Nonfiction Monday: George Washington's Christmas Camel

No, that's not the title of the latest picture book about George Washington (I'm still writing it).  Apparently, Washington paid 18 shillings to bring a camel to Mount Vernon for the Christmas holidays in 1787.  This year, the folks at Mount Vernon have expanded their Christmas program to include another Christmas camel, one-year-old Aladdin (pictured above with a Mount Vernon volunteer).  Leo's class got to see the camel on a field trip to Mount Vernon:  it was the high point of their visit.  Well, the camel, and being interviewed by a FOX television news reporter about the camel (the segment aired yesterday).  There is a surprising amount of local interest in this.  Actually, I feel a little bad for former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier, who spent 300 hours reconstructing Mount Vernon out of gingerbread for this year's Christmas program only to be upstaged by a camel.

This seems like a good opportunity to mention a recent nonfiction picture book about George Washington, Farmer George Plants a Nation by Peggy Thomas; paintings by Layne Johnson (Calkins Creek, 2008).  Visitors to Mount Vernon learn (if they are not too distracted by the camel) that Washington considered himself first and foremost a farmer.  This book draws a neat parallel between Washington's work as a farmer, specifically his efforts to make Mount Vernon self-sustaining, and his more well-known accomplishments as general and president.  The text is accompanied by well-chosen quotes from Washington's diaries and letters; back matter includes a timeline, short essays about George at Mount Vernon and George's thoughts on slavery, and a good bibliography.  No camels, though!

Santa Lucia, Hugo and Josephine

Happy Santa Lucia Day!  This image of Lucia and her attendants comes from my childhood copy of Hugo and Josephine by Maria Gripe, with drawings by Harald Gripe (1962); translated from the Swedish by Paul Britten Austin (Dell, 1969).  Sorry about the poor image quality:  what kind of paper were Dell Yearlings printed on in the 1970s?  Anyway, there is Josephine as a maid of honor (May-Lise, the prettiest girl in the class, is Lucia) and Hugo at far left as a star-boy.

I read and loved the Hugo and Josephine trilogy as a child (Hugo has since gone missing); my other favorite Gripe book was the more mysterious Glassblower's Children.  Gripe's books must have been widely available in translation then:  Maria Gripe, "one of Sweden's most distinguished writers for children," had won the Hans Christian Anderson Award in 1974.  Now my library system doesn't hold a single copy of any of her books.  Not one.  Which is a shame:  Hugo and Josephine, the one I've most recently reread, is a delight: perceptive, often very funny, told in a distinctive present-tense and set in a place (Sweden) and time similar to but interestingly different than our own.  When I start my own press dedicated to printing neglected or OOP children's fiction, the Hugo and Josephine trilogy will be on my list.  Does anyone else remember it?

Poetry Friday: Father's Fox's Christmas Rhymes

Here am I, old Father Fox
With sweets in my pocket and holes in my socks
Bringing a basket brimful of cheer
A toy for each day until Christmas is here

We're fond of foxes here at bookstogether.  Our favorite foxes are sisters Clyde and Wendy Watsons's; their Father Fox's Pennyrhymes was a National Book Award finalist in 1971.  This collection of 18 original Christmas rhymes was published over thirty years later (FSG, 2003); we like it even better.  The rhymes (by Clyde) are both crisp and cozy; the illustrations (by Wendy) reward lots of looking.

The Christmas rhymes can stand alone, although taken together (as we read them), they tell a story.  I chose this one to share because it describes so well the atmosphere in our house (and the foxes') during the days before Christmas.

Secret things in
Secret places
Whispered words
And knowing faces

Red glass beads
In the cracks of the floor
A whiff of paint
From behind a door

Paper rustles
Scissors snip
A telltale wink
And a finger to the lip

[Ssh!  This year I'm making the kids stuffed foxes of rust-colored wool felt, wearing patched white linen nightclothes like the ones the Fox family wears.  What are you making?]

[Poetry Friday Roundup is at poet Elaine Magliaro's blog Wild Rose Reader.  Thanks, Elaine!]

Thank you, Dr. Anna L. Heatherly

The carts of used books for sale at my branch library are located just inside (or outside, if the weather's nice) the door.  I always take a peek at what's on the carts on my way in (or out) and sometimes bring a book or two home.  The last couple of months, I've been inadvertently collecting books from the library of Dr. Anna L. Heatherly, professor of education at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.  Yesterday there was a hardcover copy of Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, with illustrations by Dorothy P. Lathrop and the familiar red and brown calico-print dust jacket.  Hitty!  I'm waiting for a cold quiet night so I can curl up with you.

Betsy in Oberammergau

When the November/December issue of AAA World arrived in the mail (it's free with membership), I immediately thought of Betsy Ray's trip to Oberammergau in Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace (illustrated by Vera Neville; 1952).  The cover story is about that small Bavarian village, famous for its Passion Play; I wonder if it's changed much since Betsy was there in the spring of 1914.  I am a great fan of Betsy-Tacy (although I have yet to join the Society), and this book was one of my favorites in the series.  Unfortunately, it's out of print again.  But if I ever make it to Oberammergau (or Sonneberg, for that matter), it will be because of Betsy.

Jen Corace at Tiny Showcase

Jen Corace has illustrated three children's books to date:  Little Pea and Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (see this post); and Hansel and Gretel, retold by Cynthia Rylant (review forthcoming).  All of which I love.  This noneditioned print, "Snow Storm," is being sold in conjunction with signed copies of Hansel and Gretel through Tiny Showcase (n.b., those are not Hansel and Gretel in the print; it's from this year's Craftland).  The print is small--4" x 6" plus border for framing--and so is the price.  It would make a lovely little gift for fans of Corace's work.  Like me, except I ordered one already.  Corace's children remind me so much of my own.

[Forthcoming from Chronicle Books, April 2009:  Little Oink by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Jen Corace.  I think I know what Little Oink doesn't like (getting dirty?), but I can't wait to read it anyway.]

Nonfiction Monday: Laura's Lunch

We've been reading the Little House books together for the first time, and I don't know who loves them more: me or the kids.  Milly in particular.  I think she wants to be Laura.  Today she wanted to eat a Laura Ingalls lunch.  I was out of Jiffy cornbread mix, but we decided that ham, baked beans, apple slices, and milk were all pioneer-approved foods.

A trip to the library later, and now I'm reading The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Classic Stories by Barbara Walker, with illustrations (from the original Little House books) by Garth Williams (Harper and Row, 1979).  I think it's fascinating:  organized into chapters such as "Staples from the Country Store" and "Foods from the Woods, Wilds, and Waters", each recipe gets an excerpt from the text of one of the books, a well-researched essay, and detailed directions.  Unfortunately, it's not particularly appetizing, but I've marked a few recipes to try; look for them in an upcoming special edition of Books that Cook.

In the meantime, you might want to try Laura's gingerbread recipe, which appeared in the Horn Book.  We would have made some after lunch, but I was all out of lard.  Milly was so disappointed!

[Nonfiction Monday is at Picture Book of the Day.]

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.]

Happy birthday to Astrid...and me

Today is Astrid Lindgren's birthday; it would have been her 101st.  It's also this blog's birthday: its first!  I'm celebrating by making plans for bookstogether's future.  All of which include...more posts, for starters.  Thank you for reading and commenting thus far!

And check out this gorgeous edition of Pippi Longstocking (Viking, 2007).  Tiina Nunnally's translation is described as sparkling; I like it, but I definitely prefer "thing-finder" to Nunnally's "thing-searcher" (does anyone know what that is in Swedish?).  I love Lauren Child's illustrations, though; her Pippi is sweeter somehow than Glanzman's (the one I grew up with), but still sassy.  And I really love the book's design, which occasionally merges text and illustration (full-color throughout) in all kinds of interesting ways.  Our new favorite Pippi.  And we do love our Pippi.

[N.b., it's not actually my birthday; that's October 5, and I share it with Toot of Holly Hobbie's Toot and Puddle (see A Present for Toot).  Although I'm probably more of a Puddle than a Toot, except when it comes to European travel.  And definitely more of an Annika than a Pippi, for that matter.]

Amadi's Snowman, On Virtual Book Tour

I'm pleased to be a part of the virtual book tour for Amadi's Snowman, a picture book written by Katia Novet Saint-Lot and illustrated by Dimitrea Tokunbo (Tilbury House, 2008).  There are a lot of reasons to recommend Amadi's Snowman:  it's about the ways reading can show us the world; it's set in a part of the world (Nigeria) that few of us have seen, neatly making its own point; and, perhaps most importantly, it appeals to kids who are themselves learning to read or read fluently.

My own kids identified with Amadi, who is a very likeable character, despite the fact they've made many a snowman during winters in Michigan and Virginia.  [I'll admit, I sympathized with the older boy Chima, whose reading Amadi interrupts!]  A book Chima is reading, a book with a picture of a snowman in it, sparks Amadi's curiosity and convinces him that there is something to this reading business after all, even, or especially, for a boy who will grow up to a be an Igbo man of Nigeria.

I do think Amadi's Snowman would have benefited from some additional information about the Igbo and about Nigeria, if only a map locating the country on the African continent.  Fortunately, both author and illustrator drew on their personal experience of Nigeria in the making of this book; and Tilbury House has provided discussion questions and classroom activities, as well as an extensive list of additional resources pertaining to the literacy issues in Amadi's Snowman in particular and Nigeria in general, on their website.  I especially appreciated the list of picture book retellings of Nigerian folktales and other stories set in Nigeria.

This blog tour has also been a rich source of information about all of the above; check out author Katia Novet Saint-Lot's blog Scribbly Katia for more.  And thank you to Katia and to the folks at Tilbury House for making a wonderful book!

Aesop Awards: The Press Release

[In case you don't want to read the whole press release, the winner is Ain't Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson, with Marc Aronson (National Geographic, 2008).  I'm intrigued by the book's subtitle; you can also read more about how Nelson and Aronson approach the topic of historical research for kids below.]

I recently requested a press release about the 2008 Aesop Awards from the folks at the American Folklore Society. Tim Lloyd, the executive director of AFS, responded with one; thank you. I'm reproducing it in full because I think it does a good job of explaining both the criteria for the award and how this year's award-winning choices meet or exceed those criteria. I'm also hoping to track down a copy of Anne Shelby's Adventures of Molly Whuppie (UNC Press, 2007), about which I had previously heard nothing.  I think I would love it!

Nonfiction Monday: A Second is a Hiccup

How long is a minute?

Sixty seconds to a minute,
Sixty hiccups, sixty hops.

Or if you sing just one small song
Chorus, verses, not too long
That's just enough to fill

A minute.

From A Second is a Hiccup:  A Child's Book of Time by Hazel Hutchins, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton (First American edition, Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 2007).  Hutchins describes measurements of time, from seconds to minutes, hours to days, weeks to months to years, in terms children will recognize from experience.  Parents will be reminded of just how quickly that time passes.  A delight to read aloud and to look at together.

[Kady MacDonald Denton's illustrations of children here are just as charming and expressive as her work in this year's A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker (Candlewick, 2008).  According to her website, a sequel to that book (A Birthday for Bear) is now in progress.  How long do we have to wait?]

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.]

Finalists for the 2008 National Book Award

The finalists for the 2008 National Book Award in Young People's Literature were announced today:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

I can't wait to read Chains, which is set in Revolutionary New York.  The powerful cover art is by Christopher Silas Neal.

Coincidentally, I just finished M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. I: The Pox Party (Candlewick), set in Revolutionary Boston, which won this award in 2006.  It is itself an astonishing book.  Volume II:  The Kingdom on the Waves was released yesterday.  What to read first?

Nonfiction Monday: Note by Note

If you took piano lessons as a child, or if you have a child who is taking them now, then you'll want to read Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson by Tricia Tunstall (Simon and Schuster, 2008).  I like Tunstall's description of music lessons:  "weekly session[s] alone together, physically proximate, concentrating on the transfer of a skill that is complicated and difficult, often frustrating and frequently tedious, but that every now and then open suddenly and without warning into joy" (3).  And the chapter on recitals is particularly, sometimes painfully, well-observed.

Recommended at Read Roger (see the comments for what readers remember from past piano lessons; Spinning Song, anyone?).  I only wish there were something comparable for violin lessons--that's what Leo takes.  Although Little Rat Makes Music by Monika Bang-Campbell (illustrated by Molly Bang; Harcourt, 2007) comes close, from a child's perspective.  So that's what elementary violin playing looks like!

Poetry Friday: "In an Artist's Studio"

Christina Rossetti's sonnet makes the perfect epigraph to Julie Hearn's YA novel Ivy (Ginee Seo/Atheneum, 2008), about a laudanum-addicted artist's model in Victorian England:

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness,
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; -- every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.

Hearn chooses to quote only these eleven lines, which I found somewhat disconcerting but which makes sense in the context of her novel.  Here is the final tercet; it doesn't apply to Ivy (yet):

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

[This poem is in the public domain.]

I liked Ivy, especially inasmuch as it reminded me of another modern Dickensian novel, Sarah Waters's Fingersmith.  That one's definitely for the grownups.  Don't miss it.

And speaking of Dickens:  I haven't read any (gasp!).  Well, that's not strictly true:  I've read A Christmas Carol and Molly and the Magic Wishbone (retold and illustrated by Barbara McClintock; FSG, 2001).  Where should I start?

Cybils 2008: Nominations Now Open

Nominations for the third annual Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards (the Cybils) are open from now til October 15th.  The Cybils recognize children's books that combine literary quality and kid appeal.  Anyone (that means you) can nominate a book in any or all of the following nine categories:

Easy Readers
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Fiction Picture Books
Graphic Novels
Middle Grade Novels
Nonfiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books
Nonfiction Picture Books
Poetry
Young Adult Novels

To nominate a book, visit the Cybils blog and leave a comment (title and author will do) on the appropriate post.  Clicking on the category links above will take you right there.

Remember:

• Nominated books must have been published in 2008
• One nomination per person, per category
• Multiple nominations will not help a book's chances.  Pick another book!

I'll be offering my short lists (um, for your consideration) over the next week or so.  What are you nominating?

It's Paul O. Zelinsky Day!

Well, if it isn't, it very well could be.  Online today, illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky answers 7-Imp's Seven Questions Over Breakfast and chats about his work at Just One More Book.  Not to be missed, especially if you're interested (as I am) in fairy tale retellings..

For the record, I consider Zelinsky to be past master of the art of fairy tales.  His Rapunzel (Dutton, 1997) is an exemplary book:  beautifully retold and illustrated in oils, following the traditions of Italian Renaissance painting.  The source notes (I love source notes) are both scholarly and insightful.  Rapunzel won the Caldecott Medal in 1998.

Zelinsky says he's not good at choosing favorites.  Neither am I, ordinarily; but I can say that Rapunzel is mine.

Greetings from Martha at the National Book Festival

You would be forgiven if you wandered into the National Book Festival and wondered, "Where are the books?" Leo asked me that the first time we went, and I think it's a valid question. There are authors, tents, people (more than 120,000 this year), and lines (sometimes very long lines, like the line through security to get into the children's tent while Laura and Jenna Bush were reading), but not very many actual books. I think there may have been some for sale near the Capitol (where the book signings happen), but other than that: no.

The kids had a great time at the Let's Read America Pavilion, though. They got their picture taken with Martha of Martha Speaks! (the PBS KIDS program) and listened to author and illustrator Susan Meddaugh talk about the real Martha, and about how she got the idea for the Martha books (from her son, who was in second grade at the time). Meddaugh also read (an actual book!) Perfectly Martha. We love the Martha books (Martha Blah Blah is my favorite), so Meddaugh's session was a highlight of the festival. As was the performance from the cast of the all-new Electric Company. Hey you guuuys!

I admit: I think it's a little problematic that PBS KIDS promotes its television programs so heavily at an event that's all about reading. Granted, PBS KIDS Raising Readers does a lot to help children improve the skills they need to learn to read. And other PBS KIDS programs are based on children's books, too. Maybe it's just me. My kids (who don't even watch TV) didn't seem to mind: they were more than happy to meet Clifford the Big Red Dog (online at Scholastic and PBS KIDS). The line for him was pretty long, too!