Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Have sketchpad, will travel

Vagabonding
by Audra George

When reviewing books by college kids, do I shelve my standards? Do I give 'em a break, put my skepticism on hold, temporarily suspend my snarky disdain for the mediocre, the boring, the been-there-read-that cliches? Or do I give 'em a dose of harsh, welcome to the real world, Toto-we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore reality?

I didn't know what to expect when the nice folks at Red Cygnet emailed to say they had this new idea for an imprint: picture books by college art students. I was pretty sure I wouldn't see stick figures in crayon. After that, who knew?

Fortunately, the lot has proved decent enough, and this one stood out for its simplicity, though darned if that rhyme scheme keeps fading in and out. The illustrations, however, are sprightly and appealing as a girl trades places with a gypsy or "vagabond" and dons a red kerchief and gold hoop earrings. We get a quickie around-the-world tour--from Sydney to Tibet to the Taj Mahal and Paris and then, of course, back home in time for supper.

The back flap says George studied travel sketching, and the book has the simplicity of doodles filled out with dabs of watercolor. Bonus points for portraying a full rainbow of ethnicities too.

Rating: *\*\*\

A multi-culti feast for the senses

Drumbeat in Our Feet
by Patricia A. Keeler and Julio T. Leitao; illustrated by Patricia A. Keeler

I tried an experiment. 

Before opening this book on African dance, I put on Baaba Maal's Missing You (Mi Yeewnii). It didn't take any careful timing to be deeply into a discussion of ancient rhythms during the anthemic Miyaabele, a folk song artfully updated into a call for African unity. Maal pairs an acoustic guitar with soulful string instruments, plus a xylophone made more resonant by placing gourds underneath.

I found a picture of the xylophone, and many other instruments, in the book. By the time I got to the page about talking drums, my son had heard one, and any number of other pulse-quickening percussions. When the subject of call-and-response comes up, we had fine examples of that too, from children in Maal's Senegalese village.

I don't normally plug music here, but the CD is a perfect compliment to these splashy, energetic lessons on the origins of the dances, rhythms and rituals from across central and southern Africa. End notes explain how Keeler found Leitao, a native of Angola, at a dance studio in Harlem and persuaded him to create this feast for the senses.

Time travel to Paris

Adele & Simon
by Barbara McClintock

Imagine letting your kids wander city streets alone for a few hours after school. No cell phones, no nannies, no idea where they are or what they're up to.

Not in a hundred years, right?

Yup.

McClintock takes us back a full century to Paris at its fullest glory, when the Impressionists were still alive and the colorful streets teemed with activity (instead of traffic) and cheerful kids could meander for hours. How different from our own anxious, overscheduled age!

Making connections

Celebrate! Connections Among Cultures

by Jan Reynolds

Much digital ink has already been spilled about this fascinating collection of multi-culti photos of indiginous groups in such far-flung locales as the Himalayas, the Arctic, the Outback and the Sahara desert. Some of my favorite bloggers, Liz and Kelly and Camille, have lauded the way Reynolds links Americans to other peoples through our celebrations: the way we all play music of some sort, or decorate ourselves or prepare a special meal.

I'll let you read their thoughtful takes.

I pulled this book off the shelf last night because I like the way it makes the world a little smaller and brings us a little closer at a time when far-away troubles are making headlines and causing worries the world over. Okay, so nobody from any of the globe's hot zones are featured here, but it still got me kinda misty-eyed.

Reynolds, who lived among all the peoples she photographed, has a knack for bridging our differences and pulls together such disparate threads as Halloween costumes and Inuit hunting rituals. Her journalistic pics are what former colleagues of mine would've called storytellers, rather than the stylized, artsy-fartsy compositions you might find in coffee table tomes.

But mostly I just like it because, while people's celebrations are timeless and universal, the book struck me as topical too.

Sometimes we all need reminding that while big things -- religion, politics, economics -- separate us, it's the small things that really matter, like how we gather to give thanks or greet people we haven't seen in a while or mark the amazing journey from boy to man or pass along our hard-won lore to our children.

Here's wishing everyone a smaller, closer world. We certainly need it.

Rating: *\*\*\

Paz on earth

Can You Say Peace?

by Karen Katz

International Peace Day is September 21, but I don't exactly see Hallmark rushing to corner the market on multilingual greeting cards for the occasion. Instead, there's this sweet book to fill a niche you didn't know you needed.

Katz takes us around the world with childlike collages in vivid colors. Each page spread features another child in his or her home environment saying "peace" in the native tongue. We get the biggies (see if you can guess the languages): paz and shanti and mir and he ping and paix, plus a few aboriginal words from places like Bolivia and Australia. Cool, huh?

Of course, Katz neatly sidesteps hotspots like the Middle East, but a table in the back lists "peace" in additional languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

But none of them compares to goom-jigi, a Buli word from Ghana. Have a goom-jigi kind of day, everyone.

Shalom.

Rating: *\*\

A wandering Jew tells his story

The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela: Through Three Continents in the Twelfth Century

by Uri Shulevitz

We never see the face of the narrator as he makes his way through exotic, dangerous lands. He’s viewed only in profile or from behind, an enigmatic figure who weeps into his cloak before the gates of Jerusalem or ruminates among the ruins of Rome.

Nothing is known about Rabbi Benjamin, a Jew who left his native Tudela, Spain in 1159 for a 14-year journey, except for what he wrote in his travelogue, one of the only surviving accounts of a time that straddled the ancient and modern eras.

He became the first European to bring back rumors of a country far to the east called China, and painted a complex portrait of Medieval Jewry as it perched precariously between Christians and Muslims during the time of the Crusades. He described pageants and pirates, and bore witness to the mystical and the miraculous.

Now try translating this real-life epic into a story readable to young children, and illustrating it in a way that does it justice. How would you do it? Shulevitz converts the tale into a first-person narrative and fills in gaps such as what documents Benjamin carried or the hair-raising hazards he faced on the road or at sea.

However rich the narrative, the illustrations lift this to the sublime. Shulevitz borrows different techniques and styles to fit the story: Constantinople shines as if lifted from a Byzantine mosaic; an impressionistic rendering of the Sahara shimmers with heat.

Shulevitz received a Guggenheim fellowship to partly retrace Benjamin’s path. You can see how it must’ve paid off in such knowing, precise details as the spires above Baghdad or the narrow alleys of Tudela. This isn’t merely a guide to architecture of the Middle Ages, but a tour through the imagined heart of a determined pilgrim.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Roaring over my head

The Noisy Airplane Ride

by Mike Downs; illustrated by David Gordon

Photoshopped illustrations save this book from bogging down in technical jargon. Gordon used real pictures of airplanes and morphed them into something akin to acrylic paintings. You can make out every dial on the glowing panel, yet the plane becomes a ghostly silhouette at night.

But I still don’t know how to translate words like “thrust” into ordinary English, though I’m impressed Downs can fit rhymes around all the techno-babble. Written by a pilot, the book tries to de-mystify an airplane’s many odd pings, roars and rattles for the young traveler with some lively onomatopoeia, but I don’t see its appeal beyond a narrow audience of gadget-obsessed boys.

Rating: *\*\