Review of Dare the Wind, by Tracey Fern

Adventure, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

dare_the_wind_largeDare the Wind

The Record-Breaking Voyage of Eleanor Prentiss and the Flying Cloud

by Tracey Fern
pictures by Emily Arnold McCully

Margaret Ferguson Books, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 2014. 36 pages.
Starred Review

How wonderful! A nineteenth century young woman navigated clipper ships for her sea captain husband and actually broke speed records because of her daring and mathematical prowess! Who knew? Now this is a true story I’m eager for little girls to know about!

The book starts with Ellen Prentiss as a child, loving the sea. Her father teaches her how to navigate. The illustration shows her using a sextant outside their house, by the sea, under her father’s observation. “Ellen worked for hours by the kitchen fire, learning the complicated calculations needed to navigate a ship.”

Ellen eventually marries a sea captain, Perkins Creesy. He becomes captain of a new clipper ship, built for speed.

If Ellen and Perkins could make the trip faster than any ship ever had, they would receive a bonus – and bragging rights as the best sailors in the world. It was the adventure Ellen had always dreamed of catching!

The author goes on to dramatize Ellen and Perkins’ record-breaking journey, using information from the log. There was plenty of adventure on the voyage, including a broken mast, and time spent in the Doldrums, with Ellen taking a daring new route to escape them.

In the end, on August 31, 1851, they reached their destination and brought passengers and cargo to the California Gold Rush faster than any other ship ever had.

An Author’s Note at the back gives more details of the journey, along with sources of more information for the curious reader.

This is a wonderful picture book about a woman who used her brains to become the best in the world!

traceyfern.com
emilyarnoldmccully.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing, by Leonard Marcus

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

randolph_caldecott_largeRandolph Caldecott

The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing

by Leonard Marcus

Frances Foster Books (Farrar Straus Giroux), 2013. 64 pages.
Starred Review

I got to hear Leonard Marcus speak about this material at the 75th Anniversary Caldecott Preconference last June in Chicago. There and in this book, he tells why Randolph Caldecott completely changed children’s books, and why his name is a fitting title for the award for the most distinguished picture book each year.

The book is filled with art work done by Caldecott and related images such as pictures of the places he lived or contemporary art work shown for contrast. Every double-page spread has at least two images, usually more. The format is large, like a picture book, but the text is detailed, like a chapter book.

The material is varied as well, with sketches interspersed with watercolors and photographs. The story told is the story of someone who started out as a bank clerk but eventually doodled his way to a distinguished career as an artist who will never be forgotten and who made books for children all the more accessible.

leonardmarcus.com
mackids.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Great American Dust Bowl, by Don Brown

Children's Nonfiction Review, Graphic Memoir, History, Starred Review 0

great_american_dust_bowl_largeThe Great American Dust Bowl

written and illustrated by Don Brown

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 80 pages.
Starred Review

When I see a history book for kids presented in comic book form, full of facts and graphic details, I think, “Goodness! Why don’t they all do it this way?” I can’t call it a graphic novel, but it’s a graphic history book. It’s in comic book form and doesn’t only tell you what the Dust Bowl was like, it also shows you.

I’ve heard a lot about the dust bowl. But now, with the aid of these pictures, I feel like I know what it was like to experience it.

Don Brown gives us an overarching view, even giving the factors that built up to it, but he also focuses in on the experiences of people. He shows how small people and cars and telephone poles were compared to the clouds of dust. The page about bugs has quite a gross-out factor:

Bugs that should have died in colder, wetter weather or been eaten by birds and bats killed by the drought now turned up everywhere. Centipedes crawled across ceilings and walls, tarantulas marched across kitchens, and black widow spiders lurked in corncribs and woodsheds.

“The ants were so thick and so bad that you could swipe handfuls of them off the table and still have more ants on the table.”

The picture with that shows the woman who is speaking looking askance at a table covered with ants.

There’s a dramatic page, mostly filled with a dust cloud, dwarfing a car and telephone poles. The words written in wavy lines across the cloud say:

Storms could blow for days and be immediately followed by another and another, making for unrelenting blows for weeks on end.

Raging, grit-filled winds shattered windows and scoured the paint off houses and cars.

Trains derailed. Telephone poles were knocked to the ground.

Altogether, Don Brown gives readers vivid detail about the Dust Bowl, and they understand some of the causes and the scope of the problem. (I had never realized before that during that time, even New York City got hit with a dust storm that made lights necessary during daylight hours.) They even have some warnings that it could happen again.

The book is artistic as well. If you leaf through the pages, you notice right away that Don Brown has used different panel arrangements on each set of pages, and keeps the story varied and interesting.

This is history that will stick with you.

hmhbooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of A Little Book of Sloth, by Lucy Cooke

Children's Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review 0

little_book_of_sloth_largeA Little Book of Sloth
by Lucy Cooke

Margaret K. McElderry Books, New York, 2013. 64 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s children’s nonfiction at its incredibly cutest.

In a sleepy corner of Costa Rica there’s an upside-down world where sloth is a virtue and not a sin. A sanctuary – the first in the world – devoted to saving this much maligned animal.

Home to one hundred and fifty orphaned and injured sloths, Slothville is an idle idyll where the sloths’ every whim is catered for by the celebrated sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo.

This book reveals some of the secrets behind the sloth’s smile and introduces you to a handful of the sanctuary’s superstar sloths. I think we have much to learn from their mellow ways. So take a break from the hectic world around you, kick back, relax, and enjoy hanging with the sloths.

The picture-book-sized pages in this book feature large photographs of baby sloths. Baby sloths are cute. Very cute. Along the way, we learn lots of facts about sloths, like the two main types of sloths and how much of their lives they spend resting (70%). Did you know that sloths aren’t monkeys or bears, but Xenarthrans? I didn’t until I read this book.

Sloths are born needing hugs, so orphaned sloths are given a stuffed toy to hug in place of their missing mother. We get to see pictures of Mateo trying to decide in a basket of stuffies, before he settles on Mr. Moo, a stuffed terry cow. We’re told, “If any of the other baby sloths tries to sneak a Moo hug, a fight breaks out – a very, very slow fight, in which the winner is the last sloth to stay awake.”

This book is hard to resist, simply from all the pictures of the cuddling, laid back sloths. Reading it may be all it takes to get you to join the Sloth Appreciation Society.

slothville.com
slothsanctuary.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of An Eye for Art, Presented by the National Gallery of Art

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

eye_for_art_largeAn Eye for Art

Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work

presented by the National Gallery of Art

Chicago Review Press, 2013. 177 pages.
Starred Review

Here is a fabulous overview of great artists and their work. I ended up reading it by looking at one artist per day. There are seven sections: Studying Nature, Exploring Places, Examining Portraits, Telling Stories, Observing Everyday Life, Questioning Traditions, and Playing with Space. Each section features several individual artists, with more than 50 featured in the book.

Each artist gets four pages. First, a title page, filled with the detail of the featured piece of art. When you turn the page, you get an oversized double-page spread that includes a picture of the entire work of art, usually a picture of the artist, and information about the artist and what they did that was notable in the work of art. Sometimes more than one work of art is included.

The final page on each author has either “explore more,” “try this,” or “another view.” “Explore more” looks at more of the artist’s work and suggests a way kids can explore that idea. Some examples are “Keep a cloud journal of your own” or “Make a self-portrait.” “Try this” also springboards from the work of art to project ideas. Examples here include “Create a colorful collage” or “Leaf rubbing.” “Another view” takes a look at another artist who did something similar to the featured artist. The text compares with the original artist and gives the reader a broader view of that trend in art.

This book is fascinating, beautiful, and informative. The cover explains that it includes 40 activities, so it is also inspiring. This is a wonderful book for a school library or a home collection or anyone who’s interested in art.

nga.gov
chicagoreviewpress.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design, by Chip Kidd

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

go_largeGo

A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design

by Chip Kidd

Workman Publishing, New York, 2013. 150 pages.
Starred Review

Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design is a wonderfully visual introduction to all that goes into graphic design. Chip Kidd takes the approach that everyone is a designer, and he teaches the reader to be more conscious of design decisions, along with the effects they have.

He begins with an overview of design in general and graphic design in particular. He goes on to look at specific elements of graphic design: Form, Typography, Content, and Concept. Each element is looked at in great detail, and with lots of examples for each aspect. For example, under Form, he looks at things like Scale, Image Quality, Symmetry/Asymmetry, and Color Theory, to name just a few. Absolutely every concept has an example. There are no pages in this book consisting only of plain type.

Many of Chip Kidd’s book cover designs are featured in the book, showing that he really does this professionally, and giving examples of what works and the rationale behind them. But those are by no means the only examples.

The book finishes with 10 Design Projects for kids to try on their own, thus giving them a way to use the concepts they’ve learned. What’s more, he asks them to send copies of their projects to his website, gothebook.com, so not only are they encouraged to be creative, they get ideas for how to be creative, and they get to show off their creativity.

gothebook.com
Chipkidd.com
workman.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of What’s Your Favorite Animal? by Eric Carle and Friends

Art, Children's Nonfiction Review, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

whats_your_favorite_animal_largeWhat’s Your Favorite Animal?

by Eric Carle and Friends

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2014. 36 pages.
Starred Review

What’s Your Favorite Animal? is simply good fun. A collection of 14 fabulous illustrators of children’s books answered that question and provided a picture to go with it.

Many, such as Eric Carle, Peter Sis, Peter McCarty, Steven Kellogg, Susan Jeffers, and Erin Stead, give us a little story explaining their choice. Steve Kellogg says, “My older sister had claimed horses as her favorite animal, so I chose cows.” Erin Stead tells us, “I like how penguins seem confidently awkward on land but then glide so swiftly and expertly underwater.” Peter Sis gives us a heart-warming story of blue carp at Christmas time in the Czech Republic.

Nick Bruel goes with cartoon panels, telling us about the charms of octopuses – until Bad Kitty interferes. Rosemary Wells also uses panels, to show us the favored positions of a dog on my bed. Tom Lichtenheld gives us a limerick about giraffes.

I think my favorite picture is Jon Klassen’s duck. Those eyes. Classic Klassen.

The rest are quite short. Chris Raschka’s lovely snail, Lane Smith’s show-off elephant, and Lucy Cousins’ beautiful leopard are simply explained. But shortest of all is the entry by Mo Willems, with a picture of a snake with a bump in the middle: “My favorite animal is an Amazonian Neotropical Lower River Tink-Tink. (It is also this snake’s favorite animal.”

This would require time for discussion in a storytime, and I think would work better shared one-on-one, or with a child to pore over in private. An elementary school art class could have a good time with it. Of course, it begs the question, “What is your favorite animal?”

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of To Dare Mighty Things, by Doreen Rappaport

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

To Dare Mighty Things

The Life of Theodore Roosevelt

by Doreen Rappaport
illustrated by C. F. Payne

Disney Hyperion Books, New York, 2013. 44 pages.
Starred Review

This book does exactly what a picture book biography should do. It gives the reader a fantastic introduction to the life of a great man. There are big, beautiful pictures, showing active scenes. The text covers the highlights of his life, beginning with his curious childhood. I especially like the quotations featured on each page, in large bold print.

Here’s text from a two-page spread about his childhood. The quotations are much larger than the rest of the text.

Teedie stuffed hedgehogs into drawers.
Sometimes they escaped.
Guests were warned to check water pitchers for snakes before pouring.

“He has to be watched all the time,” his mother told his father.

He illustrated and wrote books about ants, spiders, ladybugs, fireflies, hawks, minnows, and crayfish.
His fingers were always stained with ink.
He collected animal and bird specimens and created a museum in his room.
He smelled. The whole house smelled.

“All growing boys tend to be grubby; but the ornithological boy is the grubbiest of all.”

Of course, with the cover image simply the head of Theodore Roosevelt, I’d love to see people pose with the book in front of their face.

This is an accessible book for young children, giving them an overview of Theodore Roosevelt’s life and work in a beautiful package that will catch anyone’s interest.

doreenrappaport.com
cfpayne.com
disneyhyperionbooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Shahnameh, retold by Elizabeth Laird

Children's Nonfiction Review, Folk Tales 0

Shahnameh

The Persian Book of Kings

retold by Elizabeth Laird
illustrated by Shirin Adl

Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2012. 135 pages.

I loved fairy tales when I was a child. This book contains stories in the fairy tale style that I’ve never heard before.

This is from the Introduction:

Iran (often known as Persia in the west) is a land of stories. There are so many that they could fill hundreds of books and take years to tell. Some of the best of them are found in the Shahnameh, or “Book of Kings,” a very long poem which was written a thousand years ago by a great Persian poet called Ferdowsi.

People in Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and all over the mountainous lands of Central Asia know the stories of the Shahnameh. They have told and retold them through the centuries, from one generation to the next. Professional storytellers recite Ferdowsi’s verses in tea houses by the roadside. Farmers relate them to each other as they rest in the shade of their fruit trees during the hot months of summer, and mothers and fathers tell them to their children as they huddle indoors round the fire in the cold of winter.

Iranians love to hear about what happened at the beginning of time, how the first kings ruled in glory, how the great age of heroes dawned, how champions like Sam, Zal and Rustam rode out on their fiery horses to fight wicked demons, and how brave women, like Rudabeh and Gordafarid, conquered the heroes’ hearts.

And that’s what you’ll find in this volume, tales of kings and heroes, battles, tricks, and love stories.

I’m not crazy about the art, but the simple flat style suits the subject matter, having a look of primitive art from ancient times, as well as plenty of floral decorations.

This book tells American children about folktales they may not have heard before.

franceslincoln.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of March, Book One, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Graphic Memoir, History, Starred Review 0

March
Book One

by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

Top Shelf Productions, 2013. 123 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Coretta Scott King Honor Book

This is not a graphic novel, it’s a graphic memoir, and all the contents are true. Congressman John Lewis tells about what it was like for him as a young man involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The comic book format combined with the personal remembrances give this book an immediacy that will stick with the reader.

There’s a frame that’s in place on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration. The congressman is telling two kids visiting his office what it was like when he was their age. And then he tells how he first heard about people speaking up for civil rights, and how he went to nonviolence training, participated in and organized sit-ins, and began the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

This is only Book One. There’s a sort of prologue scene crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the March on Washington. We don’t get that far in the story, though we do learn, right at the start, that of all the speakers that day, John Lewis is the only one who’s still around.

This graphic memoir makes history come alive in a dramatic way.

I’m reading it because it’s the last contender I hadn’t read for School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books, which starts next week. I’m not surprised to find some powerful reading here. It fits in well with the other contenders.

topshelfcomix.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.