Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Well Done, Moses

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom
by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Kadir Nelson

Reviewed by Deb Clark

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. –Harriet Tubman

Moses is a fictional story based on the spiritual journey of Harriet Tubman, a slave in 19th-century America who possessed the courage not only to escape the brutal life of a Maryland plantation and run away to free soil in Philadelphia, but also the compassion to make the dangerous journey south over and over again to bring her family and hundreds of others to freedom. She became known as the Moses of her people, never once getting caught or losing a passenger.

Weatherford’s powerful text employs a poetic interplay of three voices—the narrator’s, Harriet’s and God’s—to evoke the call-and-response tradition of the black church as Harriet calls upon her deep faith to sustain her on her first treacherous journey north.

Harriet’s feet bleed and her gut churns.
Under the stars, she draws near to God.

Lord, don’t let nobody turn me ‘round;
I’d rather die than be a slave.

HARRIET, KEEP GOING. YOU HAVE ALREADY GLIMPSED THE FUTURE.

The dramatic, unromanticized story is coupled with breathtakingly intense oil-and-watercolor paintings that earned Nelson a 2007 Caldecott Honor Book award and a 2007 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Book Award.

A foreword provides a brief explanation of slavery and an author’s note gives a short biography of Tubman's life.

Whether readers choose this book for the history, spirituality or emotionally charged illustrations--or all three--it's a compelling introduction to an extraordinary woman whose story deserves to be retold for generations to come, not only for the remarkable feats she accomplished but also for the sense of potential her courageous acts can encourage in the rest of us.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

History of (a) Rock

The Story of Salt
by Mark Kurlansky; illustrated by S.D. Schindler

Reviewed by Deb Clark

Adapted for children from Mark Kurlansky’s adult bestseller Salt: A World History, this book recounts the weighty historic significance and scientific aspects of this most-important seasoning, making it a pretty involved topic for kids.

Both the adult and children’s version of this story have racked up rave reviews thanks to Kurlansky’s writing prowess and salt’s interesting history.

Did you know that early salt excavations in 200 B.C. China would occasionally lead to massive and deadly explosions? That without salt, there would be no ancient Egyptian mummies? That Roman Emperor Augustus gave out free salt to win public support for a war (W wishes he had it so easy)? That the high taxes on salt levied by France’s King Louis XIV lead to a prosperous salt-smuggling trade? That salt was an early and integral part of Gandhi’s campaign for Indian independence?

Energetically detailed watercolor-and-ink illustrations, maps and charts accompany the immense amount of information.

It’s interesting stuff, full of fascinating characters and amazing tales. But the main character is a mineral, and history happens around it. A rock with a great backstory is still just a rock, which makes this book, like its subject, a matter of individual taste.

Rating: *\*\

Buy it from Powells.

Pass the Peas!

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas
by Cheryl Bardoe; illustrations by Jos. A. Smith

Reviewed by Deb Clark

History does not have to be boring. This book is proof. Gregor Mendel’s life, including his groundbreaking scientific discovery of the theory of heredity, is rendered thoroughly understandable and interesting. Somebody go tell my high-school social studies teacher.

Commissioned by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to accompany an exhibit on Mendel that will wrap up at the end of this month, this book is the first by exhibition manager Cheryl Bardoe. Let’s hope she writes many more. This woman has a talent for telling a story.

The text is full of interesting details that humanize brilliant Mendel and pull the reader into his tale. We learn of young Gregor’s ironclad determination to learn, his willingness to forego half his meals to pay for his education, his decision to become a friar so he could continue his studies. Later, we’re told how the value of Mendel’s revolutionary findings was completely overlooked during his lifetime, and how the experience soured him on future scientific exploration.

The story really shines in its clear explanation of Mendel’s eight-year experiment planting peas that lead to his discovery of a fundamental aspect of genetic science: how traits are passed down through generations. Lovely and meticulous watercolor illustrations further enliven Mendel’s story and provide extra clarity to the scientific fine points.

I love to read this book to my children, but I also enjoy reading it myself.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Cynthia in the Snow

For a time, it looked like my first winter in Chicago would be a mild one. Hah! It's snowing as I write this, a hasty, wind-battered affair with little accumulation but a mean punch. So I went a-hunting for snow poems and found this one in a collection of poems from--what a coincidence--a Chicagoan, Gwendolyn Brooks.

Guess folks around here know a thing or two about the flaky stuff, huh?

Cynthia in the Snow

It SUSHES.
It hushes
The loudness in the road.
It flitter-twitters,
And laughs away from me.
It laughs a lovely whiteness,
And whitely whirs away,
To be,
Some otherwhere,
Still white as milk or shirts.
So beautiful it hurts.

One thing you should do right away

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore
by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter

Excuse me a moment.

Buahahahahahahahaha. Heeheeheee. *snort* hooohaaaheeehooohaa! (wipes away tear).

Okay, I'm back.

This is the funniest picture book I. Have. Ever. Read.

You must now picture me grabbing you by the lapels and shaking you hard: "You must buy this book! You must! You will regret it if you don't!"

I hope I didn't hurt you. Just being emphatic, is all. Feel free to add extra exclamation points; I think I've used my quota.

The girl on the cover is the kind of willful, recidivist imp whose imaginary friends must all be nervous around her.  We start with her stapling her brother's hair to the pillow, and it goes downhill from there. She walks backwards to school--stopping traffic--and flashes her panties and, oh dear, just about everything awful. And awfully funny.

Each page repeats,  "I had an idea to do X ... I'm not allowed to do X anymore," which gets more brazen and amusing as her calculated terrors add up. The pen-and-ink characters are fully realized, including our mussy-haired protagonist, drawn with a minimalist's attention to each stroke of the pen. They inhabit a digitally remade world of "real" artifacts refitted to the page, even down to their plastic desks or the crossing guard's vest.

This is a brilliantly executed concept, dropping simple figures into a complex environment; even the text was printed out, crumpled and roughed up with an emory board to achieve that faux stressed look that fits the girl's blithely destructive personality.

But will a real kid appreciate all this? Only if she's old enough to pretend not to know better.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

An Environmental Education

Almost Gone
by Steve Jenkins

Reviewed by Deb Clark

In with the obligatory segments on California missions and multiplication tables, my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Guthrie, devoted a chunk of time to studying endangered animals. I was dumbfounded to learn an animal could vanish from the planet as a direct result of human action. I admit I shed a few tears for the dodo.

And I vowed to become a park ranger and live in one of those shacks up on super-high stilts in the middle of the wilderness, which might actually have been a good job choice for me if I weren’t absolutely petrified of heights.

Almost Gone is a book my fourth-grade self would have cherished. A series of endangered animals are introduced by a paragraph of information that includes where the creature can be found and how many remain. It’s sad to note that the Abington Island tortoise of the Galapagos Islands, with only one left, will likely soon qualify for the section titled Gone Forever.

The book ends on a high note, listing three animals whose numbers are stepping back from the brink of extinction. And there is an excellent introduction that clearly explains what effect the loss of even one small creature can have on our ecosystem.

The brief entries on each animal are packed with interesting information, but it’s the illustrations that are truly fascinating. Hand-painted, cut-paper collage images of each beast are so scrupulously detailed that I half expect them to move. They captivate my children, who study them with an intensity that leads to all sorts of questions about the animals and their situations.

I’ve already decided that if either of my daughters someday works in one of those wilderness lookout shacks, I’ll just have to climb the darn ladder to see them.

Rating: *\*\*\

Gone to the dogs

The Year of the Dog
by Grace Lin

My elementary school always held a multi-culti week, but probably back then we called it Heritage Week or Roots Week or something very '70s. We'd gather in the cafeteria to see how they'd stuck little Italian flags in the same old soggy meatballs, which was somehow supposed to make Roman hearts thump with pride.

There was no "Jewish" day that week, probably because matzoh balls were beyond the lunch ladies' meager talents. But we did have "Chinese Day" complete with a Chow Mein-like dish that glistened with grease, despite there being only one Chinese girl in all of Honeyhill Elementary School. I remember Noelle Li being called up in front of the entire school to demonstrate chopsticks. She looked like she'd rather be digging a hole through the linoleum back to her ancestral country.

Turns out there were only two kids present who had ever used them: my brother and me. Thank goodness for my mother's past life regression; she had drilled us in their proper use.

I thought of Noelle and her mortification reading Grace Lin's memoir-ish novel, with its poignant moments of cultural dissonance. Is the little girl Chinese-American or Taiwanese-American? Should she use her Taiwanese name, Pacy, or her American name, Grace? She navigates some choppy waters with optimism and resolve. After all, it's the Year of the Dog, a lucky year for her, she's absolutely sure of it.

If there's an American story nearly as old as the immigrant's, then it belongs to the immigrant's kid, the one  who must navigate between the Old World and the New, acting as cultural translator and bridge builder, ever unsure which side of the divide she truly belongs on.

Lin brings the genre to kid-level, creating an alter-ego in Grace, who lives with her Mom, Dad and two sisters in a smallish town, where she's thrilled to discover another Taiwanese girl like herself.

Lin covers the usual tribulations of pre-adolescence filtered through a cultural lens. Even trying out for the school play, The Wizard of Oz, becomes a litmus test for American-ness:

"You can't be Dorothy," she said. "Dorothy's not Chinese."

Suddenly, the world went silent. Like a melting icicle, my dream of Dorothy fell and shattered on the ground. I felt like a dirty puddle after a rain.

I say the sooner you can get kids to think in terms of metaphor, the better. Lin's  imagery is as light as her mother's dumplings, floating ethereally and tempting us ever further. We know exactly how Grace feels, which gives us Anglos a way to span the gulf between sympathy and real empathy.

Of course, we all know Grace is as American as fortune cookies. She relishes her culture too, and what can't be described in mouth-watering terms, Lin fills in with delightful doodles, as if the fictional Grace had scribbled in the margins and this is the notebook of her life.

The doodles are an integral part of the storytelling, as are the stories-within-the-story, told by her parents as examples of their own, less privileged, childhoods. That too is part of the second generation's experience; the mixture of fascination with your roots and sorrow at your parents' sacrifices, with such stories having the power to make you feel lighter and more burdened all at once.

Lin's special gift is for making this story float despite its heavy subject matter, and her resistance to all things melodramatic (we're talking a pre-teen girl, after all). Grace takes her lumps and we nod knowingly, having been through similar struggles in different circumstances. She's out there for all of us who didn't fit the blonde ideal, doodling her way into our multi-cultural hearts.

I know The Year of the Dog has been out for a while, and many fine reviews have already appeared. And I'm sure Ms. Lin, who mailed my copy months ago, probably gave up on me. I finally managed to pull it off the shelf one morning, delighted to find it began with a rich description of Chinese New Year's celebration, making it a perfect entry for the first day of the Year of the Boar (or Pig, whichever you prefer. I prefer them over heaping bowls of noodles, myself).

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Odysseus returns

The Adventures of Odysseus
by Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden; illustrated by Christina Balit

I've had a tough time with this new version of the Odyssey, truth to tell, and even now I'm only halfway through. I blame it on my high school English teacher who fed us abridged snippets, all plot points and travelogue. Adventure on the high seas! Travel to exotic lands! Meet sea creatures and monsters! 'Cuz y'know them crazy kids, you gotta keep 'em innerested, right?

So I was wholly and mutely unprepared for the abject pathos in this retelling that hit me square between the eyes. You'd think after writing so many essays on quest stories and journeys-as-metaphors and blah blah blah that I'd know this was the granddaddy of them all, no?

Add this to the list of teachers I've wanted to go back in time and throttle. 

Odysseus' long and fraught return from Troy is sorrowful in a profound and relentless way, with each new misstep, each foreseeable and preventable error, inspiring an ache that wells up in your throat until you want at every turn to comfort him, to find him a shortcut  to the fragrant shores of his beloved Ithaca.

Lupton and Morden are oral storytellers, which shows in this pared-down version of the Greek classic that moves at a brisk clip without losing its epic sweep. Their Odysseus is a broken, haggard figure, deeply conscious of what his quarrel with Poseidon has cost him in human lives, wasted years and lost glory.

Their prose doesn't merely soar, it glides, it arcs up and around anything I've read since I started this blog. This is their description of the Sirens' song:

In the song I heard so many sounds: the beating of a swan's wing, the hiss and drag of the sea on sand, the moan of the wind as it blows across the broad face of the world, the rhythm of the passage of the seasons, my wife singing--and all the sounds I heard were in harmony. For those few moments I heard the Song of the Spheres. Ever since then, all music has been clatter to me; the sound of a shield as it falls on a cobblestone floor.

Balit's illustrations echo the Greek's own portrayals of themselves, often in sideview or with the picture plain fragmented like a mosaic, and borrows heavily from the bright, aqua- and marine-hued palette we know the Greeks favored, tinged with gold.

Her Circe smolders, her Odysseus bursts with vigor at the peak of manliness, her seas threaten and storm, pummel then recede, each wave or fish or sea monster as clearly articulated as any character.

I rarely tell people to go out and buy a particular book. Until your child is old enough to read a fuller translation, this one is a must-have.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

The write advice

Josephine Nobisso’s Show; Don’t Tell: Secrets of Writing
illustrated by Eva Montanari

Any veteran of creative writing workshops or critique groups has heard this lament: too much telling! Not enough showing!

Descriptive writing’s tough even for an adult struggling to commit thoughts, observations, memories or imaginings to paper. How can a child be expected to master a skill that eludes so many grownups?

Nobisso does a better job than I would’ve expected with a topic that aims so broadly over their heads. Gingerbread House has sent me several of her picture books, nearly all of them bedecked in shiny stickers for the numerous awards she’s won. This one bore a record six.

But it's the surreal illustrations, acrylics done in graphic novel format, that are key to making sense of Nobisso’s patient, meticulous advice for dispensing with vague words like “nice” or “weird” in favor of greater precision. A lion, duck, penguin and other critters hover around the narration, taking wild stabs at the instructions, chiding each other, and somehow muddling through the literary dreamscape. Each critter’s speech even gets its own font, among the many visual clues that carry us through the more abstract patches.

The activities--including a sound chip and nylon mesh for kids to describe--may take repeated reads to slowly drive the lesson home. Hey, if good writing were easy, maybe we’d all be published.

There are no fancy tricks, Nobisso insists in her forward, just an old-fashioned insistence on picking the right nouns and adjectives. Yep, grammar’s the key to great writing. That may not sound magical, but it's vital to learn that there are no shortcuts.

Rating: *\*\*\

A Mom's Dream

The Nightmare Before Christmas
by Tim Burton

Reviewed by Deb Clark

When The Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993, I was in my early 20s, Tim Burton looked hot and the comically macabre story was a welcome respite from the usual treacly holiday fare.

Now I’m within spitting distance of 40, Burton looks dumpy and I’ve developed a deeper understanding of main character Jack Skellington’s imprudent aspirations and disenchantment with his day-to-day work. Just in time, evidently, for a reissue of this book.

Really, can’t every mom relate to Skellington’s desire for a job change, even just for a day? I don’t care whether you stay at home with the kids or have another job on top of your mothering duties—we all want a break from the routine, some more often than others.

I’d like to think I’d feel less insane if, for a few hours each week, someone else would watch the kids so I could do crossword puzzles, sip a Hendrick’s gin and tonic and nap. (I also like to think my dreams will grow more ambitious as my kids get older, but who knows?)

So anyway, 13 years haven’t dulled my enthusiasm for this morbidly charming story and Tim Burton’s inspired illustrations. I had fun reading it to my daughters using different silly-spooky voices for all the characters.

As for my kids, they liked it okay but are a little too young to really get it, which is a good thing. Full appreciation of irreverence like this requires a loss of naivete that can be so unpleasant in the preschool set.

Rating: *\*\*\*\