Oh Mercy!

I'm not sure where I was when the Mercy Watson books hit the shelves in 2009 or so, but they have somehow missed my radar completely until very recently. At our local library, the children's librarian and I often chat book talk and she and I compare notes and ogle over illustrations together; I've even been able to pass on tips to her.  Anyway, she is the one who pulled out Mercy Watson to the Rescue and suggested my kids would like it.  I only checked the book out to be polite, without giving it much glance at the time.

But she was right.  My children—ages 2 thru 11—all love Mercy Watson! Who knew?!  They were written by the same talented Kate DiCamillo who gives us The Tale of Despereaux and illustrated by one of my children's favorites Chris Van Dusen… whose art is the closest thing to animation in a picture book you're ever going to see. (We love his A Camping Spree, Learning to Ski, and Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee).


Anyway, Mercy Watson, much like Stuart Little is an animal with human parents.  She is pleasant and plump and curious.  And, just like me, she has an affinity for toast "with a great deal of butter" which is brought up in every book. She is great fun and even funner are the old lady neighbors next door...

These books are FANTASTIC first chapter books.  They are short, highly illustrated, easily digestible, large font chapters. Yet, at a total of 75 pages or so, it could still be read in one sitting to a child out loud in about 15-20 minutes. What more could one want?! Children feel so awesome when they read such "mature" books and this is an excellent segue from picture books into that world. I'm so happy we found them.  After reading four out of the six in the series, I'm confident that I want to buy them all to have on hand for that perfect window of time when a child is ready for a bit more of a challenge than easy readers.  And being a sucker for "boxed sets," there happens to be an attractive gift option for a certain someone's upcoming Christmas gift: Mercy Watson Boxed Set: Adventures of a Porcine Wonder.  Superb.

Top Ten Classic Golden Book/Gift Combos

The best thing about Golden Books is that they are cheap!  The other excellent thing about Golden Books is that many of their classics are still in print. You have to look past much of the commercial titles at a store to find them, but they are readily available online. Books make excellent gifts for Christmas or birthdays… and children like them even better if they are accompanied by an actual toy. (For what it's worth, I feel just the same about toys as I do about books—looking for ones that inspire play, not ones that play for them—sturdy, excellent materials that'll last—quality over quantity). Having affordable, hardback books like the Golden ones, makes this a doable goal and here are some obvious and fun pairings I really like:


   with      
                                              The best first bath-time toy ever!

   with    
                                                  A real metal dump truck!

    with   
                                                   A high quality baby doll!

    with   
                                               Three bears wooden dress up!

   with    
                                               The plush Poky Little Puppy!

   with    
                                              Three pigs and a wolf finger puppets!

   with     
                                                 A lovely wooden animal train!

    with    
                                              Tawny Scrawny Lion cube puzzle!

    with   
                                                  A real, working stethoscope!

and the ultimate for firefighters everywhere:

   with    and
                                                     Fire chief dress up!                   The coolest ride-on toy ever!

The motherload list

Just an FYI that I changed the most popular post on this blog (which was "40 Catholic Stories"); it basically linked you to my amazon Listmania lists. But those lists were needing to be updated… and Amazon limits you to 40 titles so it was a pain to go to part 1, then 2 and 3 would be shortly in order.  Now, I have the titles of all the books right here in this post. This makes it much easier for me to update on my own as well!

The Saint and His Bees

November 1st is All Saints Day.  I like to introduce one new saint book into our collection on that day as a gift to my children.  This usually means finding a used copy of a saint book throughout the year at some point and hiding and saving it for that day.  Occasionally, in mid October, I do an online hunt for a particular book I've had my eye on and buy it used.  Rarely, is there a new, worthy saint book published that gets bought right away. This year, however, there was!  I took a gamble on The Saint and his Bees because I didn't know anything about it. All I knew was that I absolutely loved illustrator Claire Brandenburg's other book The Monk Who Grew Prayer.  I have been reluctant to purchase other titles of hers simply because she writes not explicitly Catholic books... but Orthodox.  Without going into history details, there is a fine distinction between the two faiths and while I respect Orthodox believers very much, I don't make a point of venerating their saints specifically (pre-schism: the Catholic and Orthodox churches share the same saints... so I always double check to make sure the book being written by an Orthdodox author is about a saint who lived prior to the 11th century or so. There are exceptions: I did buy the book The Wonderful Life of Saint Sergius of Radonezh after researching that St. Sergius was indeed also recognized by the Roman Catholic Church...)

Anyway,  onto this year's gift to my children: a story about St. Modomnoc (aka: St. Dominic), an Irish monk and student of St. David of Wales in the 6th century. It tells of his bond with the monastery's bees and the legend of how bees were introduced into Ireland because the swarm  didn't want to let their dear monk go when he had to return to the island... so they followed him!  Illustrated in Brandenburg's classic, rough, quirky style, the story is sweet and fun and a great addition to our collection.  I'll have to do some updating to my listmania lists in this category. I only wish it (and The Monk Who Grew Prayer) was available in hardback!  Such a pity to have lovely stories vulnerable to my ravishing, rowdy-handed children!  I just have to be extra careful...  :-)

And What About Halloween?

I'll be honest, I'm not particularly thrilled with most Halloween books out there. They generally fall to two extremes: the much too-scary ghoulish books or the cutesy little stories that are explicitly twaddle.  Maybe it's because there's nothing really in the spiritual realm to bank this holiday on... with the exception of All Saint's Day on November 1st—for which there are of course many good saint books.  But Halloween as it's popularly known today? Pretty barren for the literature world. There are of course, a couple gems, generally related to pumpkins in general: Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tudor is probably my only "must have" for this specific holiday. But Too Many Pumpkins is another fun one worth picking up.  And if you are able to find a good copy of Mousekin's Golden House for under $20 you'd be lucky, but chances are slim. There are probably others, but I've stopped searching for great Halloween specific books. I turn to other sources to get into the spirit of things.

Ed Emberley is single-handedly responsible for encouraging my children to become little artists.  Whenever I used to try and get them to draw a scene from a story or just be creative, they would whine that "they didn't know how."  So I first bought Ed Emberley's: Make a World to see if they would be motivated to try. Would they ever!  Suddenly, the whole world was opened up to them! They just needed to realize how easy it was to break down basic figures into manageable parts to draw, and Emberley was the first to show them how. Lately the boys have been drawing from two of his very Halloween oriented titles: Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Weirdos and Ed Emberley's Big Orange Drawing Book (unfortunately out of print right now) . Both books are excellent for inspiring fun, not-too-scary-but-just-scary-enough drawings. We currently have expanded our How-To-Draw ______ books but still have a good half dozen of Emberley's titles.

Another alternative to traditional Halloween stories are to explore picture books that really embody mystery and suspense... not necessarily fear. Chris Van Allsburg comes to mind with books like The Stranger or the fun and macabre (a great combo) alphabet book The Z Was Zapped.

Finally, this a great time to avoid the commercial Halloween fare altogether and bust out the old, creepy fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, or the modern but delicious Heckedy Peg. Search through many picture books to find one that gives a fair rendition of classic fairy tales or just save yourself the pain and invest in a good, quality anthology of originals.  Enter Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Book Collection if you want to do the piecemeal approach like I do.  Otherwise there are complete anthologies like Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories.

Please note that not all fairy tales were written for children and some can be quite gruesome and morbid.  Use your best discretion in previewing these tales... but know that this is what they looked like before Disney came to popularize and trivialize them.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”-Albert Einstein 

Pick of the Week: Somewhere In The World Right Now

Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Schuett is a beautiful book that introduces the concept of time zones and geography and what's happening at any given moment around the world. The art is superb. In fact, it's one of those excellent books where it is almost obvious that the author had to be the illustrator as well... because the marriage between word and picture is so complete and so congruent. The book would be an excellent study for any child studying the world-at-large or time zones in particular. I also think it pairs nicely with the excellent On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather as they both give an instant glance at the larger cultural/sociological picture of life. I sigh a happy sigh when these types of educational books are executed in a way that the educational attempts of it are not so orchestrated and obvious... but flow seamlessly and beautifully within the book. Well done indeed!

To a Publisher's Shame

I picked up Autumn Harvest at the thrift store a while back with eagerness.  I immediately recognized the illustration style that made White Snow, Bright Snow a Caldecott Award Winner in the late 1940s. The same author, Alvin Tresselt, wrote Autumn Harvest and the same artist, Roger Duvoisin, illustrated it. This team also produced a quirky, quiet book called Hide and Seek Fog (itself a Caldecott Honor Book) and their work complements each other beautifully. One that I didn't know about is called The Beaver Pond and while out of print, looks to be readily and economically available. Furthermore, Roger Duvoisin is the illustrator for other fantastic and popular books like Petunia and The Happy Lion too; his accomplishments and credibility can't be denied.

Here's my beef. Why—if you have such a lauded duo of picture book makers— would publishers let their other titles go out of print?!  Forget for a moment, the worthiness of other titles, isn't there something to be said for celebrity power in the children's literature world? But let it be known that Autumn Harvest is worthy! The story is simple, and slow. It's a cycle of nature and lifestyle beginning with the earliest harvest season:

 After the threshing, timid filed mice scurried through the stubble to find what the machines had left. And chattering birds gathered in the hedgerows to feast on the fallen grain. Each night at sundown the katydids sang louder.  Katydid...katydidn't...katydid...katydidn't. Till the first frost tipped the maples with scarlet, and turned the elms to gold.

... and continuing on through the season until the farmer's family gathers around the table for Thanksgiving. All the while accompanied by Duvoisin's excellent, vintage drawings. I'm just not sure where the book goes wrong enough to get left in the publishing dust pile? Is it too dated or nostalgic?  Is it because the farmer is not PC and he smokes a pipe? What?! Why suffocate our children with other filth in print and avoid the riches of yesteryear?  I suppose it's the vicious cycle with all consumerism: if people buy it, they produce it.  If they produce it, people buy it, if for nothing else than for lack of better options.  So who really is to blame them? Us? Them?

Whatever the case may be, don't get all glittery eyed at the Barnes and Noble shelf of books when there are treasures waiting to be purchased second hand all over the place. Do some research. Don't settle for pig slop. Buy books with wrinkles.

Upcycling Books

Who knew?!  I thought the upcycling book projects were relegated to rogue internet crafters and Pinterest lurkers... but lo and behold there are entire BOOKS published on the topic!






And my wallet loves the fact that the main three that interest me all happen to be at my library! I wonder what new ideas they can offer me. Most of MY books remain intact and I'm not sure if any of these projects are appropriate for children's picture books... but it's worth a look!




Tonight, my two year old threw The Giving Tree into the bathtub and let it soak for 10 minutes before telling me about it.  *Sniffle*... it will not be able to be repurposed and most certainly will need to be replaced when I get the chance.  I do however have 3 or 4 very exciting books waiting in my craft closet wings for projects... maybe these books will provide inspiration... ?

Appreciating Arnosky

Today I dug into our October basket (yes, our "seasonal" rotation of picture books has now grown into a "monthly" rotation of books!! I include all our picture books in this rotation (excepting non-fiction) so as to ensure we are getting a chance to read and appreciate all the good ones we have.  Otherwise, treasures get buried and forgotten in the surplus.) and pulled out Every Autumn Comes the Bear by Jim Arnosky.

I was reminded again of how much we love this author.  Is it the brilliance of the text?  Not so much.  The glory of the illustrations?  Not exactly.  I think what it is has to do with the perfect marriage of text and imagery Arnosky offers in all of his books.  He writes simple story lines... easy enough for a 2 year old to sit through, yet engaging enough for an 8 year old to appreciate.  And he doesn't fictionalize things or  indulge in anthropomorphism like so many other popular kiddy books do— I have no problem with talking animals, believe you me... but all things have their place.  And animals in Arnosky's books are simply stars in the natural history story he has to tell. And they are excellent.

Crinkleroot

Tom Bombadil

We own Grandfather Buffalo and Coyote Raid In Cactus Canyon also but I'm starting to get the itch that tells me I need to purchase more of his titles... so loved they are and so seasonally appropriate they can be.  On my shortlist are Rabbits & Raindrops or Raccoons and Ripe Corn and Armadillo's Orange (get a load of those used prices! Ha!). And we can't forget Crinkleroot and his series... which are very basic primers to different aspects of nature; kids love them. As a side-note, Crinkleroot reminds me of how I envision a simpler version of Tom Bombadil. If you get that reference, it's a strong indication you might be awesome.

Anyway, Jim Arnosky provides good stuff all around!  Go get some books!