Sunday, March 11, 2012

#11


Little Dog and Duncan
Poems by Kristine O’Connell George
Illustrations by June Otani
Clarion Books
2002
40 pages

Poetry


“Little Dog and Duncan saw me coming with the brush…
The juniper bush has grown a tail.”

I chose this book because I enjoy reading poetry, especially about animals or nature. My RITE child also likes reading about dogs. This book is full of poems about Little Dog and Duncan. The poems are in the order of occurrence during the day. The first poem is about the big news that Little Dog gets; he is having a visitor. He greets his visitor, Duncan, and brings his bags inside. Duncan gets homesick, but Little Dog sits by the door with him and helps him mope. The girl gives Duncan a hug, a pat, and a cookie. Little Dog gets the same. The two dogs play together throughout the afternoon, and Duncan goes home at the end of the day.
This wrap-around cover has Little Dog and Duncan lying in the grass, and Duncan’s huge body continues to the back of the book. The illustrations in this book are vignettes. June Otani did a fantastic job using watercolor paints to illustrate the two dogs. The paintings have very distinct lines, showing the detail of the dogs’ hair and the texture of the grass. Some of the illustrations seem to get lost in the gutter of the book.
This book would be appropriate for young children to read. It would be a great book to use to introduce poetry. You could tell students that poetry doesn’t always have to rhyme and let them read poems aloud from the book. The poetry in this book is free verse, so students could write their own similar poem about a topic of their choice. If the whole class had a similar topic to write about, the teacher could collect all of the poems and make them into a book to keep in the classroom.

           
Little Dog and Duncan has not been awarded any medals or honors. I enjoyed reading the poems in this book, and I’m sure any other dog lover would as well.

#12


Weave Little Stars into My Sleep
Selected by Neil Philip
Photographs by Edward S Curtis
Clarion Books
2001
22 pages


Poetry

“This little girl
Was born to gather roses,
Wild roses.”

            This beautiful book of Native American lullabies caught my attention because not only is it a book of poetry, but it is also multicultural. The lullabies in this book reflect the concerns of mothers all over the world. Mothers rock their babies to sleep and tell them not to cry. The lullabies have been translated into English rhymes. These lullabies are originally from the Northeast (Ojibwa), the Plains (Arapaho, Kiowa, Pawnee, Crow), the Southwest (Hopi, Acoma, Yuma), the Northwest (Kwakiutl, Haida, Tsimshian), and the Arctic Indians (Inuit).
            This book has a single image cover of an Indian mother holding her baby in her arms. The endpapers and flyleaf consist of a beautiful photograph of a canoe floating in the water. Most pages have a full-page photograph, but some are smaller, so there is blank space around it. This book has the most formal text placement, where the text is opposite from the illustration. The photographs in this book are printed in sepia instead of color or black and white.
            Weave Little Stars into My Sleep is not a very well known book. My grandmother shared this book with me because it is one that she enjoyed. In the classroom, I would use this book when talking about Indians from different locations. I would probably put this book in a reading center when I taught a lesson on poetry. It is a good example of free verse poetry, along with lullabies. I could also use this book for the beautiful photographs inside when talking about Indians. Students could look at their clothing and homes to compare the different kinds of Indians. This book has not been recognized for any honors or medals. I would recommend this book of sweet lullabies to anyone with small children.

#13


The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
Poems collected, written, and illustrated by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
Houghton Mifflin Company
2003
36 pages


Poetry

“Under the dark is a star,
Under the star is a tree,
Under the tree is a blanket,
And under the blanket is me.”

          This book caught my eye because of the cut paper illustrations on each page. This is a collection of poems about the sun, the moon, and the stars. My favorite poem is “Day-Time Moon” by Dorothy Aldis. This poem talks about seeing the moon during the day when the sun is out. It says that the moon has no stars in its company during the day time.
            Each poem is illustrated with cut papers of different colors and textures. I like how Wallace uses the cut paper to illustrate her pictures, because the pictures really pop from the page. Each color is so different from the color beside it. She uses a lot of primary colors in her illustrations since this is a book to read with young children. The page spreads differ from double to single to half page spreads. This book has an informal text placement on each page. The poems about the sun have a light blue background, like the sky during the daytime. In contrast, the poems about the moon and stars have a dark blue background representing the night sky.
            I would recommend this book to young children. In the classroom, I would use this book to talk about the sun, moon, and stars. I would use my favorite poem, “Day-Time Moon” to talk about why the moon is still visible during the day. Another activity would be to have students write their own poem about the sun, the moon, or the stars. The teacher would collect the poems and make a classroom book to display the writings in.
This book has not been recognized for any awards or honors.

#14


Revenge of the Lunch Ladies
Poems by Kenn Nesbitt
Illustrations by Mike & Carl Gordon
Meadowbrook Press
2007
73 pages


Poetry
“I think you’ll find it easier to do the work instead.”

            As soon as we talked about this book of poems in class, I had to go buy it for my future classroom. From the revenge of the lunch ladies for complaining about the cafeteria food to science homework eating a dog, this book is sure to have you laughing. My favorite poem in the book is “Let Me Out of the Classroom,” which is sung to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” There are always a few students who are anxious to get out of the classroom. They always ask how much longer they have until they get to go to lunch or recess. This poem begins with a student trying to get out of class, but then when he finds out that his mother is there to pick him up for his yearly dentist appointment, he begs to stay.
            The cover of this book is printed in color, but the pages of the book are black and white. This book has a single image cover, with a small illustration on the back. This book of poems has a table of contents so that you can look up a specific poem. With double spread illustrations, the pictures lead from one page to the next. This book has informal text placement, making the text fit into the pictures.
This hilarious book of school poetry is great for school-aged children. As we discussed in class, this book would be perfect to have in a classroom library. Students could read the poems in their spare time, or the teacher could read the class a poem a day. After reading a poem, students could write a funny poem of their own about school. The teacher would have to set rules that no one could or would be offended by a poem that a student would write. The teacher could collect the poems that the class would write and make their own book with a similar silly title to keep in the classroom. Although this book has not been awarded any medals or honors, I would recommend it to anyone.

#15


The Three Pigs
By David Wiesner
Clarion Books
2002
38 pages

Traditional Literature
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

            I chose this book for many reasons. I was interested in reading a book by David Wiesner after learning about him in class. I also have recently taught a lesson with the story of the Three Little Pigs, so I was interested in reading this retelling of the story.  This story starts off as an abbreviated story of the classic Three Little Pigs, but as the wolf starts to blow each house down, he blogs the pig right off of the page. The pigs are safe and the pages of the story fly away. The three pigs see another story, so they decide to walk into the picture and see what the story is about. The first story that they walk into is the nursery rhyme, “Hey Diddle Diddle.” When they leave the cat and the fiddle, they become part of a story about a dragon. Suddenly, they get an idea to bring the characters of the story with them, out of the pages. As they travel along the pages of different stories, they go back and find the wolf trying to blow their houses down. As the wolf huffed and puffed and tried to blow down the brick house, the dragon character sticks his head out of the front door and scares the wolf away! From that point on, they all lived happily ever after.
            David Wiesner uses watercolors, gouache, colored inks, pencils and colored pencils on Fabriano hot press paper to makes his illustrations come to life. On the dust jacket is a picture of the three pigs in this story. The endpapers have a grainy brown look, probably to relate to the pigs’ houses. This book has many different types of page layouts.  While some pictures are framed, others are spot art on a blank page. Towards the end of the book when the pigs come out of the story pages, Wiesner uses text bubbles to show us what the pigs are saying to each other.
            This book is appropriate for children in elementary school. They would easily be able to recognize the nursery rhyme of “Hey Diddle Diddle” and be able to relate to the original story of the Three Little Pigs. Wiesner is a three time winner of the Caldecott Medal and a two time recipient of the Caldecott Honor. In the classroom, I would use this book in a learning center for students to compare and contrast different retellings of the original Three Little Pigs. The student would have to draw a Venn diagram and show how each of the stories are alike and different from the original story. This would be a fun activity, but yet an educational one at the same time.

#16


The Bourbon Street Musicians
by Kathy Price
Illustrated by Andrew Glass
Clarion Books
2002
40 pages


Traditional Literature
“Sho’ nuff? As grass is green, sho’ nuff, y’all.”

            I chose this book because the front cover looked very interesting. I enjoy reading about different cultures, and this book is all about New Orleans. This story is a retelling of The Bremen Town Musicians. An old mule decides that he has become too old to continue to be a scarecrow for the farmer, so he hits the road and heads to New Orleans to play his trumpet. Along the way, he meets a hound dog who has also gotten too old to hunt for foxes and rabbits. The old dog decides to travel along with the mule and be-bop on the street corner in New Orleans. Next, the two friends meet a rooster and a cat that have both gotten too old to continue to do their jobs, so they join the group of musicians as they travel to Louisiana. The four friends get lost along their trail, and decide to stop at an old shack to ask for directions. As they peek inside the window, the mule sees six men eating supper. The animals decide that they are all hungry, so they start singing in hope of receiving some dinner. The men are frightened when hear the awful noise and they run away. The animals invite themselves inside the house and feast on what was left of the men’s dinner. One man tries to sneak back into the house, but the animals do not let that happen. The four animal musicians decided that they enjoyed life enough in the little old shack that they no longer wished to travel to Bourbon Street.
            Kathy Price uses oil crayon and turpenoid to execute her illustrations. The oil crayons almost give the pictures a blurry tone. She uses a lot of curvy lines to show the wrinkles and old age of the characters. Price uses a bold black line to outline the characters’ bodies. While some pages have a lot of blank space around the illustrations, other pages are full of color. The words in the story have a bluesy, Cajun dialect that goes along with the theme of New Orleans.
This book is appropriate for older children to read, because it may be hard for younger students to understand because of the Cajun dialect. In the classroom, I would use this book to introduce the topics of New Orleans and jazz. This would also be a fantastic book for a music teacher to read when she talks about be-bop and blues.

#17


Noah and the Devil
Retold by Neil Philip
Illustrated by Isabelle Brent
Clarion Books
2001
23 pages


Traditional Literature


“Oh, you devil, come in!"

            I chose this book because of my Christian faith. I was interested to see how the legend of Noah’s Ark would be told from another country’s perspective. This is a retelling of the legend of Noah’s Ark told from Romania. In the Romanian version of this story, pairing the animals two by two and getting them to climb aboard the ark is fairly simple. Noah’s stubborn wife, on the other hand, does not want to set foot on the ark. As Noah tries to convince her to come aboard, he gets aggravated at her and says “Oh, you devil, come in!” which invites the real devil inside the ark. The devil takes the form of a mouse, who chews a hole in the bottom plank of the ark to try to drown everyone on the ark. As Noah tries to catch the mouse, he throws a glove at it, and the glove turns into a cat. The cat catches the mouse, and Noah throws them both overboard. A snake tells Noah that he can cut off its tail to patch the hole in the plank in return for a human being to eat each day. Noah has no other choice but to agree to the deal. After sailing on the ark for one hundred and fifty days, Noah sets a dove free to search for dry land. The dove couldn’t find a dry place to land, so a week later Noah sets her free again. The white dove brings back a sprig of olive and Noah knows that the land is finally dry. Noah opened the ark and thanked God for saving his family. God told Noah to be fruitful and multiply, and to take care of the animals. Noah builds a fire to make a sacrifice to God for all that he has done. About that time, the snake slithered up to Noah. The snake asks Noah if he is going to keep his side of the deal, but Noah tells him that he cannot. Noah threw the snake into the fire and it burned to ash. Each speck of ash turned into a flea. The book says that Noah lived to be nine hundred and fifty, and was perfectly happy, except for one small thing. He and his family were plagued by fleabites. “In fulfillment of Noah’s promise to the snake, together all the fleas in the world suck just enough blood from people to make up one whole human being a day.”
Isabelle Brent illustrates this book in rich watercolor and gold leaf accents. Each double-page spread has a large, bold border along the top and bottom edges of the page. On each page that has text, there is spot art of what Noah saw out the window of the ark, and the opposite page has a full-page illustration relating to the text. The gold leaf accents add texture to the illustrations in the story. There is a lot of blue in each illustration, relating to all of the water of the flood.
This book is appropriate for a student of any age to read. Although being able to recognize faith in schools has been taken away, a teacher could use this book to compare and contrast the story from the Bible and this legend from Romania. Students would easily be able to identify similarities and differences between the two stories. A teacher could also use this cute story when talking about story retellings. This book is a perfect example of one from a different country.
Noah and the Devil is not a very well known book, and it has not been awarded any medals or honors. This book is a must read!

#18


The Man in the Moon
William Joyce
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
2011
48 pages


Fantasy
“Nightlight, bright light,
Sweet dreams I bestow.
Sleep tight, all night.
Forever I will glow.”

            I chose this book because of the beautiful illustration on the front cover. This is the story of the Man in the Moon, or MiM for short. MiM’s parents live with him on the ship, the Moon Clipper. Nightlight was devoted to watching over MiM at night to protect him from nightmares. One night, Pitch, the King of Nightmares, decided to give MiM and his parents a visit. MiM’s parents tell Nightlight to go hide with MiM and protect him from Pitch. Nightlight stabs Pitch with a diamond dagger and there is a blinding flash. At that point, MiM begins to call out for his parents, but they do not answer him. MiM sees a new group of stars in the sky; it was his mother and father. Each night, MiM crawled on the back of a Lunar Moth to fly around the moon and to see his parents’ constellation. As MiM gets older, he realizes that there are children on Earth. He receives the balloons that children on earth had lost, and listened to their dreams inside the balloon. Some dreams were of toys or candy, so MiM contacts Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Mother Goose, and other creatures to send to Earth to see the children. Although the children were happy with the gifts, they were still afraid of the dark. He wanted his friends of Earth to have a friend like Nightlight. MiM kicked rocks around the moon while he thought of a plan. The sand had made the moon much brighter, and the children of Earth could see the moon’s smiling face. MiM would be a guardian of the children of Earth, just like Nightlight had been his guardian.
            This book has a beautiful single image cover of MiM riding on the back of a blue lunar moth. There is gold foil lettering on the front cover as well. On the endpapers and flyleaf are all of the characters within the book, and the process of the Moon Clipper changing from a ship into the moon. The title page has a blue double page spread of the Moon Clipper ship and the title. The text placement is most formal, and some of the text boxes have bold borders around them. There are a lot of shades of blue used in the illustrations to represent space. The illustrations in this book are rendered in multimedia. There is a map on the last two pages of the book of the journeys and adventures of the Man in the Moon.
            This book is appropriate for anyone to read. In the classroom, I would use this book when introducing the genre of fantasy. This is a great example of a make-believe story that could never really take place. A teacher could also use this book for a science lesson when talking about the moon. Although this is a fiction story, you could talk about the myth that there is a face on the moon. This book may be difficult to incorporate in the classroom because it would be hard to relate to.
            This book has not been awarded any medals or honors. I would recommend this book to anyone. It was a great story to read.

#19


The Enchanted Rope
Written by David D Bernstein
Illustrated by Sally Taylor
Outskirts Press
2010
20 pages

Fantasy
“This rope will connect you and me forever.”

            I chose this book because it fell into the Fantasy category. I failed to realize that it was so difficult to find books that are categorized as fantasy. This story is about a little boy named Jack whose mother has just recently passed away. He misses his mother and weaves a magical rope out of wildflowers for her. As he weaves the enchanted rope, he remembers all of the memories that he and his mother had together. When Jack completed the rope, he threw it towards the sky, and climbed to where the angels lived. When he reached the clouds, he saw a castle guarded by a golden dragon. He approaches it and realizes that the dragon is his mother. He shows her the magical rope and says that it will connect them forever. Jack’s mother gives him a tour of her wonderful world and tells him that he can visit her anytime. When darkness came, Jack’s rope hit the ground and he notices that his rope is missing one red flower. He knew that he mom had kept it. As he walks home, he thinks about visiting his mom again.
            Sally Taylor uses bright watercolor paints to illustrate the beautiful full-page pictures in this book. Each page has the same layout with a picture on the left and a green page of text on the right. I think that Taylor uses the green paper because there is a lot of green in her illustrations. This paperback book’s title page is the exact same as the cover of the book. The next page is the verso, where the publishing history has been printed.
            I would not recommend this book to anyone. Although it is easy to read, it isn’t well written. The story reads very choppy and does not flow. It almost seems as if there are parts of the story missing. I did purchase this book, but I do not plan on using it in my classroom library.
The Enchanted Rope is the first children’s book that David Bernstein has written. He has worked with children for several years as a librarian and a camp counselor. He has been awarded five Editor’s Choice Awards. This book, however, has not been awarded any medals or honors.

#20


When a Dragon Moves In
Written by Jodi Moore
Illustrated by Howard McWilliam
Flashlight Press
2011
30 pages

Fantasy
“Listen to him roar!”

            I purchased this book to use for one of my reading sessions with my RITE child. He mentioned liking dragons one day, so I chose this book for him. The book begins with a little boy building a perfect sandcastle at the beach. A dragon moves into his sandcastle, and the boy thinks about how lucky he is. He has his own built-in marshmallow toaster, raft, and kite flyer. The dragon would scare away the beach bullies, but you’d have to hide him from the lifeguard. When the boy tries to tell his parents about the dragon living in his castle, they don’t believe him. As the dragon causes mischief, the boy gets in trouble for the dragon’s actions, and he decides that he’s had enough of the dragon business. The boy makes the dragon leave the castle until he learns his manners.
            This book has a very bright wrap-around cover that would attract any reader. On the endpaper and flyleaf, there is a beautiful picture of the boy and his family walking to the beach. This leads right into the story, where the family is sitting on the beach. The text is informal, and there is a different layout on each page. The illustrations were drawn with pencil on paper, and painted with digital acrylic paint. The bright brown sand and the blue ocean water make you feel like you’re at the beach with the boy and the dragon.
            This is an adorable book, and I would recommend it to anyone to share with their students or children. In the classroom I would read this book aloud and use a phrase from the story as a writing prompt. I would have my students write about building a perfect sandcastle, and having some kind of creature move in. They would tell about what happened during the day, and what events took place with their creature. Although this is a fantasy book, it would still be great for that writing prompt. This book has not been awarded any medals or honors, but it is a fantastic children’s book.