Summertime Reading – Picture Books

A more accurate description for today’s blog could have been, Summertime Themed Picture Books.

I can’t really get my head around giving a list of picture books for keeping up reading skills over the summer. Somehow it’s just not the same as working out a list of fiction and nonfiction or graphic novels for older kids in the higher grades.

Thus, today’s posting lists some great titles that will perhaps engage interest because they’re about summer and summertime fun, activities and communing with nature.



 Among a Thousand Fireflies by Helen Frost 

I love the cover of this book. It’s so evocative of summer sitting out in the evening cooling off after a hot day. This free-verse poem will make for a great read-aloud while providing an opportunity to learn about fireflies and why they glow. The photos are stunning.

The Specific Ocean by Kyo Maclear and Katty Maurey

Going away for a vacation is usually considered a treat but for one little girl she’s not convinced. By day three, however the magic of the ocean shore and time spent exploring and playing wins her over. I love that everything feels slowed down; there are no phones, TVs, computers or other bits of technology.

Swimming, Swimming by Gary Clement

This is the quintessential summer activity for me – going to the swimming pool on a hot day, hanging out with friends, and the smell of chlorine lingering for hours. In this nearly wordless picture book, summer is all about swimming for this group of young people.

Ice Cream Summer by Peter Sis 

Another essential ingredient of summer is ice cream and for the young boy in this story it really is THE most important thing as he describes in the letters he writes to his grandfather. His fascination with ice cream motivates him to learn everything about it.

Wild Berries by Julie Flett

Summer time, for me is about being outside in the garden or even better, outside the city and into the mountains. In this story, a boy and his grandmother go berry picking which becomes an opportunity to see creatures big and small going about their everyday business. There's nothing like a fresh picked wild berry exploding with flavour in your mouth.

The Raft by Jim LaMarche

Many summertime stories often have unhappy protagonists who have been 'shipped' off to some relative's place for the duration, which is the case for Nicky. But as is wont to happen in these stories, Nicky is won over to his Grandmother's way of life living at her cabin located next to a gently flowing river. The illustrations fit perfectly with the story, creating a sense of pause in this busy world and allowing time for appreciating nature.

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee 

Going to camp is also part of summer for some kids and the two boys in this picture book have a blast going to a day camp. There's lots of humour here as the narration often tells one thing and the illustrations another. The boys are staying with a set of grandparents who spoil them and also have to cope with typical rambunctious young child behaviour. 

Auntie Yang's Great Soybean Picnic by Ginnie Lo

This story is based on a family tradition that grew into an annual community event. In the 1950s, a family of Chinese immigrants living in Chicago discovered soybeans growing in a farmer's field. Happy with this discovery, Auntie Yang cooks up a pot of beans for her family. The next year, she invites other Chinese families in the area to join them. And, so the event grew larger for over 40 years.

Pictures From Our Vacation by Lynn Rae Perkins

This one is pretty realistic if you ask me. It's about the way we create memories and how we remember things. This family is returning to a family farm which is no longer lived in which involves a road trip. It's long and sometimes boring. The farm seems run down but Dad sees "happy memories everywhere he looked." However, after endless rainy days, sudden storms, navigating the changes to the local area new good memories are made when relatives congregate for a memorial service.  

Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse and Jon Muth

Do you remember days that seemed sooo stinking hot that eggs might fry on the sidewalk? Well, in this story it's just such a day. I especially love the illustrations that capture the heat of the city, the heaviness of impending rain and the lift that comes to people, both in movement and spirit, when the oppressiveness is released.

Teddy’s adventures – The sequel

A Bear on the Homefront by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat continues the story of the teddy bear we first met in A Bear in War. I blogged about it in 2010, recommending the book as a resource for Remembrance Day. 

In the first book, Teddy is returned to his human family in Canada after the soldier he accompanies to Europe dies at Passchendaele, Belgium.

Teddy resumes his story as British children arrive in Canada at the start of World War II - a safety precaution against bombing raids.  This time Teddy accompanies a young nurse, Aileen, as she meets the newly arrived children, traveling with them until they arrive at their destinations to settle with Canadian families.

Among the many children are Grace and William who Teddy picks out as looking particularly lost and afraid.  Aileen takes them under her wing offering Teddy to William to hold. Teddy is able to comfort the two homesick children on the train ride west to Winnipeg. Arriving late at night, Grace and William are very nervous about meeting the Dents, the people they will stay with. William wishes he can stay with Aileen and Teddy.

Aileen and Teddy decide that Teddy should go with William to help him adjust and settle in.  After Aileen leaves, William notices that Teddy looks sad and Teddy acknowledges that he wonders if he’ll ever see Aileen again.  William understands Teddy’s feelings as they reflect this own about leaving home and coming to Canada.

Living on the Dent’s farm turns out to be a different way of living for the children but the couple is kind and work to make the two feel welcomed. They soon settle into a new routine.  Nevertheless, William still misses home and wishes that the war would end soon.  So, does Teddy. After five long years, the war finally ends and the children return to England.

And Teddy? Well, he’s packed up and mailed to a Montreal hospital to be reunited with Aileen.  Teddy exclaims, “Finally, we were all back home, where we belonged.”

Bear On the Homefront will tie in nicely with units about Remembrance Day (November 11th) for elementary students. Besides connecting to Canadian history and war it speaks to the bigger ideas of home and family.

The authors include a page of information about Teddy, Aileen and her father, the soldier who died in 1917.

The following link will take you to the Canadian War Museum’s website and you can see a picture of Teddy which is where he now displayed.

An Urban Jungle: through the eyes of an artist

The London Jungle Book by Bhajju Shyam is an amazing and beautiful piece of art published by my favorite publisher – Tara Books.

When Gond tribal artist Bhajju Shyam is offered a job to paint murals on the walls of a tony London restaurant, it’s an opportunity that raises questions, anxieties, and excitement.

As we learn from a lengthy editors’ note (Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao), people of the Gond tribe are often marginalized in India, thought of as ‘primitives without culture’. They often live in poverty with few opportunities to improve their lot in life.

Also, as artists, their style is based on community beliefs and has a very structured aesthetic.  Images, icons, and symbols represent their everyday lives or their beliefs and are conveyed more as perceptions from the mind’s eye. Realism, perspective, light, or three-dimensionality are not significant factors.  Images are filled with detailed, intricate, geometric patterns. Traditionally limited to four earth tones, Gond artists now living and selling their work in urban centres are using colourful, commercial paints and inks to expand their art form.

So, with this introduction, how does an artist who has never travelled or flown in an airplane to a foreign world perceive what he sees and experiences?

The London Jungle Book allows us a chance to see ourselves in new way (“reverse the anthropological gaze”) playing on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. A travelogue filled with creatures (animal and human) based on Gond traditions to represent a modern city and how an artist from a very different culture would experience life here.

Each image is accompanied by a ‘story’ that relates to an observation or experience.  His flight from India to London is depicted as a winged elephant leaping into the air, the elephant being the biggest and heaviest thing he can relate to that corresponds to an airplane.

Or, that Londoners remind him of bats who come out at night, dressed in black, going out to eat and socialize.  Bhajju has observed that, though, some streets can seem deserted during the day, evening is a different matter when they are filled with people on their way to restaurants and pubs.  The pub is represented as a Mahua tree, a sacred tree symbol for the Gond, its flowers used to make alcohol  and its trunk inhabited by many black bats readying for their nightly social rounds.

“I show English people as bats not to make fun of them, but because I like to think of them as creatures that come to life in the evening.”

The illustrations always feel balanced with beautiful colours and detailing.  The patterns fill every animal, bird, human, and object with small repetitive lines, circles, or dots.

Each image also includes a small artist’s note explaining the Gond aesthetics that is attributed to each modern London scene. The cover image is a good example of this traditional and modern aesthetic that combines Big Ben, London’s iconic clock tower with a rooster.  The clock face and rooster’s eye are the one and the same. The rooster is a symbol of time in Gond art.  He says,

 “Symbols are the most important thing in Gond art, and every symbol is a story standing in for something else. So this painting was the easiest for me to do, because it had two perfect symbols coming together.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this blending of traditional folk art with trappings from modern life, like the bus with the head of a dog representing how Londoners travel through the city. These paired images offer a sense of something very familiar, comforting, and loyal much the way a dog can imbue these qualities.   Or, how apt is it that the ‘tube’ system is represented as an earthworm which in Gond tradition rules the earth below?

I felt quite humbled reading through these stories and working through the illustrations.  I was given an inside look at how this man experienced London and worked to convey something meaningful for us and himself. All travelers compare their home countries with the new ones being explored.  Sometimes we marvel and sometimes differences just make us grumpy. Bhajju is kind in his observations about life in London.  I didn’t feel he was being judgmental but rather was acknowledging differences and similarities and creating an understanding of his experiences.  This is an artist filled with wonder and generous in his assessment of life in London. This new venue offers him the opportunity to become a storyteller as well as an artist.

Art with a story

Migrant by Jose Manuel Mateo and Javier Martinez Pedro is an intriguing bilingual (English/Spanish) accordion-style folding book that looks to generate awareness about children who take huge risks in trying to enter the United States illegally, either alone or with their families.

In this story, short narratives from a child’s perspective accompany specific sections of the unfolding mural-like codex.  In the beginning life is good, with people in the village leading hard but fruitful, peaceful lives growing crops for a landowner.  But things change when some of the men leave to find work.  Eventually, the father of the boy telling the story also leaves the village, sending money back home occasionally.  But when the money stops coming and the mother finds it too difficult to survive in the village without work, she makes the decision to leave as well.

The main part of the story is the journey to reunite with the father. The family travels long distances and takes great risks jumping on trains, scaling walls, and evading police, capture and ‘disappearing’, all along way until they arrive outside Los Angeles.  Here they will find jobs cleaning houses and search for the father.

The art work is what predominates here.  Nine panels ‘unfold’ this story in black and white illustrations with exacting detail that fills up every panel.  For example, the village scene is packed with people, vegetation, animals, houses, mountains, a starry sky and a beaming sun.  We can see the watermelons, maize, and papayas being grown and harvested from the fields, while the bordering sea provides fish and fun.  It’s a bustling place.

In the artist’s note he tells us that he is following in the artistic tradition of the Mexican state of Guerrero and the work does have a folk art feel. However, I was also reminded of Peter Sis’s illustrations, as well, with tiny details conveying a multitude of life’s minutiae.  Our main character is discernible by the distinctive cap that he wears so the reader is able to keep track of him in each section (though I did have to hunt a couple of times).

The book is gorgeous, striking and provocative.  It conveys a child’s sense of home, fear, excitement, hopefulness and home-sickness.  The illustrations express the movement of people and the tension that such a situation naturally produces.  One review I read suggested looking at this book panel-by-panel and I would agree with this for the first reading.  But do open up the whole book, otherwise you’ll miss seeing the patterns of ‘lines’ that convey the sense of movement.  You have to spend time with this book.  It’s not a ‘quick read’.

Reviews are suggesting that young children are the target audience for Migrant but I would disagree.  The amount of detail, the black and white illustrations and the content of the story would be too much for the primary grades, in my opinion.  You could have young children track the protagonist throughout the story but then the point of the story would be misdirected.  If a child has been through a similar journey, then they would have some context for the story and this might work. The actual written story would be easily understood but I think the illustrations wouldn't hold young readers attention.

I’m recommending this book for older students, grades 9 and up, who would derive more from the whole book and would likely have the staying power required to work through and revisit the story. However, a co-worker thought that grades 5/6 could use it to model their own work on.

For extra interest, try pairing this with Tsunami  by Joydeb Chitrakar another accordion-style narrative about the 2004 tsunami that devastated vast areas of coastline in Southeast Asia.  I blogged about this one back in 2010.

Coffee table books round up

Even though I haven’t been blogging very much in the past few weeks rest assured that I’m always busy reading or at least looking at books with lots of pictures.

Thus today’s topic – coffee table picture books.

I’m a big proponent of these books as the best of them are typically, beautifully produced, informative and often give us mini-narratives about the photographer’s work, adventures and views on a given topic.

Let’s start with Dawn to Dark Photographs: the Magic of Light by National Geographic.  I can’t think of a single National Geographic book that has ever disappointed me.  Always stunningly beautiful photographs arrayed in thoughtfully produced books.

In Dawn to Dark Photographs, the photographs are sorted into eight sections based on time of day starting with dawn, then into sunrise, morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, twilight and then night.  Most of the photos are of landscapes and specific natural phenomena with a few showing people or animals.  In terms of classroom use, I was thinking about the obvious connections with the elementary science units about light and shadows, time, animals, as well as with photography as an art form for any level.  What I hadn't thought about was the meditative quality of the book.  Jim Richardson in the preface reminds us that photographs can resemble medieval meditations (think illuminated texts like the Book of Hours) as we pause to look and reflect on “the miracle of light and appreciate its infinite and astonishing variety”.  Every few pages we get a short passage written by the photographers about their picture: what they saw and experienced and maybe tried to capture in their image.  Or we are given a short poem, quote or thought that ties into the adjacent photo. 

India: In Word & Image by Eric Meola obviously connects to the grade 3 social studies curriculum which looks at life in India.  What totally blew me away was the overwhelming sense of colour.  Even before getting to the title page our eyes are bombarded with achingly vibrant colours.  Besides being richly coloured, the photographs capture the exotic and textured landscapes and architecture of India.  Images of people are captured individually or in groups in moments of celebration and everyday activities.  I’m not sure if it’s just me being caught up with the myriad of patterns and colours of saris or the photographer’s keen interest, as many of the pictures depict sari-clad women.

The photographs are anchored between passages, often selections taken from novels, written by authors who are Indian, of Indian descent, or who write about India.  The passages are appropriate for high school level and up but the pictures will engross any age.

And, finally I’m recommending Relics: Travels in Nature’s Time Machine by Piotr Naskrecki. This one has more text than the other two making it appropriate for high school reading level and up or perhaps for students who are super keen on palaeontology and willing to make the effort.  I didn't find the information difficult to digest; it just seemed a little dense and might be intimidating to less-than-proficient readers.  However, Naskrecki does include lots of vignettes of his adventures, which read like little mini-stories and he certainly conveys his passion and excitement.

But it's the great pictures that will get students into the book.

This entomologist is also a fantastic photographer who travels the world looking for animal and plant relics found in nature.  “Living fossils”, relicts and relics all refer to those species of plants and animals that can be linked to similar organisms in the fossil record.  These are modern plants and animals that can provide insight into genetics, habitats, adaptations and behaviours of ancient species.  Some of these include horseshoe crabs, legless lizards, various tree frogs, toads, caterpillars, ferns and fern-ish looking trees known as cycads, magnolias and so many more.

One critter of particular interest is found in the Rocky Mountains close to Calgary.  Ice crawlers are insects that live in ice caves or on northern talus slopes up to about 3,000 meters, who like it cold but not too cold (0 to -9 degrees Celsius).  You can kill an ice crawler by merely touching it because of our warm body temperatures. Very cool little critters.  Again and again, I flip through pages and see yet another fascinating animal and another and another…

Classroom connections again would lean to environmental science, art and language arts.

I recently saw this ad:

Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.  

And though I might argue that it's not the 'only' thing, I can certainly appreciate the intent behind the message.

Journey by Aaron Becker is a beautiful, wordless picture book that perfectly captures the importance of imagination and the power of finding your way whether it's in the real world or those of fantasy. 

A girl is looking for someone to play with.  Everyone in her family is too busy and she’s left to brood in her bedroom.  Check out her bedroom walls.  Within one panel we learn that she is a dreamer and dreams of travel in faraway places.  A world map, a travel poster of Egypt, sail boats on her bedspread and a hot-air balloon mobile tell us of her desire to explore/experience the world.  Her sepia-toned reality has little interest to hold her interest.

So what does a bored child do when no one wants to play?

She picks up a red crayon and draws a door (escape-hatch) on her bedroom wall.  She enters a verdant forest filled with soft green trees gently lit with exotic lanterns and fairy lights.

Her red crayon is truly magical as it allows her to draw a boat in which she drifts down a gentle stream until she reaches a castle-city. She is welcomed by everyone she sees drifting through canals until she cascades over the end of one of these canals.

But, not to worry - her red crayon and imagination come to the rescue again.  She draws a hot-air balloon that allows her to sail high above the clouds.  She witnesses the chase and capture of a beautiful purple bird that is kept caged on a steampunk-looking airship.  She releases the bird, which incurs the ire of the inhabitants and is then kept prisoner until the bird, in turn, rescues her. 

Yet again, the red crayon enables her to escape her prison on a magic flying carpet that glides over a desert landscape eventually arriving in an oasis.  There the purple bird shows the girl a palm tree with a purple door.  She and the bird enter and arrive back home.  And, lo the bird is welcomed by a boy with a purple crayon. The adventure ends where it began except the girl now has someone to share in future journeys of the imagination.

Highly recommended for elementary grades.

The truth of the matter

As I was gathering resources around the ‘big idea’ of awakening earlier this past summer, I thought about how travel often ‘awakens’ us to cultural awareness and self discovery and thought I had found a great resource.

Imagine then a fifteen-year-old boy taken from this home on an island around Tierra del Fuego in 1830 and transplanted to London.  What did this boy awaken to?  What did he learn about the people of London?  What did he learn about himself?

 In Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali, a brief account of the true story of Orundellico (his real name), we can get a general impression of what a culture shock this young man experienced in these circumstances.

And a general impression is the best we get with this picture book.  The experience is described in fairly benign terms, “one day a boat came with visitors”, “they invited the boy to visit their land”, and “one of the visitors opened his hand to reveal a button made from the ocean’s most magnificent pearl.  They gave it to the boy’s family.”

I had a feeling that this was likely glossing over some of the facts.  How likely was it that Captain Robert FitzRoy ‘invited’ Orundellico to visit London?

The book describes the long ocean voyage and what Jemmy would have seen in this vast, bustling city.  It tells of his experiences, which sound like a whirlwind of social events (even to meeting King William IV and Queen Adelaide) and a little of his homesickness.  He eventually returns to his homeland where is resumes his traditional ways, shedding his European clothing and supposedly with “great effort, he learned his native language.”(from last page)

I was left with a lot of unanswered questions after reading this picture book.  A quick Google search fills in a few of the details which are more of what I expected: Jemmy was one of four hostages taken back to London with the idea to educate and Christianize them to Victorian civilities, so that they could be sent back back to their homeland to educate their own people. Very little about this historical episode really fits with the gentle, dreamy story depicted in the picture book.

I know this is a story for children and that this isn't the place to hash out the details of Britain’s imperialistic intentions.  I know the focus of the story is on the ‘wonder’ of being in a totally foreign environment and that by the end Jemmy knows where his home is.  (In reality, it is thought that Jemmy might have chosen to stay in London if given the chance and was initially unhappy at being returned to South America.)

On that level, the story works. Its unlikely children will have the same questions I do and will enjoy the story of Jemmy.  It’s likely they’ll see Jemmy as having a grand adventure.

But I'm left wondering, what’s the point of that when this is based on a true story?

Check out Nonfiction Monday at Sally's Bookshelf for a blog-wide review of nonfiction children's literature.

Winter interlude.

I know it’s going to be a long winter when I start immersing myself in travel books and it’s not even officially, winter yet.

A Walk in London by Salvatore Rubbino is a travel book that gives us a child’s eye-view while exploring London’s city centre, visiting many well-known landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, Big Ben bell and clock tower, Trafalgar Square, Convent Garden, St. Paul’s Cathedral, plus many more sights.

Each slightly oversized 2-page spread is filled with details of each location with additional quirky, sometimes random, bits of information scattered across them.  For instance did you know that St. Paul’s Cathedral’s dome weighs about 64,000 tons? Or, that every year in Britain, 300 million fish and chips dinners are eaten? Or, that Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms? Or, that double-decker buses have been in use since the 1930s?  These factoids help us learn more about London. But for our young narrator it’s all about talking with the pelicans at St. James Park, sitting on the lions in Trafalgar Square, and enjoying the street entertainers in Convent Garden. A ferry ride down the Thames gets a 4-page pull out that gives us a panoramic view of the shore line the further orientates us with the sights to be found between the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster, such as the Globe Theatre and the London Eye.  If you check the front and end pages you will be able to name the bridges you seen in the fold out.  Good for mapping skills and geographic thinking.

The illustrations are done in mixed-media with a fairly muted palette that conveys a very retro-style.  It reminds me of old travel posters from the 1950s and 60s.

This is a fun exploration of a wonderful city. This is exactly how the book comes across: when in London, there is a lot to see, do and enjoy.  Our narrator and her mother have a very busy, full day as they travel around the heart of London and I'm glad I was able to join them.  Any respite from winter is welcomed.

Recommended for grades 1-4.