Books that Cook: The Runaway Wok

[Books that Cook: A very occasional feature in which the Books Together Test Kitchen (that would be me and my kids) prepares a recipe from the back of a picture book.]

The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale by Ying Chang Compestine (illustrated by Sebastia Serra; Dutton, 2011) doesn't overflow with rice (more's the pity, because the Festive Stir-Fried Rice recipe we tried was really good)--it's based on a traditional Danish folktale, The Talking Pot, instead. I found the economics (not to mention the ethics) of The Runaway Wok a little problematic, actually: the wok steals from the selfish, rich Li family to give to the poor, generous Zhang family. The Zhangs share the wealth with all the poor people of Beijing at a New Year's feast. And then they open up a wok shop!

Ying Chang Compestine, who has written a number of cookbooks as well as children's books, includes an informative Author's Note about the Chinese New Year. She says, "The most significant dish for children is the festive stir-fried rice, cooked in a wok. The various ingredients in this dish represent harmony and happiness. Parents urge their children to eat it so they will get along in the coming year." We'll see.

Notes from the Test Kitchen

• This recipe works best with day-old rice. We used brown rice to make it extra-healthy. 
• Feel free to make substitutions, like cubed fresh mango (instead of dried cranberries) and cashews. Delicious! I just hope it doesn't void the "harmony and happiness" clause.

Me, Frida

Amy Novesky's picture book biography of Frida Kahlo, Me, Frida (illustrated by David Diaz; Abrams, 2010), encompasses only one year--from 1930 to 1931, when the newly married Frida accompanied her husband Diego Rivera to San Francisco--but it's a critical one in Frida's development as an artist. Rivera, already an established artist himself, had been commissioned to paint a mural for the city and set to work almost immediately.

Novesky's elegant text delineates Frida's initial sense of loss and isolation (she had never traveled outside of Mexico and didn't speak English or have friends in San Francisco); her growing self-confidence as she explores the city on her own; and her arrival at what would become a distinctive style of painting--very different from Rivera's--intimate and inspired by 19th century Mexican folk art and portraiture.

The book culminates with the painting of this portrait, now in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (and reproduced in the Author's Note):

"That night, Frida painted something great: a colorful wedding portrait of herself and Diego. She painted Diego big, and she painted herself small, just as the world saw them.

But Frida knew she was more than this. And she put herself first. In the beak of a pink bird, she wrote a tiny note on violet ribbon:

Here you see us, me, Frida Kahlo, with my adored husband Diego Rivera. I painted these portraits in the beautiful city of San Francisco, California...in April of 1931."

David Diaz's paintings for Me, Frida are gorgeous, glowing works of art themselves. They were done in acrylic, charcoal and varnish on primed linen; in vibrant colors (acid yellow, turquoise, red-orange and hot pink) evocative of Frida's Mexico, and of San Francisco, too. I especially love their composition, the way Diaz's final painting, in which Frida stands in front of the wedding portrait at the opening of her first show, neatly reverses the scale of the two figures to herald Frida's arrival as an artist in her own right:

Diaz includes the pink bird from Frida's wedding portrait in almost every double-page spread, perched beside Frida or peering over her shoulder as she works. And although Novetsky's text doesn't mention the childhood illness and injuries that made walking painful for Frida (so often the focus of books about her, such as Jonah Winter's Frida--I should review that one next), she is sometimes shown, statuesque and beautiful, carrying a cane.

David Diaz and Me, Frida won a 2011 Pura Belpre Illustrator Honor.  Richly deserved, and highly recommended, for everyone.

Angela Barrett and The Hidden House

Children's illustrator Angela Barrett was featured in the Guardian's series A Life in Pictures last week (April 14, 2010).  This gorgeous image, the first in the slideshow, is from The Hidden House by Martin Waddell (1990), now out of print. I picked up a copy at a library sale a couple of years ago and promptly fell in love with Barrett's mysterious and beautiful work. The story itself is about the passage of time; both poignant and a little strange, I love it, too.

Bruno the lonely doll-maker makes three dolls to keep him company in his house in the woods before he dies and leaves them to rot away. Years later the house is brought back to life by a new family. The glorious splash of yellow in this double-page spread breaks away from the sombre greens and greys of the early part of the story.

Not to mention the blue jug of flowers, which looks like something by de Heem; and in fact several of the images in this book have the carefully composed quality of a Dutch still life. We like to count the cats here (there are five--no, six of them, one of which has tangled a spool of thread around the legs of a chair) and imagine climbing the curving blue staircase behind the yellow door.

[I've missed books together this spring.  I hope you have, too!  In any case, it's good to be back.]

Yoko's Show-and-Tell

Yoko, an adorable Japanese-American kitten, is starring in her fourth picture book by Rosemary Wells, Yoko's Show-and-Tell (Hyperion, 2011).  In this one, Yoko's grandparents in Japan send her an antique doll for Girls' Day.  Yoko's mother says ("in her Big No voice") that Yoko may not take Miki to school for show-and-tell, but Yoko can't resist: "Everyone in my class will love you!" she said to Miki. "I will bring you right home, and Mama will never know!"

Well.  Miki ends up significantly worse for the wear after the Franks toss her around the school bus--she doesn't even make it to show-and-tell--and Yoko has to confess to her mother ("Do you still love me?"). They rush Miki to Dr. Kiroshura's Doll Hospital, and she's good as new by the time Obaasan and Ojiisan arrive for their springtime visit from Japan: "Obaasan admired Miki's new kimono. "She is so beautiful. And not one scratch after all these years!"

Yoko's Show-and-Tell is a quiet and lovely little book, just 9" square. It's economically told and always attuned to Yoko's feelings, which will be painfully familiar to anyone who has ever done something against her (or her mother's) better judgment.  I do think it could have ended with Obaasan's comment above; we don't really need to see the consequences for the Franks, only for Yoko.

Yoko herself is an exceptionally expressive kitten. Wells's illustrations combine ink-and-watercolor with patterned paper collage in small square panels, one to a page; the endpapers, featuring Miki in a variety of kimonos, are especially cheerful and cute. Look for this one if you, like me, love Yoko's Paper Cranes (2001) and traditional Japanese art and culture. Just in time for Girls' Day on March 3!

Pocketful of Posies

Maybe the skill and artistry of Salley Mavor's hand-stitched, sewn, and collaged illustrations for Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes (Houghton Mifflin, 2010) are best appreciated by other needleworkers, but their appeal is so much greater than that--after all, Pocketful of Posies is a Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of 2010 and an ALA Notable for Younger Readers.  I hope it received serious consideration for the Caldecott, too.  At our house, every page has been pored over and marveled at multiple times, and it's inspired lots of reading and singing, collecting and making.

My favorite are the double-page spreads, which often illustrate several nursery rhymes in a single scene.  The one below includes Humpty Dumpty (an actual egg!), Peter Piper, and Two Little Blackbirds.  It's dfficult to appreciate the richness of the color, the depth and detail of the original in this image; nothing I've found on the internet comes close to the photographic quality of the printed book.

Or, of course, the real thing: the original illustrations from Pocketful of Posies, with new embroidered felt borders and shadowbox frames made by Salley's husband, are being exhibited in a traveling show.  At this point, most of the locations are in New England.  [Charlotte, please go on my behalf.]

Fortunately, there is plenty of information about Mavor's process available online: this interview with Salley at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is a good place to start.  And if you'd like to make little dolls like these, Mavor's Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects (C&T, 2003) is a great resource.  There's even a section of Projects for Children to Make.  Also for those of us who still struggle with the French knot.

April and Esme, Tooth Fairies

My kids had already lost a lot of teeth (Leo, almost all of them) before April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick, 2010) came out last fall, but til then I hadn't found a tooth fairy book I really liked.  The search is over. This one arrived just in time for Milly, thankfully, and we both love it.  Graham's fairies (you might remember them from Jethro Byrd, Fairy Child; Candlewick, 2002) aren't the sparkly sort; more like ordinary kids with wings, they live with their fairy parents in a little house by a tree stump, just off of the M42.  This is the story of their first "tooth visit," and I especially like the way it connects, for readers, the experience of losing a tooth with other childhood rites of passage; the sense of accomplishment that kids feel, as well as their parents' mixture of pride and concern for them.

You can see more of Bob Graham's ink and watercolor illustrations, full page and panels, for April and Esme in "Two Unforgettable Picture Book Heroines from 2010" at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (I like it when they follow the trail of toys up to the little boy's bedroom).  Unfortunately, there aren't any of the interior of the fairies' house, the bathroom of which features a tub made out of a creamer.  Graham's work is whimsical but not overly sweet; look closely at the cover image here and you'll see that the fairies are wearing mismatched clothes, the wildflowers are common weeds, and the grass is littered with popsicle sticks and pull tabs.  Yet there's even a little sparkle, too.

[And now for something completely different!  Well, there's a Tooth Fairy in it.  Silverlicious (HarperCollins, 2010) is the latest in Victoria Kann's popular picture book series.  Pinkalicious is increasingly sour about the loss of her sweet tooth until Toothetina delivers an Important Message along with three silver coins.  Could they be sweet silverlicious chocolate?  Digital collage illustrations.  Compare and contrast!]

Rubia and the Three Osos

Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a family favorite; I think I own more retellings of it than any other story (with the possible exception of Little Red Riding Hood).  This one, Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Hyperion, 2010), is a lot of fun, as you can tell by the cover image of the bears and Rubia (Spanish for blonde, or in this case, Goldilocks) having a singalong.  They've even hung some papel picado!

Susan Middleton Elya's rhyming text is sprinkled with Spanish words for the essential elements of the story--bears, bowls, chairs, beds and their identifying adjectives.  No one does this better than Elya; previous favorites of hers include Oh No, Gotta Go! illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Putnam, 2003) and Bebe Goes Shopping illustrated by Stephen Salerno (Harcourt, 2006).  I'm not sure how effective this approach is at actually teaching Spanish--I generally prefer bilingual editions that tell the story in English and Spanish separately rather than mixing them up--but it's undeniably fun to read aloud.  Here's a sample:

[The bears] headed away, but the door wasn't locked.
Then who should come over, so daintily frocked?

Little Miss Rubia, curls made of oro.
"¿A tiny casita, for me? ¡La adoro!"

She opened la puerta and saw the fine food.
"¡Sopa!" she said. "I am so in the mood!"

Fans of Melissa Sweet will want Rubia and the Three Osos, too.  The colors and landscapes in her playful watercolor and mixed-media illustrations for this book were inspired by a trip she took to the American Southwest (from the flap copy); the details, too, are distinctly southwestern--from the cactus to the cowboy boots.  The bears themselves could be the Hispanic cousins of the ones in her illustrations for Jane Yolen's Baby Bear books.  That Papi Bear has a temper, though!

Aside: I remember reading Sweet's short essay in the Horn Book about her palette, which she said is "basically the same as Winslow Homer's, with the exception of one [color] called Opera" (January/February 2010).  Mama Bear's coat?  Opera.

[Check out Abuelo y los Tres Osos by Jerry Tello; illustrated by Ana Lopez Escriva (Scholastic, 1997) for a bilingual retelling of the Goldilocks story with a similar southwestern flavor.  In this one, the bears are having frijoles.]

notable Notables

Thanks goodness for the ALA Notables list--it's a great consolation when favorite titles find a home there.  I do wish the Notables didn't have to include all of the other ALA award winners and honor books; it seems redundant.  Fortunately, they also include books by international authors and illustrators (which are not eligible for the Newbery or Caldecott), so April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick) is on the list, as well as The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood (illustrated by Renata Liwska; Houghton Mifflin), and, in the Older Readers category, Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic).

Other notable Notables I haven't mentioned elsewhere (there were lots in my Caldecott Hopefuls post!): Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Hyperion); and Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josee Masse (Dutton).

Which of these should I review first?  (Yes, I'm still reviewing 2010 titles.  It's a copyright date, not an expiration date!)

Interrupting Chicken with happy surprises

There were some favorite books and happy surprises for me among the ALA Award winners on Monday.  The best was David Ezra Stein's Caldecott Honor for Interrupting Chicken (Candlewick).  It was on my list!  It was my six-year-old daughter Milly's most favorite book last year, too.  According to the copyright page, the illustrations were done in a unique combination of watercolor, water-soluble crayon, china marker, pen, opaque white ink, and tea.  They results are gorgeous--the glowing colors and painterly technique used for the little red chicken and her Papa in the main story contrast beautifully with the more old-fashioned looking pen drawings used for the stories-within-the-story (Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Chicken Little).  And then there's Bedtime for Papa, illustrated by the little red chicken herself (she seems to use only crayon).  A classic.

I was also happy to see Margarita Engle recognized with a Pura Belpre Author Honor for The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba.  This is my favorite of Engle's verse novels (so far); I wrote about it here, quoting a passage about the Santa Lucia celebration in Sweden and its connection to the fireflies in the title (and on the cover).  Engle's Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck (Henry Holt) will be out in March.

And finally, Tomie dePaola won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his "substantial and lasting contribution to children's literature."  I love Tomie de Paola, especially at Christmastime (it's his favorite holiday, too!), and was already happy that last year's Joy to the World: Tomie's Christmas Stories (Putnam Juvenile) includes The Story of the Three Wise Kings, which has long been out of print.  Now if only Pages of Music (written by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Tomie) and An Early American Christmas were in there, it would be perfect.

What were your happy surprises on the ALA Awards list?  Or (unhappily)...off of it?  I have some of those, too.

2011 Caldecott Hopefuls

I'm posting my list of Caldecott Hopefuls (I don't even try to pick the winners; these are just some of last year's personal favorites) from a borrowed computer on our last night in London.  Sadly, I scheduled our plane trip home such that we will be IN THE AIR when the ALA awards are announced tomorrow morning.  It's going to be a long flight!

• Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan and Sophie Blackall (Viking Juvenile; reviewed here).
• Bunny Days by Tao Nyeu (Dial).
• Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick). 
• Nini Lost and Found by Anita Lobel (Knopf).
• Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Salley Mavor (Houghton Mifflin).
• Young Zeus by G. Brian Karas (Scholastic).
• Dotty by Erica S. Perl and Julia Denos (Abrams).

Nonfiction edition (links are to my reviews of these titles):

• Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg, Sandra Jordan, and Brian Floca (Flash Point).
• Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle and Julie Paschkis (Henry Holt).

International edition (I know, not eligible, but these are MY Caldecott Hopefuls after all):

• The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska (Houghton Mifflin).

And that's it, except for the ones on my desk at home that I'm forgetting.  Maybe the Caldecott Committee will remind me, or maybe they'll choose Art and Max by David Weisner (Clarion):  a worthy choice!  What are your personal favorites and/or Caldecott picks?  Remind me.

Caldecott hopefuls: Big Red Lollipop

[I should note that by "Caldecott hopefuls" I mean picture books I happen to like a lot, not necessarily picture books that are likely to be recognized by that committee using these criteria (although one can hope).   Really, I'm almost always surprised by the Caldecott (well, maybe not last year, when The Lion and the Mouse won).  But for what they're worth, here are my quick takes on some 2010 favorites, starting with Big Red Lollipop.

In Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan, illustrated by Sophie Blackall (Viking), Rubina is invited to a birthday party and her mom, unfamiliar with the whole concept of birthday parties, insists that her little sister Sana attend the party, too.  Sana is a brat at the party and then eats the lollipop from Rubina's goody bag ("I don't get any invitations for a really long time," says Rubina).  When Sana gets a birthday party invitiation, should littlest sister Maryam get to go?

I should probably admit that I'm the bratty little sister in my family (hi, Maria!), so I speak from experience when I say that both Khan's text and Blackall's illustrations get the sibling and cultural dynamics just right.  It's the expressive faces and easily readable body language of the sisters (and their mother) that tell the real story here.  A spare, creamy background sets off the composition of the illustrations as well as the colors and patterns of the family's clothing. 

Blackall did the cover art for last year's Newbery winner, When You Reach Me (written by Rebecca Stead; Wendy Lamb Books, 2009).  The first page of Big Red Lollipop (shown below) recalls that image, but it's the bird's-eye views--particularly the one of Rubina chasing Sana around the first floor of the house--that are really striking.  A graceful and gorgeous book.

Bones by Steve Jenkins: Not just for Halloween!

Children's book author and illustrator Steve Jenkins sets the standard for cut paper collage illustration in every one of his books (What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?, made in collaboration with Robin Page, won a Caldecott Honor in 2004).  His newest nonfiction book is Bones: Skeletons and How They Work (Scholastic, 2010).  You might think that bones, being mostly white, would be less interesting visually than the range of fins, fur, and feathers rendered in the rest of Jenkins's books about the animal kingdom (I might have, anyway); on the contrary, Bones is Jenkins at his best.

The bones themselves, cut from a limited palette of mottled creams and grays, glow against the solid background colors, but the best part is the arrangement of bones on the page, to inviting, eye-opening, often humorous effect (the gatefolded human skeleton waving at you is just one example).  Jenkins's background in graphic design really shows here.  Witty headings and compact text plus a More About Bones section at the back round out the book.

Bonus:  Add up the number of bones in the human body as you read; you should end up with Jenkins's total (which would be...?).

[Nonfiction Monday is at Mother Reader today.  Thanks, Pam!]

Lauren Child, Charlie and Lola in Slightly Invisible

For fans of Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola:  The Guardian profiles Lauren as part of their "A life in..." series ("Lauren Child: A life in books," 10/04/2010), accompanied by a gallery of images from Slightly Invisible, her new Charlie and Lola book.  I like all of Lauren Child's work, but I'm partial to Charlie and Lola because they remind me of my own kids, who when they were small would insist that I substitute their names when reading aloud.

I especially like Child's portrayal of Charlie and Lola's sibling relationship.  Charlie in particular is consistently patient with and protective of Lola, both qualities I try to encourage in my own son.  So I wasn't sure what to think when I read that Slightly Invisible, the first new Charlie and Lola book since 2003 (not counting all those spin-offs from the BBC series), was inspired by a boy who asked, "Have you ever thought about writing a book where Charlie actually gets annoyed with Lola?"  No!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Slightly Invisible (and my son will probably love it).  This image is from the beginning of the book: there's poor Charlie, caught between Marvin's eyerolling and Lola's plaintive look.  The whole scene is instantly recognizable.

Slightly Invisible won't be available in the US til May 2011, but I plan to pick up a copy when we're in London later this year (happy birthday to me!).   A traveling exhibition of Green Drops and Moonsquirters: The Utterly Imaginative World of Lauren Child will be at the Discover Children's Story Centre while we're there, too.

Dave the Potter

I'm looking forward to Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill; illustrated by Bryan Collier (Little, Brown, 2010), and reviewed in today's Shelf Awareness (9/15/2010).  Dave was a 19th-century potter and poet from South Carolina, where he was enslaved for most of his life.  He inscribed some of his pottery with two-line poems, practical ("put every bit all between / surely this jar will hold 14," indicating that the jar would hold 14 gallons) as well as personal ("I wonder where is all my relation / friendship to all--and, every nation").  In any case, reading and writing, even signing his name (which he also did, in beautiful script, "Dave") was forbidden to slaves, making Dave the Potter's work even more powerful and rare.

Hill's text, fittingly, is also a poem about making a pot, crafted of short, strong lines; Bryan Collier's earth-toned watercolor and collage illustrations provide the larger context (the pairing is described in Brown's review as "a glorious collaboration").  The back matter is thorough and includes some of Dave's poems (I quoted my favorites from them) as well as photographs of his work.  You can even peek inside Dave the Potter using BookBrowse.

Grownups like me who want to know more about Dave should try Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of Slave Potter Dave by Leonard Todd (Norton, 2008).  Todd is a descendant of one of Dave's owners; he began his research after finding out about his family's connection to Dave in this New York Times article ("In a slave's pottery, a saga of courage and beauty," 1/30/2000).  Finally, local folk can see an alkaline-glazed stoneware jar made by Dave the Potter in 1862, on display in the Civil War collection at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum, review and giveaway

Most of us only get to see Ancient Egyptian artifacts in museums far from Egypt--like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which has one of the finest collections of Egyptian art outside of Cairo.  And while there are lots of books for kids about Ancient Egypt, this book answers the question that at least one kid on every school tour is likely to ask:  How the Sphinx Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland (Blue Apple Books, 2010).

Hartland uses the school tour to frame the story of the Sphinx of Hateshepsut's journey over 3,000 years (and 5,000 miles), from the quarry at Aswan where the granite was obtained all the way to the galleries of the Met.  The cumulative story format--think The House that Jack Built--introduces some of the people and professions involved in her journey; on the museum side, those include archaeologists, art movers, curators, conservators, even the registrar, who uses "red oil paint and a teeny, tiny brush" to paint the the official number (31.3.166) on the Sphinx.

These vignettes are fascinating (trust me, kids ask about this sort of thing all the time).  Hartland varies the repetitive parts of the text just enough to keep things interesting; the use of a variety of fonts also helps here.  The ink-and-watercolor illustrations themselves are worth the price of admission, though:  colorful, detailed but not busy, expressive and entertaining (keep an eye on the Sphinx's face throughout).  Hartland worked closely with the staff at the Met, and the book has an authentic museum feel.  N.b., the docent is wearing sensible shoes.

I have an extra copy of How the Sphinx Got to the Museum to give away!  If you'd like to be entered in a random drawing (and you do; it's a gorgeous book), please leave a comment by midnight Monday, September 13.   Bonus entry if you comment with a behind-the-scenes-at-the-museum question you'd like to see answered in picture book form.

[Review copy from Blue Apple Books via Media Masters Publicity.  Thank you!]

Hansel and Gretel, costume design by Zwerger and Stemple

The costume and set design for the Amherst Ballet's Hansel and Gretel is faithful to Lisbeth Zwerger's watercolor illustrations of the Grimm tale, "right down to the shingles on the witch’s house [and] the patterns hand-printed on the dancers’ skirts" (Shop Talk, 8/25/2010).   If you know me at all, you'll know that I love this project.  Premiering at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Ballet for Martha

Sometimes art is made by one artist, working alone, but sometimes it is the result of artists working together--collaborating--to forge something new.

At this point, I'm just adding my voice to the chorus of praise (including five starred reviews) for Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan's latest collaboration, the picture book Ballet for Martha:  Making Appalachian Spring (illustrated by Brian Floca; Roaring Brook, 2010).  Actually, authors Greenberg and Jordan (Action Jackson, 2002; Christo and Jean-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond, 2008) also collaborated with Floca and editor Neal Porter (not to mention book designer Jennifer Browne) to an unusual degree in the making of this book; see Booklist's Story Behind the Story (June, 2010) for their process.

Back to the book itself, which is about the collaboration of choreographer Martha Graham, composer Aaron Copland, and artist Isamu Noguchi in the making of Appalachian Spring (link is to a filmed version from 1959; the first performance was on October 30, 1944 at the Library of Congress).  Somehow Ballet for Martha beautifully conveys a Graham-like sense of movement, music, and spaciousness; all qualities that would seem to resist the book form.  It's in the spareness of the text, and the line of the illustrations.  And--a point that has not yet been made, I don't think--it's a book about ballet that's not pink.  No tutu required.

I did wonder who had designed the costumes (Martha Graham herself); an original cast member was able to describe the colors to Floca.  I should note that in the final image, of an imagined performance, the Bride is wearing a pink dress!  It must have been impossible to resist.  The back matter ("Curtain Call") includes brief biographies of Graham, Copland, and Noguchi, each accompanied by a photograph of the artist dating to the 1940s; as well as extensive source notes and bibliography.

Ballet for Martha is a masterpiece--both of them.  Don't miss it!

Urban Animals

No,  not pigeons, rats, or raccoons.  Urban Animals by Isabel Hill (Star Bright Books, 2009) is about animals in architecture, and it works as an introduction to architectural terms (like keystone, column, and bracket), as well as an I Spy book that might inspire you and your kids to look for the animals in your own built environment (or in a nearby city; author and photographer Isabel Hill found all of these animals in New York).

I like the design details of Urban Animals itself:  Colorful cartoon animals correspond to the mostly monochrome architectural ones, and coordinating accents (photo corners on the detail shots, the hand-printed font used for architectural terms) brighten things up.  The rhyming text (it's all in couplets) is relatively utilitarian.  Here's a typical double-page spread:

There's also an Architectural Glossary at the back of the book, helpfully keyed to a line drawing of a city block; and a list of "Animal Habitats" that gives the NYC street address (as well as the architects and construction dates) of the buildings featured in the book.

It's interesting to think about why a particular animal might have been incorporated into a building's design:  the cow on the Sheffield Farms Milk Plant makes sense, and so does my favorite, the squirrel on the Kings County Savings Bank, but what about the alligator on Liberty Tower?

[Local folks, check out the National Building Museum's Calendar of Events for animal sightings in Washington, DC.  I'll let you know if we spot any more!]

A Boy Named Giotto

We read A Boy Named Giotto by Paolo Guarnieri (illustrated by Bimba Landmann; FSG, 1999) at the National Gallery of Art yesterday, as part of the NGA's summer series Stories in Art (this year's theme is Explore Italy).  Inspired a legend about the artist's childhood, the story tells how the boy Giotto, with materials borrowed from the artist Cimabue, paints a sheep so convincingly that even her missing lamb is fooled and returns to Giotto's father's flock.  When Cimabue sees Giotto's painting of the sheep, he asks Giotto's father to let his son become Cimabue's apprentice, which eventually he does.

Landmann's elegant illustrations are likewise inspired by the work of Giotto, which is a daunting task; but not imitative, which never works anyway.  They evoke the early Renaissance, with its Byzantine grace and modern spirit.  I love the palette Landmann uses here as well, all rusts and ochres and gold.

Unfortunately, A Boy Named Giotto is out of print (my library doesn't even hold it anymore) so we haven't been able to reread it or look closely at the illustrations.  If you can find this one, it's worth it.  In gold (or at least gold leaf).

[Nonfiction Monday is at In need of chocolate this week.  Thanks!]

BraveMouse Books: Benjamin and Bumper to the Rescue

When Benjamin Middlemouse's mother goes missing from their home in the armoire, Benjamin and his friend Bumper (a small elephant who lives on the bed) go on a search-and-rescue mission that takes them into the kitchen, out to the garden...and straight up the stairs to Sir Pouncelot's tower.  Will they free Mrs. Middlemouse from her cage before Sir Pouncelot (ha!) bakes her into a casserole?  Well, yes, but how they do it--and make him promise never to eat mice (or moles) again in the bargain--is part of the homespun, handmade charm of Benjamin and Bumper to the Rescue by Molly Coxe, with photographs by Olivier Toppin (BraveMouse Books, 2010).

Benjamin, Bumper, Mrs. Middlemouse, and Sir Pouncelot, not to mention the miniature world they inhabit, are quite literally the creations of author Molly Coxe.  (You can make a BraveMouse like Benjamin, too!  Molly and her daughter show you how.)  They were photographed for this book by Olivier Toppin, who specializes in lighting effects that set a magical mood.  It doesn't hurt that the photos were taken in a medieval French village, either.

The interior scenes, like the one in Benjamin's bedroom (above), are filled with a combination of repurposed, miniature, and handmade items that child readers with an eye for detail will love to discover.  I especially liked the outdoor shots, too: the whole thing, from kitchen to garden, feels very French.  [A good thing!  More sample pages at BraveMouse Books.]

It's clear that great care and love have been lavished on this book, the first in the Adventures of Benjamin and Bumper series to come out of "mouse-sized" publishing company BraveMouse Books (a story in themselves).  The next book in the series, Posie and the Pirates, promises more small adventures for the BraveMice (and Bumper).  Watch out for the Roof Rats!

[N.b. Review copy provided by the publisher; thank you!]