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The Super Hungry Dinosaur by Martin Waddell, ill. by Leonie Lord
Tod-PreK      32 pages      Dial, 2009

A little boy and his dog are playing in the backyard when a super hungry giant dinosaur arrives and announces he’s going to eat up the boy. The ensuing simple tale details how the lad and his dog outwit and tame the dinosaur. Unlike Where the Wild things Are by Maurice Sendak, in this tale you are never sure how much is imagined and how much is real. After all, the boy’s mother and father meet the dinosaur as well. And any damage done by the dinosaur’s rampage is fixed by the exasperated creature before he can have lunch, cooked by Mom. Martin Waddell uses the same simple storytelling here that made his earlier book Owl Babies so successful and illustrator Leonie Lord turns what could have been a threatening story into an exciting but nonthreatening adventure. Together they have created the perfect toddler-preschool book.

 

January's Sparrow by Patricia Polacco

Gr. 2 and up    95 pages    Philomel 2009

In the powerful tradition of Pink and Say and The Butterfly, Patricia Polacco gives us here an even more powerful saga—the Crosswhites of Marshall, Michigan, out of Hunter’s Bottom, Kentucky. Set in 1847, more than a decade before the Civil War, this over-size picture book’s central character is young Sadie Crosswhite, the youngest of the enslaved Crosswhites’ four children. Together they live through the terrible degradations of slavery in its fiercest hours, including the heartless near-fatal whippings of Sadie’s dearest friend, January. That night they begin their long and frightening journey into Indiana and then Michigan via the Underground Railroad, all the while pursued by slave hunters.

Settling in Marshall, regarded as a safe-haven for runaway slaves in the free-state of Michigan, the family begins a new life, including the pivotal friendship between Sadie and Polly Hobart, the local judge’s daughter. Even so, Mrs. Crosswhite continues to caution her children they must never tell anyone they are runaway slaves. Stolen property must be returned to its rightful owner and, under the law, runaways were considered “stolen.” Nonetheless, Sadie cannot help herself and one day shares her story with Polly who promises to keep the secret.

Four years after their arrival in Michigan, the Crosswhites’ former owners arrive in town to recapture their former slaves and a fierce confrontation ensues between the citizenry of Marshall and the slavers. There are two grand surprises packed into the night’s events, too good to spoil by revealing them here. Suffice it to say, the Crosswhites make one more escape, this time to Canada, where they reside throughout the Civil War.

After the war, they return and take up residence once more in Marshall, where more than a century later their story is still told in reverent tones—though never better than here in Polacco’s words and searing images. Indeed, Polacco’s home today, 12 miles from Marshall, is a former safe haven on the Underground Railroad.

It's hard to imagine the Caldecott committee ignoring Polacco after this volume. It's more than time to honor this woman's magnificent work, in whole or part.

Related books and other media:

Mildred Taylor’s series on the Logan family’s southern experiences before the Civil Rights movement: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Let the Circle Be Unbroken; The Road to Memphis; The Land; and four short novels, The Friendship; Mississippi Bridge; Song of the Trees; and The Well. Other related titles on slavery: Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen. Related nonfiction picture books: Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack; Mary Barney by Chris K. Soentpiet and Alice McGill; More Than Anything Else (Booker T. Washington learns to read) by Marie Bradby.

Classroom MUST's:

• The March 31, 1999, issue of Education Week carried the story of a Colorado fourth-grade class studying slavery, and how their highly publicized subsequent investigation revealed frightening modern-day slavery in "Sudan: Liberating Lesson," by Linda Jacobson, pp. 22-24. www.edweek.com/ew/1999/29sudan.h18.
• Two years before the famed bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., black citizens in Baton Rouge, La., staged what's believed to be the first-ever organized protest of Jim Crow laws in the South: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1304163.
• Congressman John Lewis looks back on a lifetime in the Civil Rights movement and talks about his early and later encounters with officials who persecuted him and others in the movement. (NPR, June 25, 2005, 6 min.; http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4718548)

    Film recommendations:

• "4 Little Girls," Spike Lee's acclaimed 1997 documentary of the turning point in the civil rights movement, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church; and "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Tull," Keith A. Beauchamp's documentary film about one of the most horrific murders in the civil rights era (for grades 7 and up).

 

OTIS by Loren Long

PreK—Gr. 1     36 pages     Philomel 2009

Literally and figuratively, Otis is a “throwback.”

A small but diligent, spirited farm tractor, Otis is the life of the barnyard and the best friend of a lonely calf residing in the barn's adjoining stall. When his day’s labors are done, he and she sat in the shade of the apple tree to contemplate their happy lives. But their happiness is suddenly interrupted when the farmer purchases a brand-new yellow tractor that quickly relegates Otis to the scrap heap-weed patch outside the barn. He is now outdated, unemployed, and too sad to play with his friend. The calf, in turn, wanders down to the pond for a good soak, only to get stuck in the mud. Either unable or unwilling to work herself out of the mire, she soon becomes the focus of a community-wide rescue effort. But neither the farmhands, the new tractor, nor the fire department can extricate her from the mud. Suddenly Otis is seen making his way down the hillside and soon a “happy ending” is in sight.

This anthropomorphic creation falls in the grand tradition of children’s literature, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit. If you add modernization and technology to the mix of ingredients, you’re sure to end up including picture books like Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Bill Peet’s Smokey, all of which featured objects or machines that happily escaped obsolescence by way of diligence or patience. The lasting success of such books perhaps is due to humans’ basic need to hold on to their past, to never completely escape the innocent joy of childhood. And those who do lose that innocence completely are doomed to a joyless adulthood. At least that’s my theory.

Despite following this long tradition, author-illustrator Loren Long remains entirely original and never imitative with this book, although there appears to be a subtle tribute to Munro Leaf’s Ferdinand on one page (insert right). Long’s earlier books include Drummer Boy (one of my favorite Christmas books) and Toy Boat (written by Randall de Sèv). If there is true justice in children's publishing, Otis and his friend the calf deserve a long life in children's lives. They speak volumes about lasting friendships and the outcasts around us.

Loren Long's OTIS follows in one of the grand traditions of children's literature — anthropomorphic survivors of the junk heap of life.

 

 

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