Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Mmmm ... berry tasty

Blackberry Banquet
by Terry Pierce; illustrated by Lisa Downey
Sylvan Dell

This snappy rhyming text has all the woodland animals zeroing in on a blackberry bush with its yummy, just-ripe treats. That is, until growly Bear turns up, sending them all scurrying in a farcical cascade of mishaps. But who will get the last berry--and the last laugh?

Pierce keeps the text light, with lots of appropriate onomatopoeia  for all  the animal noises when they're happily munching. Downey's lifelike art captures just a hint of whimsy in their gleeful gobbling. And, of course, there's more info on blackberries and their place in the "food web" and a yummy recipe for blackberry smoothie.

This is one of Sylvan Dell's better outings this season, with a more imaginative and sprightly treatment of a nature topic, but one that doesn't stray far from its factual basis.

Rating: *\*\*\

Travel to Europe for Poetry Friday

Someday When My Cat Can Talk
by Caroline Lazo; illustrated by Kyrsten Booker
Schwartz and Wade

reviewed by Kelly Herold

Cats have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Their enigmatic smiles, their tendency to snub their humans for any minor slight, their expressions of deep knowledge and understanding. What is he thinking? is something a cat owner often considers.

The little girl hero of Caroline Lazo's Someday When My Cat Can Talk has some ideas about her cat's inner intellectual life. Her cat, she thinks, has a tale to tell about a trip abroad: "He'll tell me how he hopped a ship/and where he stowed away./He'll cheer the wind that blew his fur/as he sailed beyond the bay."

The little girl's cat travels all about Europe--from England to France to Spain and Italy.  And Lazo's rhyming text conveys a sense of fun and humor throughout the tale. Take this stanza, for example:

He'll speak fondly of the snail he met
while camping out near Cannes.
And he'll whisper why she's hiding
from the chef at Cafe Sands.

The cat comes home to the little girl, who imagines he'll tell her stories about his European travels. But the cat, alas, is a cat in the end and the little girl and the reader is left to guess about his adventures: My cat will tell me all these things/when he talks to me someday./Until then, when the sun goes down,/he always sneaks away.

Kyrsten Brooker's paintings--in a warm palette of dark greens, reds, blues, and browns--merge an impressionist style (a la Cezanne, in this case) with touches of collage.  Their quirky, but approachable, style works beautifully with Lazo's rhyming text.

Pack your bags!  Let's follow that cat this Poetry Friday.

Nighty-night, li'l critters

Animals are Sleeping
by Susanne Slade; illustrated by Gary R. Phillips
Sylvan Dell Publishing

This short but sweet bedtime book sneaks in some lessons about animal habitats, showing polar bears, sloths, fish and other critters catching some zzzz's. Slade's simple verses aim for the preschool crowd with plenty of repetition and easy-breezy rhymes, and Phillips' lush illustrations almost glow, with touches of day-glo colors shimmering out amid the somnolent dark blues and greens.

The book's been vetted by a zoologist for accuracy, so there's no anthropomorphism or cutesy antics. The animals are shown as they would be in the wild. What I like is how it confers instant genius status on the reader, making you a hero to your kids, who have know way of knowing that you'd never seen a sloth sleeping, either.

The "For Creative Minds" exercises in the back reinforce lessons on what the pictured animals eat and where they sleep. But it's also fine for reading just before you tuck your human cub under the blankies too.

Rating: *\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Ehlert's 'Oodles'

Oodles of Animals
Lois Ehlert
Harcourt, Inc.

Ah, joy of silly joys! What's more fun that curling up with a wiggledy-piggledy toddler and dazzling her with colors and rhymes that zing. She might even sit still for the whole book (I can dream, can't I?)

The wildly popular Ehlert doesn't need my help selling books (though I'm always happy to take a tiny commission should you order via the box above). Her latest features several familiar feathered, finned or furry friends per page, from the ever-popular penguins to a not-too-scary wolf.

Her cut-paper creations in vivid primary colors are a wonder to behold, as bold, geometric shapes come together as various animals, and who knew that hole punches and pinking shears could be put to such artsy uses. The poems also leap out for their cleverness and simplicity that should keep parents as amused as kiddies.

Here's a small sampling:

CHICKEN
If a chicken crossed
the road and rampled,
would the eggs she laid
be scrambled?

CATERPILLAR
A caterpillar's
future plan
includes a
butterfly wingspan

I particularly liked CATERPILLAR, as it forms the end papers, with numerous geometric caterpillars looking like gear parts from a mechanical drawing.

And there are several along the lines of CAT, which use the most obvious rhymes and still manage to sound fresh:

CAT
A cat
is a purr
wrapped up
in fur.

In a word: delightful.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Birdsongs take wing as poems

Today at the Bluebird Café: A Branchful of Birds
Written by Deborah Ruddell; Illustrated by Joan Rankin
McElderry Books

Reviewed by Ilene Goldman

From the frontispiece, this book made me smile. Rankin’s whimsical illustrations of laughing children swung by trapeze ropes held by birds foreshadows the imagination and lyricism captured in Ruddell’s poems. Each poem in this collection tells us something about the bird for which it is named. 

“The Loon’s Laugh” focuses on the loon’s unique song while “The Cardinal” finds more “red” words than I can think of quickly.  “The Woodpecker” asks us to put ourselves in his shoes: “If you think that his life is a picnic, / a seesawing day at the park, / I ask you just once to consider/ the aftertaste / of bark.

I’ve tried to pick a favorite poem in this collection, but I just can’t.  How can you choose between a vulture who lectures on table manners and “Blue Jay Blues,” which begins with this startling description: “Blue as a bruise on a swollen knee”?

Beyond the striking juxtaposition of words to elicit movement, sounds, and colors, the strength of these poems lies in the variation of rhythm and meter from poem to poem.  Trilling rhymes echo the loon’s laugh, “No tweedle-dee-dee on your windowsill. / No sunshiny tune from the top of a hill. / No chirp. No coo. No warble or cheep. / No bubbly twitter or sweet little peep.” 

Loftier, gentler rhymes fly with the Eagle: “She rides like she owns the sun, on a sea of air and light— / surfing, skimming, rising high, / then sweeping low and tight.”

Ruddell’s poems are complemented by Rankin’s lovely watercolor paintings, at once whimsical and realistic.  She illustrates the stories told by the poems, adding fancy to flight, if you’ll forgive the backwards pun.

I end with a confession and an aspiration. The confession: I recently had the opportunity to hear Deborah Ruddell and her editor Karen Wojtyla speak about the publication of Today at the Bluebird Café. I was particularly interested to read a book whose editor declared publicly that she’d done very little editing because Ruddell’s poetry was already precise. I was not disappointed.

The aspiration: Ruddell spoke of being “old” for a first children’s book.  I can only aspire to debut, at any age, with such a delightful book.

Rating: *\*\*\*\ 

GROSS-OUT WEEK Eensy-weensie arachnids

Spiders
Seymour Simon

Smithsonian/HarperCollins

"You may be surprised to learn just how fascinating [spiders] are."

Hey, Seymour, I'll take your word for it, okay? I mean, I've lived 44 years on this planet -- quite happily too -- without knowing a spider's body parts or that it's related to ticks, mites and scorpions. It's not like I go through my day thinking, "Wow, I wonder what it's like to have poison sacs on either side of my jaw!"

Okay, sometimes I do think that, but mostly in traffic.

This being strictly a science book, and from the Smithsonian at that, there's some uncomfortably close-up photos of our arachnid friends as they go about their bug-eating, web-weaving day. Some are pretty. Most would be much prettier if they masticated with their mouths closed.

Simon has a whole series of these nature books out, and they're staples of the young and science-report afflicted. They're the printed equivalent of broccoli, really.

Rating: *\*\

Everybody wants some tail

Little Skink's Tail
by Janet Halfmann; illustrated by Laurie Allen Klein

Sylvan Dell Publishing

A skink's a type of lizard with a dazzling cobalt tail, which the poor critter loses in a fight with a crow. While this saves her life, it leaves her unadorned. While she's waiting for it to grow back, she imagines herself with tails from other forest animals.

A squirrel's tail is too bushy, nor does a porcupine's please. And feathers? Still no.

Halfmann really runs with this idea, keeping the storyline simple but upping the ante as Skink considers the different appendages. Even kids unfamiliar with most of these animals will get the humor in Skink's good-natured tail shopping.

Klein's watercolors are lifelike, the better to educate, and exercises in the back enhance our foray into Skink's forest. Like If a Dolphin Were a Fish, (also by this illustrator) it's a fanciful way of teaching what an animal is by demonstrating what it isn't -- which uses fairy-tale transformation to impart factual information.

Rating: *\*\*\

Walk a mile in another's paws

Tracks of a Panda
by Nick Dowson; illustrated by Yu Rong

Candlewick Press

Like Chinese poetry, this narrative is lean and flowing, celebrating nature by immersing us in it. Though not technically a poem, the text has that same rhythmic feel of translated Chinese verse, and even mimics its minimalist descriptions and solemn tone.

It's told in the present tense as if unfolding right now, from the mother panda's perspective but without anthropomorphizing. Dowson takes us through birth and the first year, as seasons change, food becomes scarce and the mother's strength falters. Predators and humans encroach, and there's the never-ceasing need to suckle even when she's exhausted and starved.

Nope, you don't get a sentimentalized, Disney-fied version of a dancing Mama bear and her goofy cub played by a hyper-caffeinated Robin Williams. Nature is tough, but  wondrous, if you know how to appreciate it.

This is a book for a quiet evening, one free of distractions, when curious eyes can marvel at the soothing, monochromatic watercolors with the occasional splash of fleshy pink or spring green. Rong grew up near the mountains that are home to dwindling panda populations and captures their habitat with a few easy strokes of a calligraphy brush.

Factoids on pandas are dropped onto every spread to satisfy your little must-know-it-all. Pair this book with Fox for a similar venture into the forest.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Insect-asides

Today's ant-sized selection comes from Bugs: Poems About Creeping Things, a book no bigger than a flea circus but with Goliath beetle-sized humor.

David L. Harrison channeled Ogden Nash for this offbeat collection that's just the thing for the wiggly worms and buzzy bees in your household. Rob Shepperson's drawings add jots of squiggly fun to the verses.

Below are simply a few excerpts, not whole poems. For that, you'll have to fly, hop, crawl or skitter to the bookstore for your own copy.

From Chigger:

Since we have
to have
the chigger,

Let's be grateful
he's not
bigger.

And, in honor of the Midwest's Cicada season:

Cicacada's grumpy,
red-eyed,
mean,
set his
alarm for
seventeen. 

Rating: *\*\*\

A mother-daughter-turtle thing

Turtle Summer: A Journal for my Daughter
by Mary Alice Munroe; photographs and illustrations by Barbara J. Bergwerf

Once upon a Florida summer, I got to see a sea turtle nest as the last little hatchlings were scurrying toward the water. My midnight stroll on a beach got me there just in time to see the last straggler hit the surf and vanish into the black waters. I spent the rest of the weekend exploring the shoreline, noting the nests cordoned off by wildlife officials, who posted signs with the dates and species and the usual warnings.

Reading bestselling novelist Monroe's personal account of her "turtle summer" in South Carolina with her school-age daughter brought back the wonder and giddiness I felt even as an adult. She gives us one nest's chronology, laid out to resemble a scrapbook, but with Monroe's descriptive prose and tender touch.

Bergwerf is no stranger to loggerhead turtles, the featured species, but her photography is better showcased here, with sharp close-ups of all kinds of sea critters and shore birds, but her snapshots of mother and daughter tending the nest are still artless and perfunctory. She also created charcoal sketches of local flora on flecked paper that adds a rustic touch and deepens our understanding of the area.

It's still a lovely composition, matching facts and fancy, science and story, that's well worth a vicarious visit to the idyllic isle off South Carolina, where a mother and daughter patrol the beach in the pre-dawn hours searching for loggerhead nests.

Rating: *\*\*\