Book reviewed:  The Word Collector – Peter H. Reynolds, Orchard Books, imprint of Scholastic, 2018

The first thought I had upon hearing about this book was that it cannot be a new idea. It is not.  The premise of the story is that a young boy, Jerome, decides to collect something quite different from the ordinary choices: stamps, coins, comic books. He loves words and he seeks them out, categorizes them, and used them to communicate with the people in his life. There are actually several picture books with a similar theme, among them Kate Banks’s and Boris Kulikov’s Max’s Words and The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter and Giselle Potter.  Both those words and in some ways more sophisticated, with more involved text and pictures which are more fantastic and perhaps less accessible than The Word Collector. This is not a criticism of Peter H. Reynolds’ story, which fills a different niche.  The simple narrative and cartoon-like illustrations offer a beginning lesson in the love of language that even early readers, or listeners, can understand.

In fact, the structure of the book is deceptively simple.  While Jerome, a bright and happy child armed with a pencil and the word “wonder,” is seen at first diligently copying words from posters, books, and personal conversations.  Later, he begins to amass words that are much more difficult, and to become effectively obsessed with carting them around and pasting them carefully into scrapbooks.  I wondered if it was not a contradiction of the book’s purpose, but then I realized that each of these words could be “translated” into a more familiar one.

Continue reading “Emerald, Vociferous, Infinitesimal: Collect Them All!” →

Book Referenced:  The Betsy-Tacy Treasury – Maud Hart Lovelace and Lois Lenksi, William Morrow Paperbacks, 2011 (reprint of first four books in the series, 1940-1943)

What is the source of the devotion that followers of Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, three girls growing up in a small town in Minnesota at the turn of the twentieth century, maintain into adulthood?  The series of ten novels, which take Betsy and her close friends from the age of five to young adulthood, seems to fill a nostalgic need to re-imagine childhood as a wonderful era almost free of conflict or suffering.  The friendship of the three girls, along with their family relationships, does suffer some minor detours on the road to near perfection, but that reassuring illusion alone does not characterize the series.

First, the very fact that these three girls constantly love and support one another, in spite of the fact that when they first all become friends, skeptics claim that three girls cannot be fair to one another without turning against one another. But the three girls will not be a part of that destructive view of female friendship: “But although so many people expected it, no trouble began with Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. The three of them didn’t quarrel, any more than the two of them had.”

Perhaps the sensitivity and flexible attitudes of their parents, the positive and accepting values of their homes, make these three girls defy stereotypical ideas about girls and women.  Betsy, the character modeled on Lovelace herself, longs to be a writer. Both her parents encourage her, expressing pride in her stories and poems. When they cannot afford a desk for her, her mother constructs one out of an old theatrical trunk.  But within the idyllic community of Deep Valley, not everyone is so enlightened. One part of their small town, Little Syria, is populated by immigrants in homes built by a disappointed eastern developer who discovered that this was the only market for his buildings.  Betsy, Tacy, and Tib meet a little girl named Naifi.  Although her clothing is different, they find this admirable, and they are equally fascinated that she writes “backwards” in “Syrian.”

Continue reading “Betsy, Tacy, and Tib Protect Syrian Immigrants” →

Book reviewed:  The Silent Witness: A True Story of the Civil War – Robin Friedman and Claire A. Nivola, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005

Many of us can remember a time when people of color were rarely portrayed in children’s books, and even more rarely portrayed sensitively or accurately.  Awareness of the need to faithfully reflect the world’s diversity in books for children has dramatically increased. Of course, people of color were always aware of that need. Historical accuracy, particularly when interpreting the experiences of marginalized groups, is one important part of that new commitment.  In 2015, Emily Jenkins’ and Sophie Blackall’s depiction of an enslaved mother and child in their picture book, A Fine Dessert generated enormous controversy, even anger. Even more contentious was the reception of the ill-fated A Birthday Cake for George Washington, by Ranim Ganeshram and Vanessa –Brantley Newman, which Scholastic actually withdrew from production. This book was based on the improbable premise that Washington’s slave was happy with his status.

I myself wrote an article for Jewcy in 2016 about A Year of Borrowed Men, a picture book that I believe grossly distorts the role of slave labor in Germany during World War II.  I was surprised that the book had received favorable reviews, and commendations specifically for promoting values of tolerance of peace, which it did only by erasing the historically irrefutable suffering of the victims of Nazism.

The Silent Witness is a picture book by Robin Friedman and Claire A. Nivola that specifically claims to tell a “true” story about the American Civil War through the perspective of one southern family, their little girl, and her doll.  It received favorable reviews, earning praise for its insight into how the lives of ordinary people, including children, were impacted by the Civil War.  In 2005, only thirteen years in the past, these responses were the norm and most readers might have found nothing to criticize about the book’s presentation of the War, which is unabashedly pro-Confederate.  Lula McLean and her family live an idyllic existence on their family’s Virginia plantation, “in a peaceful countryside dotted with cedars and pines.” Their lives are fruitful and productive, until the Civil War, which the narrative accurately reports began after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter.

There the accuracy ends.  Friedman’s explanation of the reason for this horrific conflict is one that has been completely discredited by legitimate historians:

Continue reading “The More Things Change, the More They Have Not Remained the Same” →

Today is the beginning of Black History Month.  It is also the birthday of one of our greatest modern American poets, Langston Hughes.  Here is a link to a moving opinion piece in today’s New York Times, in which author and activist Renée Watson recalls the profound effect that reading Hughes’s poetry had on her as a child and young adult.  Watson is the author of several critically acclaimed works for young people about the African-American experience.

Hughes himself was the author of works for children, including poetry, history, and the wonderful novel coauthored with Arna Bontemps, Popo and Fifina (unfortunately out of print). Hughes has also been the subject of numerous biographies, including picture books, for children, as well as  collections of his poetry illustrated by Daniel Miyares, Benny Andrews, Charles R. Smith, Jr., and Bryan Collier, among others.

 

I will write about some of these inspiring works in the month ahead, but I don’t want to let the birthday of this legendary artist go by without bringing some of them to my readers’ attention.

Book Reviewed:  The Pink Umbrella – Amélie Callot and Geneviève Godbout, Tundra Books, 2018, translated from the French, Rose à petits pois, by Lara Hinchberger, Edited by Tara Walker and Jessica Burgess, Les Éditions de la Pastèque, 2016)

Adele is the proprietor of a neighborhood café in a French village.  Not only does she serve delicious food and make sure that her tables are decorated with exquisite flowers, but her establishment is a home away from home for everyone who needs a place to talk, celebrate, fall in love.  Lucas is a grocer, but think of him as a combination of Jean Gabin, Charlie Chaplin in City Lights, and Chef Linguini from Pixar’s Ratatouille.  “Lucas is very reliable, and he always takes off his cap when he comes into the café.

Adele is kind, beautiful, and fortunate enough to have a rewarding career. Her only problem seems to be that she succumbs to depression when it rains. On those days, as fewer customers venture out to her establishment, “…she shuts down the café, rolls up in her quilt and waits for the sun to take the place of the clouds. Then one day, a beautiful pair of pink rubber boots appear, followed by a series of other prêt à porter items suitable for bad weather.  By the end of the book, the mystery is solved.

Am I watching a French movie? No, I’m reading, and viewing, an adorable children’s book that is not afraid to remind you of a series of animation stills.

Continue reading “La Vie en Rose” →

Books reviewed:
Suki’s Kimono – Chieri Uegaki and Stéphane Jorisch, Kids Can Press, 2003
Yoko’s Paper Cranes – Rosemary Wells, Hyperion Books for Children, 2001

There is a fairly long tradition of children’s books about Japan for western readers.  Taro Yashima’s Crow Boy (1956; available in a paperback edition from 1976) addressed the problem of fitting in to a hostile society. Yoshiko Uchida’s works explored both Japanese traditions and recent history in numerous works, including New Friends for Susan (1951), the story of a Japanese American child living in California.  There are new works released for readers in English every year as Americans and Canadians continue to be fascinated by Japan.

Suki’s Kimono is less an introduction to Japanese culture than the story of a child caught between affection for her grandmother and the demands of conforming to the norms of her friends in school. Thanks to the support of a kind teacher as well as her own innate self-confidence, Suki is able to appreciate her grandmother’s gifts of a beautiful blue kimono and red geta (clogs).  The author and illustrator express the sense of integration and happiness experienced by Suki as she sticks to her unarticulated conviction that her grandmother’s way of life holds wonder and meaning.

Continue reading “East, West, and Change” →

Book reviewed:  Raisel’s Riddle – Erica Silverman and Susan Gaber, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999

Raisel’s Riddle is often described as a “Jewish Cinderella” tale, and it is, in that the heroine is a poor and oppressed girl who becomes the unlikely choice of wife for a man of much more elevated status. In this case he is not a prince, but a rabbi’s son, and Raisel attracts his attention not through physical beauty or charm, but intelligence.

The story also takes place around the Jewish holiday of Purim, coming up this year on March 1, and the 14^th of the Jewish month of Adar.  Erica Silverman is a prolific author of picture books, several with Jewish themes, and also of the successful beginning reader series’, Cowgirl Kate and Lana’s World.  Raisel’s Riddle is out-of-print, which seems inexplicable considering its incredibly timely message of female empowerment.

 

Raisel grows up in a village in Poland, or shtetl; Susan Gaber’s pictures are dream-like and reminiscent of folklore, but the characters’ clothing place the story in the late 19^th or early 20^th centuries.  She observes her grandfather devoting his days to religious study, and one day she declares to him, “Zaydeh…I want to study, too.” After his death, she is forced to seek work as a maid, and enters the household of a distinguished rabbi. Unfortunately, the household cook becomes the proverbial wicked stepmother, forcing Raisel to spend the hours that she had previously devoted to learning sacred texts on exhausting chores. When Raisel catches the sympathetic eye of the rabbi’s son, the cook reprimands her harshly.

Continue reading “Girls Just Want to Learn” →

Books Cited:
Emily– Michael Bedard and Barbara Cooney, Doubleday, 1992 (available in a paperback edition from Dragonfly Books, 2007)
Emily Dickinson’s Letters to the World – Jeanette Winter, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002
The Mouse of Amherst – Elizabeth Spires and Claire A. Nivola, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999

How old does a child have to be for you to tell her about Emily Dickinson?  There is a kind of fairy-tale element, unfortunately, of presenting her unusual and somewhat solitary life, but that is not the essence of what you want her to know.

Three very different books each include the poet’s insistence on independence and nonconformity, but they all succeed in conveying the phenomenal power of her creativity, which is the main part of Dickinson’s life of interest to us all.

Continue reading ““There Is No Frigate Like a Book”: Emily Dickinson for Kids” →

Book Reviewed:  Thank You and Good Night – Patrick McDonnell, Little Brown and Company, 2015

Thank You and Good Night is one of those children’s books that has something for adults hidden in the story, kind of like the parodies on Sesame Street. However, instead of funny allusions to pop culture which kids will miss while still enjoying Elmo and Big Bird, Patrick McDonnell has built something more poignant and substantial into this sweet story for young kids.

The characters are Maggie, a little girl, and three toy animals having a sleepover at her house. They are Clement the bunny, Jean the elephant, and Alan Alexander the bear. As you are reading, it will begin to dawn on you that Maggie is a child version of an iconic author, and her three friends are three other creators of children’s classics transformed into the animals who star in their books. Or maybe the animals are just named for their creators in a kind of homage.  Your child might miss why a Muppet on Sesame Street is satirizing a 1960s t.v. show or rock band, but you might get more recognition from her when you point out that Clement is dressed in blue striped pajamas, just like the bunny in Good Night Moon, who was drawn by a man named Clement Hurd.

Continue reading “Good Night Toy Animals Everywhere” →

Books referenced:
The Complete Adventures of Curious George – Margret and H.A. Rey, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016 (75th anniversary edition; reprint of 1941, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, and 1966 editions)
Good Night, Little Bear – Richard Scarry, Golden Books of Random House Children’s Books, 2014, Big Golden Book reprint of 1961 edition)

I am philosophically, as well as practically, against bowdlerizing children’s books to conform to modern values.  In case you have forgotten, the process of “updating” literary works for this purpose is name for Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who famously expurgated Shakespeare’s plays to avoid damaging the delicate sensibilities of women and children.  While recently reading Curious George to my three-year old grandson, I was forced to think a bit about my opposition to this process. I’m still convinced that sanitizing problematic parts of children’s books is a terrible idea for many reasons, one of which is the “slippery slope” argument, of how far we can go once we decide to make an exception for particularly objectionable material.  I would just like to raise the issue here so that caregivers can think about the implications of smoking in children’s picture books.

The man with the yellow hat smokes a pipe, and why wouldn’t he? Smoking, whether cigarettes, pipes, or cigars, was both popular and accepted, at least among men, when the book was first published in 1941.  In fact, looking through several children’s illustrated books from the post-World War II era, it strikes me how relatively few characters smoke, considering the habit’s prevalence in the general population.  (Cigarettes seem to be less common than pipes, although a quantitative study would be necessary to confirm that impression.) Curious George’s guardian has a rather paternal air as he sits on the boat from Africa with the little monkey, explaining that he is going to take George to live in a big-city zoo, and cautioning him with raised finger not to get into trouble.  The man is smoking a pipe during this talk. My grandson asked me what it was; at first I hesitated…

Continue reading “Thank You for Not Smoking” →