Review of The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, by Robert Arthur

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Mystery, Old Favorites, Starred Review 0

stuttering_parrot_largeAlfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in

The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot

by Robert Arthur

Random House, New York, 1964. 179 pages.
Starred Review

This is the second book in The Three Investigators series, but the fourth I’ve read in my current rereading spree. I remembered this as being my favorite, and on rereading it, I have to say that’s still true. The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, more than most of the others, is a puzzle-mystery. There are seven cryptic clues leading step-by-step to treasure. The scenario may not be completely realistic, but it is definitely a lot of fun.

They’re also working out some of the themes of The Three Investigators. This is the book that introduces the Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup. They also discover a down side to traveling in a gold-plated Rolls Royce. It’s highly noticeable and easy to follow.

As in the other books, there’s physical danger to the boys. It seems there’s always at least one person who carries an ethnic stereotype. Maybe they were trying to include a wide variety of cultures in the books? The bully Skinny Norris makes a mercifully brief appearance.

Mostly, this is a chance for Jupiter Jones to display his powers of deduction as the reader puzzles along with the group all that follows when the boys try to find a missing parrot – that stutters.

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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 an interlibrary loan borrowed via 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

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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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 Interrupted Tale, by Maryrose Wood

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Historical, Humorous, Starred Review 0

interrupted_tale_largeThe Interrupted Tale

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Book 4

by Maryrose Wood
read by Katherine Kellgren

Listening Library, 2013. 8 hours, 19 minutes on 7 compact discs.
Starred Review

Brava! Another installment in the incredible series about The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place. This series makes fabulous listening. I laughed and laughed during my commute, my only regret being that in my own car I had no one to share the joke with, and since I listened to it, I can’t quote hilarious bits in this review.

The plot is outrageous, but told in all seriousness. Katherine Kellgren’s proper British accent strikes exactly the right note.

In this fourth book, mysteries that have followed the Incorrigibles through the entire series are beginning to be uncovered. For the bulk of this book their governess, Penelope Lumley, is invited back to her former home, the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, just in time to learn of an insidious plot to change it into the Quinzey School for Miserable Girls.

Meanwhile, the charming Simon Harley-Dickinson, he of the spark of genius, has been silent, captured by pirates, and the cannibal book from Lord Ashton’s library gains weighty importance.

The plot is wild and unlikely – and oh, so much fun! The style reminds me of Lemony Snicket’s, only far more hopeful and uplifting. This is a series I highly recommend listening to, because you will appreciate its brilliance even more than if reading it on your own.

maryrosewood.com
booksontape.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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Black and Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review 0

black_and_blue_magic_largeBlack and Blue Magic

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Atheneum, New York, 1975. 186 pages.
Starred Review

Well, my co-worker opened up the floodgates when he decided to order Three Investigators books via Interlibrary Loan. That got me thinking about the other books I loved in childhood but that are no longer in print.

Many other books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder are still in print, so I don’t know why Black and Blue Magic is not among them. It’s the one I checked out from the library over and over again and dearly loved.

And it was just as good as I remembered it! (A lot shorter than I remembered it, but just as good!) Harry Houdini Marco is clumsy as can be, always tripping or running into things. His mother says he’s just still growing, but all he knows is that he’s clumsy. And Harry believes that if his father were still alive, Harry would be a disappointment to him. Harry’s father was a skilled magician, and wanted Harry to be the same, which explains the name he was given. He even brought him to the Great Swami and got a prophecy that Harry’s “magic will be of a very special kind.” But Harry has tried doing magic tricks, and he’s just not coordinated enough.

But then one day Harry sees a little man who’s clumsy lose his big suitcase on the bus. Harry gets off the bus and takes it to him. The man’s a salesman, so Harry recommends his mother’s boarding house. Before the man leaves, he gives Harry a magical reward. It’s an ointment, and when Harry puts a drop on each shoulder, he sprouts wings!

Harry has to learn how to use the wings safely and unobtrusively. He’s accidentally seen by a few people, and it’s quite amusing the conclusions those people draw.

This book is wonderful because there’s magic and adventure combined with character growth and personal problems that Harry is able to solve.

It’s a delightful book about a good-hearted kid who finds out that special magic might make him a little black and blue. And it definitely stands the test of time.

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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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

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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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 Mating Season, by P. G. Wodehouse

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Humorous, Starred Review 0

mating_season_largeThe Mating Season

by P. G. Wodehouse
narrated by Jonathan Cecil

Sound Library (AudioGO), 1992. 6 hrs 51 min on 6 CDs.
Starred Review

I keep exclaiming on how much fun Jeeves & Wooster CDs are to listen to in the car. This one had delightfully absurd situations.

Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia has asked him to visit Deverill Hall, and he dare not disobey. He is to participate in a concert in the village, which is being organized by the vicar’s niece, Bertie’s good friend Corkie, who is also a Hollywood star. Meanwhile, Gussie Fink-Nottle has been told to visit Deverill Hall by his fiancé, Madeleine Basset. Living at the hall is Esmond Haddock and his five aunts.

As if that situation alone weren’t enough, Bertie ends up going to Deverill Hall pretending to be Gussie, and Gussie comes later, pretending to be Bertie. Once at the hall, romances are all tangled up. Corkie loves Esmond, but he is too cowed by his aunts. Gussie falls for Corkie, which puts Bertie in peril of being engaged to Madeleine Basset. And Corkie’s brother, Catsmeat, is in love with Gertrude Wentworth, a daughter of one of Esmond’s aunts. But Catsmeat fears that Gertrude is falling for Esmond, who is trying to make Corkie jealous.

As usual, there’s a grand comical mess, and only Jeeves can possibly hope to straighten it all out. Along the way, we get to hear Bertie’s hilarious understatements and apt similes all told in Jonathan Cecil’s wonderfully versatile British accent. He’s consistent in using different voices for each of the many characters, so you can tell who is speaking by just listening to his voice. A marvelously entertaining audiobook.

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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 audiobook 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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

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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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 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 King for a Day, by Rukhsana Khan and Christiane Krömer

Contemporary, Cross Cultural, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

king_for_a_day_largeKing for a Day

by Rukhsana Khan
illustrations by Christiane Krömer

Lee & Low Books, New York, 2013. 32 pages.
Starred Review

Recently, Betsy Bird of School Library Journal’s Fuse 8 blog did a post about “casual diversity” – books that include characters from diverse backgrounds, but where that isn’t the point of the story. Race or disability isn’t seen as a problem, it’s just the way the world is.

Shortly after reading that post, I read King for a Day and was delighted to find such a wonderful example.

The story is about Basant, a kite festival that happens every year in Lahore, Pakistan, to celebrate the arrival of Spring. We focus on a boy, Malik, who has been planning for a long time to win the kite battles, to be king of Basant. He has one kite which he has crafted himself.

He flies his kite from the roof of his building. Right away, he comes up against a bully who lives nearby, who has a big, expensive kite. But Malik is triumphant. And the day continues, battling all kinds of colorful kites. The illustrator has beautifully created many different cloth kites for these pages.

Big kites, little kites, fancy and plain. Even kites made of old newspapers. Sometimes I catch them in groups. Making wide circles around clusters of kites, Falcon slashes through their strings.

For a while the kites fly where the wind carries them. When they land, they’ll belong to whoever finds them. But at least they will have tasted freedom.

Insha Allah, I really am king of Basant today!

So we have a wonderful story about a kid living in another culture tasting victory. But what takes this a step further is that Malik is in a wheelchair.

It’s never mentioned in the text, that is just the way Malik is. His sister helps him with the kite’s taking off and helps him gather the kites that come to their rooftop. His brother, down below, gathers kites that drift downward. They help Malik with things that need feet, but he is the mastermind and the chief kite battler.

The illustrations are beautifully done in collage, with a wonderful variety of kites, in particular. Simply a marvelous book.

rukhsanakhan.com
christianekromer.com
leeandlow.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.