Book reviewed:  how to – Julie Morstad, Simply Read Books, 2013

In case you have forgotten how to be a child, Julie Morstad can reacquaint you with the “idiomatic logic,” of this stage of life, immortalized by Annie Ross in the lyrics to the vocalese number, “Twisted,” covered by Joni Mitchell on her “Court and Spark” album

The children in Morstad’s loosely connected series of instructions know “how to watch/where you’re going” by observing your shadow, “how to wash your face” by standing in the rain, and “how to make new friends” by drawing pictures of them with sidewalk chalk.  While adults may forget that a child taking a bath is a mermaid and an alternating stack of children and cushions is a sandwich, younger people know that their parents’ inability to distinguish literal from figurative in just the right way can be frustrating.

Continue reading “How to…Be a Child” →

Everybody Bonjours! – Leslie Kimmelman and Sarah McMenemy, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008

Everybody Says Shalom – Leslie Kimmelman and Talitha Shipman, Random House Children’s Books, 2015

There are an impressive number of truly high-quality children’s illustrated books about world geography and culture, presenting in colorful, informative, and sometimes humorous formats the world in all its variety to young readers. Even among these rich offerings, two books by Leslie Kimmelman stand out.  Paired with equally inventive illustrations by two different artists, Sarah McMenemy and Talitha Shipman, they introduce readers to the glories of France and Israel respectively, and to the reassuring return home that grounds these works as stories more than travelogues. (McMenemy has produced a series of miniature panoramas of cities for Penguin Random House, so she is experienced in this genre, to use a French word.)  Shipman has illustrated several other books, including the recent Judah Maccabee Goes to the Doctor, which emphasizes the importance of vaccination to frightened kids. (An article about the role of this book in combating anti-vaxers recently appeared in Tablet Magazine.)

In Everybody Bonjours!, Kimmelman takes a linguistic risk by converting the French word for “hello” into a cross-lingual verb. Following blue and black illustrated endpapers featuring all the Paris landmarks, the narrator asserts that in Paris, “everybody bonjours.”

Continue reading “Hello, Goodbye, Bonjours” →

Book referenced:  The Complete Adventures of Curious George: 70^th Anniversary Edition – H.A. and Margret Rey, introduction by Leonard Marcus, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers, 2001 (there is also a 75th anniversary edition with other add-ons, but it is hard to beat the Marcus introduction!)

Curious George occupies a distinct role in children’s literature. Although there are other animals who act like risk-taking toddlers, George has special qualities that make him competitive in the arena of experiments, bad consequences, and the reassurance by adults that his actions are not irreversible.

In Curious George Takes a Job from 1947, the little monkey is seemingly inundated with choices in, as my son-in-law has pointed out, the post- World War II economy in which jobs were there for the taking. (To help your kids learn math using fun and effective methods, you might try my son-in-law’s blog, “Teaching with Problems.”)

After busting out of his cage in the joint (zoo) and sleeping under an elephant’s ear (image), George finds gainful employment, first as a window washer in a mid-century high rise.  (He has already worked as a dishwasher, but this was only to pay off his debts after overturning a pot of spaghetti.)

Continue reading “Curious George: Laborer of Love” →

Books cited:
     Daddies – Janet Frank and Tibor Gergely, Golden Books of Random House Children’s Books, 2011 (reprint of 1953 edition)
     What Do People Do All Day? – Richard Scarry, Golden Books of Random House Children’s Books, 2015 (reprint of 1968 edition)

If you have wondered how to explain to your child exactly what adult people, male and otherwise, do, since in the universe of children,  grown-ups may “go to work” to do unspecified “things” before returning home, here are two options, both from Golden Books ( (For a wonderful overview of Golden Books, including author and illustrator biographies, see Leonard Marcus’s Golden Legacy: The Story of Golden Books).

Continue reading “Review Essay– Children Have Wondered: What Do People Do All Day?” →

Book Reviewed:  Tallulah’s Nutcracker – Marilyn Singer and Alexandra Boiger, Clarion Books, 2013

When you pair the highly original talents of an author who can bend words through both poetry and prose, and an illustrator who specializes in creating persistent and confident female characters, the result should be predictably good.

Marilyn Singer and Alexandra Boiger’s Tallulah’s Nutcracker, one in a series of stories about a little girl with ballet dreams and the energy to match them, is not a rendition of Clara and her Nutcracker Prince’s mysterious nighttime adventure.  It is instead an episode in the chronicles of Tallulah’s lessons about balancing ambitions and reality. The text and pictures are realistic, but with a touch of the magical which makes the Nutcracker story appealing in almost any incarnation.

Continue reading “Break a Leg, Tallulah” →

Book Reviewed:  City Moon – Rachael Cole and Blanca Gómez, Schwartz and Wade Books, 2017

Children like to know that the moon will stay right where it is in the night sky, whether viewed during a walk outside, or safely inside their bedroom.  Rachael Cole’s and Blanca Gómez’s City Moon follows a mother and young child on a walk through their city neighborhood at night, as the pair discovers together that the moon will follow them everywhere, and finally rest, along with the boy, at the end of his bedtime routine.

The book both responds and adds to the tradition of childhood moon appropriation in such classics as Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s Goodnight Moon, Frank Asch’s Moongame, and Kevin Henkes’s Kitten’s First Full Moon.   What does it add to this genre?  An urban setting and a new conversation between an adult and child who learn that “There is only one moon.”

Continue reading “Good Night, City Moon” →

Book Reviewed:  Happy Hanukkah, Curious George – Emily Flaschner Meyer and Mary O’Keefe Young, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

Can you remember the world before board books?  Reading to the youngest children, even babies, involved the possibility that they would tear the pages and teethe on bound or paperback volumes supposedly geared for their age.  Now many classics are available in board book format for toddlers. (This will be the subject of a future blog entry.)

It is almost the end of Hanukkah and a week before Christmas. Ramadan will arrive in the spring of 2018. Curious George, the irrepressible and non-verbal symbol of innocent childhood rule bending, celebrates all three holidays.

Continue reading “Happy Hanukkah, Curious George (and Christmas and Ramadan)” →

Reviewed Book:  Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova – Laurel Snyder and Julie Morstad, Chronicle Books, 2015

This is a ballet book not only about beautiful fairies and exotic costumes. It is not even only about toe shoes and the fanatic discipline they require.  Swan presents to young readers the fantastically but ultimately tragic life of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881-1931).

Laurel Snyder’s simple but evocative language encourages readers to identify with Pavlova’s progress as the daughter of a poor laundress who becomes a world-famous icon of classical ballet.

(In a fascinating blog about the Jewish origins of ballerinas, children’s book author Yona Zeldis McDonough reports that Pavlova, whose parents were not married, may have been the daughter of a Jewish businessman and philanthropist.)

Continue reading “Not the Nutcracker” →

A Unique Out-of-Print Hanukkah Book by Newbery and Coretta Scott King Award Winners

Book Reviewed:  The Stone Lamp: Eight Stories of Hanukkah through History – Karen Hesse and Brian Pinkney, Hyperion Books for Children, 2003

This book is out-of-print, but it is well worth buying used.  My family is currently celebrating Hanukkah and we have a number of children’s books acquired over the years.  Each year new ones arrive, many imaginative or quirky, others traditional, some even bland.

The Stone Lamp is a collection of Hanukkah tales written as poetry by Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse.  She is the acclaimed author of Out of the Dust, a free verse narrative work about the struggles of young girl to survive the Great Depression, as well as The Music of Dolphins, which uses an experimental form as a meditation on the nature of language itself.  Brian Pinkney has illustrated, or illustrated and written,  numerous children’s books and has been honored with the Coretta Scott King Award for In the Time of the Drums, as well as with several Coretta Scott King and Caldecott Honors.  The collaboration between these two giants has produced a book about the holiday of Hanukkah that commemorates its different historical contexts with accessible literary language and painterly images.

Continue reading “Holiday Treasure:” →

Book Reviewed:  Singing Away the Dark – Caroline Woodward and Julie Morstad, Simply Read Books, 2017 (reprint of 2010 edition)

This is my second blog entry about Julie Morstad, an illustrator whose work should bring intense delight to your celebration of the winter solstice.

Her collaborator is Singing Away the Dark is author Caroline Woodward, whose simple poetic phrases mark the journey of a little girl making her way to the school bus in a snowy rural area.  Ms. Woodward, according to the bio on her website, lives on the Lennard Island Lightstation on the British Columbian Coast. Wow. I live in Manhattan, where we also have some lighthouses, but there any obvious connection between myself and the creators of this book ends.  However, I love this newly reissued book.

Continue reading “Welcome the Winter Solstice with Woodward and Morstad” →