevin Hawkes (Candlewick, 1999).  Actually, I've been waiting for just the right time to read it with him since I first read it myself.  If you haven't, it's about Wesley's summer project:  "[to] grow his own staple food crop--and found his own civilization!"  (Maybe this is more of a common interest than I thought.)  Wesley uses all the parts of a mysterious and magical plant that he grows in his suburban backyard to provide himself with food, clothing, shelter, and recreation; he invents a counting system based on the eight petals of the plant's flowers and even a 80-letter alphabet which he uses to record the history of his civilization's founding.  His summer project is a spectacular success.  And, once a social outcast, Wesley now has no shortage of friends.

Leo checked Weslandia out of the school library today and, after (finally!) reading it together, he started wondering what his civilization's staple crop might be.  Wesley may have "found it thrilling to open his land to chance, to invite the new and unknown," but if we did that we'd probably end up with a lot of pokeweed.  Maybe we could grow sunflowers in Leo-landia instead?  This civilization is open to comments and advice.