by Kelly Bingham and Paul O. Zelinsky (Greenwillow Books)
This book is sure to delight all young alphabet-lovers and their parents, with special fun for moose-lovers: and who isn’t one? I had the pleasure of watching a parent and child making their way through the expected choices of apple, ball, and cat, where the young reader found her bearings, but by D the moose jumps in, and gets called out by a zebra wearing a movie director’s hat and carrying a clipboard. The elephant on the E page looks angry at the mistake. Moose keeps hoping for a turn, but when the M page finally comes, Moose is upstaged by a gleeful mouse. Chaos ensues, until the happy and clever ending.
Bear has a dream of telling jokes to make his friends laugh, but shyness gets in his way. He practices with the support of his big-hearted friends. Even strangers seem supportive in this community near the woods. Animals do want to laugh. The pencil and watercolor illustrations are as simple, funny, and warm as the story, so that we’re rooting for Bear while laughing at his pun-filled jokes. Good fortune and teamwork turn around Bear’s fate. New readers will enjoy working their way through the short sentences of seven short chapters, while, as with the best books for emerging readers, others will be happy to hear them read aloud.
One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small (Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin, 2012)
Here’s a story about “a very proper young man,” who looks a bit like a penguin, and a distracted father, who resembles a tortoise, who visit the aquarium, where a penguin is popped into a backpack. Children will laugh at the antics accompanied by good manners, and thrill at the thought of a penguin finding a new home in an apartment, with the air conditioner turned way down. When the father at last meets the stowaway in the bathtub, he asks, “Young man, where did this penguin come from?”
The southern tip of Argentina,” his son answers, before a perfectly happy and silly ending. Pick up a copy of One Cool Friend.
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Today, February 22nd, is George Washington’s birthday and what better way to celebrate our forefather who could not tell a lie, than with a “mostly true” and yet entirely amusing picture book. Margaret McNamara’s George Washington’s Birthday: A Mostly True Tale (Schwartz & Wade, 2012) is a fresh and funny relief from stale biographies about historical figures that children are forced to read for school. Instead, McNamara, with help from witty illustrator Barry Blitt, best known for his satirical New Yorker covers, offer a story about a 7-year-old boy who thinks his family has forgotten his birthday. A story many young and birthday conscious readers can relate and aspire to, because this particular 7-year-old happens to grow up to be the first president of United States. And, humorously, no one will forget his birthday now that it’s a national holiday.
McNamara and Blitt cleverly play with fact and fiction throughout the book. McNamara weaves in familiar facts and legends about George Washingon, such as the story of the cherry tree and throwing a stone all the way across the Rappahannock river. Little asides on each page act as disclaimers, telling readers what is fact and what is myth, offering insight and often more detail about George Washington’s bright future. Blitt’s illustrations play off of these facts and myths. Where a factoid states that George Washington never wore a wig, he puts the 7-year-old in a white wig which comically shifts and falls on in various states of the boy’s activities.
The text and illustrations are packed with little nuances of humor for the reader to pick up on. Sometimes subtle, like when George mutters under his breath, calling his older half brother “a tyrant” to other times being a bit more blatantly funny, such as the headlines in the newspaper that George’s father reads: “Cherry Tree Mystery Solved” and “Don’t Axe Don’t Tell Repealed.” Perhaps my favorite illustration is the hilarious one on the back cover of an older and more familiar looking George Washington wearing a party hat, blowing a party horn. Party on, George.
Adults and children alike will appreciate the different levels of humor in this book, while learning facts and debunking popular myths. If you’re interested in hearing illustrator Barry Blitt talk a bit about the book, he was interviewed by Terry Gross for NPR’s Fresh Air recently. You can listen online here.
Our gratitude to author Margaret McNamara who is donating a portion of the proceeds from this book to The Carle Museum. A reason to party, indeed. Pick up your copy online here.
Has there ever been a happier book about chickens and art? With a story that begins on the inside of the cover an doesn’t stop until the last endpaper, there’s lots of energy in this tale of a curious chicken’s misadventures. Messages about creativity are layered and may take most a few readings to grasp, but there’s plenty of fluttering, flapping, flurry, squacking and silliness to delight those who miss finer points about how mistakes and moving outside the lines can make pictures come alive.
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Droll illustrations primarily in shades of brown and red, “created digitally and in Chinese ink,” are a perfect foil for this narrative about a lost hat. A bear’s simple, serious sentences make us smile as he questions animals who aren’t helpful, but display nice manners. His replies stay trim and realistic. Even punctuation is spare. Instead of quotation marks, different colors indicate a change in speaker, and different size fonts suggest heightened feeling and raised voices with more verve than exclamation points could. The understated humor has been delighting many at story hour. The ending is ambiguous to some, hilarious to others, but almost all children and adults are happy with the laughs along the way.
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Some 25 years ago, Chris Van Allsburg created The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a fascinating book that has intrigued young readers, teachers and librarians alike. The book consisted of just 14 full-page, black and white illustrations, each with only a caption and a short sentence to give any clue to Harris Burdicks’s intent; the book has inspired children and young people across the country to write stories about what they thought was happening on the page. Now, Allsburg offers The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, in which he asked authors of young adult books to unleash their imaginations and provide tales for the mystifying pictures — such as “Uninvited Guests,” “The Third-Floor Bedroom,” and “A Strange Day in July.” Readers will find familiar names — Lemony Snicket, Linda Sue Park, Lois Lowry, and Walter Dean Myers — dotting the title page. The original illustrations accompany the authors’ stories. Short author bios are appended.
For more, watch this hilarious trailer for The Chronicles of Harris Burdick featuring fun cameos from Lemony Snicket, Lois Lowry, Louis Sachar, Kate DiCamillo, M.T. Anderson, Linda Sue Park, Gregory Maguire, Jon Scieszka, Water Dean Myers, and of course, a very mysterious Chris Van Allsburg. Whoa.
Tomorrow, September 13th is Roald Dahl’s birthday and to celebrate, today’s puzzler is quotes from his books. Can you name the book based on the quote? Put your guesses in the comments and I’ll be back on Friday with the answers.
1. Panic and pandemonium broke out immediately on top of the peach.
2. It was at times like these that Mr. Hoppy wishes more than ever that he could change places with Alfie and become a tortoise.
3. But if she is wearing the gloves, if she has the large nose-holes, the queer eyes, and the hair that looks as though it might be a wig, and if she has a blueish tinge on her teeth — if she has all of these things, then you run like mad.
4. “But I don’t want a blueberry for a daughter!” yelled Mrs. Beauregarde.
5. Now there began a desperate race, the machines against the foxes.
6. The next day was poaching day, and don’t think my father didn’t know it.
7. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose, were covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear-holes.
8. Soon the marvelous mixture began to froth and foam. A rich blue smoke, the color of peacocks, rose from the surface of the liquid, and a fiery fearsome smell filled the kitchen.
9. “Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our earls! You surely is not telling me that a little whizpopping is forbidden among human beans?”
10. Soon Amanda Thripp was travelling so fast she became a blur, and suddenly, with a might grunt, the Trunchbull let go of the pigtails and Amanda went sailing like a rocket right over the wire fence of the playground and high up into the sky.
Oh, Harry! by Maxine Kumin, illustrated by Barry Moser (Roaring Brook Press)
Kumin, a highly acclaimed poet who breeds horses on her New Hampshire farm, imagines a funny tale about a horse with an unusual asset — calming his fellow equines in their horse-show barn. When 6-year-old Algernon Adams the Third arrives with a nasty attitude and a barrel of unruly tricks, he puts the whole stable in an uproar. The boy gets his comeuppance, however, when one of his daily pranks backfires and he ends up locked in the grain bin. How Harry saves the day and makes a lifelong friend of Algie provides fodder for Kumin’s agile pen. Moser’s deft illustrations capture Harry’s personality well, amusing children as well as parents reading the story aloud.
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The Piggy in the Puddle by Charlotte Pomerantz, illustrated by James Marshall (Simon & Schuster, 1974)
April showers bring…lots of mud! Today’s Friday Favorite is one of my very favorite picture books to read aloud and it’s full of wonderful squishy, mooshy mud. Charlotte Pomerantz’s text is so full of tongue-twisting verse and funny not-used-nearly-enough words like skadaddle, willy-nilly, and squooshy, that it’s almost impossible not to laugh while reading (or listening to!) this book. James Marshall’s hilarious cartoon-esque illustrations show a very clean and fancy pig family, complete with a fez-wearing father, a tea-drinking mother, and a properly behaved brother, who despite their best efforts just can’t persuade the little piggy to get out of the mud. One by one, in playful rhyme, they each try to convince the naughty piglet to get out of the mud and get clean.
“Mud is squishy, mud is squashy,
mud is oh so squishy-squashy.
What you need is lots of soap.”
But the piggy answered,
“Squishy-squashy, squishy-squashy-NOPE!”
I have a feeling most children can relate to being delightfully dirty and deliciously disobedient once in a while. The little pig’s refrain, complete with a loud capitalized NOPE! begs to be shouted right along with the text. And when father, mother and brother all fail at getting little piggy out of the mud, what do they do? Well, when you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! This pig family reminds you to sometimes shed those stuffy inhibitions and just have FUN.
At The Carle Bookshop we specialize in backlist picture books. Backlist is bookseller talk for the not-so-new picture books that you often can’t find at other bookstores. We carry the fabulous new books too (make sure to read our weekly Top of the Shelf posts for new book recommendations), but we know what makes us unique are the shelves and shelves of picture books you remember from your childhood or books you read to your own children. Each Friday, we’ll highlight one of these special older titles in case you may have missed it or forgotten about it along the way. Let’s keep the picture book alive and loved, shall we?
