Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Blossoms for Mom

Flower Garden
by Eve Bunting; illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
Harcourt, Inc.

I haven't reviewed many board books, but then I haven't encountered many as lovely and enticing as this one. A young girl and her Dad are planning a special birthday surprise for her mother in this sweet, all-too-brief story told in super-simple quatrains.

We meet the girl--and her would-be garden--in the store:

Garden in a shopping cart
Doesn't it look great?

Garden on the checkout stand
I can hardly wait.

And so it goes, until the flowers have been lugged home, repotted and perched in a window box overlooking a bustling city street. Hewitt captures expressions flawlessly in her warm, earthy acrylics, from the girl's glowing fascination to the mother's genuine surprise.

Nice, too, that the book's rugged cardboard will hold up to rough treatment from little fingers, as this may become a fast favorite. Toddlers are notorious for getting restless quickly, but the story is short and the rhymes easy, and you can point out flowers and colors to keep them engaged.

The art features an African-American family, but the appeal should quite obviously be universal. (I like how many illustrators no longer assume the default race of characters is white, but that's another topic for another day.)

Rating: *\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY God Bless the Child

God Bless the Child
By Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.; illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
Amistad/HarperCollins

Oooh ... tingles. Pair a classic song by legendary Billie Holiday with the illustrator's fascination with the Great Migration, and you've got one powerful depiction of an amazing era in African American history.

Pinkney's watercolors capture every detail in a subdued palette that brims with diffused light. You can make out the grains on wood and the hope on faces as sharecropping families leave the South behind and eke out a better existence in northern cities.

That things didn't work out so well for so many isn't dealt with here, where we're still on the cusp of something new and great. The full-bleed illustrations dwell on intimate family scenes or the sweep of cityscapes, with the storytelling left to the readers. Holiday and Herzog's lyrics suggest the fickleness of fortune; Pinkney's art picks up on its more redemptive notes.

Money, you got lots o' friends,
Crowdin' round the door,
When you're gone and spendin' ends,
They don't come no more.

Rich relations give,
Crust of bread and such,
You can help yourself,
But don't take too much!

Mama may have,
Papa may have,
But God bless the child
That's got his own!
That's got his own.

Here she is with Count Bassie. Enjoy!

The chicken that laid a golden egg

One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Difference
by Katie Smith Milway; illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes
Kids Can Press

I have a thing against truthiness. It's all the rage, I know. And silly me for demanding not just verisimilitude, but veracity in a book's claims. I rail against it here, about another book that with a save-the-world message wrapped in a based-on-true-events story.

This one's mistake is in its subtitle. If it said "how one small load could make a difference," I'd be fine. Semantics aside, it's about a boy from a hard-scrabble family in Ghana whose village hatches a plan to loan each other money. Kojo's able to use his share to buy a hen, and sell the eggs. And from the money he buys another hen, and eventually he pays for his schooling, wins a college scholarship, opens an egg farm and employs 120 people and loans some of them money too.

Wow! What a seriously great story! Don't you love it? Doesn't it make collecting pennies for the church plate or tzedakah box feel like a hugely satisfying leap of faith? Yes! I want to say. Pass the plate again!

And, oh, how useful in explaining how lending works, and why people borrow money. It makes such an abstract concept sublimely concrete.

But what's this? An end note introduces Kwabena Darko, the "Kojo" in the story, whose ingenuity and thrift indeed lifted him from poverty to head a micro-loan program in Ghana. Except the facts told in the end note don't match the plot points in the story.

I'm confused. Is he Kojo, or is this a "based on" story or a dramatization? Answers, please.

I really wanted to love this book. The acrylic and mixed-media artwork immersed me in Kojo's colorful, busy world, reminding me of those massive 1930s public works murals with their sweeping panoramas and heroic portrayal of workers.

But I want the details of Kojo and Darko's lives to align better, or the subtitle changed, or to get rid of an acrid aftertaste from the blatant appeal for money at the end.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for micro-loans, even the U.S. version. But the truth isn't rubber: the story's stretch marks are unappealing.

Rating: *\*\

The Art of Music

Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum
by Robert Andrew Parker
Schwartz & Wade Books

Okay, I know I've railed against adding junque to picture books. But every now and then, it makes sense. Just sometimes. And this is one of those times I'd hoped for a CD of the glorious sounds Art Tatum made during the height of the Jazz Age.

Sorry to say I'd never heard of him, despite an ex-boyfriend who chirped endlessly about jazz legends and took me to some of Philadelphia's nicest jazz venues, even to one of Cab Calloway's very last performances. Not much of it stuck, I'm afraid.

Still, I'm not a complete philistine, and I'd love to have heard some of the magic that clearly drew Parker to Tatum's story. He doesn't so much tell as envision--becoming Tatum as he narrates an early life filled with wonder despite dim eyesight:

...because of my bad eyes, day and night, dark and light, don't really matter to me. Not the way sounds and smells do--piano notes, streetcar bells, corn bread baking in the oven.

The son of working class African Americans in Toledo, Tatum takes to his mother's piano, making it an extension of self, a way of connecting to the seeing world through touch and sound. Parker's poetic, visceral narration floats through the milestones: the first time he's asked to play in church, the night his father sneaks him into a honky-tonk, a radio station asking him to play. We're always aware of his music's effect on others: his father tossing his mother's apron aside so they can boogie, a smoke-filled bar growing hushed.

Parker used watercolor as if to recreate the blur that Tatum must've seen through his weak eyes: everything is smudges of color and imprecise lines, faces fading into dark backgrounds, light streaking across the keyboard.

Now if only, if only, I could hear that music too.

Rating *\*\*\

End notes fill in much of the story, but that's not why you buy this book.

POETRY FRIDAY A step between brothers

Oh, Brother!
By Nikki Grimes; illustrated by Mike Benny

Greenwillow

One of the most powerful poetic storytellers has done it again. With a few keystrokes, a rhyme here and there, she's woven a moving story of how two very different boys become brothers in more than name.

We don't learn the narrator's name--Xavier--until late in this collection, but we do get plenty of his opinions about his mother's remarriage. He loves his new Dad, but not the boy, Chris, who comes as extra baggage, getting in the way, acting all perfect, taking up space, throwing his small family off balance:

STEPS
Everyone in this house
is a step, now.
Stepmom.
Stepdad.
Stepson.
Stepbrother.

In my mind,
I turn them into steps
I can climb
And when I reach the top,
I rule.

Several of the poems are told in rhyme, others are simple, quick dabs of free verse, meant to convey a fleeting emotion. Few kids' poets are as adept as Grimes in exploring their emotions with such range and empathy, and in so few words.

At last, the two boys have their breakthrough, and if you're not crying as their bond strengthens, you're probably dead. And when we do learn the narrator's name, as Chris practices writing it, Grimes creates a magical moment for Xavier to grow. She respects her character enough to know he probably has a tough time expressing emotions, and instead gives us his actions:

I swipe his pen
and write H-E-R-M-A-N-O
"Huh?"Chris can be slow.
"It means brother," I say.
"That's my name now,
one you already know how
to spell."

We know immediately what's going on in Xavier's head, because Grimes respects our intelligence too. 

Benny's illustrations follow through on Grimes' many hints that this is a multiracial family--Latino and African-American--but this could be any boy's blended family today. Kids have a tendency to recover, to patch together a new life and a mended heart. Grimes takes us there, until we want to adopt this new family and make it our own.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Checkmate on trouble

Chess Rumble
by G. Neri; illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson

Lee & Low Books

Is this a poem or a story or a dramatic monologue? I love genre benders, and this gripping, dark look at an urban African-American kid's anger and confusion defies pigeonholing. It's nominated under Middle Grade novels for a Cybils award, where I'm hoping it doesn't get buried by more traditional fare.

The 11-year-old narrator, who goes by Hulk or Fattie, depending on whether you're friend or foe, wields free verse like a blunt stick, now tapping out a rhythm, now beating us freely with rapid images, impressions and raw action from his damaged life. This is one kid on the edge, and the abyss is a single misstep away.

I wanna say
I'm not a angry guy,
that I'm not the one
she gotta worry 'bout.
But I can see
in the way she look at me
that she don't believe
I will turn it around.

When an exasperated teacher sends him to the library, he encounters the mysterious CM, a tattooed warrior who wields a mean chess board. Average game: three moves. When he challenges Hulk to beat him, we sense a temblor building beneath the boy's fragile fault lines.

Where it leads and how we get there is for you to discover. It reads quickly, but this is one story that lingers long after the covers are closed.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Peas on earth

Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas
by Gail Piernas-Davenport; illustrated by Marion Eldridge

Albert Whitman & Co.

Black-eyed peas, dontcha know, are an African-American tradition on New Year's Day. But Shante's grandma -- who's been cooking up a storm -- forgot all about them. Shante scurries about the neighborhood, but her neighbors have their own traditions and foods.

By the time Shante returns with those legumes, we've learned a bit about Chinese, Hindu, Scottish and Mexican celebrations. When everyone turns up with their own dishes, you can almost smell the varied spices. How come I don't get invited to potlucks like that?

Suspense builds quickly and we move at a brisk pace, thanks to Piernas-Davenport's taut rhyming couplets. It was almost over too quickly, but end notes describe some other customs around the world.

Eldridge's acrylics are cheery and upbeat, in pleasing pastel shades, adding all the right ingredients for some lighthearted fare.

Rating: *\*\*\

Go, baby, go

Jazz Baby
by Lisa Wheeler; illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

"Brother's hands tap. Sister's hands snap ..." and before you know it, the whole family's got rhythm -- and rhyme -- as the impromptu music grows and proves infectious. Even the doe-eyed, grinning baby joins in with a loud "Go, man, go!" as everyone takes turns bopping and hip-hopping with him.

Wheeler's onomatopoeia (when words simulate sounds) careens along to a syncopated beat like electrons bouncing around an atom smasher; highly charged and fast, fast, fast. Sure, you can buy heavy parenting tomes written by Ph.Ds. on the beneficial effects of music on early childhood development, or you can just watch Jazz Baby in action.

And like all teeny-weeny boppers, he reaches the end of the day and his limits, just in time for his parents to slow the tempo down and switch to some blues-y lullabies.

Christie's gouache paintings are the perfect dance partner to Wheeler's punchy verses with elongated figures who seem to sway with the beat.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Note: Another book by this illustrator is reviewed here.

No cages for these Cajuns

In honor of a legendary place, I'm taking on three reviews at once. Think I can do it?

All take place in rural Loozyanna, where my mother lived briefly in her 20s, and where locals used to feel the top of her head for horns.

They're a bold, brash, bigger-than-life people, alright, and not afraid to embrace myths, superstitions and the like--though, as in the above example, maybe not always so charmingly.

Still, three new picture books capture the best of the Bayou, from the bouncy, punctuated rhythms of their speech, their love of fast music and sloooow cooking, and the outlandish, outsized similes and metaphors that pepper their conversation.

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: *\*\*\*\