Review of Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Change Sings

A Children’s Anthem

by Amanda Gorman
pictures by Loren Long

Viking, 2021. 32 pages.
Review written November 16, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

I’m not usually a fan of picture books that simply try to present an uplifting idea, but this book is something special, and I can’t resist Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman’s words.

We begin with a girl who looks like a young Amanda Gorman sitting and strumming a guitar.

I can hear change humming
In its loudest, proudest song.

I don’t fear change coming,
And so I sing along.

The pictures show the girl enlisting other kids to help make a difference — both playing instruments and cleaning up city streets and playgrounds.

They end up with a diverse cast doing good things and forming a joyful parade.

And I can’t really do it justice in a description. Check out this book and see if you aren’t uplifted, empowered, and filled with hope.

It’s about coming together, doing good, and making music together where everyone is welcome.

Buy from Amazon.com

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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of I Never Saw Another Butterfly, edited by Hana Volavková

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942 – 1944

Edited by Hana Volavková
Expanded Second Edition by the United States Holocaust Museum

Schocken Books, 1993. 106 pages.
Review written July 22, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

I found this book in good condition, hidden in the children’s nonfiction section of our library. It’s a thin paperback, and not many had noticed it. Besides, it’s a thin book and doesn’t draw the eye. But instead of weeding it from our collection, I was pulled in. I checked it out and read a few poems a day while the library was closed.

This book is a collection of poems and artwork created by children who were incarcerated in the town of Terezin, a ghetto in the Czech Republic during World War II. Jews were sent there supposedly for their safety, but as a stop on the way to extermination camps.

There’s a description of the history of Terezin and what life was like there at the front. At the back, an index tells what happened to the children who created the art and poetry. Most died in the camps, though a few escaped.

Something that made Terezin remarkable, though, was that some teachers decided to encourage the children to write and draw about their experiences. And their work, miraculously, has been preserved.

If you think about the words and pictures in this book much at all, they’re heart-wrenching. Reading it felt like a small way to honor these children, who experienced things no child should ever have to deal with.

Buy from Amazon.com

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 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.

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of In the Woods, by David Elliott, illustrated by Rob Dunlavey

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry 0

In the Woods

by David Elliott
illustrated by Rob Dunlavey

Candlewick Press, 2020. 36 pages.
Review written July 7, 2020, from a library book

In the Woods is a book of poems about fifteen creatures that live in the woods, accompanied by large, beautiful paintings.

My favorites are the short and snappy ones. Such as:

The SKUNK

Give the skunk
a lot of
room, unless
you care for
strong perfume.

The PORCUPINE

Does not hurry.
Never scampers.
Will not scurry.

Beware this surface nonchalance;
when rushed, she gives
a barbed response.

The longer poems are nice, too, and none of them are terribly long. These poems nicely celebrate the woodland world.

In the back there are two pages of “Notes about the Animals” with a little more information. So this is a beginning science book as well as a beginning poetry book.

candlewick.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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 book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Ink Knows No Borders, edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond

Poetry, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Ink Knows No Borders

Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience

edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond
foreword by Javier Zamora
afterword by Emtithal Mahmoud

Seven Stories Press, 2019. 183 pages.
Review written May 18, 2020, from a library book
Starred Review

Ink Knows No Borders is a collection sixty-four poems by skilled poets with stellar credentials – who are all immigrants or children of immigrants and many have been refugees.

Our library has this in the young adult section, but there’s no reason old adults wouldn’t enjoy these poems as well.

There’s a wide variety in the poems – in style, form, and the ethnicity of the authors. But they’re all well-crafted poems, and they’re all hard-hitting. They each succeed in shining a light on one aspect of the immigrant experience. I had considered very few of these aspects before.

I read this book slowly, a poem or two per day. They made me think – and they helped me feel empathy for those who have had to leave their homes to come to America.

Here’s a bit of what the editors say at the front of the book:

Ink Knows No Borders celebrates the lives of immigrants, refugees, exiles, and their families, who have for generations brought their creative spirits, resilience and resourcefulness, determination and hard work, to make this land a home. They have come from the Philippines, Iran, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Sudan, Haiti, Syria, you name it. Enter the place of these poems, bordered only by the porousness of paper, and you’ll find the world’s people striving and thriving on American soil….

These poets know that the pen holds a secret, a secret that can only be uncovered by putting that pen to paper, in a crowded coffee shop or some solitary place, maybe in the middle of night or when the dawn won’t let you sleep, inspired, as you are, by birdsong or your own song. They know that “This story is mine to tell.” These lived stories, fire-bright and coal-hot acts of truth telling, are the poet’s birthright – and a human right.

Whether you were born in this country or another, whether you came here with the help of a “coyote,” crammed in a too-small boat, or with a visa and papers in order, whatever your skin color or first language may be, whomever you love, writing poems is a way to express your most authentic truths, the physical ache of despair, the mountaintop shout of your joy. Writing poetry will help you realize that you are stronger than you thought you were and that within your tenderness is your fortitude.

Not only does ink know no borders; neither does the heart.

patricevecchione.com
sevenstories.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/ink_knows_no_borders.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 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Cast Away, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Cast Away

Poems for Our Time

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins), 2020. 159 pages.
Starred Review
Review written March 6, 2020, from a library book

This is a book of poems about trash. And I was surprised, but it made me want to write poems about trash, too. In fact, I will never look at things thrown by the side of the road the same way.

In the Introduction, Naomi Shihab Nye writes about her compulsion to pick up trash. She makes a habit of going out and cleaning up her spaces. And other spaces in her neighborhood. And even spaces where she visits.

And then she writes poems about it. Here are a few short ones.

Two

Two white buttons
not matching
in hot white gravel
dreaming of
shirts

Junk Mail

The great poet
William Stanley Merwin
known as W. S.
wrote first drafts of his poems
on junk mail envelopes
plucked from the garbage
so he never had to worry
about wasting paper
or being perfect

Most of the poems are longer than these. And most either make you smile or make you think.

I enjoyed this book, reading several poems per day. I will not look at things thrown out the same way again. I’m even thinking maybe it’s time to pick up some of the detritus on the edges of my local lake.

My favorite part of the book, though, is at the back, called “Ideas for Writing, Recycling, Reclaiming.” After reading all the poems about things thrown away, I was ready for ideas about getting out and cleaning up – and then writing about it. Here’s the second idea listed, after the first idea of ways to equip yourself to get out and pick up trash:

Write about what you find. You learn a lot about human nature while doing this. Why do people throw certain things away? What do these leavings tell you about your neighbors? Imagine the litterer. Create a character study from everything you find on one day, as if it all came from one person. Or write a story including 5-10 of the items you find.

Further ideas involve ways of including other people as well as further writing prompts. I also like this one: “Write a letter to a particular piece of trash.”

The final paragraph of this section is something she’s shown to be true with the entire book:

It’s never too late to make things better. Understanding them more might help.

harpercollinschildrens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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 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.

What did you think of this book?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Animal Albums from A to Z, by Cece Bell

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Animal Albums

from A to Z

by Cece Bell

Walker Books, 2024. 72 pages.
Review written April 23, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is seriously the silliest serious silly children’s book I have seen in a long long time.

And oh my goodness — that’s what I thought before I found the QR code leading to the YouTube channel featuring performances of all the songs. (Oh wait. It looks like only four of the songs are up when I’m writing this. But I hope more will come.)

The book is played completely straight. We’ve got an intro at the front that the author is sharing her obsession with us. That page is just too good – so let me share how it begins:

I love finding and acquiring old albums, especially those created by animal musicians. The “animal albums” in my treasured collection reflect the visionary work of several small human-run recording studios whose mission was to elevate and promote musical talents of all kinds. From the 1940s to the 1980s, these albums proved somewhat popular and profitable, with the animal musicians themselves experiencing varying degrees of success.

However, my research reveals that these albums were never easy for the studios to produce. The communication difficulties between humans and animals during the recording sessions were a constant challenge; the volatile disagreements regarding proper toileting procedures could not have helped, either. By the early 1980s these difficulties, coupled with a waning interest from audiences, both human and animal, signaled the beginning of the end of an extraordinary time in the history of music.

In this book, Cece Bell shares 26 gems from her supposed collection, including beautiful album cover art, with the lyrics to one of the songs printed out on the facing page. I couldn’t resist sharing this book with my coworkers, and more knowledgeable than me about album cover art, they’re pretty sure most of them reference classic albums.

Some of the albums are “Blame It on the Baloney” from the Barbershop Beagles, “A Little Lounge Music” from Leo Lionel, and Tubby Tapir’s “Let’s Twist Tomorrow and Tuesday Too.” The lyrics are completely silly in their seriousness. Here’s a bit from The One and Only Olga the Ostrich of Opera singing “The Oysters Are a Little Off”:

The oysters are a little off my love
There’s mold upon the bread
Let’s postpone the party
Let’s watch TV instead

The oysters are a little off my love
The house, a total mess
Our party days are numbered
Don’t cry, I must confess

It is I who left the oysters out
It is I who let them rot
A party wasn’t in the cards
My dear, it just was not

Or from Ivanna the Iguana, “I Am an Inspiration to Me”:

You might think
You’re as lovely as me
But we both know that’s simply a lie —
My skin is the best
My hair’s even better
The pink of my lips makes me sigh!

REFRAIN
I’m an inspiration to me, to me
I’m an inspiration to me!
I do everything perfectly —
I’m an inspiration to me.

As if all this weren’t enough, at the back there are bios of all 26 performing groups. My favorites are N and Y:

Nose flautist Natalia Numbat is beloved worldwide for mystical soundscapes that evoke the tinkling of mountain streams and the flushing of porcelain toilets. Numbat got her start touring with her siblings, the Numbat Nine. She left the group in 1982, stating, “My siblings couldn’t appreciate the subtle nuances that my nose fluting brought to the music.” Her song “Next November (I’ll Be Normal)” addresses that familial fissure.

Despite having no musical talent, siblings Yvette and Yohan Yak were pressured by their mother, Yolanda, to perform a yodeling act throughout the Carolinas in the early 1970s. Neither sibling was able to play the alphorn that Yolanda had ordered from a Sears catalog; what you hear on Yodelay-Yoo-Hoo was lifted (illegally) from Heilwig Schweizer’s instructional recording “The Alphorn and You.”

My first reaction was not being sure who this is for. Will kids get any of the references? But then I reflected that I have a stunted musical education and don’t get any of the references (just know enough to be pretty sure there are lots of references) — and I’m completely delighted with the cleverness and ingenuity and just plain silliness. And all that before I found the YouTube channel. I’m sure there are kids out there who will be delighted, too.

The fact that this book exists makes the world a better, and sillier, place.

YouTube channel
walkerbooksus.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/animal_albums.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of How to Write a Poem, by Kwame Alexander & Deanna Nikaido, art by Melissa Sweet

Children's Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

How to Write a Poem

by Kwame Alexander & Deanna Nikaido
art by Melissa Sweet

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 32 pages.
Review written June 27, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

This picture book is a wonderfully illustrated poem about poetry. It is appropriately fanciful, imaginative, and full of figurative language.

The collage illustrations show kids following the instructions on one level, and imaginative flights of fancy on the other level.

Each line or pair of lines gets a spread. Some of the lines I like best include:

Close your eyes, open the window of your mind, and climb out,
like a seedling reaching for tomorrow.

Next, listen to the grass,
the flowers,
the trees — anything
that’s friends with the sun.

Another wonderful image:

And dive deep into the silent sea of your imagination

to discover a cotton candy cavalcade of sounds —
words raining everywhere.

They tell us to let the words “dance with your joy, speak to your sorrow.”

As the book goes on, the kids who started out sitting in a circle of chairs end up playing in imaginative landscapes.

I have no doubt this book can inspire a new generation of poets. I hope we get it into their hands.

kwamealexander.com
deannanikaido.com
melissasweet.net
harpercollinschildrens.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/how_to_write_a_poem.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of My Name Is Jason. Mine Too, by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

Biography, Poetry, Teen Nonfiction 0

My Name Is Jason. Mine Too.

Our Story. Our Way.

by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin

Atheneum, 2022. (First created in 2009.)
Review written February 26, 2023, from a library book
2022 Cybils Finalist – Poetry Collections

My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. is from the same two Jasons who created the award-winning Ain’t Burned All the Bright. This book came first, and was recently reissued. It’s a memoir in poetry and art — about two young guys who moved to New York City after college. One dreamed of being a poet and the other an artist. They were twenty and twenty-two years old.

It wasn’t an easy road for them. They were hungry. Their parents weren’t thrilled. And they thought maybe they were making a big mistake.

Now, I’m an old fogey. There’s probably lots of symbolism in the art that I’m not getting. But together with the words, there’s something powerful going on here. The book paints a portrait of two guys, trying to be adults in the world and yet also make art.

And wow! One of them went on to become the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

I hope there will be more collaborations in the future with these two Jasons.

jasonwritesbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/my_name_is_jason.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Abuela, Don’t Forget Me, by Rex Ogle

Biography, Poetry, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

Abuela, Don’t Forget Me

by Rex Ogle

Norton Young Readers, 2022. 198 pages.
Review written February 26, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award Finalist

Rex Ogle is the author of the amazing Free Lunch and Punching Bag, both of which were Sonderbooks Stand-outs. Those books tell about his difficult childhood and difficult teen years, dealing with poverty and abuse.

This book doesn’t continue the story so much as look at the story again, this time in the light of the constant in his life — his abuela.

Abuela now has dementia. Rex Ogle wrote this about writing this book:

A few years ago, after a particularly difficult call with Abuela – in which she forgot who I was halfway through – I sat down and cried. Then I wrote out a few words. Those words led to fragments of sentences. Those fragments led to verses. Those verses formed a poem, and before I knew it, the memories were flying out of me, all of them in verse.

In the foreword to this book of poems, he writes this tribute:

My abuela is the woman who encouraged me to read and write at an early age. Who bought groceries when my mom was unemployed and we were living on food stamps. She is the woman who offered her home to me when the violence at my mom’s became too much. Abuela is the woman who got me off the streets after my father kicked me out for being gay. She told me if I wanted to be a novelist, then I should pursue it, that if I worked hard, I could accomplish anything. By every definition of the word, my grandmother is an angel. My own personal fairy godmother. Abuela is the only parent I’ve ever known who showed me truly unconditional love, kindness, and support.

This book is another version of the author’s childhood and teen years. In this version, his abuela shines as a bright and beautiful example of unselfish, generous, unconditional love – going to a kid who needed it.

nortonyoungreaders.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teen_Nonfiction/abuela_dont_forget_me.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman

Creativity, Nonfiction Review, Poetry, Starred Review 0

Call Us What We Carry

Poems

by Amanda Gorman

Viking, 2021. 228 pages.
Review written September 20, 2022, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

I don’t purchase a lot of poetry books, but I was so happy with this one, and I’ve spent the last few months reading a poem or two a day most days.

Amanda Gorman was the 2021 Inaugural Poet, and the stirring poem she recited that day, “The Hill We Climb,” is the final poem in this book.

The book is full of poems as moving and insightful as that one. Amanda Gorman has a way with words. The poems are full of rhymes and alliteration and word play, turning words as if they are pieces of glass, reflecting light in different ways.

These are poems about current times. Written during the thick of the pandemic, there’s plenty about pain and death and healing.

Here’s a small stanza where I underlined the middle line:

Perhaps our relationships are the very make of us,
For fellowship is both our nature & our necessity.
We are formed primarily by what we imagine.

There’s lots that’s lovely here, and lots that made me pause in meditation.

I’ll be honest — there’s a big section in the middle with “erasure poems” — poems made by erasing parts of a document, using what is left. I didn’t enjoy those poems as much. For me, they didn’t have the resonance and didn’t roll off the tongue as well. But I think she was going for the significance of the documents she chose — documents about slaves and about indigenous people treated horribly — and they definitely still have punch.

Altogether, this is a book of poems I’ll want to come back to. I’m glad I got my own copy.

We are enough,
Armed only
With our hands,
Open but unemptied,
Just like a blooming thing.
We walk into tomorrow,
Carrying nothing
But the world.

(p. 205, from “What We Carry”)

And from “The Hill We Climb”:

When day comes, we step out of the shade,
Aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light.
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

theamandagorman.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/call_us_what_we_carry.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.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

What did you think of this book?