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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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/little_nellys_big_book.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 The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett, by Tom Angleberger

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett

by Tom Angleberger

Amulet Books, New York, 2013. 224 pages.
Starred Review

This is now the fourth book about Origami Yoda and Tommy, Dwight, Kellen, Sara, and other kids at McQuarrie Middle School. Like the last one, this one ends with “To Be Continued,” but that didn’t bother me as much as it did in the third book. Now we’ve got a continuing saga going, and those who have read this far will certainly want to keep going.

In this book, the kids are up against the FunTime Education System, produced by Edu-Fun Educational Products. The school’s average standardized test scores were down, so all elective classes have been cancelled so they can watch “educational” videos with Professor FunTime and Gizmo the talking calculator.

This horror is too big for Origami Yoda alone, but they recruit a complete Origami Rebel Alliance to fight back and attempt to restore band, drama, and art. But can a band of rebel fighters take on the Empire of adults determined to bring up those test scores?

This installment in the series was huge fun. Tom Angleberger knows how to fill the reader with mind-numbing terror at the idea of FunTime, because although it’s over-the-top, there are far too many elements of truth in this scenario.

Imagine, if you will, another world, another galaxy, where there is someone like Mr. Good Clean Fun, the guy with the monkey puppet who comes to our assembly and sings songs about how to blow your nose. But this other-galaxy dude is actually worse — he lip-synchs all his songs and is named . . . Professor FunTime! And instead of a puppet, he has an animated, singing calculator.

And together they sang:

“FunTime! Every minute, every second will . . . help you FOCUS on the FUNdamentals!”

The weird dude said, “I’m Professor FunTime!”

And the calculator said, “And I’m Gizmo!”

“We’re here to help you PREP for your big test!”

“What does ‘PREP’ stand for, Professor?”

“‘Preparation and RE-view Period!'”

“Wouldn’t that be ‘PARP’?” asked Kellen.

Oh, the horror! Go, Origami Rebel Alliance!

This middle school series is full of good, clean Fun!

origamiyoda.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/jabba_the_puppet.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.

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

Review of Shadows, by Robin McKinley

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Shadows

by Robin McKinley

Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin), 2013. 356 pages.
Starred Review

The story starts like something out of a fairy tale: I hated my stepfather….

Okay, okay, I do know why I couldn’t deal with Val. It was the shadows. But in Newworld, where we’re all about science and you stop reading fairy tales about the time you learn to read (which always seemed really unfair), being afraid of shadows was silly and pathetic. Even if there were a lot of them and they didn’t seem to be the shadow of anything. (And if they were, whatever it was had way too many legs.) So I hated him for making me silly and pathetic. That’s scientifically logical, isn’t it?

Even the first time Maggie saw her stepfather, he was surrounded by shadows. But for some reason, her dog Mongo, who should know better, likes the shadows.

Val is from Oldworld, where they still have magic. But he never would have been allowed into Newworld if he had any magic. And Maggie can’t have any magic herself. Generations ago, the magic genes were neutralized from her family. And she has been scanned to make sure that was effective.

The problems in Oldworld are something called cobeys.

They are something like bulges, like bulges into our world from another, like hands beating against a curtain, and we do not worry unless they appear as a series… too many strong hands against an old curtain which may tear if the hands beat too hard.

But when Maggie suddenly discovers power to deal with a cobey that opens up around her, her new problems are with the authorities. For it seems there’s a lot more magic in Newworld — at least in the people Maggie cares about — than she ever knew.

I love all of Robin McKinley’s books. This one is very different from a typical fantasy tale. Who ever heard of a danger of too many shadows? And problems with boundaries between worlds?

There are places where the magic-working — including using origami and animals and shadows — seems a little vague and hard to figure out exactly what is happening. However, somehow I can handle that in Robin McKinley’s books where it might bother me in someone else’s. Perhaps because she always draws me completely in to her characters?

This book has magic and romance and danger. And an intriguing world, perhaps not as devoid of magic as the government thinks it is.

robinmckinley.com
robinmckinleysblog.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/shadows.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 my own copy, purchased via preorder on Amazon.com.

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 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.

Sonderling Sunday – Lost in the Sackgassen

Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge, Sonderling Sunday 5

It’s time for Sonderling Sunday! That time of the week when I play with language by looking at the German translation of children’s books, creating the phrase book you never knew you needed!

This week, we’re back with the lovely bizarre phrases of James Kennedy‘s The Order of Odd-Fish, Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge.

(Though does James Kennedy still exist?!? His latest blog post leaves some doubt.)

Last time, we left off on page 189, Seite 238 auf Deutsch.

I like this better in German, somehow:
“actors in costumes” = Schauspieler in Kostümen

“her eyes blazing” = ihre Augen glühten

“stalked off” = marschierte dann steifbeinig (“marched then stiff-boned”)

“glumly” = mürrisch

“babbling” = herausgesprudelt (“here-out-bubbled”)

“sneaky” = hinterhältig

“crowds” = Menschenmenge

“caught in snarls of traffic” = blieben häufiger im Verkehrsgewühl stecken

“baffled” = verblüfft

“suspected” = argwöhnen

This must have been fun to translate!
“Snoodsbottom” = Bilgental (“Bilge Valley”)

“hewn” = hineingehauen

“luminous fungus” = schimmernde Pilze und Flechten (“shimmering mushrooms and lichen”)

“gloomy” = dämmrig

“long lean man” = gro?er, schlanker Mann

“dead end” = Sackgasse (“sack-alley”)

“frustrating circles” = frustrierenden Kreisen

“She silently fumed” = Sie kochte vor Wut, blieb aber stumm
(“She cooked for anger, but stayed silent.”)

“Jo’s mood had soured” = Jos Laune gelitten hatte

“crammed” = überfüllte (“overfilled”)

“convoluted” = unübersichtliche (“un-oversightly”)

“creepers” = Kriechpflanzen (“creep-plants”)

“sweaty, dismal heat” = schwei?treibenden, widerlichen Hitze

“spiced with heavy incense” = von Weihrauch geschwängert (“from incense pregnant”)

I love the way in German this looks like a normal word:
“lizard-dogs” = Echsenhunden

“cobbled street” = Pflastersteine (“plaster-stones”)

“runners” = Kufen

“bounding past” = vorbeihetzten

“almost running them over” = sie fast umrempelten

“barking and howling” = bellend und heulend

“crouched” = kauerte

“shuddered” = fröstelte

I’m going to finish with this dramatic sentence:
“just as a horrible moistening sound came from behind her and a boneless arm wrapped itself up her leg.”
= Im selben Moment hörte sie hinter sich ein schreckliches schmatzendes Geräusch und ein knochenloser Arm schlang sich um ihr Bein.

May you have no occasions to cook for anger this week!

Review of My Bookstore, edited by Ronald Rice

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

My Bookstore

Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop

Introduction by Richard Russo
Edited by Ronald Rice and Booksellers Across America

Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York, 2012. 378 pages.
Starred Review

My Bookstore is a delight. I read it slowly, one essay per day. It would be a wonderful project to try to visit all the bookstores mentioned in this book, though it might take a lifetime.

The premise is simple. 82 American authors wrote an essay about their personal favorite independent bookstore. The essays are entertaining and delightful. Some talk about the power of reading, some about community, some about great book recommendations, some about wonderful family times.

Here’s what Richard Russo says in the introduction:

Many people love good bookstores, but writers? We completely lose our heads over them. We tell each other stories about them. We form lifelong, irrational attachments to our favorites….

…to me, bookstores, like my first one, remain places of genuine wonder. They fill me with both pride and humility when I come upon my own books in them. Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world’s longest, best, most thrilling conversation. The people who work in them will tell you who’s saying what. If you ask, they’ll tell you what Richard Russo’s up to in his new one, but more important, they’ll put in your hand something you just have to read, by someone you’ve never heard of, someone just now entering the conversation, who wants to talk to you about things that matter.

If you haven’t been in a good bookstore in a while, the book you now hold in your hand will welcome you, lovingly, home.

By reading this book, you can experience for yourself some of those stories that writers tell.

It seems wrong to have a link to Amazon after this review. However, I’m going to keep it there, but ask that my readers merely use Amazon as a “showroom.” Get the information about the book, current price, length, reader reviews. Then go find an independent bookstore and buy yourself a copy. Even though there’s only one of the stores in this book anywhere near me (and not so very near), I think I need to purchase a copy of this book before my next vacation and then start checking off stores.

It does have a list at the end of the stores by geographic location. This book is a celebration of books and people who love them.

blackdogandlevinthal.com

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

Buy from Amazon.com

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.