January 29, 2014
Big Picture Press: Mamoko and Maps
Harriet is (sort of) beginning to learn how to read, and as Harriet balks at any activity that is remotely challenging or involves learning by rote, I have to tread very carefully in my exuberance for her acquiring literacy. A book like Mamoko, by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński, which I brought home from the library the other week, is a perfect reminder for both of us that books can be wonderful fun.
Think of Mamoko like Where’s Waldo, but for people who love stories. The book’s inside cover introduces us to a range of characters whose stories we will follow throughout the rest of the book in dynamic, busy, detailed, wordless illustrations. There are dramas experienced, mysteries to be solved, jokes shared, and something new discovered every time. You can pick a new character and “read” a new book in Mamoko over and over again, or else just pick peruse the illustrations for general entertainment. The stories in this book aren’t straightforward either, and we went back and forth a lot to try to understand what we missed, to figure out exactly what was going on. It was utterly engaging, the illustrations smart enough to make this very satisfying, and while we had lots of fun with this book together, it’s also nice to have a book that Harriet can “read” all by herself.
Another book by the same press and same authors is Maps, which was one of (too) many books I’ve picked up at Book City lately (sob). I’ve got such a thing for maps and atlases (my prized one is Atlas of Remote Islands, and I so want to get my hands on Infinite City by Rebecca Solnit), so I was excited to get a kids’ atlas. There is a world map, and about 50 others of individual countries. And as with Mamoko, the creators of this book know that story is what compels someone to open a book over and over again. And so each country’s map includes an image of a little boy and girl who might live there, and we learn their names, which is how these countries become more than just a shape on a page for young readers. And then we learn about that country’s wildlife, famous exports, cultural figures (fictional and otherwise), different cultures, national food and drink, industry and agriculture, all though adorable cartoon illustrations.
Pick a page, any page, and Maps will take you on a journey.
January 9, 2014
The Silver Button and Wanderlust
I have been besotted with Rebecca Solnit ever since reading The Faraway Nearby last fall, so I was very pleased to receive two more of her books for Christmas. I read Wanderlust: A History of Walking first as it was written before the other, and I loved once again being absorbed in a Solnitian world where the connections between books and place are so strong, and where one thing leads to another, just as one step does. (“One foot in front of the other,” is Harriet’s mantra as we embark on the 1.3 km walk to school every morning. It is a long walk if the walker is 4 years old, particular lately through snow and ice. ) And it is because one thing leads to another that one can’t sum up a Rebecca Solnit book properly, and I therefore must resort to ecstatic sharing. I loved learning about how closely the history of English garden design connects to the history of walking, about how the idea of walking being natural takes for granted civilization (i.e. law and order), and the gender politics of walking and (for women) the sexualization of the street—how different is the term “tramp” depending on to whom it is applied.
The first paragraph of Wanderlust:
Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak.
Which reminds me of the exquisite picture book that I bought Harriet/myself for Christmas this year. The Silver Button is a new book by Bob Graham, one of our favourite authors and the force behind the wonderful Oscar’s Half-Birthday. It’s a story that takes place within a single moment, illuminating the connections, the beauty and the perfections of the world. The perspective moves from a space on the floor in a single room to eventually comprise an entire city and beyond toward the global as Jodie puts the finishing touches on her drawing of a duck and her brother Jonathan rises to his feet to take his very first step. “He swayed, he frowned, he tilted forward, and took his first step. He took that step like he was going somewhere….”
These two books are an unlikely but absolutely perfect pair.
December 13, 2013
Top Picture Book Picks at Bunch
Over at Bunch Family, I’ve posted a list of some of my favourite picture books of 2013. Most of these will be familiar to anyone who is a regular reader here, but still might come in handy for your last-minute Christmas shopping needs.
December 5, 2013
New Kids’ Books Lately
Never Let You Go by Patricia Storms: Patricia is a friend of mine, and I love her latest book, the story of a parent’s unconditional love. This Mommy or Daddy Penguin is never going to let the baby go… except, well, let’s not be ridiculous about the whole thing. Baby Penguin will be let go to go to the bathroom, of course (and she actually mentions bathroom=hilarity). And Baby Penguin will be let go for lunch, to play, to chase the stars (and here there is a gorgeous spread of Aurora Australis). But other that that, of course, “I will never let you go,” says Big Penguin, portraying the elasticity and infinitude of great parental love.
Mr. King’s Castle by Genevieve Cote: I’ve got a bias for this book as well, because it’s got a pink owl in it who was named for my daughter. It’s the follow-up to Cote’s Mr King’s Things, and similarly presents an environmental theme. That crazy cat Mr. King starts building a castle out of the pieces of the world around him, and he wants a big castle. So he builds and builds and builds and the castle is amazing, but he’s oblivious to the fact that he has robbed his animal friends of their habitats. When he realizes, he and his friends go to make it right, and he learns something about environmental stewardship in the process.
ABC of Toronto by Per-Henrik Gurth: I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this alphabet book, as Allan Moak’s A Big City ABC is the Toronto alphabet in my mind. But it turns out that Toronto is big enough for two ABCs. I love “D is for Dinosaur,” which shows my favourite dino skeleton from the ROM; “K is for Kensington Market;” and “P is for Picnic at Trinity Bellwoods Park.” Plus Union Station, Streetcars and “W is for Ward’s Island.” I love this book’s perfect specificity.
Loula is Leaving for Africa by Anne Villeneuve: This brand new book is a little old-fashioned, recalling Eloise a bit (or perhaps that’s just the chauffeur). I like this book’s eccentric twists–Loula’s mother is an opera singer, her father a designer of moustaches (?). Neither is much concerned that Loula’s three brothers are making her crazy, and so she runs away from home, on a voyage of the imagination to “Africa”, in the company of her family’s chauffeur Gilbert. The story shows that one needn’t travel far to really get away, and that the most wonderful terrain to explore is in the mind.
Shhh! Don’t Wake the Royal Baby! by Martha Mumford and Ada Grey: I picked up this one while we were in England, because Iris and the Royal Baby are contemporaries and it’s as good a souvenir as a tea-towel. It’s a funny story with smart illustrations about how the Royal Baby just can’t be put to sleep. My favourite part is when the Baby is almost down, and then Prince Phillip prances in kicking his heels and dancing, waking baby up again. I also like when Pippa and Prince Harry raise a ruckus planning a lavish party in Baby’s honour, with Pippa yelling, “More blinis! We need more blinis!” Of course, specific Royals (and their sister) are not named exactly, called “The Duchess” and “The Duke” (and oddly, Phillip gets to be The King, and Charles and Camilla don’t even factor, but let’s not complicate things).
November 15, 2013
Picture Book Inspiration: Get Excited and Make Things
(This one is cross-posted to Bunch Family!)
My favourite picture books are the ones whose stories escape their pages, books that live on in the imagination long after they’ve been returned to the shelf, books which inspire their readers to get excited and make things. And such books are perfect for these days when it’s a little too cold outside, and you’re looking for a fun diversion or two.
How To by Julie Morstad: It’s been nominated for a 2013 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature Illustration, and no wonder. Morstad’s How To is a guide to life, albeit life lived whimsically, with a great deal of imagination and style. It doesn’t inspire a specific craft project, but instead is the launching pad for several (including chalk-drawings, stilts, butterfly wings) and also to a whole new way of looking at the world.
The Imaginary Garden by Andrew Larsen and Irene Luxbacher: This is a really wonderful story about the connection between a young girl and her grandfather who has had to leave his garden behind to move into an apartment. Together, Theo and her grandfather create an imaginary garden to fill the void, a painted picture on a large piece of canvas. I love this book because there’s something going on beneath the surface–just what is the grandfather’s story, I wonder?–but I also love that just about every child who reads it is compelled to pick up some crayons and paper and make an imaginary garden of her own.
Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Gilman: I memorized this book when I was seven years old, and now my daughter knows it too. And she has been inspired to play pirates by it, as well as to fashion a robot head out of tinfoil and a cardboard box. (“I’m mad about boxes! Boxes are fun! No one will guess who we are when it’s done.”) Jillian Jiggs’ imagination is quite contagious, and I also remember that its follow-up, The Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs, came with instructions for making little stuffed pigs of one’s own, with button noses and everything.
The Stone Hatchlings by Sarah Tsiang and Qin Leng: This book is the follow-up to the acclaimed A Flock of Shoes, the story of a little girl who finds some eggs and decides she is going to hatch them into birds. Never mind that Abby’s mother tells her that the eggs are just stones–with the aid of some paint and a brush, Abby transforms those eggs into beautiful birds who are alive in her imagination. We’ve had three egg-shaped stones nesting in a pile of silk scarves ever since this book came into our lives, and I don’t doubt that they’ll hatch one day.
Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen: My love for this book knows no bounds–it’s funny, features yarn-bombing, a brave heroin who defies an evil archduke, and it’s illustrated by Jon Klassen (who did I Want My Hat Back). Extra Yarn is the story of Annabel, who finds a box of yarn and starts knitting, and discovers that the length of yarn is infinite. So she knits sweaters for people, sweaters for pets, sweaters for trees and pickup trucks. Her creations fill her dreary little town with brilliant colour, and might just inspire a young reader to pick up a pair of needles.
Chicken Pig and Cow by Ruth Ohi: Ruth Ohi’s series takes place amongst the residents of a popsicle-stick barn, the residents themselves being plasticize creations, all of whom have been built by Girl. The friends have adventures, misunderstandings, reconciliations and brave rescues. These books were the inspiration for the popsicle stick barn we’ve got at our house.
The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb: I love this book by Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo. In delightful rhyming verse, she tells the story of a string of paper dolls who went on to have many adventures, and even when their life was over, they lived on in the memory of the little girl who made them. When we made our own string of paper dolls, naturally, we too called them, “Ticky, and Tacky, and Jackie the Backy, and Jim with Two Noses and Jo with the Bow.”
You can get a Paper Dolls template here!
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It occurs to me that each of these book features girls who are getting excited and making things, though the Morstad and Gilman do show boys in the mix. But what else am I missing? Are creative boys being left out of picture books? Or is my reading just a little too girl-centric? Please give me your recommendations in the comments.
October 24, 2013
Lois Lowry!
Seven years ago, I sent Lois Lowry a fan-email to tell her how much her Anastasia Krupnik books had meant to be growing up, and she sent a kind and gracious reply. Three days ago, apropos of a conversation with Helen Spitzer on Twitter, I changed my profile picture to the cover of Anastasia Again! And then today, I discovered that Lois Lowry, Anastasia’s creator, was giving a lecture at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, mere blocks from my house. Today was also important, because it was Iris’s first time rolling off the couch, which was slightly traumatic, but not so much because she is my second baby. Also because she is my second baby: I can go out whenever I want, even if it’s for the third time in seven days, whereas with Harriet, I didn’t leave the house in the evening for nine months. So I went to the Lois Lowry lecture tonight.
(Yes, I am slightly wired. I don’t sleep much anyway, and then Jennica Harper’s new book turns up in the post, and it’s so good that I’m up late late on Monday reading it. And then yesterday, I discover that Margaret Drabble has a new novel, which is so fantastic that all I want to do is read, and that then today I get to be in the same room as Lois Lowry? Where do weeks like this one come from? [And yes, Iris is fine. Really. No injuries sustained. She actually landed on her bum, which was kind of weird because I looked down and she was just sitting on the floor, and I thought, “How did you get there?”])
Helen phoned me tonight to confirm I was going, and thought she’d stop by a bookstore en-route to pick up some Lowry and cram. What a fantastic idea, I thought, and calculated the unlikelihood of me finishing dinner, doing story-time, feeding Iris, and going to Book City in a twenty-five minute period, leaving enough time to get to the lecture. And then I started remembering Anastasia, and realized I’d never forgotten anything about her ever. I didn’t need to read up. And that she was incredibly important to who I wanted to be when I was young, and to who I am today.
Her parents, Myron and Kathryn Krupnik, and Myron’s old flame Annie, who turned out to be terrible. Anastasia who was in love with Washburn Cummings, who was black and always bouncing a basketball. How her father, a Harvard Professor, criticized her for using the word, “Weird,” which I still never write, because I hear Myron Krupnik saying, “Anastasia, you live in a house that’s full of books. Surely you can come up with a better word than that?” Her baby brother Sam, who was the weird one. One day she walked into a room and there he was, and he told her, “I am eating ice.” How she put her dad’s Billie Holiday albums on the radiator and they melted, and I didn’t know who Billie Holiday was (though I DID know what albums and radiators were), and got confused with Buddy Holly. How Anastasia got a job working for a rich lady called Mrs. Bellingham, and how, echoing her employer, Anastasia referred to residents of a public housing complex as “the great unwashed”, and her father blew a gasket. Her mother was an artist and always splattered with paint, wore jeans. Anastasia had the same reservations that I do about “the suburbs”, though I’d change my mind too if I ended up in a room with a tower. I love how her parents were so intelligent in their parenting, how they treated her like a person. I like how they were individuals in their own rights, with their own first names. These books introduced me to Freud (which was pronounced “Fraud”, I imagined), GertrudeStein (who was Anastasia’s next door neighbour, and she had a fish, I think, and a short-lived marriage with a man called Lloyd, who’d insisted the double L had a y sound). I remember Anastasia’s boyfriend, who was called Steve Harvey and wasn’t at all weird, and how he had no qualms about a girlfriend with glasses and intellectual leanings. Oh, and that other boy, with the briefcase, and how Anastasia had told him that her brother was disabled, which led to an enormous misunderstanding.
I remember buying Anastasia books at the World’s Biggest Bookstore on trips to Toronto, and we’ve forgotten how amazing that store seemed at the time. It was also there that I bought Pollyanna, with a foreword by Lois Lowry, which contained the phrase, “Goodness triumphs. I like that!” which I like very much too, except I misread it as, “Goodness turnips” and thought it a most peculiar expression.
I read her other books too–A Summer to Die, Find a Stranger Say Goodbye. I read The Giver just a few years ago, though it was not so much my thing. She told us tonight that her publisher asked her to stop writing Anastasia books, said her appeal had been exhausted, but never! What a spectacular heroine, smart and utterly herself. Which is what Lowry herself seemed like at the lecture, which was fascinating, funny, touching and wonderful. I left the house in a hurry and forgot to bring a pen and paper, so I didn’t take notes, but that was sort of nice, actually, because I got to just sit back and listen, and it was so enjoyable to do so.
She talked about being born into a family of readers, about being read it and learning to read. About the books that first impressed her, discovering how words worked, learning to tell stories through an elaborate lie she told to impress a counsellor at camp. She talked about her sister who’d died young, and about how, upon her death, she finally understood what a writing instructor had meant when he’d told her that she would need to suffer a loss before she could really write, and how she turned that experience into story. About how she lived in Japan as a child, riding her bike around post-war Tokyo, and the boy she knew but never spoke to, and how they met again on a stage years later when she won the Newbery Award and he was being awarded the Caldecott Medal for Grandfather’s Journey–he was the illustrator Allen Say. She showed us a still from a video of her playing on a Hawaiian beach in 1940 with her grandmother, and how eventually she realizes that it’s the USS Arizona in the background, which would be destroyed just over a year later, all the men on board killed. “And this is what literature is,” she told us. “The putting together of things.”
it was an extraordinary lecture, and something to behold: the actual sight of this woman whose books I’ve been reading for over 25 years now. I will be introducing Anastasia to my daughters, because apparently she’e just come back into print. But in the meantime, I bought Harriet one of Lowry’s books called Gooney Bird Greene, and tomorrow we will read it together.
October 21, 2013
Harriet and Sheree Fitch at Eden Mills
The most wonderful thing that ever happened was captured on video! Here is Harriet storming the stage to help the great Sheree Fitch read Mable Murple at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaOX6dValjY&feature=youtu.be
October 20, 2013
Animal Stories (including woolves!) at the Gardiner Museum
We went to the Gardiner Museum today to see the Animal Stories exhibit.
“Elephants, leopards, dogs, squirrels and dragons… From exotic creatures, household pets, urban wildlife to mythical beasts, animals have been an active part of human experience, an inexhaustible trigger of the imagination. Animal Stories presents the many tales of our encounters with the animal world, shedding light on how our social, symbolic, affectionate, scientific and utilitarian relationships with animals have been visualized through ceramics from the 17th century to our day.”
Fantastic events are scheduled as part of the exhibit, and today we were happy to catch the first of the Kids Can Press Reading Series, today with the lovely Kyo Maclear reading Virginia Wolf (with the assistance of her entire family). Afterwards, the kids got to make their own Virginia Wolf ears (which alternate as a big blue bow, depending on one’s mood).
Three readings are left in the series: Wallace Edwards on November 10, Eugenie Fernandes on December 8, and Nicholas Oldford on December 15. (And we got free passes for the museum through the Sun Life Museum and Arts Pass at the Toronto Public Library. Such a great deal!)
October 10, 2013
Breastfeeding Babies in Picture Books
Every week is Breastfeeding Week at my house, which is my best excuse for being a few days late with this post specially designed to coincide with World Breastfeeding Week (which ended on Sunday). But let the festivities continue by picking one of these great picture books that celebrate and normalize the image of nursing mothers. These are not books about breastfeeding, but instead stories with breastfeeding taking place in the background, with breastfeeding as part of ordinary life, just like it is in the real world.
Kisses Kisses Baby-O! by Sheree Fitch and HildaRose: Baby love is bursting from the pages of this board book whose story narrates the pattern of a baby’s day. And a part of that day is “Shhh. Hushtime. Slurping Burping Snuggle Huggle Sleepy Sleepy Baby-O”, the accompanying illustration of the nursing baby from its Mama’s point of view. Even better: families of all different races are depicted in the book, which exists also in French and Mi’kmaq translation. (And do check out a the scene about expressing milk into a bathtub in Sheree Fitch’s novel for adults, Kiss the Joy as it Flies, which includes the line, “Holy shit… you’re like a goddamn cow”).
Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers and Marla Frazee: This beautiful book with its bouncing rhythm never ceases to be a joy to read aloud, and I especially love that the babies in the book belong to so many different shapes of family. But this book is most remarkable for featuring my favourite image of a breastfeeding mother ever, for she is reading, and as far as I am concerned, that’s the only way to do it.
The Baby’s Catalogue by Janet and Allan Ahlberg: My copy of this book is disgustingly battered and covered in food splatters because we took it everywhere when my older daughter was little. It’s one of the lesser known books by the Ahlbergs, the creative team behind Each Peach Pear Plum and The Jolly Postman, and is full of several stories through images of different babies and families going about their day. A day which involves mealtimes, of course, and breast-milk is just one of many items on the menu.
Hello Baby by Jorge Uzon: This is the first in a series of four board books by Toronto photographer Uzon which document the first year of his baby’s life. That baby is brand new in Hello Baby, which documents the baby’s tiny fingers, tiny toes, and his very first feeding at his mother’s breast.
Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley and Janice Nadeau: Cinnamon Baby tells a story that’s familiar, as a new baby cries and cries but nobody knows why. Breastfeeding in just one of the soothing methods the baby’s mother attempts, along with puppetry, juggling and walking on her hands, but nothing works. The solution to Baby’s woes turns out to be its mother returning to her essential self by going back to work at her bakery–the child is finally quieted when the smell of cinnamon bread fills the air.
Dogs Don’t Eat Jam (and Other Things Big Kids Know) by Sarah Tsiang and Qin Leng: This is “What to Expect When You’re Becoming a Big Sister” in the guise of a guide to babies that’s written from Big Sister’s perspective. “So you’ve been born! Congratulations…” it begins, and goes on to outline to the newborn all he/she has to look forward to. “You’re learning to drink milk,” Big Sister patiently explains, with an accompanying illustration of Mom with baby at her breast, before going on to show that Baby will learn new things every day.
Note that Sarah Tsiang is also the poet Yi-Mei Tsiang whose award-winning collection Sweet Devilry includes some of the best poems about motherhood I’ve ever encountered: “Learn a good latch, Kiddo–/ It pays to hold on/ to someone you love.”
Katie Morag and the Dancing Class by Mairi Hedderwick: I love the Katie Morag series for a million reasons, including the map of her island village at the beginning and end of every book, how the characters challenge gender binaries, the clutter in the corners of every illustration, and Katie Morag’s irrepressible spirit. These books are so vivid in their realness, and accordingly, breastfeeding is depicted. In this story, Katie Morag’s mother is shown breastfeeding Baby Flora Ann (as Little Brother Liam tries on a pink tutu), and the chaos of their household is all a-swirl around her.
Have Milk, Will Travel: Adventures in Breastfeeding by Rachel Epp Buller (Editor): Not a picture book, but a brand new anthology from Toronto’s Demeter Press, a collection of short essays and anecdotes from breastfeeding mothers in the trenches (and some who were lucky to escape with their lives). Breastfeeding is often presented as an all-too serious, divisive issue, but these essays are light and humorous, and will provide any expectant mother with great perspective, and makes a fun read for those of us who’ve been there.
September 26, 2013
Our Complete Childcraft How & Why Library
It was almost two years ago that I found a near-complete set of encyclopedias out on somebody’s curb, and schlepped them all home in our stroller (which later fell apart, and this may be part of the reason why). The books were the Childcraft How & Why Library, which is basically the whole universe printed and bound circa 1987. Three books devoted to literature (nursery rhymes, poems, myths, fairy tales, and also contemporary stories), and then others about space, plants, animals, math, crafts, world cultures and more.
I am very excited that I finally purchased our two missing volumes online (one of them for a dollar, no less) and that our Childcraft set is finally complete.
The photos are dated and the print a bit faded, but we love these books, and because my child has been raised on faded picture books, this deficiency doesn’t even register. These books have become our first stop for information, because research here doesn’t seem to suck us into a vortex of inanity as the internet does. And truth be told, our family loves any excuse to curl up on the couch with a book. We’ve learned about clouds (which means we get to say “cumulonimbus”, which is always fun), beetles, human digestive tracks, molluscs, the solar system, and so much else.
That the books are a little out of date is actually useful too. Pluto, Harriet knows now, is no longer a planet after all, and I love what that knowledge represents. She realizes that not everything written down is immutable. That the universe is not static. That the world is ever-changing and wild, infinite in its wonders.
