On Story Bent

So historically I haven't always been able to make up my mind on Mother Goose rhymes, but after listening to some of the Stories are Soul Food podcast where Nate Wilson was talking (in one of the early eps) about the importance of rhyming books in developing a good ear for rhythm & for future storytelling etc., I got thinking on it again. Children need imagination food cultivating that sense of wonder & fostering the ability to see the world inside out and upside down and right side up. A sense of fitness and unfitness, and the absurdity and hilarity often popping between the two. Also ingraining the feel -- from even an early age -- of the rough edges of things. And I think all of that is something these early rhymes can uniquely supply. I really like the illustrations in this copy, sweetly and seamlessly flowing between people in Victorian garb and then tennis shoes. (I know that sounds corny but they actually do a really cute job.) There have to be 150+ rhymes, but my f...

This blog is for loved, less well loved, & even disliked books (in short, the good, the bad, & the ugly) & it's also totally biased, so making no apologies.  Anyway. The story of a child learning how to control his tongue & steer clear of bad words, I thought this one looked kinda cute & promising. I know it's supposed to be taken in a lighthearted vein -- & I expect my child to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff -- but for this particular age 1) I wasn't entirely happy about the prominence of the gardener-wizard solving the whole problem (esp. without self-control premiering at all) & then 2) his solution being to just replace the Bad Word with Polite Fillers. (I'm actually more of the camp that a bit of strong language -- not irreverent -- is sometimes called for too, so there's that.) And I'm certainly not against funny British-isms, but two of the minced (replacement) oaths they DO use in here ("zounds and gadzooks...

An action-adventure story published in 1899, this hit the bestsellers list in 1900 and became the most successful popular novel in America between Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Gone with the Wind (1936). I think I first discovered it through the rabbit trail of my love for Howard Pyle's school of illustration (or Johnston's other Civil War historical fiction). There should still be plenty of old copies lying around, but you can find new copies inexpensively on Amazon and it's also available on Gutenberg if you'd like to check it out here . Before we go further, a short summary: Set in Virginia round Jamestown in 1621 and 1622, Captain Ralph Percy marries a lady newly arrived aboard ship from England, unaware that she is a runaway ward of James I. In due course, the villain of the piece makes his appearance and we see the terror of what she was flying from -- the lascivious and appropriately named, Lord Carnal, favorite of the King. Sword play, daring deeds, and wild ...

From the dust jacket summary: "A is for Augustus, emperor of Rome.... And so begins this lovely journey through the Nativity story, using the letters of the alphabet to highlight the people, places, and events associated with the birth of Jesus. Graceful couplets are paired with richly textured mixed-media collages to create a warm, yet reverent depiction of the first Christmas."   Another of my top favorites, I remember this one from when I was little -- so much so that I was still able to mentally conjure up the title recently and find it. :) From A to Z (for Zest and living life with joy), the words are lilting and lovely. It's like a waltz, where the entire thing is just beautiful. I'm so happy to have it in our growing Advent book collection! This one apparently goes in and out of print (I was able to buy a new hard back copy for around $10 last year), so it's worth keeping an eye on it. For toddlers and up Reviewed for The Literary Christmas Reading Challeng...

This book was a ginormous part of my childhood and is still one of my three top favorite Christmas picture books. Possibly my tip top favorite. (It's a close call and I really can't pick one for the honor, but this sure comes mighty close.) (Please overlook any fuzziness in the pictures, I was working with some tricky lighting but really wanted you to get a little taste. ;)) The summary is simple: a group of carolers comes into a tiny little community and, family by family, the residents join them. Each stop is accompanied with the first verse of a different traditional carol and an artfully done cutaway scene of the Nativity story.  The illustrations are so colorful and endlessly fascinating, packed with all sorts of details. Looking at it now -- with the families of all different sizes and with different cultural heritages, family traditions, activities, etc -- I'm realizing it was actually one of the first books to shape my understanding of just how huge Christmas is: ...

From the dust jacket: "Here, depicted in loving detail, is Christmas celebrated at the beginning of [the 20th] century in England, indoors and out, upstairs and downstairs... Family and friends gather at the large, comfortable house in the country, and the festivities begin! What bustle and fun there is from Christmas Day and its lavish plum-pudding dinner on through the holidays that follow, with activities galore for one and all. Riding to hounds, ice skating on the pond, dancing at the great, fancy dress ball, watching the pantomime, playing Blindman's Buff--all this and much more springs to life in John Goodall's exquisitely executed watercolor paintings. As he did in An Edwardian Summer , Mr. Goodall portrays an era now long gone. This is a remarkable recreation of a special time, a special way of life, and an invitation to join in a spirit of joy that transcends time itself." While the name Goodall rings a bell, I just recently discovered this immersive, wordle...

This is a cute classic -- the story of a Christmas tree that keeps getting lopped smaller and smaller, finding it's way around the neighborhood and spreading good cheer. It's a recent addition to our family library and hasn't quite hit the top tier of favorites yet, but the rhyming text is fun to read and gives lots of room for using different dramatic voices. :) In a spirit of complete honesty, the main sticky bit is that it uses a couple phrases once each, 'good heavens' and 'jolly, by golly', which I agree are pretty innocuous on a scale, but I try not to use in toddler level reading. Generally it'd be easy to just drop them, but in this case (to paraphrase Wodehouse) it plays merry havoc with the rhythm of the thing. xD Anyhow, that quibble might not bother other folks at all, and it's obviously stood the test of time and earned its classic status. If I was using the star system I'd say four out of five stars. Now I didn't grow up on The ...

From the author's note at the beginning: "At Chrismastime, in the New Hampshire town where I live, it is traditional for white electric candles to be put in house windows and in the windows of the Baptist Church. It is a beautiful sight. But the early residents of this New England town and other villages weren't always so festive. [some early settlers] tended to avoid any observance of the holiday whatsoever. In fact, one source tells of an Irishman being chased out of a New England town in 1755 because he was 'a Christmas Man.' All of this set me to thinking, 'What might have happened in the early 1800s if a family accustomed to celebrating Christmas moved into a New England town? Using historical fact and my research as a departure point, I began to imagine that it could have happened this way..." I grew up with this story and it's just delightful. Tomie dePaola is, of course, well known in picture book circles and this one fits right in with his be...

 "When Pa decided at the last moment to set out for California to claim his share of the fabled gold, Minnie just knew she couldn't bear being left behind in quiet old St. Joe with her spinster Aunt Addie. The trail west was a trail of bones, she'd heard, but regardless, one bright sunshiny morning Minnie Weldon took leave of her pretty blue and white bedroom with its Rob Peter quilt and starched curtains and stowed away behind the flour barrel in the big covered wagon.  "Minnie took a gamble, a rash one at that, and Pa nearly turned back when she finally climbed out of the wagon. But it also won Minnie a whole new life in the vast freedom of the prairies, the arduous crossing of the Rockies, and at last the descent into the wild hurly-burly of San Francisco at the height of the Gold Rush. There, for a time, Minnie had to survive by her wits alone and in the process of doing so amassed her own crock of gold." (from the dust jacket) I distinctly remember reading T...

I'm SO excited about these!! Ok, so this is a little departure from my normal model, but I'm about to loan these out and wanted to write this up while I still had them. So far I did the in-depth page by page skim for tone and content thing, but they were definitely so good that some day I'd like to read them personally and write up proper individual reviews. They're lighthearted -- actually very well written -- entertaining action mysteries. Relevant, but historically respectful (I'm a big stickler on that, especially when it comes to the ancient world where they had such different thought paradigms etc), not corny, and definitely not stuffy. They're FUN! :)  It's challenging to find good Egyptian historical fiction period, so this is just a win win win and you can understand my excitement. Really hoping my little history class will enjoy them!  So far there are four in the series: 1) Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll 2) Mystery of the Egyptian Amulet 3) Zet an...

So... I fully know it's heretical in some circles, but I can cheerfully admit I'm not always the biggest fan of Margaret Wise Brown. (That being said, there's a place for most everything and there is an endearing anthology of some of her little known children's poems that I'd like to find. And I may, may even slowly be coming round to start thinking about appreciating a certain astronomical rhyming bedtime book on which I've had strong feelings for years. ;-)) But we're here to talk about Little Fur Family, which is also a classic, and charming, and wistfully, enchantingly sweet. The funny thing is it's one of those that goes waaaaaaaaay back into my very earliest memories, checking piles out from the library (or rather, digging through the library basket) as a wee thing, but my parents never actually purchased it, so when I hunted it up for Princess E, I was flabbergasted to find out it was by MWB! (I honestly don't know why I was surprised,...

In the interest of waking up and revitalizing this blog, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet, but the long and the short of it is, the little princess has recently Come of Story Time Age (I know, I know, that can start waaaaaaay earlier, so more on that at another time in another place), but as I was saying, come story time, she always seems to grab this one and it generally appears near the top of the stack. The text is fairly prosaic, though does nicely build tension and has some fun onomatopoeia (ha! I've tried to work out a way to use that word for a long time ;D), but as always, the pictures are deeply worth reveling in and alive with action. And we love studying our African animals around here and it's so fun to see Princess E enjoy and go through naming them all as we read. So yes, all in all a winner!