Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

POETRY FRIDAY Blessings from far and wide

The Barefoot Book of Blessings
from Many Faiths and Cultures
compiled by Sabrina Dearborn; illustrated by Olwyn Whelan

Whenever I was in need of a little interfaith uplift, I used to search a very cool site with  prayers from around the world.

But the domain's been taken over by an evangelical site--or I've forgotten the URL. Not that an evangelical site's bad, mind you, it's just not the ecumenical smorgasbord I used to browse so raptly.

Thanks to Barefoot, I can at least offer my kids a snippet of soul-soothing reflections from different traditions. Here are two to get your weekend started right:

House Blessing
Blessed is the spot, and the house,
and the place, and the city,
and the heart, and the mountains,
and the refuge, and the cave,
and the valley, and the land,
and the sea, and the island,
and the meadow where mention
of God has been made
and his praise glorified

--Bahai

Blessing for a Journey
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the
Palm of his hand.

--traditional Irish

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: *\*\*\*\

Give 'Peace' a chance

What Is Peace? (What Is?)

By Etan Boritzer

I contracted a serious case of the guilts after panning a collection of poems about war. Did it make me a warmonger? A closet Bushie? What was I trying to say, exactly?

Fortunately, Boritzer's book turned up in time to rescue me from too much self-flagellation. What is Peace? tackles the subject head-on in a way that's candid yet reassuring.

His flowing free verse doesn't nail a definition of peace so much as map its territory, starting with a Zen-like quietude:

Do you have to go to a quiet place,
far from the city
with all the cars and people
and noise and crazy stuff going on,
in order to feel Peace?

He makes the terrain bumpier as the scope broadens from bratty behavior at home to civil strife --  a bad king is portrayed as a schoolyard bully in a crown -- while asking if it's always possible to "be both brave and peaceful."

Although there's no storyline, there are numerous imaginary examples. Throughout, Boritzer keeps returning the focus to the child's feelings, peppering young readers with questions that are only daunting if they've never had to articulate anything deeper than what they want for dinner.

Such probing will be familiar to fans of the "What is" series, which explores such abstracts as love, money and beauty, and are designed to launch kids on an exploration of personal ethics. Boritzer takes pains not to step on any interfaith toes, urging kids to ask their parents how they pray. Non-violent heroes aren't mentioned by name, be they Buddha or Jesus, or someone contemporary like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., but parents and teachers can easily fill in those blanks.

I'm sorry I don't have a cover image of Jeff Vernon's illustrations, with their coloring-book simplicity. I hope that doesn't dissuade people from clicking through to Amazon, or try the publisher.

I should also note that I met Etan Boritzer at the LA Times BookFest last April (where he patiently posed for me), and he's just about the most effusive purveyor of books you can imagine. Sure, he was flogging his own stuff. But he's clearly on a mission. How nice that it dovetails with my own efforts to wean my son from his addiction to whacking his sister, not to mention what it does for dinner conversations about that whole Middle East thing.

Rating: *\*\*\

A little Latina magic

Dona Flor

by Pat Mora; illustrated by Raul Colon

A Gift of Gracias

by Julia Alvarez; illustrated by Beatriz Vidal

Perhaps it's odd or inappropriate to pair a magical realism story with a religious one, since many will insist that there's no suspense of disbelief in the latter, at least for the religiously inclined. That'd be missing what the stories have in common, which is more than the occasional Spanish phrase and Hispanic backdrop (and the fact that they arrived in the same box. Ah well).

One's a tall tale from what could be either the American Southwest or northern Mexico, the other's the Dominican legend of Our Lady of Altagracia (literally "High Grace").

Mora creates a larger-than-life heroine in the giantess Dona Flor, giving her oversized common sense as well as a heart as big as the hand-made tortillas that double as roofs for a grateful pueblo. When a puma's thunderous roars make both people and animals tremble, she righteously marches off to settle matters. How refreshing to see a protagonist who doesn't face every affront with a massive shot of testosterone, but with folksy wisdom and a wry smile.

Little Maria in The Gift of Gracias prays that her family won't have to leave colonial Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic) after their olive crop fails. She's rewarded with a dream of planting oranges, accompanied by a vision of the Virgin. When her family plants orange seeds, the trees mature quickly and bear a life-saving harvest.

An aboriginal servant, Quisqueya, acts as a sort of Catholic spirit guide, appearing in Maria's dreams and later bringing home a blanket with the Virgin's likeness that's hung in the new orchard. Alvarez blurs the distinction between the folkloric and the sacred, with a Virgin firmly rooted in Dominican soil and native culture.

It makes the story decidedly Latino, just as Dona Flor, who may have girth akin to Paul Bunyan's, but whose story is only American in the largest possible sense -- an America that spans two continents and whose people are as likely to speak Spanish as not.

Both books channel Diego Rivera in their homage to peasants, though maybe that's not the right word. I think of Latino folk art when I see the rounded figures and earthy colors and the artists' celebration of the simple and everyday. Plus there's the usual clues: the flattened picture plane, the minimal use of light and shadow, the uncluttered compositions, and how the artists freely mix the mundane and the supernatural as if it were an expected thing. 

The act of planting orange seeds takes on a religious solemnity, for example, with figures praying as they stoop at their work. Vidal used a magnifying glass on the many details, but her pictures remain clear, straightforward depictions of a modest family's brush with divine grace.

Colon's Dona Flor soars, ethereal and sweet, the lines smudged and smoothed to make her literally soft around the edges, a depiction that is more awed than religious, but uplifting in its own way. 

Rating: *\*\*\

Oy vey! Dickens revisited

Hanukkah, Shmanukkah

By Esme Raji Codell; illustrated by LeUyen Pham

The story’s more an appropriation than a retelling of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” with a Yiddish-spewing, immigrant “Scroogemacher” whose nastiness threatens to darken the Festival of Lights for workers at his turn-of-the-20th-century sweatshop.

Codell sidesteps ugly stereotypes of stinginess by focusing on his abrasive personality: “Old man Scroogemacher was as sour as a pickle and had a tongue like horseradish.” It’s hard not to instantly love a book that so captures the tart Yiddish vernacular in English.

He’d be a more fascinating, deeply drawn character if Codell hadn’t made the perplexing error of trying so self-consciously to write about The Meaning of Hanukkah. You know how I am about Books With A Message. Grrr.

The Rabbi of Hanukkah Past brings us waaaay back, to Judah Maccabbee, when what we really want is Scroogemacher’s past – of which we get only a glimpse, when we see him parted from his wife. Dickens felt no need to rehash the Nativity, and what makes the original Scrooge so compelling is how we come to understand so minutely the reasons for his bitterness and isolation.

Perhaps Codell didn’t trust her audience to know the Hanukkah story, which is a shame. Many, many books tell it much better. With what we’re given, we can still interpret Scroogemacher’s misanthropy as a type of internal exile, which delicately translates the story between faiths and cultures while trying not to offend anyone. And that’s the trouble – Codell wimps out.