Review of Grandma and the Great Gourd, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Susy Pilgrim Waters

Animal Characters, Fantasy, Folk Tales, Picture Book Review, Readalouds 0

Grandma and the Great Gourd

A Bengali Folktale

retold by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters

A Neal Porter Book, Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a wonderful folktale, marvelously told. The pictures are exquisite, giving the flavor of India. The story is sprinkled with sound effects that aren’t ones native English speakers would naturally use. There’s the repetition of a folktale, and a lovely predictability — with a twist.

This is a book for school age kids, with the text on the long side for preschoolers. With that in mind, the telling is sure to engage their interest.

Here’s how it begins:

Once upon a time, in a little village in India, there lived an old woman whom everyone called Grandma. She loved gardening and had the best vegetable patch in the village.

Grandma lived by herself in a little hut at the edge of the village, next to a deep, dark jungle. At times she could hear herds of elephants lumbering on forest paths, thup-thup-thup, or giant lizards slithering over dry leaves, khash-khash.

She didn’t mind because she had two loyal dogs, Kalu and Bhulu, to protect her. They also helped her with garden chores.

When Grandma crosses the deep, dark forest to visit her daughter, she encounters three fierce animals who want to eat her up. But this is how that goes:

Grandma’s heart went dhip-dhip, but she didn’t let the fox see how scared she was.

“If you’re planning to have me for breakfast,” she said, “that’s a terrible idea. See how skinny I am? I’ll be a lot plumper on my way back from my daughter’s house because she’s such a good cook. You can eat me then, if you like.”

“That sounds good!” said the fox, and he let her go.

Of course, to get home after visiting her daughter, and indeed growing plump, Grandma must outwit the tiger, the bear, and the fox. Her plan works on the tiger and the bear, but the fox is more clever and confronts her. However, there’s a lovely satisfying ending, for which the groundwork was laid at the very start.

This has all that’s good about a folktale, including being one you’ll want to tell again and again.

mackids.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 Not Your Typical Dragon, by Dan Bar-el and Tim Bowers

Delightfully Silly, Fantasy, Picture Book Review 0

Not Your Typical Dragon

by Dan Bar-el
illustrated by Tim Bowers

Viking, 2013. 40 pages.

Big thanks to my co-worker, Kim, for booktalking this book at the elementary schools this year. Watching the Kindergarten and 1st grade classes roar with laughter just at the description, I had to take a closer look.

Crispin Blaze was born into a proud family of fire-breathing dragons.
“Every Blaze breathes fire,” explained his father. “I breathe fire. Your mother breathes fire. Tomorrow, when you turn seven, you’ll breathe fire, too.”

But when Crispin tries to light the birthday candles on his cake, he feels a tingling in his tummy, but fire does not come out. Instead, he breathes out whipped cream!

Crispin’s parents take him to the doctor, and there he breathes out band-aids. The doctor gives him medicine, but Crispin continues to breathe out silly (but oddly appropriate) things. As they seem more and more outrageous, each one is good for a laugh.

Crispin meets a knight who has been told he needs to fight a fire-breathing dragon. They work on the situation together. Things get a little hot, but there’s a lovely solution at the end, and Crispin and his family get to embrace the fact that he’s not your typical dragon.

The message of not necessarily meeting family expectations, but embracing who you are, is an old one. This book puts that message in a funny and fresh package.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/not_your_typical_dragon.html

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 Flora and the Flamingo, by Molly Idle

Animal Characters, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Flora and the Flamingo

by Molly Idle

Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

Flora and the Flamingo is a wordless picture book. So I can’t quote the book to tell you how delightful it is.

The story is simple. Doesn’t even use different settings. But you can look at it again and again. We’ve got a flamingo. We’ve got a flamingo-shaped little girl. The flamingo poses. The girl poses in imitation.

Flaps on several pages over both the flamingo and Flora give us more pictures and an additional sense of movement.

At first, the flamingo doesn’t seem too happy about Flora’s imitation. She falls down.

But the flamingo helps her up, and they begin posing together, and it flows into a lovely pas de deux, culminating in an exuberant leap into a pond.

Words don’t do the book justice. Check it out, look at it again and again, and share it with a child!

idleillustration.com
chroniclebooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/flora_and_the_flamingo.html

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 Little Nelly’s Big Book, by Pippa Goodhart and Andy Rowland

Animal Characters, Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review 0

Little Nelly’s Big Book

by Pippa Goodhart
illustrated by Andy Rowland

Bloomsbury, New York, 2012. 32 pages.

This book makes me laugh. Little Nelly, whom we can see is an elephant, looks in a book and learns that she is a mouse. She is gray. She has big ears. She has a skinny tail.

Nelly goes to find other mice in their home behind the wall, and they aren’t so sure, but they welcome her among them and are very kind.

Now, Granny Mouse looks on her computer and she says, “I found out that there are other mice like you. Most of them live far away, but some live in a zoo nearby.” Nelly and her friends move in with the Zoo Mice.

When Little Nelly’s actual mouse friend Micky looks in her book and learns that he’s really an elephant, we get the moral of the story:

Which just goes to show why books should always have pictures.

Kids are sure to enjoy this fun story of mistaken identity. They will get wholeheartedly behind the moral, too.

bloomsburykids.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 The Blessing Cup, by Patricia Polacco

Historical, Picture Book Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Blessing Cup

by Patricia Polacco

A Paula Wiseman Book (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), New York, 2013. 42 pages.
Starred Review

Patricia Polacco knows how to tell true stories with punch. This is a picture book for school age kids, with lots of text on each page. The story told is powerful, and will mesmerize readers and listeners.

The story begins when Patricia’s great-grandmother, Anna, was a little girl in Russia. Anna’s mother was given a beautiful china tea set for her wedding. The tea set had a blessing with it:

This tea set is magic. Anyone who drinks from it has a blessing from God. They will never know a day of hunger. Their lives will always have flavor. They will know love and joy . . . and they will never be poor.

I like when they explain that the blessings work:

And even though their lives were humble because there was never enough money, Anna’s papa would say to her, “Oh, there is rich and there is rich. We are richer than kings, and do you know why?” Then he and Anna chanted together, “Because we have each other!” Anna felt that in Roynovka everyone was rich. They had one another!

But then the Tsar’s soldiers come to Roynovka and they’re told they must leave Russia, along with all the Jews. On the long, hard journey, they bring the tea set. But Anna’s papa falls ill and almost dies.

However, a kind widowed doctor takes the family in and brought their father back to health. They called him Uncle Genya. But when Uncle Genya is told he cannot keep Jews in his house, he buys them tickets to America.

In gratitude, they leave the tea set with Uncle Genya – all except one cup. And that cup is handed down through the family, all the way to Patricia Polacco, with the blessing always recited along with it.

I can summarize the story, but of course you need to read it, in full, with the repeated blessing, in Patricia Polacco’s words, with Patricia Polacco’s illustrations. Again and again, she writes a story that packs an emotional punch.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/blessing_cup.html

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 Knit Your Bit, by Deborah Hopkinson and Steven Guarnaccia

Historical, History, Picture Book Review 0

Knit Your Bit

A World War I Story

by Deborah Hopkinson
illustrated by Steven Guarnaccia

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013. 32 pages.

Knit Your Bit is a historical fiction picture book. It’s based on the effort made by the American Red Cross during World War I to have people across the country “knit your bit” to provide soldiers in the trenches with warm clothes to get through the winter.

The picture book looks at a boy named Mikey and his sister Ellie. Their father has gone to war. Ellie decides right away to learn to knit for Pop, but Mikey thinks knitting is for girls. However, with the announcement of a Knitting Bee in Central Park and the girls saying that the boys are scared to learn, Mikey and two friends form a Boys’ Knitting Brigade to try to beat the girls.

The historical aspect of this picture book makes it extra interesting. I love the photos on the endpapers from actual World War I knitting groups, and the sheep that President Wilson kept on the White House lawn. An Author’s Note at the end gives more details, including a song that ends like this:

We are knitting for the boys over there;
It’s a sock or a sweater, or even better,
To do your bit and knit a square.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/knit_your_bit.html

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 Robomop, by Sean Taylor and Edel Rodriguez

Contemporary, Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Robomop

by Sean Taylor
pictures by Edel Rodriguez

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013. 40 pages.
Starred Review

This book is too fun. It’s a story of a Robomop with personality. He works cleaning a bathroom in a basement. He is completely stuck, because Robomops can’t get up stairs.

He comes up with clever plans to try to escape. Run over a potato chip wrapper so it sticks in his vent and makes an awful noise. Try to hide in a man’s duffel bag. Dance to the honky-tonk music the window washer plays, in hopes someone will sell him to the circus.

But they didn’t.
Oh dear. I was completely gloomy, and in a sad pickle.
How was I ever going to see the world, feel the sunshine, and fall in love?
I was stuck down there, well and truly, with an awful case of Robomop-basement-bathroom-blues.

But when the Inspector of Public Restrooms brings in a brand-new Bio-Morphic Bellebot Cleanerette, the Robomop finally leaves the basement restroom – to land in a trash can. But that’s not the end for him, and the happy ending is lovely.

The pictures in this book are done with print-making and a few muted hues, looking vaguely old-fashioned. The expressions are choice, and the picture when Robomop gets so excited at meeting the Cleanerette is sure to elicit roars of laughter. “I was overcome with excitement, so much that I had an odd small accident.” (He’s upside-down in a toilet.)

This book holds a story with a beginning, middle, and end that includes a character readers won’t soon forget.

seantaylorstories.com
edelrodriguez.com
drawger.com/edel
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/robomop.html

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 Crankee Doodle, by Tom Angleberger and Cece Bell

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review 0

Crankee Doodle

by Tom Angleberger
pictures by Cece Bell

Clarion Books, New York, 2013. 32 pages.

This one is just silly.

There are so many parts of the song “Yankee Doodle” that don’t make any sense. Turns out, they didn’t make sense to Yankee Doodle himself.

Here’s a section where he’s talking to his pony, who wants to go to town, and suggests he buy a feather for his hat:

First of all, why would I want to call my hat macaroni? I don’t want to call my hat anything! It’s just a hat! Second of all, why would putting a feather in my hat turn it into macaroni? It would still be a hat, not macaroni! Look at this hat! Does it look almost like macaroni to you? I don’t care how many feathers you put in it, it’s still just a hat. And besides, I don’t even like macaroni!

This picture book isn’t really for the preschool set, but for young school-age kids who may have wondered a few things about that silly song. But here’s hoping it doesn’t make them as cranky as this guy gets!

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/crankee_doodle.html

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 No Fits, Nelson! by Zachariah OHora

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

No Fits, Nilson!

by Zachariah OHora

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

I always love the books that turn the tables on a toddler’s world, and give them a chance to have a new perspective on their own propensities.

In this book, Amelia has a giant blue gorilla for a friend. The last page pictures him as a small stuffed toy in bed with her, but the bulk of the book is the way Amelia sees him: A giant blue companion.

They do everything together. But Nilson does have a problem with throwing fits.

However, Amelia’s on top of it. When she sees Nilson is frustrated, not getting what he wants, impatient, and about to throw a fit, she says “No fits, Nilson!” and gives him a reason to contain himself. “We’re having banana pancakes for breakfast!” “This is an ADVENTURE, not errands!”

The pictures are such fun, with Nilson’s mounting frustration and Amelia’s calm, but then happily enjoying the day together in between the fit-crises.

I especially love the page after Nilson’s been promised banana ice cream on the way home.

Amelia covers Nilson’s mouth and stares him down with a gorilla eye lock, repeating the words banana ice cream over and over.

The picture shows tiny red words BANANA ICE CREAM over and over in a line between their eyes and between Amelia’s mouth and Nilson’s ears.

There’s a lovely climax when it turns out there’s no banana ice cream left for Amelia, and she’s the one in danger of throwing a fit. This time, Nilson is the one who saves the day and calms her down.

This book is perfect for any family whose child has ever acted like a giant gorilla. Marvellously cozy and quirky.

zohora.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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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 Lucky Ducklings, by Eva Moore and Nancy Carpenter

Contemporary, Picture Book Review 0

Lucky Ducklings
A True Rescue Story

by Eva Moore
pictures by Nancy Carpenter

Orchard Books, New York, 2013. 32 pages.

This book is a lovely tribute to Make Way for Ducklings, using a true story and an equally cute family of ducklings. A note at the front explains the true story from an incident that happened in June 2000, which the book is based on. Five ducklings fell through a storm grate and had to be rescued by people.

But Eva Moore gives the ducklings names – Pippin, Bippin, Tippin, Dippin, and Little Joe. She shows us the walk from Mama Duck’s perspective. She’s walking along proudly, stepping over the grate, and all five ducklings fall right through.

When the firemen are called, they can’t get the grate up. But then they use a cable from a truck, while someone holds back Mama Duck. Then the firemen can climb down and rescue all five ducklings.

It’s all dramatized beautifully, with multiple pictures of adorable ducklings, and plenty of places for the reader to Quack. To get the family all the way to the park, there’s even a scene where a fireman holds back traffic while Mama Duck hurries to reunite with her rescued babies.

This doesn’t replace Make Way for Ducklings, but it’s a lovely book, more modern and shorter, to read alongside the old classic. Some things, like families of ducks, remain the same.

scholastic.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/lucky_ducklings.html

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.