ALL ABOUT HAIR

Hair is important. Ads featuring hair products for growing hair, coloring hair, erasing hair, compete for a buyer's attention on TV and wherever else space is open and for sale. Everyone knows what a bad hair day is. The person proclaiming it will be avoided. Usually. Of course, kids need their own book about hair. It’s important to them, too.

 THE HAIR BOOK by Latonya Yvette, illustrated by Amanda Jane Jones, Sterling Children’s Books, 2022.

Children notice hair at a very early age. They cut the dog’s hair, their dolls’ hair, little brother’s hair…and their own.  Sometimes this urge to cut hair extends into adulthood.

I remember when I was four, my mother was shopping, and my dad decided to surprise her by trimming my bangs.  It turned out to be more difficult than he thought. I was draped in a towel and held my mother’s hand mirror in front of my face. I watched as Dad trimmed a little here, evened up a little there. By the time my mom came home, the bangs I had been brushing out of my eyes edged my forehead in a light brown fringe.

It took a few weeks for Mom’s surprise to fade and my fringe to become bangs again. She and Dad talked about it. A lot. With so much interest focused on hair, I decided to cut my doll’s hair. Her bangs did not grow back. I won't tell you about my little brother's hair. 

What do you suppose inspired the author and illustrator to create this book? Both were little girls once upon a time. And probably still girls at heart. Both are moms. The rest we can guess.

THE HAIR BOOK just launched as a board book and a picture book this month. In bold primary colors and spare text your young listeners and early readers will see themselves or someone they know.  They might discover someone new.

Party hair.  

Poufy hair.

All gone hair.

Beard hair (Santa?)

Monster hair (is that you in the morning?)     

 What's your hair story?

THE HAIR BOOK is an eclectic mix, but the message is clear: No matter what style or type of hair you have, YOU are welcome everywhere.

 

How Creative Are Your Kids?

 My favorite part of Halloween has always been the creative costumes kids make on their own. Halloween 2020 is a little different, but not in the costume department.

 EENIE MEENIE HALLOWEENIE by Susan Eaddy, illustrated by Lucy Fleming, Harper, 2020

 What to wear? What to wear? A little girl with a dress up trunk full of inspiration has important decisions to make. Her imagination is off and waddling like a penguin or running like a pink polar bear. Could she be an ocelot? Giraffe or kangaroo? Eenie Meenie—at last, she knows what to do.      

Your little trick or treaters will love turning pages. Then turn them loose with “finds” around the house. Old curtains or sheets? Scraps of trim and fabric from your last burst of sewing? Don’t forget the kitchen. My daughter used a roll of aluminum foil to turn her 7 year old self into the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.

Susan Eaddy is an author and illustrator who sculpts in clay. For her young readers and their moms, she has thoughtfully provided crafts on her web page to help extend this book’s fun way beyond Halloween. Keep scrolling down until you find out how to make a tree for a smiling little monkey. http://www.susaneaddy.com/teachers-kids

 Illustrator Lucy Fleming has peppered the pages of this charming book with surprises for sharp eyed readers. Tissue boxes? A bow tie? Lots and lots of tape and glue.

 Let’s get going!

 Switching gears, I’ve added a new feature to Book Log. How do creative folks keep their spirits up in this time when school visits, book launches, and book store gatherings have been reduced or cancelled?

 So I asked Susan Eaddy, how are you and what lifts your spirits these days? 

 

A tip from Susan Eaddy for lifting one’s spirits:

One of the things I have been thinking about is how the inability to travel has led me to discoveries in my own neighborhood. I have always been a walker for exercise, but usually limited my walks to 30 minutes in the blocks nearby. By necessity this led me to a predictable loop so I could be back home in 30 minutes. 

But now... I set out my front door and have no plan other than seeing up close a street that I've never explored. I've lived in the same neighborhood for 25 years and surprised myself by realizing that I'd never actually WALKED on the streets that are a less than a mile from my house. My curiosity keeps me walking further, and my 30 minute walks have become an hour or more as I indulge that curiosity to see what is around each corner. Every day is a new discovery of homes, tidy or unkempt, manicured gardens, or lawns bare with kids’ foot traffic.

Every home has a story I had never stopped to consider. And I make a point of making eye contact & saying hello with a big smile to every neighbor, walker or runner I encounter. It surprises people, and more often than not, they smile back. With genuine warmth.

MICE ON ICE!

Breaking news: Winter is not reading the calendar! It keeps on snowing across the upper swath of our country and is not the least bit apologetic about dropping cold temperatures across the south.

Enter Lucy who loves snow and ice. If only her friends would join her.

MICE SKATING by Annie Silvestro, illustrated by Teagan White, Sterling Children’s Books, 2017

Lucy is a mouse. And so, of course, her friends are mice. Like any self-respecting and traditional mouse, each one has burrowed in to spend the cheerless days of winter below ground, snoozing, perhaps, or maybe reading books about humans while I am reading a book about them.

Not Lucy. She dons her fluffy wool cap with a pink pom-pom on top and goes adventuring. She catches snowflakes on her tongue, makes mice angels in the snow, and misses her friends. Her attempts to bring snow fun into her friends’ cozy napping spaces fail. Snow cones?  They aren’t cheese. An indoor snow fight? A soggy mess.

Then Lucy figures out how to skate.

Adding to the reader’s enjoyment, the author sprinkles wordplays on cheese throughout the sprightly text. Art shimmers. Winter re-gains its first snow of the season excitement.

Thank you, Lucy.

ABOUT THE CREATORS:

Teagan White, whose art brings Lucy and her field mouse friends to life, has illustrated greeting cards and textiles as well as children’s books and received a BFA in illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design.  

Author Annie Silvestro  is the author of Bunny’s Book Club (Doubleday), another Bunny book coming out this summer, and The Christmas Tree Who Loved Trains (HarperCollins, September 2018).

After considering opening a children’s book store, Silvestro decided to create books instead, beginning her writing career with determination in 2009. She joined the Society of Children’s 

Book Writers and Illustrators and “kept working and learning.”

Author Silvestro shares this journey with young authors in schools – a part of being a children’s author that she discovered she loves.  “It (author visits) was something I was nervous about doing at first, but now I’ve found it to be the very best part of my job. Engaging with children about books and reading is such a gift.”

Silvestro says she loves to tell young readers “how important it is to keep reading! You have to be a good reader to be a good writer. I also like to tell them to persevere and that it’s ok to make mistakes.”

Returning to Lucy, readers will see that Lucy perseveres, makes mistakes, and yes! succeeds. Set out the snacks of cheese and crackers. While younger readers enjoy turning pages, older readers will be chuckling over the wordplay. And a few more days of winter will be OK.    

Can a Story Save the Kingdom?

If your kids are into saving kingdoms this year, here is a holiday book to give them some options.

THE STORY BOOK KNIGHT by Helen Docherty and Thomas Docherty, Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2016

Leo was a gentle knight. So begins this gentle tale. He likes to read. However, his parents succumb to the way it is always done, and when they pronounce, “Knights must FIGHT,” Leo is puzzled.

However, not only is Leo a gentle knight, he is a dutiful son. And so he sets off to tame a dragon, armed with gifts from his parents, a new shield and sword. (He also packs sandwiches and a stack of books.)  

Along the way to find the elusive dragon, Leo encounters a griffin, (he knows it is a griffin because he has read about one), a troll, and finally, in a village where the people are in hiding, an ENORMOUS and cranky from a nap, DRAGON. 

The cover copy asks, “…can a story be as mighty as a sword?” Read this to your four year old and discover a happy ending and a delightful answer.

This book’s creators live in Wales with their two daughters. I’m guessing lots of stories are told in their home.

My suggestion: after you have read this to your young listener half a dozen times or so, suggest he or she read it to the baby or a doll, or even the dog or cat.  Like Leo, you will be left in peace to read.  It’s your turn to read to YOU.

Reverse Integration—Who Knew?

During the Civil Rights movement in the turbulent 1960’s, black and white citizens in Huntsville, Alabama worked together to make their city an example of peaceful change. This was little known at the time and the same is true today.

SEEDS OF FREEDOM, The Peaceful Integration of Huntsville, Alabama by Hester Bass, illustrated by E. B. Lewis, Candlewick Press, 2015

 

Author Hester Bass was a first grader in an all-white classroom in GA in 1962. She saw black children in her town and wondered where they went to school. They weren’t in her classes. Where were they?

Later, when she lived in Huntsville, Alabama, she discovered a fascinating story.  She asked lots of questions (writers do that) and decided that what happened in Huntsville, the how and the why, should be written, published, and added to the growing collection of diverse books for children.

Both author and illustrator are highly awarded. Hester Bass’s first picture book for young children, The Secret World of Walter Anderson, also illustrated by E.B. Lewis, won the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. More honors for E. B. Lewis include the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Talkin’ About Bessie: the Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman by Nikki Grimes. This talented team of author and illustrator mirrors the contrasts and the strengths among the citizens of Huntsville.

Invisible lines in communities, schools, stores, parks, swimming pools, public restrooms and drinking fountains, wherever both races might come in contact, existed in Huntsville much the same as they did in other southern cities. However, the difference in Huntsville is revealed as author and illustrator lead the reader through a series of choices made by black and white citizens to face injustice with peaceful protest. The courage of both races sets an example for others who seek out of the box solutions to complex problems. It is possible to work together.

In August 1963, a judge ruled that four black students should be admitted to Huntsville schools. However, in September, those four students found the doors of their prospective schools locked.  Governor George Wallace had closed public schools to thwart their efforts. At the same time, a private school across town, a black school, was adding twelve new students--all white-- to its roster, quietly and peacefully. Following this, after the public schools re-opened, one black child was successfully enrolled in the same white school closed to him only a few days earlier.

 

I didn't know this story before. Did you?      

The author’s note brings a greater historical perspective and concludes with a challenge to all of us: “More needs to be done. Be the one person who makes a difference.”

cover credit:
SEEDS OF FREEDOM. Text copyright (C) 2015 by Hester Bass. Illustrations copyright (C) 2015 by E. B. Lewis. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

 

 

 

 

Making Letter “A” Happy

Imagine if you were a hard working letter "A". You have to start every ABC book. There IS no ABC book without you. It must get very wearying to be on call for every single time somebody decides to write a “new” alphabet book. Besides, how many ABC books does the world need?

ONCE UPON AN ALPHABET, Short Stories for all the Letters, by Oliver Jeffers, Philomel Books, 2014

The sub-title pretty well says what this book is about, but it doesn’t tell you what the stories are about, and that’s where the reader becomes entertained and each hard working letter smiles because now he has his very own story. Isn’t it about time? (I can hear the author thinking that.)

The introduction, which looks as if a child wrote it in black crayon, says, “If words make up stories, and letters make up words, then stories are made of letters. In this menagerie we have stories, made of words, made FOR all the letters.” (On further reflection, the author must have written that because I can’t imagine a young reader using the word “menagerie.”)

And so all the stories, made of words, made of letters, begin.  Stories from A to Z. Stories about an inventor in disguise, a forgetful king, and a parsnip that could use a tutor. And more. Because as everybody knows, there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Thus, 26 stories. If you were paying attention, I mentioned only three. No spoiler alerts here!

The author/illustrator, who was born in Australia and grew up in Belfast, has set so many tales spinning, that it’s pretty obvious his mind can’t sit still. It has to dance. (That’s what I think.)  His book titles The Incredible Book Eating Boy and This Moose Belongs to Me will capture the curiosity of almost anyone. (Unless that person is in a bad mood and late for dinner.)

Oliver Jeffers says his favorite letter is O because it is his first initial, he was born in October, and there are two O’s in Brooklyn where he now lives. 

Upon careful consideration and many page turnings, back and forth, my favorite letter is J because it’s my first initial and because Author Jeffers might like it, too, (it is his second initial) and because he wrote a story for “J” about an invention I’d love to have: a jelly door. If he could Just make it work.

That’s all I’m going to say. What is your favorite letter and why?

Oh, one more thing—to challenge your own creativity, go to www.oliverjeffersworld.com

That really IS all I’m going to say. Today.

On Passover

What was it like to be a child in Biblical times? Did you ever wonder? Does your child?

The Longest Night, a Passover Story by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by Catia Chien, Schwartz & Wade Books, 2013

The author wondered, too. She wrote this book for the curious girl she was. When her family honored the tradition of reading Exodus every year at Passover, she wondered about the real people in the story. Who were they? What did their families do on ordinary days?  What did the children do? 

A young slave girl tells this story, and her ordinary day begins “in the heat and blowing sand.”

Children do not play. They must work.

Then the world changed.  “Life unraveled, rearranged.” Plagues arrived. Exodus tells us about the leaders and rulers and how this impacted them. This author lets us feel the impact on the families in the streets.

Parents and grandparents waited. The young main character wondered, worried, but didn’t ask. She just watched.

The night her father marked the doorpost with blood was a night filled with terrible cries of anguish. Everyone rushed into the square. They gathered their belongings and ran. “Running from, but also to.”

The illustrator carries the reader from the silence of a grey and grim setting, punctuated with hopeful skies and free-flying birds, grants a reason to look up into a world that turns brown with the prospects of greater hunger and more wounded lives. Swirling blues of a mighty Red Sea roll to surprising bursts of color as the people celebrate their escape and a grand arrival where, “As we found in open air—All our voices, everywhere.”

Together, the writer and illustrator have created an imaginative treatment of this majestic event.

For your child or your inner child, whether your family observes Passover or not, here is a book for all who enter this season…and wonder.