Alice Cary

Children's & YA

Pigging out for the holidays

Feature by Alice Cary

Ian Falconer's irrepressible piglet is getting ready for the holidays, and her fans know that means trouble. Her latest misadventures are recorded in Olivia Helps with Christmas, and I guarantee it will bring smiles during this hustle-and-bustle season. Olivia stuffs her baby brother full of blueberry pie, gets tangled in the lights and sets the table for dinner. She even finds the perfect centerpiece (by chopping off the top of the Christmas tree). Yes, Olivia's antics continue to be hilarious. Ian Falconer's charcoal illustrations are brightened by plenty of green and red splashes, and this inventive illustrator adds fun touches of photographs and computer-aided inserts (a ballet star joining Olivia onstage, a scene of snow-covered trees outside Olivia's window). Several fold-out pages add more excitement, such as the panoramic flurry of present-unwrapping on Christmas morning. This book is bound to become an instant Christmas classic.

Check out Toot & Puddle: Let It Snow, the latest in the series by Holly Hobbie. These two charming friends remind me a bit of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad, and in this book they each try to surprise each other with an exciting homemade gift. Toot knows that the best present was usually something you made yourself, a one-of-a-kind thingamajig, not just a whatsit anyone could buy in a store. Hobbie's watercolors are full of personality, and her homey scenes are cozy enough to make readers want to pull up a chair and visit. Toot and Puddle ski through the snow, and Puddle announces, I wish I could take this morning and put it in my pocket and keep it forever. This is a sweet but never syrupy book about friendship and giving, and readers will enjoy seeing what perfect gifts Toot and Puddle end up making for one another.

SPECIAL GIFTS
Next, it's time for bunnies frolicking in the snow in Little Rabbit's Christmas by the late Harry Horse. The Little Rabbit series is charming; I instantly fell in love with Horse's pen, ink and watercolor scenes. As with Toot and Puddle, the world of Little Rabbit is warm and cozy, particularly the little homes and shops carved out of the hollows of trees. Little Rabbit spots a beautiful red sled in a toy shop, and when the Christmas Rabbit grants his wish and brings him the sled, he can't bear to share it. He has a wonderful time whooshing down hill after hill, but eventually lands in trouble. Luckily, other little rabbits come to the rescue, and Little Rabbit learns a valuable lesson.

Check out to The All-I'll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll from the award-winning team of Patricia C. McKissack and illustrator Jerry Pinkney. In an author's note about the story, McKissack explains that she was inspired while interviewing a woman who grew up during the Depression in an all-black Alabama town that was tagged as the poorest place in America. Mary Lee Bendolph's memories of a very special store-bought doll gave McKissack the idea for her character, Nella, and her wish for a Baby Betty doll from Santy Claus. Baby Betty is all Nella wants. The only hitch is that on Christmas morning, she and her two sisters get one Baby Betty to share. Nella manages to convince her sisters that since she is the one who asked for the doll, it belongs to her. She then tells her new gift, You are all I want. I don't need anything else! Nella's mother wisely says, We'll see, and of course, Nella soon learns that her doll is not so interesting without her sisters. This is a well-told family story in its own right, and the period details (mentions of Br'er Rabbit, the newspaper lining the walls to keep in warmth, the washbasin near the bed, the curtain separating the children's bed from the adult's) add historical insight. Pinkney's pencil and watercolor drawings are perfect, with a wistful, sketchy feel, and details and color in just the right spots.

SAVING CHRISTMAS
For a vastly more modern, pixel-type mood, Rob Scotton has created a third book about Russell the sheep, and his artwork practically jumps to life in Russell's Christmas Magic. On Christmas Eve, everyone in Frogsbottom Field snoozes except Russell, who sees a shooting star. That star turns out to be Santa, whose sleigh has crashed. In the tradition of Rudolph, Russell saves the day. This is a fast-moving story with lots of humor. For instance, when Russell holds a buzz saw to help repair the sleigh, a tiny sign on the machine reads, Ask parents before using this tool. Scotton's art is so vivid that readers can practically step right in and see the animation come to life.

Very young children will enjoy Where, Oh Where, Is Santa Claus? by Lisa Wheeler. This is a perfect bedtime tale, with soothing, repetitive rhythms. The scene is the North Pole, where animals join the search: rabbits, seals, foxes and polar bears. Santa has gotten himself into a bit of trouble, and this polar menagerie follows footprints to aid in the rescue. Ivan Bates' wax crayon and watercolor illustrations are bathed in pink, another soothing touch.

HOLIDAY MEMORIES
Bear's First Christmas by Robert Kinerk is a rhyming tale that's also set in the woods, far removed from holiday commercialism. A young bear awakens in winter and follows a sound, encountering animals along the way a crow, moose, pheasant and chicks. The group trudges through the snow to a house, where they peer through the window at a family enjoying Christmas. They watch for a while, then return to the woods and hibernate together in the bear's den. Jim LaMarche's acrylic and colored-pencil drawings are just realistic enough to make readers yearn to reach out and pat the young bear's thick coat of fur. The bear awakens in spring and treks to new places, but he carries the memories of his friends forever. Bear's First Christmas ends with a perfect holiday message: For each friend, though he roams from the others apart,/Carries with him, inside him, that glow in his heart.

Ian Falconer's irrepressible piglet is getting ready for the holidays, and her fans know that means trouble. Her latest misadventures are recorded in Olivia Helps with Christmas, and I guarantee it will bring smiles during this hustle-and-bustle season. Olivia stuffs her baby brother full of…

Children's & YA

Books to spice up your next birthday bash

Feature by Alice Cary

My children's birthday parties are events I anticipate with equal parts delirium and dread. With younger crowds, I often start by reading a book out loud. At my twin daughters' recent 5-year-old bash, for example, 11 of their friends raced into our family room on a late spring day that featured bone-chilling wind and snow flurries. In other words, a potentially hazardous situation: lots of energy combined with no outdoor games every mother's nightmare. Thankfully, the entire crowd sat with rapt attention for two picture books. What happened afterwards is another story. In any case, here are some excellent choices for your next fiesta.

To get everyone in the mood, start with Rocko and Spanky Go to a Party, a lively new book and the first in a series of adventures featuring twin sock monkeys. The duo was conceived by a team of two sisters living in the Boston area, Kara and Jenna LaReau, the first of whom happens to be an award-winning children's book editor. Their simple story combines excitement and tension as Rocko and Spanky receive an invitation to a party and worry over the right gift to bring, what to wear and whether they've got the right time and place. Indeed they do, as the party turns out to be a surprise for them! The artwork is both retro and visually tactile, featuring a hodgepodge of materials that include digital photography, acrylics, crayons, "one pair of Red Heel socks," sequins, glitter, maracas and googly eyes. Rocko and Spanky are definitely cool cats, even though they're monkeys.

If you know a birthday princess, she's bound to fall in love with The Princess's Secret Letters about an exchange between a girl named Lucy and the real princess, Isabella, she invites to her party. As they write each other, we learn all sorts of royal secrets. For instance, Princess Isabella actually likes pizza much better than the official menu of cucumber sandwiches, and she prefers gifts of in-line skates to silver candlesticks and teapots. Of course, what the princess loves most of all are secret visits, and she makes a surprise one to little Lucy's party, swinging her around the room in her arms once she arrives. This book also comes with a special pack of notes and envelopes, so little princesses can write their own secret messages. This pretty, pink book, written by Hilary Robinson and illustrated by Mandy Stanley, is packed with girl-appeal.

Rebecca Emberley's new Piñata! will definitely be a standard feature of parties at our house. It's excellent on many levels, starting with its bilingual Spanish-English text. Using mixed-media collage throughout, Emberly begins with a short one-page history of the tradition, explaining that it may have actually started in China. With a bright red background on every page, the colorful piñata and objects that fill it stand out in high relief. An assortment of these items adorns each page, such as whistles, yo-yos, jewelry, toy bugs, confetti and candy. At the end, readers can guess the names of these objects, then make their own piñata just like the one in the book.

Finally, Chloë's Birthday . . . and Me by Giselle Potter is a refreshingly different birthday tale, not all sweetness and song. It's a riveting story of sibling rivalry, based on the author's own childhood, which was spent in Europe with her puppeteer parents. As Giselle narrates the story, she and her family are in France and it's her little sister's birthday, which makes Giselle absolutely green. Giselle and her mom go gift shopping, finding a perfume called "Chloë." Every single detail of the day is focused on her sister, so when they family goes to the beach to celebrate, Giselle is so miffed that she buries the perfume in the sand. The gift is lost for a while, but eventually turns up. In the end, even Giselle learns to enjoy the day. The tale is real without being one bit preachy. Potter's funky art, often featured in The New Yorker, is in an almost primitive style in pastel shades, and the book also includes a birthday card inside with Giselle on the cover.

Take it from me try some books at your next birthday party, and you'll have a group of excited but calm revelers on hand.

 

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

My children's birthday parties are events I anticipate with equal parts delirium and dread. With younger crowds, I often start by reading a book out loud. At my twin daughters' recent 5-year-old bash, for example, 11 of their friends raced into our family room on a late spring day that featured bone-chilling wind and snow flurries. In other words, a potentially hazardous situation: lots of energy combined with no outdoor games every mother's nightmare. Thankfully, the entire crowd sat with rapt attention for two picture books. What happened afterwards is another story. In any case, here are some excellent choices for your next fiesta.

Children's & YA

Need some great gifts for a special young reader?

Feature by Alice Cary

There's nothing like a classic book, and this year there's a bumper crop of beautiful new anniversary editions sure to make adults nostalgic and kids engaged.

Can Charlie Bucket really be 40 years old? Yes he is, and everyone can help celebrate with the 40th anniversary edition of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Most everyone knows what a jaw-breakingly good story this is, as poor Charlie Bucket takes a fantastical tour of the chocolate factory belonging to the mysterious Willy Wonka. It's one of my all-time favorites, and, of course, also a splendid movie (with a new version slated for release next summer, starring Johnny Depp as Wonka). This full-color anniversary book is particularly yummy, printed on a series of candy-colored pages lavender, pink, blue and yellow. Drawings of wrapped pieces of candy fill these pages: on endpapers, at the end of chapters, around borders. Quentin Blake's illustrations have long been a delightful hallmark of Dahl's novels, and their energy and humor bursts through in a rainbow of colors. With its roomy layout, easy-on-the-eyes print, and illustrations galore, this edition is perfect for both read-alouds and read-alones. Just grab some candy and turn the pages.

SETTING THINGS RIGHT
Eleanor Estes earned a Newbery Honor in 1945 for The Hundred Dresses, the story of a little immigrant girl named Wanda who wears the same dress to school every day. When she gets tired of being teased, she tells her classmates that her closet at home contains 100 dresses. This "restored" edition brings the delicate lines and colors of Louis Slobodkin's art to life. There's also a new letter to readers from Helena Estes about how her mother came to write this classic (these background notes are always fascinating). It turns out that the author was inspired by a girl in her own class who always wore the same dress and was teased, and then moved away. Helena Estes explains that her mother never had a chance to apologize: "What could she do so many years later, my mother wondered, to set things right to reach out to the girl who had stood lonely and silent against the red brick wall of the school? Well, she thought, the one thing she could do was to write her story." Why does our school district pick such a book for required reading, one so seemingly a "girl's story"? It's a splendid tale, that's why, and a grand lesson on teasing, bullying and forgiveness.

THE VAMPIRE BUNNY
For 25 years now, kids have been howling at Deborah and James Howe's Bunnicula. The tale is narrated by a lovable dog named Harold, who tells how a pet bunny arrived at his household not just any bunny, but a vampire bunny. Just read a few pages and take a look at the spooky new cover art showing Bunnicula with glowing red eyes, and you will be hooked. This was the first of many books about Bunnicula and his pals, and in this edition James Howe explains how it came into being: "One night in 1977, two underemployed actors, a husband and wife who didn't know the first thing about writing a children's book, sat down at their tomato-red kitchen table and jotted some notes about a vampire rabbit and the 'typical American family' with whom he came to reside." Sadly, Deborah Howe died before the book was published. The book's popularity led James Howe to his true calling, and he's been writing ever since.

BLESSINGS TO COUNT
About 50 years ago my dear friend Elizabeth Orton Jones won the 1945 Caldecott Medal for illustrating Rachel Field's poem Prayer for a Child, now published in a special diamond anniversary edition. I love giving this book to newborns and their families. Regard- less of denomination, it contains a lifelong message of childhood love, comfort and well being, as a young girl says her bedtime prayer and blesses what is dear to her:

Bless my friends and family.
Bless my Father and my Mother And keep us close to one another.
Bless other children, far and near, And keep them safe and free from fear.

Miss Jones led the way in multiculturalism before it had such a highfalutin name. She paints a sea of little faces from around the world to accompany these last lines, a beautiful sight and a tribute to world understanding.

STICKING HIS NECK OUT
Lordy, lordy, look who's 40! It's Shel Silverstein's A Giraffe and a Half. This cumulative tale starts out with a giraffe stretching, and thus the title, with an added, hilarious complication on each page. Silverstein's line drawings and poems are always simple, but so rich that they never lose their appeal. This latest edition contains a giraffe tape measure for recording your little reader's changing stature. Put this book between other Silverstein classics (such as The Giving Tree) and Dr. Seuss books, and you'll be set with a tall order of classic children's rhymes and humor.

Happy birthday to these literary gems, just as fresh and wonderful today as they were when first published. The only difference is that now they are already well known and loved all around the world. It's safe to say that 50 and 60 years from now, new generations of readers will be clamoring for 100th anniversary editions of these classics.

 

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

There's nothing like a classic book, and this year there's a bumper crop of beautiful new anniversary editions sure to make adults nostalgic and kids engaged.

NonfictionNatureArt

Hold the universe in your hands

Feature by Alice Cary

Explore the far corners of the natural world in five new books, where you’ll find fascinations ranging from the remnants of a supernova to killer whales kicking up white spray in the Atlantic.

How do we see our universe? The answer to this question continually changes as science marches forward, which the gorgeous, thought-provoking Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World thoroughly illustrates. Universe pairs 300 images from art and science, selected by a panel of astronomers, curators, astrophysicists and art historians. A photograph of Buzz Aldrin’s footprint on the moon occupies a spread alongside Andy Warhol’s stylized screen print of Aldrin in his space suit next to the American flag. Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” is coupled with a luminous 2015 print that re-creates a picture of the cosmos in pigment and gold.

The images are bold, beautiful and intriguing, drawn from a tremendous range of sources, including an image painted around 15,000 B.C. in France’s Lascaux Cave, thought to be one of the earliest celestial maps; an Infinity Mirrored Room by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama; and the “First Moon Flights” Club Card issued by Pan Am Airways in 1968.

Universe is an imaginative, informative and unexpected cosmic journey.

STORIES OF THE STARS
Discover the wonders of the night in What We See in the Stars: An Illustrated Tour of the Night Sky. Naturalist illustrator Kelsey Oseid has created a delightful compendium of constellations, celestial bodies, asteroids, deep space and more. What We See is a handy reference guide for all ages with its brief, clear explanations that combine mythology with modern science.

There are sections devoted to Ptolemy’s constellations as well as “modern” constellations such as Microscopium (the microscope), Fornax (the furnace) and Tucana (the toucan). Did you know that shadows cast on the moon are much darker than those cast on earth? Or that Mercury has craters named after Duke Ellington and Van Gogh, while Mars has a crater named after “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry?

Oseid’s luminous illustrations act as eye-catching anchors on each page, in hues of black, slate blue and white that remind readers of the mysteries of the night sky.

ALL THOSE WHO WANDER
We’ve come a long way from the days when John James Audubon tied threads to the legs of birds to prove that certain ones returned to his farm year after year. As geographer James Cheshire and designer Oliver Uberti explain in their fascinating collaboration, Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics, today’s scientists can rely on any number of innovations, including radio, satellite and GPS to track animals.

Not only does Cheshire and Uberti’s book contain gorgeous graphics (maps of sea turtles swimming through the seas, Burmese pythons slithering through the Everglades, geese migrating over the Himalayas), it also presents an amazing series of stories to accompany their maps. Who can resist tales like “The Elephant Who Texted for Help,” “The Jaguars Taking Selfies” or “The Wolf Who Traversed the Alps”?

Whether you’re a lover of data, animals or informatics, you’ll soon find yourself caught up in this wonderful book.

LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP
If you’re in the mood for some armchair forest viewing, cozy up with The Living Forest: A Visual Journey into the Heart of the Woods, written by Joan Maloof and exquisitely photographed by Robert Llewellyn. Leaf through this book and you’ll be transported to a world of soaring branches, misty mountains and a treasury of living things that includes acorns, fungi, eagles, coyotes, snakes and millipedes.

Moving from the canopy to the ground, Maloof, who founded the Old-Growth Forest Network, writes eloquent essays that read like personal tours, concentrating on both the scientific and the spiritual. As she concludes, “The forest offers beauty and poetry to those who are open to it, perhaps waiting in silence for it to appear. It feels like a shift of the heart, like falling in love.”

OFF THE MAP
Islands have long fascinated travel writer Malachy Tallack, who grew up on Scotland’s Shetland Islands and edits The Island Review. He takes readers on a journey to isles real and imagined in The Un-Discovered Islands: An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes. This unusual travelogue, full of history and stories, is illustrated with fanciful creations by noted botanical illustrator Katie Scott.

There’s a section on Atlantis, of course, and many other mythical kingdoms that you’ve likely never heard of, such as the “fraudulent” island of Javasu, which a strange woman who called herself Caraboo claimed to have come from when she appeared on the doorstep of an English village home in 1817, wearing a turban and speaking unrecognizable words. (Turns out she was an imposter named Mary Willcocks.)

Even in our modern age of satellites and GPS, mysteries like Sandy Island, noted in 2012 on maps and Google Earth as being near New Caledonia, still crop up. In fact, the island doesn’t exist, and was simply an error that had persisted since a supposed sighting in 1876.

Sit back and prepare to pleasantly lose yourself.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Explore the far corners of the natural world in five new books, where you’ll find fascinations ranging from the remnants of a supernova to killer whales kicking up white spray in the Atlantic.

FictionPhotographyArt

Look not with the eye, but with the heart

Feature by Alice Cary

Feast your eyes on color, composition and personalities galore in these photography and art books, which include a landmark offering from Annie Leibovitz, a collection of artful fiction, never-before-published photos of Julia Child in France, as well as William Wegman’s charming, artsy dogs.

Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016 is both breathtaking and mind-blowing, a journey unlike any other. Gorgeous, mesmerizing, fascinating—words don’t fully encapsulate the vitality of Leibovitz’s photographs.

The sheer heft of this volume will ensure that you sit with it a while—as well you should—to appreciate the variety and versatility of Leibovitz’s subjects, which include celebrities, artists, writers, politicians and more. The book’s large scale renders the images nearly life-size, drawing you in to the many faces: Stephen Hawking gazes piercingly from his wheelchair, Johnny Depp drops a hint of a smile, a sun-drenched African mother fills a bedroom with her loving warmth as she works to prevent babies from being born HIV-positive. Time after time, Leibovitz captures hearts and souls, bringing viewers right there with her as she snaps her shutter.

(Lin-Manuel Miranda, New York City, 2015. From Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016. © Annie Leibovitz.)

In a short essay, Leibovitz writes, “I often wish that my pictures had more of an edge, but that’s not the kind of photographer I have come to be. There are all kinds of circumstances that determine the outcome of a single shoot. The edge in my work is probably in the accumulation of images. They bounce off one another and become elements in a bigger story.”

It’s a very big story indeed.

A MUSEUM OF FICTION
Alive in Shape and Color: 17 Paintings by Great Artists and the Stories They Inspired offers a unique armchair gallery tour, but one warning: You’ll probably never look at these paintings the same way again. Last year, Lawrence Block edited a surprise hit, In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper. This year’s follow-up is every bit as intriguing, with a slightly different spin, allowing writers to use any painting as a springboard for a short story. The paintings are wonderfully varied, including Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Norman Rockwell’s “First Trip to the Beauty Shop” and even a sculpture, Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. There are many blockbuster writers as well: Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. The fun comes in seeing how each author makes use of his or her artistic inspiration. Alive in Shape and Color is a funfest of surprises.

WHO’S A GOOD DOG?
It’s ironic but fitting that a new book of more than 300 photo­graphs of Weimaraners is titled William Wegman: Being Human, but few would argue the choice after seeing Wegman’s soulful, evocative, always imaginative and often hilarious portraits.

Photography curator William A. Ewing showcases old favorites alongside new images from Wegman’s personal archives, spanning five decades and featuring a variety of his dogs, including, of course, Man Ray and Fay Ray. The book is divided into 16 categories, such as the delightful “Masquerade” and the artful “Nudes.” All are wonderful, but the “human” categories (“People Like Us,” “People We Like”) tug at readers in unforgettable ways, like in “Night Man,” as a Weimaraner wearing bib overalls and pushing a broom looks weary but resigned to his task. Don’t miss the brief essays at the end in which Wegman discusses his work and his dogs.

FOOD, FRANCE AND JULIA
France Is a Feast: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child lives up to its name, presenting a rich treasure-trove of photography, biography, history and culinary lore. Here’s your chance to page through the photo albums of Paul Child, narrated by his great-nephew Alex Prud’homme, who co-authored My Life in France with Julia and wrote The French Chef in America.

Paul was a gifted artist and photographer as well as a Foreign Service officer. Julia called him “the Mad Photographer”; his work is in the Museum of Modern Art, and he seriously considered becoming a professional artist or photojournalist. Prud’homme calls the book “a visual extension of Julia’s memoir, an extension that lets Paul’s imagery take the lead.” And while Paul’s arresting, artful images offer a fascinating glimpse of the couple’s life in France between 1948 and 1954, it’s the photos of Julia that are strikingly intimate: Julia kneeling near her cat in the couple’s apartment; her nude silhouette in front of a sunlit window in Florence; Julia talking on the phone, with only her long, outstretched legs visible, but her warm, hearty laugh so easy to imagine.

BIG, NATURAL ART
English artist Andy Goldsworthy has been making large-scale, environmental art exhibits around the world since the mid-1970s, and you’ll get to see how his work unfolds in Andy Goldsworthy: Projects. These large, beautiful photographs show Golds­worthy’s varied earth-moving processes in great detail, from beginning to end, which is as fascinating as the completed projects. A few of the many works discussed include clay houses in Maryland, Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall in New York state, a leaf house in Scotland and a cairn in Mallorca. You’ll just wish you could see them all in person.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Feast your eyes on color, composition and personalities galore in these photography and art books, which include a landmark offering from Annie Leibovitz, a collection of artful fiction, never-before-published photos of Julia Child in France, as well as William Wegman’s charming, artsy dogs.

NonfictionChildren's & YANatureCrafts, Hobbies & HomeCookbooks

Unwrap and get busy: Hands-on gifts for little ones

Feature by Alice Cary

After a wild Christmas morning of unwrapping, there’s nothing better than the silence of children who are completely absorbed in their new gifts. With these books, kids can create, build, bake, imagine and marvel all year long.

Kids and adults alike will want to try out Oscar Sabini’s alluringly creative Paper Monsters: Make Monster Collages! Following on the heels of Paper Zoo, Italian illustrator and educator Sabini presents a variety of templates to make a menagerie of unbelievably cute critters. Cardstock and colorful paper are included, so all that’s needed is glue to follow his simple instructions for assembling a collage and slipping it into a pocket with a monster-shaped window. Add a few eyes, noses and teeth, and the creatures come to life. Sabini notes that any paper can be used, such as newspaper and even stamps. This self-contained art class will appeal to a wide variety of ages and act as a springboard for future collage projects. Believe me, you’ll want to try this yourself!

PINBALL WIZARDS
Open this ingenious box and have fun exploring Pinball Science: Everything That Matters About Matter by Ian Graham and Owen Davey. Inside you’ll find an instruction book and all the components needed to build a retro, science-themed pinball machine. There are no electronics here: Just insert and fold the tabs of 63 pieces of cardboard (a sturdy box slips out of the package to form the base of the pinball machine), and you’re ready to play. Meanwhile, there are accompanying lessons about gravity, force and acceleration—everything that matters when that pinball rolls out of its starting gate. In addition to instructions and science lessons, the book contains suggestions for very simple science projects using common household items. Budding scientists will have a ball.

FOR THE LITTLEST SOUS-CHEF
Roll up your sleeves and get out the oven mitts for Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake! This colorful, spiral-bound guide, presented by the aptly named kids’ cookbook writer Deanna F. Cook, features easy instructions paired with helpful pictures. There are eye-catching recipes for crispy cheese squares (think Cheez-Its) and brownie pizza, plus adorable bread art (bake an octopus or a snail) and cake and cookie decorating ideas, all rated for difficulty using a scale of one to three rolling pins. Who knew you could put designs and initials on toast using foil shields? A section on the basics gets young bakers started, and additional bonuses include stickers, bake-sale tags and design stencils to use with confectioner’s sugar.

READ AROUND THE WORLD
“How [do you] love a story?” asks prolific children’s author Jane Yolen. “Read it aloud. Let it melt in your mouth. There is magic between the mouth and ear when a story is involved.” Yolen has assembled a wonderful collection of more than 30 short folk tales for preschoolers, Once There Was a Story: Tales from Around the World, Perfect for Sharing. Old favorites (“The Gingerbread Man,” “The Ugly Ducking”) mix with little-known offerings, such as “The Little Old Lady Who Lost Her Dumpling” from Japan and “Plip, Plop,” a rabbit tale from Tibet. Yolen partners with longtime collaborator Jane Dyer, whose softly colored illustrations bring these stories to life. This enriching, thoughtful collection is sure to be a bedtime favorite.

NATURE’S BUILDERS
“Welcome to nature’s very own super-clever construction world,” writes Moira Butterfield in How Animals Build. There are fun facts and lifting flaps galore in this lively compendium, with entire pages that unfold to reveal a bunny warren and a beehive, the many animals living in one tree and the wonders of a coral reef. Paired with Tim Hutchinson’s illuminating illustrations are brief discussions of everything from a naked mole rat’s burrow to the nearly five-foot wide nest of a European white stork. Readers also learn about some extreme builders, like two orb spiders who traveled to the International Space Station. This nicely laid out book will engage a variety of ages and interests.

DID YOU KNOW?
Somehow kids never tire of fun facts and trivia, especially when they’re alongside eye-popping photos. Middle school and older elementary readers will find plenty of tidbits to entertain everyone in the family with 13½ Incredible Things You Need to Know About Everything. Each of the book’s two-page spreads has a theme, such as “Blood Rush” (circulation), “Medical Marvels,” “A Way with Words” (language) and “On the Ball” (sports). In “Making Movies,” we learn that not everyone eats popcorn at the movies. In Norway, movie snacks can include reindeer jerky, while Indians might eat samosas, Japanese love dried sardines, and South Koreans munch on chewy dried cuttlefish. Each spread contains 13 facts, plus a “½” fact, which addresses a half-truth or misconception, such as: “Whales and dolphins don’t squirt water out of their blowholes—they use them to breathe. The stream of water vapor often seen shooting out is the result of the warm expelled air condensing when it meets the cold outside air.” Get ready for a trivia smackdown.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After a wild Christmas morning of unwrapping, there’s nothing better than the silence of children who are completely absorbed in their new gifts. With these books, kids can create, build, bake, imagine and marvel all year long.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Big hearts in little tales: Picture books of kindness

Feature by Alice Cary

As Aesop said, no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. Two picture books contain memorable messages for kids learning to be kind in ways both big and small. Both feature a diverse cast of characters, showing young readers how to reach out to the vast world around them.

KIND ACTS MULTIPLYING
A simple incident of classroom embarrassment becomes occasion for an exquisite treatise on the subject of kindheartedness in Be Kind (ages 3 to 6). Tanisha, a young black girl, spills grape juice all over her new dress, causing her multiracial class to burst into laughter. The white narrator tries to help by announcing, “Purple is my favorite color.” The plan backfires, however, as Tanisha runs into the hallway, seemingly in tears.

While painting a picture for Tanisha in art class, the narrator ponders, “What does it mean to be kind anyway?” Many things, this student muses, such as making cookies for a lonely old neighbor, asking a new girl to be a partner, or saying hi to Omar or Rabbi Mandelbaum in the park. Pat Zietlow Miller―author of the marvelous Sophie’s Squash books―allows the narrator’s thoughts to meander from local (“Maybe I can only do small things.”) to global, as small acts “spill out of our school” and ”go all the way around the world.”

Jen Hill’s lively illustrations soulfully portray Tanisha’s mortification amid classroom giggles as the narrator looks on with concern. Subsequent pages reveal an array of characters whose kindnesses reach around the world to Africa, Asia and the Middle East. On its final pages, Be Kind returns to Tanisha’s dilemma, reaching a subtle, satisfying conclusion.

COME ONE, COME ALL
Open your heart and umbrella wide―that’s the message of this seemingly simple tale for preschoolers, The Big Umbrella (ages 4 to 8). A raincoat-clad child of indeterminate sex grabs an umbrella and heads out into the city streets. This anthropomorphized “big, friendly umbrella” that “likes to help” wears a big grin as it stretches wider and wider to shelter an increasingly diverse group: a runner, a ballerina, a huge duck, a hairy (but friendly) monster, a dog, and more. The final spread (“There is always room”) reveals a bustling, sun-filled street chockfull of diversity, including a woman in a hijab, a young man in a wheelchair and a dad sporting a Mohawk.

Author-illustrator Amy June Bates’ watercolor, gouache and pencil scenes provide the perfect backdrop for this heartwarming tale, co-written with her seventh-grade daughter, Juniper. Minimal text drives their message home, allowing the illustrations to become the focal point of this celebration of inclusion and generosity.

As Aesop said, no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. Two picture books contain memorable messages for kids learning to be kind in ways both big and small. Both feature a diverse cast of characters, showing young readers how to reach out to the vast world around them.

NonfictionParentingMemoirCookbooks

A Sunday kind of love

Feature by Alice Cary

If you’re lucky, your mom will always be your moon and stars, even after she’s gone. During the month of Mother’s Day, celebrate memorable moms and their adoring (and occasionally aggravating) children with these five books.

Margaret Bragg is an extraordinary octogenarian cook from Alabama who’s worn out 18 stoves and has no use for things like mixers, blenders or measuring cups. She whoops at the term “farm-to-table,” saying she had it in her day—it was called “a flatbed truck.” Even though Margaret proclaims that “a person can’t cook from a book,” her Pulitzer Prize-winning son and author of All Over but the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg, decided it was high time to collect her cooking stories and recipes in The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table. “I guess you would call it a food memoir,” Bragg writes, “but it is really just a cookbook, told the way we tell everything, with a certain amount of meandering.”

And what marvelous meandering it is. Each chapter contains a family photo, recipes and the often uproarious tales behind them, starting with the legendary tale of Bragg’s great-grandfather Jimmy Jim, who deserted his family after a bloody battle that may have involved a murder, but was summoned back years later to teach Bragg’s grandmother how to cook.

These stories shimmer and shine, casting a Southern spell with Bragg’s gorgeous prose, while the myriad of recipes—including Cracklin’ Cornbread, Spareribs Stewed in Butter Beans and a dessert called Butter Rolls—are guaranteed to leave readers drooling. Each recipe includes directions like, “Turn your stove eye to medium. My mother cooks damn near everything over medium.”

The Best Cook in the World is Julia Child by way of the Hatfields and McCoys. Margaret Bragg can cook up a storm, while Rick Bragg writes with a powerful, page-turning punch. The result is unimaginably delectable.

A LIFE LIVED WITH FLOWERS
Academy Award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden writes an extended love letter to her mother in The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers. Harden’s mother, Beverly, has always been her best friend and cheerleader; she prodded her reluctant daughter to try out for a local production of a Neil Simon play, which turned out to be her entree into show business.

Texas-born-and-bred Beverly married her college sweetheart at age 19 and soon had five children. As the family of a Naval officer who was frequently away at sea, Beverly and the children traveled the world, living in California, Maryland and Greece. “If Dad was our captain, she was our navigator,” Harden writes.

When their travels brought the family to Japan, Beverly fell in love with ikebana, the ancient art of flower arranging, which became her lifelong passion. Harden uses its imagery and philosophy to tell her mother’s story, interspersing chapters with photographs of ikebana arrangements specially created for her book. It’s a soulful tribute that’s framed with sadness and loss: Harden’s mother has been increasingly debilitated by Alzheimer’s since 2007.

“The details of a home are usually what fill up a mother’s life,” Harden notes, “but how often have her children stopped to consider that her sacrifices are actually gifts?” With The Seasons of My Mother, Harden lovingly shares her mother’s gifts with the world.

BREATHE, THEN GRIEVE
One day, while contemplating the horror of someday losing her mom, illustrator Hallie Bateman realized that a day-by-day book of instructions would be helpful at such an unimaginable time. Naturally, she turned to her writer mom, Suzy Hopkins, for help. Their collaboration has resulted in an exceptional self-help guide, What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter.

From What to Do When I’m Gone, written by Suzy Hopkins and illustrated by Hallie Bateman. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Bloomsbury.

Bateman and Hopkins share a loving, humorous outlook, and their graphic memoir is filled with plenty of heartfelt wisdom and edgy humor reminiscent of Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? There are recipes to feed the soul (Day 1: Make fajitas.), burial instructions, tips for overcoming grief and advice for things like marriage, divorce, childbearing and aging. For example: “Things not to include in my obituary: Nobody but my immediate family needs to know that I made mosaic tile flower pots, played piano badly, bought season tickets but only saw two plays a year, or cooked with the same six ingredients for the past twenty-five years.”

What can you do to help someone who’s recently lost a mom? Give them a copy of What to Do When I’m Gone.

MAKE ’EM LAUGH
It takes real talent to be consistently funny while sharing both your worst fears and greatest dreams. Kimberly Harrington is a mother of two who does just that with her debut collection, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words.

This always lively, sometimes sidesplitting series of short essays tackles everything from the exhausting days of early infancy to the dread of having one’s children grow up (“I worry about what I will do with that silence when you both are grown. What will I do with that? Is it payback for me shushing you and waving my hands at you when I was on a work call in that NO-NO-NO-OH-MY-GOD-GO-AWAY way that I did?”). Some essays are pure satire (“What Do You Think of My Son’s Senior Picture That Was Shot by Annie Leibovitz?”) while others are deadly serious (“Please Don’t Get Murdered at School Today”). Many are wonderful mixtures of both, such as the not-to-be missed “The Super Bowl of Interruptions.”

Whether she’s aiming for your funny bone or your heart, Harrington’s takes on motherhood are spot-on.

MOTHERING MADNESS
Life doesn’t always go as planned, as author Jennifer Fulwiler can tell you. “I used to be a career atheist who never wanted a family, yet I ended up having six babies in eight years,” she writes in One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both. This, coming from an introvert who “needed to minimize having people all up in [her] face.”

To add to the chaos of writing and parenting six young kids, Fulwiler hosts “The Jennifer Fulwiler Show” on SiriusXM radio. Before the children arrived, this Wonder Woman’s life had already taken a few surprising turns—she converted to Catholicism and left her job as a computer programmer, a journey chronicled in Something Other Than God.

Fulwiler is a likable, down-home Texan who never preaches or proselytizes. Thoughtful and funny, she whips off lines like, “Our home life had been utterly derailed when Netflix suddenly removed Penny’s favorite show, ‘Shaun the Sheep,’ from its lineup. The role Shaun played in our house was similar to the role a snake charmer might play in a cobra-infested village.” The morsels of wit and wisdom Fulwiler delivers are as delightful as fresh-baked cookies.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re lucky, your mom will always be your moon and stars, even after she’s gone. During the month of Mother’s Day, celebrate memorable moms and their adoring (and occasionally aggravating) children with these five books.

NonfictionMemoirFashionArt

Elements of style

Feature by Alice Cary

By definition, fashion is always in flux. As New York Times “On the Street” photographer Bill Cunningham explains, “An idea that is elegant at its time is an outrageous disgrace ten years earlier, daring five years before its height, and boring five years later.” These three books offer engaging looks at how trends evolve in the fashion world.

When Cunningham died in 2016, the world lost a trailblazing fashion icon. Thankfully, he left behind one last gift: a secret manuscript that’s now a book, Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs. And what a gift it is! You’ve never had such an effervescent guide through the style world—even fashion haters won’t be able to resist his charm.

Cunningham lived and breathed fashion from his earliest days, even though his mother “beat the hell out of him” when she caught him parading around their home in his sister’s dress as a preschooler. Despite his family’s shame, he doggedly pursued his passion, working after school in Jordan Marsh and Bonwit Teller department stores, where the gorgeous gowns made him think he’d “die of happiness.” With endless optimism, believing that “good came from every situation,” the Harvard dropout-turned-hat maker managed to transform being drafted into the Army in 1950 into a zany gig leading soldiers on weekend tours of Europe. Back home, he lived hand-to-mouth in his millinery shops and gate-crashed fashion shows, all the while making a name for himself.

Fashion Climbing is a multilayered fashion excursion and a heartfelt memoir that grabs you and never lets go. If only Cunningham had left behind a sequel covering the rest of his joyful, fashion-filled life.

STAN BY ME
Sometimes it’s best to simply embrace your worst feature. Early on, tennis player Stan Smith felt that was his feet: “One of the few disappointments of my tennis career were my big size 13 feet—yet the shoe I eventually wrapped around them enabled me to become better known than I could have ever imagined.” After being deemed too clumsy at age 15 to be a Davis Cup ball boy, Smith trained hard, eventually becoming a tennis great. Later, Smith’s sneaker deal with Adidas in the early 1970s led to a fashion craze and then a 1989 Guinness World Record, with 22 million pairs of those eponymous sneakers sold, more than any other “named” shoe.

Stan Smith: Some People Think I’m a Shoe—a weighty tome that’s nearly as big as Smith’s foot—is a self-contained sneaker museum, detailing the many incarnations and influences of his famously green-trimmed, white-leather shoe, which originally featured the name of French tennis star Robert Haillet. With detailed, personal commentary from the modest, affable Smith, this fact-filled compendium takes the form of an alphabet book, with entries like “V is for Versatility,” explaining how Stan Smiths became hip-hop’s favorite footwear. As Smith confesses, “I guess that I have become somewhat of a modern sneakerhead since my closet is full of both everyday and rare shoes that all happen to be Stan Smiths.”

Stan Smith is a unique blend of sports history, funky fashion chronicle and chic celebrity memoir.

Sarah Barrett Moulton: Pinkie, by Thomas Lawrence, 1794. From Pink, edited by Valerie Steele. Courtesy of the Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, California.

 

TICKLED PINK
Perhaps like me, you have a love-hate relationship with the color pink. If so, you’ll enjoy exploring those complicated emotions with Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color. Consider just a few of its many shades: Drunk Tank pink, Kissing pink, Millennial pink, Naive pink and, of course, Princess pink. You’ll learn that Asians, especially the Japanese, seem to like pink more than Europeans do, while in the United States, pink has been called “the most divisive of colors.” And guess what: Pink didn’t become associated with girls in the U.S. until the 1930s, and the “pinkification of girl culture” didn’t take over until the 1970s and ’80s, spurred by Barbie’s wardrobe.

This lavishly illustrated pink menagerie features everything from French fashion of the 1700s to a 1956 ad for a pink Royal Electric typewriter and plenty of political pussy hats, plus the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Sugar Ray Robinson, Rihanna and Mamie Eisenhower all looking pretty in pink. Pink’s publication coincides with a major exhibition on view now at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Editor Valerie Steele, the chief curator of the exhibit, includes an intriguing mix of essays written by a costume designer, an art historian, a gender studies expert and more.

Whatever you think of pink, there are fascinating tidbits on every page of this eye-catching history.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

By definition, fashion is always in flux. As New York Times “On the Street” photographer Bill Cunningham explains, “An idea that is elegant at its time is an outrageous disgrace ten years earlier, daring five years before its height, and boring five years later.” These three books offer engaging looks at how trends evolve in the fashion world.

NonfictionPhotographyNature

It’s home, and it’s the only one we’ve got

Feature by Alice Cary

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

Who wouldn’t want to see the photo album of astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station? Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut’s Photographs from a Year in Space is a remarkably mesmerizing accomplishment, especially given the microgravity environment. Kelly not only had to brace himself and his camera to keep from floating around but also had to pan the camera quickly when focusing his lens on Earth, galloping by at 17,500 miles per hour.

Take a look inside the phone booth-size quarters where Kelly slept in a green sleeping bag attached to a wall. Check out his space-walk selfies and a shot of him watching his twin brother Mark’s appearance on “Celebrity Jeopardy.” Kelly took dazzling shots of sunsets, sunrises, auroras, New York City, Hurricane Patricia and Paris after the 2015 terrorist attack. Following in the footsteps of his artist mother, to whom this book is dedicated, he also created “Earth Art,” amazingly colorful photos that vary from realistic shots to the seemingly abstract, showing islands in the Bahamas, fiery Peruvian volcanoes and an opalescent Iran resembling shimmering gold filaments.

True to its title, Infinite Wonder offers an amazing array of jaw-dropping photographs unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

Lotus flower from Flora. © Dorling Kindersley: Gary Ombler/Kew Gardens, 2018.

 

PLANT PEERING
How about a botany primer on steroids? The subject bursts to life with a winning combination of stunning photographs and clear, concise scientific explanations in Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants. Such lavishness comes naturally; the book is a joint venture between the Smithsonian and London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As Smithsonian Gardens Director Barbara W. Faust explains in her foreword: “The otherworldly beauty of the magnified subjects made me feel like I had landed on Lilliput and happened upon old friends who had been supersized!”

This weighty tome takes on the fundamentals with chapters on stems and branches, seeds and fruits, roots, leaves, flowers and plant families. Within each chapter are fabulous arrays of topics: nitrogen fixing, the strangler fir, fragrant traps, exploding seedpods and a variety of mini essays on plants in art. The photographs will lure you in like insects to a Venus flytrap. See the fine hairs that cover stinging nettles, the volcanic center of a corpse flower and the soft, springy tissues of a furled fern.

Spend some time with Flora, and you’re bound to look at the world differently.

FRESH, FANCIFUL TAKES
It’s easy to get lost in the pages of Seeing Science: An Illustrated Guide to the Wonders of the Universe, a marvelous mishmash of facts and illustrations by artist and lay scientist Iris Gottlieb. This unusual collection, perfect for browsing, is divided into sections covering life, Earth and the physical sciences. Readers of all ages and diverse scientific backgrounds will find factoids of interest: In 1970, two bullfrogs were sent into space to test motion sickness because their internal systems of balance are similar to humans’. Or how about this: Some ghost “encounters” can be explained by the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, which causes hallucinations.

Gottlieb’s illustrations are fun, funky and informative, and her quirky sense of humor and intellectual curiosity up the entertainment value of Seeing Science.

FOREST BATHING
If all the data about climate change has left you down in the dumps, revitalize yourself with The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition, an abridged edition of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s bestselling book about the many secrets of our deep-rooted forest friends. This seems like a book that’s meant to be illustrated, after all, and these luminous photographs from around the world underscore Wohlleben’s intriguing explanations and arguments.

Just as Temple Grandin has revolutionized the way people think about livestock, Wohlleben is changing the conversations people have about trees by revealing the ways they react and communicate in social networks. While this book is full of inspiring photographs, it’s also meant to be read, not simply perused. Happily, Wohlleben’s lively writing style makes that a snap, with passages that ask, “So why do trees live so long? After all, they could grow just like wild flowers: grow like gangbusters for the summer, bloom, set seed, and then be recycled into humus.”

Tackling everything from “Community Housing” (animals and insects that inhabit trees) to “Street Kids” (urban trees), The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition leads readers on a thought-provoking nature expedition.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The world never stops being amazing and mysterious, as these four books remind us. Each offers a unique perspective, challenging readers to observe their surroundings as never before.

NonfictionChildren's & YALiterature

Put the world in their hands

Feature by Alice Cary

Give these gifts, and see young readers’ faces fill with glee. Below, find six picks that encourage hands-on learning, stereotype-free thinking, the power of imagination and more.

Calling all Indiana Jones wannabes: Now there’s a kids’ version of Atlas Obscura, The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid, which highlights 100 jaw-dropping places to visit around the globe. Authors Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco chronicle sites like Antarctica’s Blood Falls, an underground town in China built by Mao Tse-tung in the 1960s as a military bunker in case of nuclear attack, a small island in Brazil that’s home to between 2,000 and 4,000 golden lancehead snakes, and the world’s largest model-train setup in Hamburg, Germany. This lively, large-format guide brims with colorful illustrations by Joy Ang, maps and all sorts of geographical excitement.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Children who love to build and create will enjoy Discovery Globe, a step-by-step build-your-own spinning globe kit. With slotted cardboard pieces, wooden dowels and plastic connectors, there’s no glue required here, and once assembled, young builders can spin their globes while paging through the accompanying World Explorer’s Guide (written by Leon Gray), which is filled with fun facts, a glossary, colorful illustrations from Sarah Edmonds and trivia questions for young globe-trotters.

A DINOSAUR DELIGHT
Learning cool facts about dinosaurs is more fun with Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum. Inside is a “crate” of five fossil exhibits waiting to be unpacked and matched with the correct exhibition. Pretend paleontologists must assemble the color-coded dinosaur fossil pop-ups by slotting the pieces together (again, no glue) and inserting the finished skeletons right into the pages of this fun, fact-filled book, which looks like the museum of a young dinosaur lover’s dreams.

A DAILY DOSE OF VERSE
While Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is a weighty tome, it’s filled with a wonderful variety of short poems selected by Fiona Waters, making each day’s read a welcome treat. With beloved poems from the likes of Robert Frost (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” makes a pitch-perfect appearance in January) and less familiar gems like a translated Mescalero Apache song, this is a celebration of all sorts of weather and its impact on the lives that dwell in biomes such as oceans and forests. Frann Preston-Gannon’s big, bold and colorful mixed-media illustrations are what truly give this collection its wow factor. Readers will be drawn right in, whether they’re poring over a wild ocean storm in April or a brightly blazing November fire. In the introduction, Nosy Crow publisher Kate Wilson explains that this project grew out of her desire to re-create her own favorite childhood book, which caused her to fall “in love with poetry, with rhyme, with rhythm, with the way that poetry squashed big feelings, big thoughts, big things, into tiny boxes of brilliance for the reader to unpack.” Sing a Song of Seasons makes a great read-aloud as well as an enticing treasury for older children.

Illustration from Power to the Princess © 2018 by Julia Bereciartu. Reproduced by permission of Lincoln Children's Books.

 

PROJECT PRINCESS
There’s good reason to be a princess if you’re reading Power to the Princess, written by Vita Murrow and illustrated by Julia Bereciartu. Cast away the old stereotypes, and make room for these smart, independent heroines who span the globe, many of them young women of color. Little Red Riding Hood saves her grandmother and helps relocate those hangry wolves, while Rapunzel becomes a creative architect at her firm, A Braid Above, and designs buildings that people like blind Prince Gothel can navigate. While the social consciousness in these stories can be a bit excessive, they’re an overdue antidote to those outdated princess roles of yore.

MOWGLI RETURNS
Billed as a companion to Rudyard Kipling’s classic novel The Jungle Book, Into the Jungle: Stories for Mowgli contains five original stories about Mowgli, Baloo, Kaa and more. Rest assured, this ain’t your Disney Jungle Book, and these tales have a more modern, enlightened outlook as well. They’re created by award-winning children’s writer Katherine Rundell, who spent her childhood in Africa and Europe and whose prose is exciting and exquisite. Icelandic artist Kristjana S. Williams’ plentiful illustrations are colorful collages created with Victorian engravings. A cloth ribbon bookmark takes the appeal of this gorgeous volume over the top.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Give these gifts, and see young readers’ faces fill with glee. Below, find six picks that encourage hands-on learning, stereotype-free thinking, the power of imagination and more.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Illustrated tales of nonstop fun

Feature by Alice Cary

Fans of Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate series will adore the author and cartoonist’s Max & the Midknights, a superb hybrid of chapter book and graphic novel that’s packed with nonstop adventure, dragons, wizards and flying rats. The daring, wise-cracking Max (who discovers she’s actually a girl) is stuck in the Middle Ages, longing to become a knight but acting as an apprentice to bumbling Uncle Budrick, a troubadour who’s anything but tuneful. This down-on-their luck pair courts catastrophe when they enter the Kingdom of Byjovia, where the evil King Gastley carts Uncle Budrick off to be his jester. While Max and her merry band of misfits bear a noticeable resemblance to Charlie Brown and his buddies (Charles Schulz is one of Peirce’s inspirations), these characters have a modern Wimpy Kid vibe.

In the second adventure of his Mac B., Kid Spy series, Caldecott Medal-winning author Mac Barnett recounts his supposed youthful adventures in 1989 as an espionage agent in Mac B., Kid Spy: The Impossible Crime. One moment, young Mac B. is playing mini golf in Castro Valley, California, and the next the queen of England is summoning him via pay phone to help her protect the crown jewels. Three hundred years ago, Colonel Thomas Blood stole them, and the queen believes one of his heirs will try to steal them again on the anniversary of this real-life 17th-century crime. The action never stops in this light-hearted adventure that’s fueled by Barnett’s jaunty narration, jokes galore and Mike Lowery’s entertaining, full-color cartoon illustrations. The plot may be preposterous, but it’s hard not to enjoy the ride.

Family dynamics are decidedly tricky for Happy Conklin Jr., a 10-year-old who has to shave three times a day after being experimented on by his inventor father. In 2018’s How to Sell Your Family to Aliens, Hap battled his authoritarian grandma, and in How to Properly Dispose of Planet Earth, he longs to be lab partners with Nevada Everly, the new girl in his science class. Hap manages to befriend her, but he also opens up a black hole that threatens to swallow his school—and the solar system. In this rollicking sci-fi adventure by New Yorker cartoonist Paul Noth, Hap and his superpowered sisters endure extraordinary exploits reminiscent of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” with appearances by Genghis Khan, magical lizards and a gigantic robot. There’s never a dull moment in this outlandish romp. 

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Playful illustrations make super stories even better, and these three action-packed novels for young readers are chock full of them.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Silly stories to inspire a love of language

Feature by Alice Cary

There’s great fun to be had in messing around with letters and words, and these four new picture books balance hilarity and education.

After his first day of kindergarten, author Tony Johnston’s grandson asked him, “We’re learning the letters, but what do they do?” Johnston was then inspired to write The Magic of Letters, an exhilarating answer whose cover shows letters tumbling out of a magic hat in front of a rabbit. Inside, the rabbit explains that “Letters hold magic. When you know their secrets, they open worlds.” The text shows how letters form words, proclaiming “Letters hold POWER. You can shuffle them around to make loads of mighty words.” On this poster-worthy spread, the rabbit drives a bright orange dump truck filled with words like “diversity,” “libraries,” “art” and “science.” Subsequent pages are playful, toying with words like “flibbertigibbet” and “quesadilla.” Wendell Minor’s childlike illustrations set a variety of moods, ranging from scenes of moonlit enchantment to the excitement felt by a boy and girl who hop on the back of a colorful toucan and soar into a sky filled with letters. Johnston urges readers to roll words “in your mouth like lollipops.” Yup, there’s a mighty sweet reason for learning those ABCs, and The Magic of Letters is proof.

A girl and her younger brother spend a glorious summer day camping near the sea, going to an amusement park, and swimming in author-illustrator Fiona Woodcock’s effervescent Hello. The story is cleverly told with only one or two words on each page, each and every one containing the paired letters “ll.” It’s a nifty follow-up to Look, in which the same siblings visit a zoo, “oo” words. Once again, Woodcock makes her amusing premise work well, starting out with the words “hello” and “yellow” as the sun rises over the family’s tent site. The siblings collide on bumper cars, yell their way down a giant slide and gallop aboard a carousel. Adding to the charm, Woodcock often incorporates those double letters into her illustrations, as the poles of each carousel horse or the boy’s long legs as he views himself in a hall of mirrors. Woodcock’s cheerful art accentuates the joy of every moment in a wonderful graphic style, often using the spatter of blow pens to mix her muted colors. Hello is a book readers will be eager to greet again and again.

As a green lion repeatedly approaches a stoplight, instead of the expected green light, a series of new surprises await, each beginning with the letters “li.” Sometimes the resulting events are “startling” (lightning and rain), sometimes “alarming” (a flood), sometimes “timely” (a passing rowboat), and so on. Occasionally, a picture book can strike a deep chord, and Candace Ryan’s Red Light, Green Lion does just that, serving as the perfect parable for its epigraph from Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen, part of which says, “Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy.” Never fear―this book is anything but heavy. With wonderfully spare text, Ryan builds anticipation with repetitions that prompt young readers to guess what might be next. Illustrator Jennifer Yerke’s simple line drawings in a limited palette of primary colors serve as the perfect counterpoint to the text, keeping the story light and lively. Red Light, Green Lion is a squeal-worthy preschool read-aloud that contains an invaluable lesson for all ages.

Sometimes the wrong word can be a lot more fun than the right one, and that’s certainly the case in Lambslide, the first picture book from award-winning adult author Ann Patchett. On a bucolic farm owned by none other than the Farmer family, young Nicolette is running for class president. When her mom says, “You’ll win by a landslide,” a group of rambunctious, self-centered lambs hear her prediction as “lambslide.” The lambs conclude that this wonderful sounding malaprop is exactly what they need, and through a series of negotiations with their mom, the other farmyard animals and the Farmers, they are forced to consider the needs and wants of others. Finally, after a farm-wide vote, these wooly crusaders get what they’re after, sharing the fun with everyone. This lively tale of teamwork―along with a playful peek at politics―features bestselling illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser, of Fancy Nancy fame, whose appealing art has something of an old-fashioned feel. The result is a book full of visual and verbal delights, brimming with joy, energy and humor.

There’s great fun to be had in messing around with letters and words, and these four new picture books balance hilarity and education.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features