Red, A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall

He's supposed to be a red crayon, after all, that's what his label says.  But every time he draws something that should be red, it comes out blue.  His teacher thinks he just needs more practice, but no matter how hard he tries to imitate her example, his strawberries still come out blue.

His mother thinks Red just needs to mix with other crayons more.  But when Red and Yellow decide to make something together, it comes out green, not orange the way it should have.
It just seems that no matter how hard Red tries to live up to his red label, he just can't do it.  Everything still comes out blue.

Naturally, all the other crayons have something to say, and some of what they say isn't very nice, you know, platitudes like "Frankly, I don't think he's very bright" from Fuchsia or "Well, I think he's lazy" from Grape.  Not very helpful to Red's plight.  Even the art supplies try to help, but no matter what they do for him, Red still draws blue.

Then, one day, Red met Berry, who asked if he could draw him a blue ocean for his ship to sail in.  Suddenly, red knew exactly who he was - he was Blue, he was happy and he just couldn't draw enough blue things.

Like many, when I first read this story, I thought it was ideal for kids facing gender identity issues.  Then I began to think that it could also be for kids dealing with questions about their sexual identity.  But then, I thought about how I was an undiagnosed dyslexic in school and I felt a lot of what Red felt, and heard all the platitudes, so OK, even learning challenged kids could benefit from this book.  The more I thought, the more I began to see that almost any young person could benefit.

In the end, I realized that in Red, A Crayon's Story, Michael Hall has created a perfect metaphor about difference and the need to look beyond the label, whatever that label may be.  By simply placing his story in a box of crayons, and having it narrated by a pencil, who is able to keep some objective distance to the crayons, Red becomes a book that allows the reader to read it however s/he needs to.  I think kids will understand Red's plight pretty quickly, and hopefully parents and teachers will start looking at their Reds in a whole new way.

A very helpful Teaching Guide is available from the publisher, Greenwillow Books, HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 4+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

How to Read a Story by Kate Messner, illustrated by Mark Siegel

Sure, your young readers may already know how to read, but do they really know how to read a story.  In How to Read a Story, Kate Messner outlines 10 simple to follow steps for really reading a story.   Each step elaborates just what is involves.

Step 1: Find a Story begins with a little boy surrounded by books about all kinds of things and suggests picking one that is about something he likes.

Step 2: Find a Reading Buddy shows our hero approaching different family members and has suggestions about what to look for in a good  reading buddy.  A reading buddy can be anyone at all, even the family dog (maybe even a favorite stuffed toy)
.
Step 3: Find a Cozy Reading Spot shows our hero testing different spots, and finally settling on one both he and his reading buddy like.

Step 4: Look at the Book's Cover shows our hero and his buddy trying to guess what the book might be about based on the cover and title.

Step 5: Open the book

Steps 5 through 10 are all about reading, how to make reading aloud to your reading buddy exciting and interesting, sharing the pictures, sounding out new words and guessing what they mean based on the pictures, reading with feeling to make the exciting parts sound exciting.  And when you get to the end of Step 10, you can start all over again.

I love How to Read a Story.  We take it for granted that we and our kids automatically know how to do read a book once we learn how to read, but there is so much more to reading.  Of course, kids will probably see their teachers following the steps that Messner talks about, but not always and often not until around 3rd grade.  Here, however, is a book that can be read, shared, and followed by kids still at the picture book stage.  One thing I particularly liked is how Messner makes it OK to reread a book if the readers really likes it or to not like a book and to simply go back and pick a different one when that happens. two things readers are often discouraged from doing.

The whimsical illustrations by Mark Siegel are done in ink and watercolor in bright, happy colors and match the text on every page.  I loved how he depicts the young reader following the step listed and then reading his story aloud to the family dog so well that he begins to attract and draw other family members into his listening circle.

How to Read a Story is the book to read over and over again with your kids, at home or in school.  When a child knows how to read, a love of reading will most likely result and steps that Messner lists are skills that they can use over and over again.

The benefits of reading aloud to children can't be stressed enough, so it only stands to reason, that teaching a child to read aloud would greatly enhance those benefits.

Children's Book Week begins May 4, 2015 and what could be a better way to celebrate books and reading that with a book that helps us learn how to get the most from a story.

How to Read a Story will be available April 28, 2015.

This book is recommended for readers age 5+
This book was obtained from the publisher, Chronicle Books and will be available May 5, 2015

It's Nonfiction Monday!

This is book 5 of my 2015 Nonfiction Picture Book Reading Challenge hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy

Poetry Friday: Earth Day by Jane Yolen

Poetry Friday is a weekly meme, hosted this week by Renee at No Water River.  Thanks for hosting this week, Renee. 

I know Earth Day 2015 is over but I thought I would post this poem by Jane Yolen anyway to remind us that earth day is really should be everyday.

   
Earth Day

    I am the Earth
    And the Earth is me.
    Each blade of grass,
    Each honey tree,
    Each bit of mud,
    And stick and stone
    is blood and muscle,
    Skin and bone.

    And just as I
    Need every bit
    Of me to make
    My body fit,
    So Earth needs
    Grass and stone and tree
    And things that grow there
    Naturally.

    That's why we
    Celebrate this day.
    That's why across
    The world we say:
    As long as life,
    As dear, as free,
    I am the Earth
    And the Earth is me.

"Earth Day" by Jane Yolen
The Three Bears Holiday Rhyme Book
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995 32 pages

Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams-Garcia

Fictionally speaking, a little more than a year has passed since we last visited with the Gaither sisters, Delphine, 12, Vonetta, 10, and Fern, 8.  The girls are still living in the house on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, NY.  Their dad has remarried, but their stepmother has been pretty sick lately, especially in the morning.  So now, the girls are off for the summer to visit Big Ma, Uncle Darnell, Ma Charles, their great grandmother and Caleb, the hound dog in Alabama - by Greyhound (remember, it's 1969, people did that then).

Everyone is glad to see the girls down there, but Vonetta is still angry at Uncle D for what he did with the money they had saved for Jackson Five tickets.  But that's not the only grudge in town.   There's not much going on at Ma Charles's house - no working TV, no radio - and after Delphine puts her foot down about washing, starching and ironing her great grandmother's cotton sheets, each day the girls cross the creek to hang out with their Cousin JimmyTrotter, 15, and his great grandmother, Miss Trotter, Ma Charles's sister Ruth.

Ma Charles and Miss Trotter have a long standing rivalry going on and quickly discover that Vonetta is the perfect person to carry their mean-spirited insults and messages back and forth across the creek each day.  But as the barbs keep flying, unknown family history is revealed to the girls, going back to the days of slavery, to hard times under Jim Crow and segregation and their Native Indian connection, along with some other real surprises in the family tree, including a white cousin in the KKK.

Indeed, it feels like Delphine's family is fractured no matter where she looks.  Rita Williams-Garcia has written about family in each of the novels about the Gaither sisters.  Each book exposes a new layer of family relationships and the way she has captured the different familial problems and relationships has been really spot on.  In fact, when the reader begins to see the similarity of the great-grandmother's long-standing squabbling with each other reflected in the same kind of bickering that takes place between Delphine and Vonetta, it's easy to wonder if this will be their destiny, too.

But when Uncle D keeps forgetting to bring home milk for Vonetta's cereal, she decides to go get it herself.  Riding Cousin JimmyTrotter's bike to town, she is unaware of the tornado heading her way and Delphine is frantic to find her.  Will the destruction that the tornado causes be the healing catalyst that pulls this family back together again?

Once more, Williams-Garcia has written a book that is a delight to read and it does work as a stand alone novel, though I think that reading all three novels is the better way to go.  And, like the previous two books, One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven, Gone Crazy in Alabama is also narrated in the first person by Delphine.  This is definitely Delphine's coming of age story,  She has always been an astute observer, and the arbiter of reality for her younger sisters when necessary, even if they do gang up and pay no attention to her, but there is a new budding maturity now.

One of the thing that Williams-Garcia is genius at doing is creating full-bodied, totally distinctive characters, and I don't mean just Delphine, Vonetta and Fern.  Ma Charles, Big Ma, Cousin JimmyTrotter, Uncle D, even Caleb singing his dog song have so much depth to them, regardless of the size of the part they play in this story.

Even time and place are as much characters in the Gaither sisters trilogy as girls and their relatives are.  The late 1960s was an eventual period - civil rights, Black Panthers, Women's Liberation, the Apollo moon walk and Williams-Garcia has managed to seamlessly get it all into her books without sounding the least bit forced.

The only down side of Gone Crazy in Alabama is that it is the last time we will meet the Gaither sisters, otherwise this is a wonderful trilogy and Gone Crazy in Alabama is not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from Edelweiss/Above the Treeline

Echo, a novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Today I want to share the post I wrote about  this book for my other blog, The Children's War, simply because I found this to be such an enchanting novel.  

When young Otto goes missing in a German forest during a game of Hide and Seek, he meets three princesses, sisters named Eins, Zwei and Drei (One, Two and Three).  The sisters were brought to a witch by a midwife after their father, the king, rejected them for not being the son he wanted.  Now, they have been cursed by the witch to live in a small clearing, unable to leave until they save a soul from death's door.  The sister's hope comes from the prophecy each were given by the midwife when she left them with the witch: "Your fate is not yet sealed/ Even in the darkest night/ a star will shine/ a bell will chime/ a path will be revealed."

As an adult, Otto becomes a master harmonica maker, but when one of them is destroyed in an important order for 13 harmonica's, he decides to include the one that each of the sisters had played.  One the bottom of the harmonica, he paints the letter M.

The story skips now to Germany in 1933, just as Hitler comes to power.  For 12 year old Friedrich Schmidt, life is hard.  Not only was he born with half is face covered in a wine colored birthmark, and Friedrich can hear music in his head and has an uncontrollable need to conduct it, making his a target of the other kids and earning him the name Monster Boy.  A loner, Friedrich finds the M marked harmonica in an abandoned factory.  The music from it is like no other he has ever heard before.  After his father is arrested and sent to Dachau, Friedrich becomes a target of the Nazis despite the fact that his sister is an important member of the Hitler Youth's League of German Girls.  Though he is about to audition for the music conservatory and realize his dream of conducting, Friedrich realizes he must try to free his father and escape Germany.

The story skips two years to an orphanage in 1935 Pennsylvania.  Mike Flannery and his younger brother Frankie are adopted by Mrs. Sturbridge's lawyer Mr. Howard on the spot when it turns out that they can play piano beautifully.  The adoption is done to meet the requirements of the will left by Mrs. Sturbridge's father.  But when Mike learns that Mrs. Sturbridge is planning on have the adoption reversed, he makes a deal with her.  If her keeps Frankie, he will audition for a travelling harmonica troupe of young kids.  After all, he has a harmonica marked with an M that makes an especially beautiful sound.

The story jumps to California in 1942.  Japanese Americans have just been rounded up and sent to internment camps.  For Ivy Lopez and her parents, that means a job and the possibility of owning land, having a permanent home and never needing to move from job to job.  Her father new job is caring for the house and land of an interned family, the Yamamotos, whose oldest son is serving in the army.  Ivy, who has come into possession of a harmonica marked with and M that makes an especially beautiful sound from her old school, is excited to join the orchestra in her new school, until she discovers that the Mexican American students don't attend the main school, going to a ramshackle annex instead. 

Three different stories bound together in space and time by one harmonica marked with an M but how do their destiny's connect?  Ryan ends each story with a cliffhanger, but it all comes together in the end.  In the meantime, she shows the reader how music can be a sustaining force even in the most difficult times.  Each of the characters must deal with situations that are rife with hate, suspicion and intolerance to suffering for those who are different and helpless in some way. 

Ryan uses the technique of a Rahmenerzählung, framing the three stories with the story of Otto and the fairytale story of the three sisters, giving it a nice magical element.  Ryan holds the reader in suspense about every one's destiny and how they connect until the very end, but it is a delicious kind of suspense. 

Echo is an enchanting novel that carries a message of hope, even throughout the scary parts, but readers should still read it with a willing suspension of disbelief to really get  appreciate the entire story.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL (but I liked it so much, I've decided I need to buy a copy for my personal library)

Audacity by Melanie Crowder

Living with her mother, father and three brothers in a shtetl in Russia, young Clara Lemlich's great desire is to go to school and get an education.  But in her strict Orthodox Jewish family, education is limited to her brothers, who will follow in the footsteps of their father, praying and studying the Torah.  But Clara has learned to read Russian against her father's wishes, and even after he destroys her few hard won books, she doesn't give up.

After the pogrom of 1903 against the Jews in nearby shtetls, the Lemlichs decide to emigrate to the United States.  It is a long, harrowing trip, but eventually they arrive in New York City and make their way to a small dingy apartment on the Lower East Side.  Day after day, her mother goes out looking for work, while her husband and sons spend their times praying and studying.  Finally, her father decides that Clara shall be the one who goes out to work.

Finding a job in a sweatshop making shirtwaists at $6.00 a week, she brings home the family's only income.  The work is harsh, under grueling circumstances, with row upon row of women and children sewing in a locked room, only allowed to go to the restroom twice a day despite the long hours.  And at the end of the day, the girls and women are inappropriately patted down to make sure they haven't stolen anything.  But Clara also discovers public libraries and the free school, and her hope of going to school revived.

After getting fired from her first job, her second job pays less and the workdays are longer.  More harsh conditions and more abuse from the sweatshop owners, foreman.  Once day, Clara hears the word union and, after learning what it means, decides the women she works with in the garment industry also need a union to represent them, just as the men, who are treated differently, have.

Little does Clara realize what forming a union will involve.   Her dream to go to school and become a doctor is given up in her fight for better working conditions for the women in the garment industry.  To that end, she is spit on, locked out of jobs that she needs, she's beaten repeatedly by thugs and by the police, she's jailed and hospitalized, but she never stops, never gives up.   To say that Clara was a young woman who had a definite streak of defiance and a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, is to say the least about her.  And she succeeds!

Audacity is a imagine fictional portrayal of the early life of Clara Lemlich.  Written in beautiful free verse, it is the story of a small, but fearless, and yes, audacious fighter.  Told from Clara's point of view in the first person, the reader is privy to her hopes, dreams, thoughts, fears, especially telling is her anger at her father for denying her an education, for not working when the family is so destitute.

Free verse novels can look deceptively simple, and they are wonderful enticements for reluctant readers, but make no mistake, the content is not so much complicated as it is far more thought provoking than you might at first think it is.

One of my favorite books from 2013 is Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909 (which happens to be the end point of Audacity), a picture book for older readers, and as I read Audacity, I had flashes of the illustration from this book.  So although Audacity is a book meant for teens, it could be nicely paired with Brave Girl.

Melanie Crowder has written a spellbinding story, full of historical and cultural references that make it an eminently readable full-bodied novel and a source of inspiration.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book is a ARC received from the publisher, Philomel Books

If you are ever in New York City and want to see what life was life for immigrants living on the Lower East Side like the Lemlich family, be sure to visit The Tenement Museum

Catch You Later, Traitor by Avi

It's 1951 and for 12 year-old Pete Collison life is all about the Brooklyn Dodgers, Sam Spade mystery stories, and his best friend Kat A/K/A Katherine Boyer.  He could completely live without his older brother Bobby, who thinks only about rockest and getting into an elite science camp run by am aeronautical government agency, and the NY Giants because what self-respecting Brooklynite would root for any other team than the Dodgers?  Yes, life was pretty ordinary for Peter Collison.

Until one Thursday morning in April, when everything changed.  Suddenly, Pete's teacher Mr. Donovan started picking on him, his friends started to avoid him and even things with Kat felt different.  To top it all off, when Pete got home from school that day, there was a mysterious phone call from a stranger telling him he has to help, but help who? and why?

Pete figures out that Mr. Donovan has said something to the class about his parents, but no one, not even Kat, will tell him what.  The next day, a Friday, Pete's seat in class is changed to last seat, last row -the public school equivalent of no man's land.  And by the end of the day, Pete realizes that his teacher thinks his father is a Communist and had spoken to the class about it on Wednesday when he was out of the room.

At home that day, there is another mysterious phone call asking if Pete would help.  Suddenly, Pete has a lot to think about.  Could his father, a professor of American History at City College, really be a commie?  And even if he did have some affiliation with the Communist Party, who told the FBI about it?  What, Pete asked himself, would Sam Spade do?  His answer - poke around, look for clues, watch, listen and wait, keep everything to himself until he figured things out.

Things seem to just go downhill for Pete.  He's constantly followed by the FBI, who want him to spy on his father, Kat is sent away to boarding school because of him, and the only friend he seems to have left is the blind neighbor he reads to once a week.  To top it all off, after putting his best Sam Spade detecting methods to work, Pete discovers some incriminating family history from the Great Depression that could land his dad in jail.  And now his dad is being called before the Subversive Activities Control Board.  Can all of Pete's clues and information help his dad now?  Or will it only hurt his case?

Catch You Later, Traitor is told in the first person by Pete, who at times tells his story in the language and style of a Sam Spade novel.  This gives the story lots of period flavor and also serves to introduce information which would otherwise be awkward or distracting to include, but necessary to the story.  But that is part of Avi's strength as a writer.

And Avi always manages to produce clever page-turning historical fiction.  Infused with the big story, here McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the early 1950s are real details about living in Brooklyn at that time.  His stylized narration reminded me so much of his two earlier books, Don't You Know There's a War On? and Who was that Masked Man, Anyway? All three books are written in the protagonists favorite form of entertainment - detective novels, snappy slang and radio shows.  I like to think of these as Avi's Brooklyn trilogy.

If Avi is good at capturing the micro-flavor of a time and place, he is also able to realistically represent more complicated macro-events of a period.  McCarthyism was a movement that bred so much fear and ignorance, and that impacted so many lives, including Sam Spade author Dashiell Hammett.  The McCarran Act gave the government license to hunt down anyone they thought might be a subversive and as we see with Pete's dad, if a person couldn't or was unwilling to give names of other Communist party members or sympathizers, they could be imprisoned.  FBI intimidation/bullying tactics are also realistically portrayed.

I think Catch You Later, Traitor is a good introductory novel to this complicated era, and nicely explores themes of loyalty, friendship, the meaning of family as well as the rights and freedoms granted Americans under the Bill of Rights.

If you like Avi, this is a book for you; if you are new to Avi's novels, jump in, you are in for a treat.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book is an EARC received from NetGalley

New Shoes by Susan Lynn Meyer, illustrated by Eric Velasquez

It's the 1950s somewhere in the Jim Crow south and Ella Mae is off to buy new shoes with her mom.  Normally, Ella Mae's new shoes would have been a pair of her older sisters outgrown shoes, but her feet have grown and she can't wear her sister's hand-me-down shoes anymore.

Money is counted out and soon Ella Mae and her mom are off to Johnson's shoe store, where they are ignored by the salesman in favor of a white girl and her father who came in after them.  Eventually the salesman acknowledges them, pointing out where the pencil and paper are so that Ella Mae's mom could draw an outline of her feet.

Why? Because African Americans were not allowed to actually try on shoes back then; shoes were matched to the outline of a person's foot.

Sadly, Ella Mae's cousin Charlotte tells her that she has had the same humiliating experience buying shoes at the shoe store.  So Ella Mae comes up with a plan.  The two girls diligently begin doing chores for neighbors, and all they ask for is a nickel and a pair of outgrown shoes.

Finally, they have enough nickels and shoes to set their plan in action.  The girls clean and polish and wash shoelaces for all the usable shoes.  And when all that's done they open their own shoe store - Ella Mae and Charlotte's Shoes, price: 10¢ and their used pair. And the best part of their shoe store is the everyone can try the shoes on.

I really liked this book because it not only opened a window on a shameful part of American history but I loved the way Ella Mae and her cousin Charlotte came up with a way to fight back and solve a problem in a way that also allowed their friends and neighbors to be treated respectfully at the same time.  And it shows how even kids can make a difference.

New Shoes is narrated by Ella Mae in a very matter of fact way that immediately draws the reader into her world.  For the realistic oil painted illustrations, Valasquez used a palette of earth tones for the background and but he shows the girl's dresses in soft pastels.  In this way, the illustrations compliment the narrator's tone, making it feel inmate yet still giving the reader some needed objective distance to think about what is being said.  

Sometimes when we talk about things like the Jim Crow south and segregation, we tend to see the overall picture.  But historical picture books for older readers like New Shoes are able to bring to light the everyday individual indignities and humiliations caused when these ideas were played out.  Trying on a pair of new shoes is such an ordinary, everyday thing that most people probably don't even think about it, let alone think about a time when African Americans were not allowed to simply because of the color of their skin.  

Be sure to read the informative Author's Note at the back of New Shoes.  

This book is recommended for readers age 7+
This book was borrowed from a friend

Poetry Friday: A Poem in Your Pocket by Margaret McNamara, illustrated by G. Brian Karas

Poetry Friday is a weekly meme, hosted this week by Amy at The Poem Farm.  Thanks for hosting this week, Amy.

April is National Poetry Month and what better way to start the month than with a picture book about poetry.  And Margaret McNamara's third book about Mr. Tiffin and his students is definitely up to the task.

All through April, Mr. Tiffin's class is going to learn all about poems in preparation for poem in you pocket day and a author visit from a well known poet, Emmy Crane.  But Elinor has spent all of March at the library studying poetry. so now she has all the answers when it comes things like similes, metaphors concrete poems, haiku, acoustic poems.

But when Mr. Tiffin takes the class out for a walk to practice using their poet's eyes, the kids in Elinor's class all seem to be able to see the poetry around them except Elinor.  And when brings brown bags with surprises in them for everyone and asks each student to write a poem about what's in their bag, Elinor just can't seem to get one written.  Her poetry journal is blank.

Over the weekend, Elinor writes poem after poem, but none are good enough as far as she is concerned.  Finally, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, Elinor goes to school with an empty pocket.  In assembly, Emmy Crane reads some to her own poetry to the children, and each child reads their poem to her.  But when its Elinor's turn, she courageously goes up on the stage and confesses to Emmy that she has no poem, none were perfect enough for a poet like her.  No poem is perfect, Emmy tells her, but can she help Elinor find her poet's eye?

A Poem in Your Pocket is an ideal book for introducing young readers and writers about poetry, a subject that is so often overlooked in schools these days.   It is a wonderful read aloud as well as a great teaching tool.  McNamars's definitions of the different poetic terms used are simply defined making that aptly suited for young children just starting their poetic life.  I loved the walk Mr. Tiffin took the kids on to discover the poetry in the things that they see everyday but probably don't think much about.

Added to this wonderful book are Karas's gouache, acrylic and pencil sometimes full page, sometimes spot illustrations, adding to and enhancing the story.  He really captures Elinor's frustration and despair, along with the eagerness with which the other kids in the class embraced poetry. I really liked that Mr. Tiffin's class was portrayed as very diverse.

I thought this was going to be a story about a girl who just wasn't terribly poetic.  Instead it was about how we all have a poet's eye and that there is no such thing as a perfect poem.  Of course, the underlying message is about how the need to be or do something perfectly results in being completely unproductive because nothing measures up.  And bravo for the portrayal of a caring teacher and poet who both gently showed Elinor what's important.

A Poem in Your Pocket is a book not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 5+
This book was borrowed from a friend

Remember - Poem in Your Pocket Day is Thursday, April 30, 2015

You can find our more about Poem in Your Pocket Day including poems to download, and ways to participate HERE

Susan at The Book Chook also has some tips and resources for Poem in Your Pocket Day that can be found HERE