When my blog-friend Hannah came to visit us last week—and a delightful visit it was—Rilla fell in love with her on sight. Actually, we all did; I’ve known Hannah online for years, and it was wonderful to get to sit down with her in person and talk books and kids and the virtues of dirty floors and all those things we’ve conversed about in the interwebz for so long.
(I say “blog-friend” only to convey that we met each other via our blogs, not in any way to convey a less real kind of friendship than the sort that blooms away from a screen. Some of my favorite people are people I got to know from their writing online.)
Hannah’s visit passed way too quickly; there was far more to talk about than we could squeeze into a morning. We need an encore, this time with her kids too. I think my favorite moment was when Rilla produced a copy of a picture book she has been entirely enchanted with these past couple of weeks, Me Hungry by Jeremy Tankard, and roped nice Miss Hannah into reading it with her.
It’s about a cave-boy who tells his parents “Me hungry” but they tell him “Me busy” so he goes off by himself to hunt. He encounters a rabbit (“Me hide!”), a porcupine (“Me sharp!”), and a tiger (“Me mean!”) before running into a woolly mammoth who surprises him by becoming his friend. The caveman speech is funny and charming, not at all arch, the art is tremendously fun, and the little twist at the end elicits a belly laugh from my four-year-old every single time—seriously, after dozens of readings, many of them on the same day. The look on the daddy caveman’s face just cracks her up.
But why oh why oh why didn’t I get a picture of Rilla and Hannah reading together? Me kicking myself!
So far, I’ve read 19 of the 76 titles—most of them in the Fiction Picture Book and YA Fiction categories, the former because I have three picture-book-devouring younguns at the moment (and some of their big sisters have been known to listen in), the latter because I was part of the panel that drew up the list. We’re doing pretty well with the beginning readers, too; there’s another batch arriving for us at the library any day now.
Since we’ve now had the pleasure of reading all seven books on the fiction picture book shortlist, I thought I’d do a little roundup here.
Rilla and I are in love. What a sweet, gentle, quirky story. Amos is an elderly fellow who works at the zoo, where he always makes time to visit with his friends. Chess with elephant, a race with tortoise, a quiet moment shared with a shy penguin. When Amos stays home sick one day, his animal pals (and a floating red balloon) set off to find him. Rilla giggled the whole way through this lovely, quiet book. “Again, again!” she begged the moment we finished. The second time through, she lingered over the pictures, murmuring over winsome details. It was this year’s Caldecott Winner, and I see why. The art is delicate and sweetly atmospheric, and full of tiny surprises. I’ll be giving this one as a gift, often and often.
Fantastic. A chicken lass can’t help but chime in when the stories her Papa’s reading get tense. Papa keeps trying new fairy tales—Hansel and Gretel, Chicken Little, Little Red Riding Hood—in hopes the little red chicken will settle down and get sleepy, but every time the story gets rolling, the energetic chick catapults herself into the tale and warns the main characters before they stray into danger. Wonderfully funny and absolutely true to life (except, of course, that they’re chickens). 2010 Caldecott Honor book and the winner of the CYBIL in this category.
Here’s the book trailer if you’d like a peek between the pages:
Gregory’s dad tells him not to go into the water, and not to stray too far away from the lion Greg has drawn in the sand. Gregory draws the lion’s tale longer and longer, veering around a jellyfish and a horseshoe crab, swooping over an old sandcastle and beyond. When he realizes Dad is lost in the mass of beach umbrellas, Gregory follows Sandy Lion’s tail back to its body—and there’s Dad, watching all the while. Gorgeous art and simple text; both Rilla and Wonderboy took a real fancy to this one. Just now, as I was writing this, Rilla peered over my shoulder at the cover and asked if we could get it back from the library.
I’ve already written about the other four Cybils picture book finalists here, but I’ll paste those notes in this post just to keep them all in one place.
Jiminy crickets, what art! Amazing expressions on the kids, especially when they’re running in terror from the T Rex…Rilla and Wonderboy were transfixed by this one. The magic of chalk that brings drawings to life, the dramatic turn of events, the clever solution. A wordless story, which is something Rilla always enjoys.
Silly, funny, sweet. Very satisfying for Rilla and Wonderboy. A rollicking rhymed text that isn’t torture to read, and the joke at the end went over big. (From this post on Jan. 30, 2011.)
Rilla and I were quite surprised to find ourselves and Huck in the opening pages of this book. I mean, really, it’s like Matt Phelan was peeking in the window. A charming story, quite appealing to the four-year-old big sister in this household. (She wouldn’t let Huck blow away either.) Flora is frustrated when baby brother Crispin gets into the paints and ruins Flora’s picture. Their frazzled mama sends them outside to play, despite Flora’s protests that the wind is too strong and will blow them away. Sure enough, a hearty gust scoops Crispin into the sky, and Flora must abandon her boots and go rescue him. Seems every high-flying creature in the big blue and beyond wants to claim Crispin—who is, admittedly, utterly irresistible in that long-tasseled hat—for a helper. Dragonfly, sparrow, eagle, rainbow, cloud, even the moon! Flora’s exchanges with these entities quite enchanted my Rilla. And my goodness, Matt Phelan’s art just blew me away.
A perfect picture book, I tweeted the day I read it. “A perfect marriage of art and text” is a reviewer’s cliche but by golly it’s no overstatement in this case. Two little boys run for a toybox and brandish their selections in triumph and challenge. Shark vs. train—who wins? It depends…what’s the competition? Pie-eating? Diving? Marshmallow roasting? The stakes keep escalating, to hilarious effect. Rilla and Wonderboy sit and pore over the art, which is sharp and comic and enchanting. I find myself wishing my nephews and nieces hadn’t all grown up so much: this would be my birthday book of choice this year. (From this post in September 2010.)
• How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen & Mark Teague. From our Rillabooks list. Technically it was Jane who read this one—11 times in a row—to her insistent little sister. That Jane, she’s a keeper.
After last week’s startling discovery that Rilla had not yet made the acquaintance of Miss Rumphius (that she remembered, at least), I realized there were a number of unmissable picture books that she has, in fact, missed up to now. This is what happens when you’re the fifth child. She listens in on the older kids’ read-alouds—The Hobbit, The Strictest School in the World, Tom Sawyer—and there has been a steady stream of newly published picture books in her world, thanks in large part to the review copies I often receive. But even for a reading family, there are only so many books you can cram into a day.
Which is why Rilla made it almost to her fifth birthday without meeting Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and the Lupine Lady.
I’ve been combing through the shelves in search of other must-reads, and there’s now a two-foot-high bookstack in front of the (never used) fireplace. Several of those appear in this week’s list of recent reads.
• Miss Rumphiusby Barbara Cooney. Top of the list in every respect. “I’d like to add some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily. “I don’t exactly want to make people KNOW more…though I know that IS the noblest ambition…but I’d love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me…to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.” That’s Anne Shirley, not Alice Rumphius, but they’re kindred spirits, aren’t they?
•Make Way for Ducklingsby Robert McCloskey. Okay, I’ve been reading this book aloud for fifteen years, and I’m still undecided. Ouack: “Oh-ack”? Or “Wack”? I usually opt for the latter, but that kind of throws off the whole alphabetical rhythm. Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack…Wack?
• Hairs/Pelitosby Sandra Cisneros, illustrated by Terry Ybanez. The text of this gorgeous, lush, evocative book is a paragraph from Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. Rilla, like all three of her older sisters before her, is spellbound by its rich colors, rolling cadences, and the comfortable family warmth of this unusual book that is more prose poem than story, a little girl’s description of all the kinds of hair in her family. “My mother’s hair, my mother’s hair like little rosettes, like little candy circles…”
• Koala Louby Mem Fox, illustrated by Pamela Lofts. Honestly, I think my little ones care less about the plot of this book than they do the mama koala’s cooing refrain: “Koala Lou, I do love you.” Me, I’m crazy about the colored pencil drawings.
• Bub: Or the Very Best Thingby Natalie Babbitt. I pulled this one off the shelf for the aforementioned big stack of classics, but I knew I wouldn’t be reading it to Rilla myself. This one is reserved for the daddy of the family. It’s a special favorite of ours, and if I gave things stars, I would give it as many as I possibly could. An out-of-print gem. The king and queen want the “best thing” for their young prince, but what does that mean? Their quest for the answer takes them all over the castle—but it seems the young prince has known the answer all along.
• Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?by Nancy White Carlstrom, illustrated by Bruce Degen. All you Five in a Row mothers out there just got a wave of nostalgia, didn’t you? 😉 Rilla faintly remembered it—it had been perhaps a year since it last found its way off the shelf into our laps. My little boys adore Jesse Bear too. Reading this with Rilla the other night was a particularly sweet moment for me; the text’s rhythm and repetition gave her just the right footing for a sudden spurt forward in reading. She took over on page two and what-will-you-wear-in-the-morning’d her way through the book. I could listen to that a hundred times in a row. (As long as you don’t make me count the stars.)
• The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bearby Don & Audrey Wood. This one’s a Huck magnet. Rilla’s frankly a bit suspicious: she’s pretty sure the narrator is putting one over on the little mouse. Didn’t stop her from asking for it six times in succession.
• Brave Georgie Goatby Denis Roche. When I open this book, it doesn’t matter which child is on my lap: I’m 27 again, and Jane’s a two-year-old in a hospital bed. Our dear friend Joan Slattery, a Knopf editor at the time, brought Jane this book on one of her visits to the cancer ward, and we both fell head over heels in love with it. Scott too, actually. It’s difficult to convey the sweet simplicity of these three short stories about matters of vital importance to very small goats and girls. If Mommy Goat goes, how can you be sure she’ll come back? What do you do when your best friend and constant companion, your beloved red coat, doesn’t fit you anymore? And what are all those ominous shapes and sounds in your room when the lights go out? The grownup goats in these brief tales (Mommy and Grandpa) are a gentle and steady source of comfort for a little kid who is beginning to take notice of a very big world.
Rilla and I were quite surprised to find ourselves and Huck in the opening pages of this book. I mean, really, it’s like Matt Phelan was peeking in the window. A charming story, quite appealing to the four-year-old big sister in this household. (She wouldn’t let Huck blow away either.) Flora is frustrated when baby brother Crispin gets into the paints and ruins Flora’s picture. Their frazzled mama sends them outside to play, despite Flora’s protests that the wind is too strong and will blow them away. Sure enough, a hearty gust scoops Crispin into the sky, and Flora must abandon her boots and go rescue him. Seems every high-flying creature in the big blue and beyond wants to claim Crispin—who is, admittedly, utterly irresistible in that long-tasseled hat—for a helper. Dragonfly, sparrow, eagle, rainbow, cloud, even the moon! Flora’s exchanges with these entities quite enchanted my Rilla. And my goodness, Matt Phelan’s art just blew me away.
Flora & Crispin will join Max & Ruby and Maggie B. & James in the company of great big sister-little brother pairs in children’s literature.
Serendipitously, we picked up this book for the first time on the very day that Rilla discovered two pairs of rainboots in the hall closet. Pink and blue, not red and purple, but still.
One of my own childhood favorites. Now a Rilla fave, requested every couple of weeks. (I’ve mentioned it before, here and here.) (I’m back this morning to add another little bit of squee over this book. The art especially, which has just as much hold over my heart now as it did when I was small. The expressions on Christina’s face, and her mother’s! The magic of her bright imagination, which rebounds from every disaster! The ball in the summer mansion was always my favorite bit.
Number books may be the delight of the toddler, but they can be dull business for the parent forced to flip their pages infinity times. Not so with Fleming’s Count. The bold, bright paintstrokes of the art bring to life a menagerie of mischievous animals whose questionable manners delight my children and amuse their mother. The (4) crocodiles bite each other’s tails. The instruction on the toucan page may be “Share” but you just know the bird with the berry ain’t gonna. It takes a master to pull off a simple concept book with this much energy and appeal.
• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, pictures by Betsy Lewin
Me: “Honey, what would you say about Click, Clack, Moo?”
Scott: “What would you say about Click, Clack, Moo?! Sheer storybook perfection! Sheesh!”
This little gem has a pub date of 1996, the year after Jane was born, so I’m betting it was a present to us from one of our publishing-world pals, and a very fine gift it was indeed. Another gathering of impish critters—ape, lion, snake, and more—wreak delightful havoc on a gentle home through the course of a day. Sort of. Our guide is a young boy who describes the beasts in galloping rhyme, and his insider’s understanding of their antics begins to look mighty suspicious….My little people, who (like the narrator) spend much of their time as cats and other creatures, consider this kid a kindred spirit. I think this book is out of print, but maybe you’ll luck out and find it in the library.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
I heard about the Mole Sisters at the Greenwillow blog a while back and thought it sounded like something Rilla would love. I was right. What a sweet little book: lovely small trim size, so appealing to preschoolers; soft, charming illustrations; and a simple storyline with minimal text—this can double as an early reader—that has delighted my young miss. We’ll have to look for more Mole Sisters adventures.
This isn’t the edition we read—I’m reading out of an illustrated Just So Stories—but each story gets lingered over and talked about so thoroughly that each one seems to warrant its own entry here. This one was a particular hit with Rilla: all those unfathomable spankings, and the satisfying turnabout at the end. We also read “How the Leopard Got Its Spots” but she talked all the way through that one, more interested in questions (which is fine!) than the story itself.
Cybils fiction picture book finalist. Jiminy crickets, what art! Amazing expressions on the kids, especially when they’re running in terror from the T Rex…Rilla and Wonderboy were transfixed by this one. The magic of chalk that brings drawings to life, the dramatic turn of events, the clever solution. A wordless story, which is something Rilla always enjoys.
Cybils fiction picture book finalist. Silly, funny, sweet. Very satisfying for Rilla and Wonderboy. A rollicking rhymed text that isn’t torture to read, and the joke at the end went over big.
All my little ones have been attached to this book at a certain age. Rilla’s turn now, it seems. Had to ‘read’ it to her three times today. Well, the third time she was telling it to me. Always makes me crave berries and cream.
A taste of icy northern winter for my little California girl. The tone of this book, as the tomten makes his rounds of the farm at night, is as hushed and glittering as its own snowy fields.
I keep posting about what I’m reading to Rilla, but of course I’m reading to my little boys too. Huck’s in board book land; you probably have all the same ones. (He’s also big on the Dr. Seuss ABC and Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.) Wonderboy’s a whole different kid in terms of reading and being read to. That’s a post for another day. He listens in to most everything I read his little sister, but he’s much more interested in mechanics than story. When he chooses a book, it’s usually Seuss or Elephant-and-Piggie or the Pigeon or a Boynton. Which is lucky for us, because all those things are fun to read over and over and over and over and…
Anyway, Rilla’s last week-or-so’s worth of read-alouds, often enjoyed with one brother perched on my lap and the other digging a sharp elbow into my thigh. This list goes backward from the past week or so, because I sent the links over from Diigo. This means some of my notes won’t make much sense.
Rilla’s first time. Today we read “How the Whale Got His Throat” and “How the Camel Got His Hump.” Utterly delicious to get to watch a child hear these for the first time, all over again. (And another Kindle-read.) Wonderboy loves them too, the bumpy jumpy cadences.
She begged for this but got stressed out by the King’s threats and fury, and all through the second half she just wanted me to quickly tell her (not read in detail) what happened. It’s always funny to read Seuss’s prose—as much of it as I was allowed to read, at least.
Oddly, we read this on the Kindle—so no art. Beatrix Potter without the art! It’s almost heretical! But, see, I was reading a book of my own on the Kindle, and Rilla burrowed in and started picking out words she recognized, Scout Finch fashion. I asked if she wanted me to find a story for her, and she was rather gleeful at the prospect of reading one of HER stories on MOMMY’S Kindle. I poked around to find some things in the public domain. Potter turned up right away, and fairy tales, and Mother Goose. I downloaded one of each. What she’s enjoying is having me enlarge the font to its maximum size, and she reads the words she knows, and I read the rest, and she’s doing that echo thing where she says a word before I have a chance to finish it. I absolutely love this stage. She’s right on the brink.
A frequent request from both Rilla & Wonderboy. Family favorite since Jane was tiny. Rilla’s at the emergent-reader stage where nursery rhymes are hugely satisfying for her, because she can fill in from memory the words she can’t yet read. (And each repetition nudges her closer to reading.)
Arrived in a goodie package from my agent. What a fun picture book! The other chickens in the coop don’t quite know what to make of this enormous new chick. Is he an elephant? An umbrella? Goofy and giggle-inducing, and wonderful cartoony art. The cover just kills me.
Such a sweet, simple, satisfying story, comfortably formulaic. And ink-lined watercolors tend to be my favorite illustration style—Elsa Beskow is very Carl Larsson.
Rilla and Wonderboy like this one more to look at than to hear. The illustrations are beautiful—butterflies and caterpillars on their host plants in the garden. A pore-over-and-hunt book.
My very favorite book when I was a preschooler, made all the more wonderful by the art of the inimitable George Booth. “Never tease a weasel, not even once or twice. A weasel wouldn’t like it, and teasing isn’t nice!” This was one of the first books I learned by heart. Loads of fun with language, and that refrain is irresistible.
Bink reminds me of Tib: tiny, fluffy, determined. Gollie is just this side of an Edward Gorey character. Which is to say: I adore ’em both. Rilla won’t let me read this one to her just once. Gotta be two or three times in a row. A smart, funny, sophisticated Early Reader—which sounds like an oxymoron but isn’t. Rilla is captivated by the intense personalities of Bink and Gollie, and by the ups and downs of their relationship. Every time we read it, she wants to discuss and discuss. In a way, this is her first book-club book: that book you love so much you just have to talk about it.
Poor Mr. Pusskins, tormented by that rogueish kitten, and blamed for his hijinks to boot. Wonderful expressions on the feline faces here. Rilla is smitten with cat and kitten.
My SIL recommended this one and I bet I’ve read it a hundred times so far this week. No exaggeration. Huge hit with the three youngest, especially Rilla who is in a big rhyme phase. Bonus: vacuum cleaner sucking noises.
One of my favorites from my stint as a first-round CYBILs picture book judge in 2008. Now a repeat request from Rilla, who loves the quiet, earnest tone of this story about a boy who rescues an injured pigeon. The kind of book you pore over and talk about, heads together.
A family favorite. Grandma Jo loses her glasses the night before Little Lloyd is due for a visit. That’s how she happens to bring home an escaped zoo lion instead. She plies her furry visitor with ice cream and dancing, and they have a fine old time, managing to thwart a burglar while they’re at it. Big belly laughs from my littles over this one.
The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. A tiger shows up at teatime and eats all the food in the house. What’s not to love? Young Sophie and her mother are unfailingly polite to their ravenous guest, and at the end of the day there’s an outing to a cafe—with Sophie in pajamas, which Rilla thinks is just about the best thing she ever heard. Pretty sure it was The Bookworm who introduced us to this gem: much obliged.
Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld. I raved about this one a while back: Two little boys run for a toybox and brandish their selections in triumph and challenge. Shark vs. train—who wins? It depends…what’s the competition? Pie-eating? Diving? Marshmallow roasting? The stakes keep escalating, to hilarious effect. Rilla and Wonderboy sit and pore over the art, which is sharp and comic and enchanting. I predict numerous awards for it this year, just you watch and see.
Mirror Mirror by Marilyn Singer. I read about this one at The Poem Farm and tracked down a copy straightaway. You guys, it’s amazing. Each spread is a poem based on a fairy tale—a form called a “reverso,” invented by Singer. You can read it from two directions: top down and bottom up. This isn’t just for little kids; my older girls passed it around the day it arrived, all of them intrigued. Fun, clever, inspiring. Thanks for the tip, Amy. (Great review at A Year of Reading, too.)
I could add more books to this list, but breakfast beckons.
