T-MINUS: THE RACE TO THE
MOON by Jim Ottaviani,
Ill. by Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon
This history book, designed as a comic book, is
not a read-aloud title. It’s
just such an important book for classroom use
today that I feel compelled to include it here.
In case the "comic book" label puts you off,
consider the fact that many of today’s
best readers began their reading lives not with
classics but with picture books and comic books.
The reluctant reader (who might be considered
the “lost
sheep” in your
reading mission) could be more inclined to pick
up this book before anything else on your shelves.
Now to the plot. Although the astronauts garnered
all the praise and glory through the last half
century, it was the thousands of brainy scientists
who were the real stars of the space race. Thus
on the 40th anniversary of man’s first
steps on the moon, we find this book (what
could be more appropriate for an achievement
based on charts and diagrams than a volume with
hundreds of inked panels) called T-Minus: the
race to the moon by Jim Ottavianni, illustrated
by the unrelated team of Zander Cannon and Kevin
Cannon.
Anyone old enough to remember names like Eisenhower
and Khrushchev know about the “space race,” but most
people today — especially children — know only
the role of Neil Armstrong, if that. T-Minus begins in 1957, a full
12 years before the moon landing and takes us forward through the
lives of American and Russian scientists and politicians, each bent
on beating out the other for the glory of a lunar landing. Along
the way, there are enlightening side trips back to Robert Goddard’s
workshop and Werner Von Braun’s
efforts to reach General Eisenhower during WW
II.
None of this is simple; indeed, it’s information-loaded and
brilliant. No, not a read-aloud but a book every classroom from sixth-grade
and up should have on its shelves. There’s a future scientist
sitting in some classroom who will soak this up like a sponge. But
he or she can’t do that if it’s not there.
LOOK OUT, JEREMY BEAN! by
Alice schertle, Ill. by david slonim
K-Gr. 1 60 pages Chronicle,
2009
With
a finger firmly pressed to the pulse of early childhood, author Alice
Schertle gives us a short novel about a one Jeremy Bean who will ring
true with both parents and children. When his class is asked to bring
in their “collections,” Jeremy is worried: He has no collection.
How about collecting a sample of everyone’s shoes in his family?
Not good. How about their hats? No. What can he share with his classmates?
The book is broken down into three chapters, each
dealing with a different challenge (collections; dust bunnies; and
the St. Patrick’s Day when he forgets to wear green) with short
subchapters, making it an ideal read for classes with short attention
spans.
The gentle humor that pervades the book is best
seen in “Jeremy Bean and the Dust Bunny.” When Jeremy
overhears his mother tell someone that she has to get after the “dust
bunnies” under the beds, he thinks there must be some kind of
rabbit under his bed — so he sets about laying traps to catch
it.
Let’s hope Ms. Schertle has more Jeremy Bean
tales to share. Lord knows we could use more good chapter books for
early primary grades where there is a great shortage.
TEEDIE: The Story of Young Teddy Roosevelt by
Don Brown
Houghton,
2009 Gr. 1-3 30
pages
Few
presidents of the U.S. had as little expected
of them as Theodore ("Teedy”) Roosevelt did as a child.
Born with weak eyes and muscles, along with severe
asthma that left him gasping for air, he was
lucky to just “survive,” never
mind succeed. But he did. With private tutors,
a positive-thinking father, a natural curiosity
that led him deeper and deeper into the world
of print, and a fierce personal determination, he eventually became
a police commissioner, governor, war hero, President of the United
States, and Nobel Peace Prize-winner. Not bad for a guy who lived
as blurry and “gasping” childhood.
Over the last
17 years, Don Brown has written and illustrated
a dozen outstanding picture book-biographies
of men and women who deserve the attention of
children for their accomplishments. Both his writing and artistic
styles compliment each other and are easily assimilated by early primary
graders. This volume is among his very best. Related book: You’re
on Your Way, Teddy Roosevelt by Judith
St. George.
Bobby bramble loses his brain by Dave Keane, Ill.
by David Clark
PreS-Gr. 1 30 pages Clarion, 2009
Bobby Bramble never exited by way of a door
if there was a rooftop, drainpipe, or a tree
branch he could climb out on. With more energy
than the Energizer Bunny, he vaulted somersaulted,
skipped, bounced, and flipped his way through his
days, leaving behind the shouts of his parents, “Be
careful, Bobby, you’ll fall and break your head open!”
Of course, Bobby ignored them—until the day
he fell and not only did he break his head open
but his brains skipped out and ran away — "because
it had a mind of its own.” The rest of this lively and entertaining
cautionary tale is the search for and eventual
capture of Bobby’s
runaway brain. After reading this book, it’s pretty easy to understand
the author’s favorite TV show was “The Three Stooges.” This
will be a huge hit with children who find it hard
to sit still for very long—though they'll sit still
for this tale.
MOONSHOT: The Flight of Apollo 11 by
Brian Floca
Gr.
K-4 44 pages Atheneum,
2009
In the end, what started
out as a fierce race between the two fiercest
enemy nations on Earth—the
U.S. and the Soviets—became a ride with
three guys locked in two containers they’d
nicknamed Charlie Brown and Snoopy with
most of the world watching from 238,00 miles
awa.—Apollo 11.
With all the technology
and politics involved in the first moon landing,
the simple beauty of the event is easily overlooked.
And since the astronauts were equipped with
the most advanced camera technology in the
world, what could an illustrator’s pen and brush bring to the
story that hadn’t already been captured “for
real” by their cameras? In celebration
of that historic event’s 40th anniversary,
artist-writer Brian Floca brings his considerable
talents to the roundtrip ride and gives us a
beautiful bird’s eye view from both outside
and inside.
As the image top-right
shows, he sometimes gives us a simultaneous
view, from the spectators on the beach at Cape
Canaveral to inside the space capsule with
the astronauts as the blastoff-countdown progresses.
His text is not only uncomplicated, but poetically
informative. Take, for example, his description
of the crew’s
first taste of weightlessness (image right, bottom):
Onboard
Columbia and Eagle,
Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin
unclick gloves,
unclick helmets,
unclick the straps
that hold them down,
and float inside their small ships,
their home for a week.
Here there is
no up or down;
an astronaut can spin in air and
turn a floor into a wall
or a ceiling to a floor . . .
|

. . . There
are food and clothes
packed into corners.
There are flight plans, flashlights,
pens, and cameras—and they float too.
They drift from hands and pockets.
That’s why there’s Velcro everywhere:
for holding things so they stay put. |
All the facts a young child
would wish to know about this trip are here,
never crammed, but floating beside the illustrations.
And in those pieces of art, Floca demonstrates
what great art can offer that cameras cannot:
every camera must have a lens and each lens has
its edges and limits beyond which it cannot focus.
What the artist has instead of a lens is an imagination
that is limitless. When Armstrong and Aldrin
walked the surface of the moon with Collins looking
on from above in the orbiting Columbia, there
was no camera to give us the perspective of
both the men, their landing craft, the moon,
and mother Earth. Floca gives us exactly that.
Artist over technology.
For those who want more,
Floca’s endnotes
and sources will take you there.
Boys of Steel by
Marc Tyler Nobleman, ill. by Ross MaCDONALD
Gr.
3-7 32 pages Knopf,
2008
Jerry
and Joe, two nerdy, bespectacled teenagers in
Cleveland, spent their high school years writing
and drawing things that couldn’t be seen
or experienced any way except in their imaginations.
Their peers avoided them and their teachers berated
them. What were they thinking, anyway? The country
was mired in the Depression and families were
struggling to put simple bread on the table.
Why couldn’t these kids two “get
real”?
What the pair was about to
create would very soon become “real”—a
real super cultural hit, known the world over,
that would bring daily relief from the pain of
reality. Jerry Siegel would write and Joe Schuster
would draw a fictional character named Clark
Kent, aka Superman.
Here is the true story behind
the fictional saga, including the corporate shenanigans
that cheated the pair out of their rightful royalties
for most of their lives. Not even Superman could
capture the glory these two so deserved for what
they gave the world’s children.
This picture book retelling
of their tale offers a spirited look into the
creative process and fearsome determination that
is necessary for most great things to be born.
If you know a young person obsessed with writing
fantasy and/or drawing super heroes, this book
is a natural connection.
Little Britches and the Rattlers by
Eric A. Kimmel
Gr.
PreK-1 30 pages Marshall
Cavendish ,
2008
Here's
yet another take on the age-old Little
Black Sambo tale, although
once again no credit is given to Helen Bannerman's
1898 original plot. In the last decade
there have been several spinoffs, each rephrasing
the objectionable aspects of the original. Julius
Lester's Sam and the Tigers in 2000
was more than a rephrasing—it was a small encyclopedia
of a tale and too wordy for young children. So
far the most successful effort is Fred Marcellino's
version, The Story of Little
Babaji, in which
he took all the Bannerman text except for the
offensive names and reillustrated the tale to
locate it correctly in India (no tigers in
Africa) with an Indian child as the central figure.
A year ago Anne Isaacs produced a version with
a North America forest theme called Pancakes
for Supper.
Like the Isaacs version, Kimmel's
book casts a young female in the "Sambo" role.
She's a smartly dressed-out cowgirl on
the way to the rodeo when she's accosted by a
string of rattlesnakes in the dry gulch. Using
Bannerman's strategy, she outwits the snakes
in time to win the calf roping contest.
Lawn Boy by
Gary Paulsen
Gr.
4-7 96 pages Wendy
Lamb Books, 2007
Let’s face it, except
for J.K. Rowling, nobody in the last 25 years
has caught the attention of preteen and teen
male readers like Gary Paulsen.
Having never forgotten his own childhood (good
and awful as it might have been), he’s
able to plug great yarns into the circuitry of
boyhood and suddenly there is power and light. Hatchet, Harris
and Me, and the Francis Tucket series
are just a few of the dozens that attest to his
power.
Lawn
Boy follows in the same vein
but is as original as Hatchet —
and funny besides. In fact, it’s probably
the only book out there right now that can explain
the fragile nature of the U.S. economy. Talk
about being ahead of the curve: Paulsen wrote
this a full two years before the world economy
collapsed in a heap (though it was published
in 1997). One can only wonder if things might
have been different with this 12-year-old protagonist
at the helm of things, but that’s 20-20
hindsight. (Maybe Paulsen could do a short stint
as Secretary of the Treasury?) (Sequel: Lawn
Boy Returrns.)
In a nutshell, this is a 96-page,
first-person novella about a preteen who’s
been given his deceased grandfather’s old
riding lawnmower. He comes from a loving and
caring family but his folks are kind of busy,
like many parents today. Their jobs take up an
awful lot of their lives. In this case, the child’s
jobs are going to take up a lot of his life.
His neighbors are just as busy with their lives,
too busy to do yard work and the kid with the
riding machine is just what they’ve been
looking for. Before he knows it, he’s got
more lawn jobs than he can handle—even
working mornings, afternoons, and evenings.
That’s when he gets even
luckier. There’s a down-on-his-luck e-trader
who wants to trade his skills with the stock
market for the kid’s skill with the mower:
You do the lawn and, instead of paying you, I’ll
invest some money for you.
And it works—big time.
The next good fortune is when Arnold the e-trader
introduces him to a crew of migrant workers willing
to handle any overflow work the boy can’t
handle and they’re willing to give the
lad a commission on each lawn. More money. In
fact, between his own lawns, the commission lawns,
and the e-trader, he’s raking it in faster
than he has time to count it or tell his folks
about it. They’re clueless.
Granted, all of this done with
great tongue in cheek (especially with the prize-fighter
and thugs at the end), but still wrapped in a
very simple explanation of how the economy works.
Paulsen’s chapters include titles like:
The Principles of Economic Expansion; The Growth
of Capitalism; The Law of Increasing Product
Demand Versus Flat Production Capacity; Capitol
Growth Couples with the Principles of production
Expansion; and Labor Acquisition and its Effect
on Capitol Growth—with each applying to
the young entrepreneur’s business dealings. Sequel: Lawn
Boy Returrns (six weeks later).
Drummer
Boy by
Loren Long
PreK-Gr.
2 36
pages Philomel,
2008
It's
been two decades since a Christmas book has garnered
and deserved the kind of attention that came
to Chris Van Allsburg's Polar Express. Creating
a lasting Christmas book is like trying to write
a classic Christmas song—most are forgotten within
minutes, so say nothing of months and years. Loren
Long, a young illustrator
whose work has risen to the very highest
ranks, now gives us a book that deserves everything
the best holiday books can offer. If Christmas,
for most people, is about homecoming, family,
warm feelings, and a certain birth in long-ago
Bethlehem, Drummer Boy has it all. If you ever
listened carefully to the lyrics of the Christmas
song "Little Drummer Boy," you may have been
confused by the strange logistics — what
was a soldier drummer boy doing in the stable
with the baby Jesus? Doesn't make sense
— until you read this book which follows a toy
figurine of a drummer boy as it travels from
the home of a real boy to the garbage bin to
the dump to an owl's nest to a steeple-top to
. . . until it finally ends up rescued and back
in the boy's home where it's given a place of
honor at the mantle creche. Following a similar
path and also illustrated by Long: The
Toy Boat by Randall de Seve.
SPUDS by
Karen Hesse, Ill. by Wendy Watson
Gr.
1-3 30
pages Scholastic,
2008
In a tale of rural America that is easily set
in The Great Depression — but shouldn’t
be, in light of today’s economy — three
young children see the backbreaking effect of
their mother’s night shift work and decide
there’s an easier way to put food on the
table. Down the road apiece, farmer Kenney’s
harvester has turned over the potato field, an
their guess is that it missed a ton of tatters
that are probably still lying in the dirt. While
their mother is off working her shift and under
the cover of darkness, the children take their
wagon to Mr. Kenney’s field and gather
three bulging sacks of potatoes. Only when they
dump their sacks on the kitchen floor do they
discover their harvest to be mostly stones and
only a handful of potatoes. When their mother
discovers their clandestine work, she orders
the few potatoes be returned in-person to Mr.
Kenney with a full explanation of their treachery.
His reaction is not what your audience may be
expecting and makes for a satisfying resolution
to a tale focuses on whether the ends justify
the means.
TOO MANY TOYS by David Shannon
Gr.
PreS-Gr. 1 30
pages Scholastic-Blue Sky Press,
2008
Plain and simple, Spencer has
too many toys. They're of every size, shape,
color, material, and propellant. They've come
by way of every relative, neighbor, drive-thru
window, and birthday party. So many toys that
they've become a physical hazard to anyone trying
to get from one side of the room to another,
and thus his mother utters the infamous words, "We're
going to get rid of some of them." What? Impossible! Can't be done! But little by little,
item by item, they negotiate a compromise: one
entire box of toys Spencer is finally ready to
part with. Having reached a deal, his mother
took a rest from the bargaining table, only to
return to a "deal-breaker." In a culture
that mimics the cry that "more is better," the
vast majority of children, teachers, and parents
(to say nothing of grandparents) will identify
with Spencer's situation from all sides. David
Shannon once again has proven he knows kids,
families, and the American culture. He also is
the illustrator for How
I Became a Pirate.
Boycott Blues by Andrea Davis
Pinkney, ill. by Brian Pinkney
Gr.
2-6 36
pages Greenwillow, 2008
Subtitled
How Rosa Parks inspired a Nation, this is that
and a lot more. It is the story of "tipping
point" in the
civil rights movement, when 40,000 people refused
to cave in to emotional, physical, and economic
pressure in 1955 but chose instead to "walk-the-walk."
For 382 days the black community of Montgomery
refused to use the local bus service after it
invoked the Jim Crow law against Rosa Parks,
a strategy that pitted black will power (and
their tired feet) against the company's economic
fortunes, all of it adding extra prominence to
the segregation laws that were on the docket
of the U.S. Supreme court that year. The Pinkneys
(mother and son) interpret this inspiring moment
in history in the lyrical prose of the blues.
Related civil rights picture books, see list
with Roll
of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Related audio
programs include:
- On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students
in Greensboro, NC, handsomely dressed in jackets
and ties, sat down for lunch at a Woolworth
store (the equivalent of Wal-Mart today) for
what would initiate the first lunch
counter sit-ins. At a time when
segregation ruled the south, such an action
was more than daring — it bordered
on suicidal in some places. Denied service,
they returned the next day with 15 friends
who, in succeeding days, were joined by 300,
and then 1000. A revolution had been started
by four young people. Listen as one of those
men, Franklin McCain, eloquently looks back
to those events and the role it played in
his own life and American history. (NPR's "All
Things Considered," Feb. 1, 2008, 7
mins.) at:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18615556.
- Two years
before the famed bus boycott in Montgomery,
Alabama, black citizens in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
staged what's believed to be the first-ever
organized protest of Jim Crow laws in the
South—the Baton Rouge
bus boycott; listen to the story as
it is remembered by those involved: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1304163.
- Listen
to the commentary of writer S. Pearl Sharp
who took three of her godchildren to meet Rosa
Parks and she recalls their meeting: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=498768.
Ten Little Fingers and Ten
Little Toes
by Mem Fox; illustrated by
Helen Oxenbury Infants-Toddlers 36
pages Harcourt, 2008
Here
are two widely accepted facts among early childhood
educators that are little-known to parents (and
grandparents): 1) Children gravitate first to
rhyming words (thus the success of Mother Goose
and Dr. Seuss); and 2) Children gravitate to
images of other children, especially babies to
babies, and even responding empathically to their
cries.
Apply these facts to the most
recent efforts of the popular Mem Fox and illustrator
Helen Oxenbury and you end up with what may become
their biggest picture book success ever and one
that holds the greatest chance of becoming a
classic: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes.
A simple excerpt from the book
gives you all you need to know about its simplicity
and tone:
 |
"There
was one little baby who was born far away.
And another who was born on the very next
day.
And both of these babies, as everyone knows,
had ten little fingers and ten little toes.
There
was one little baby who was born in a town.
And another who was wrapped in an eiderdown.
And both of these babies, as everyone knows,
had ten little fingers and ten little toes." |
What makes this even better
than just the words is the multi-ethnic/multi-gender
flavor of the narrative and illustrations. As
the image left shows, the little people who populate
this book are representative of every color of
the globe.
I can't think of a better "new-baby"
book.
Bartholdi's dream was to produce
a gigantic statue in the mouth of New York harbor
that would welcome the dreamers arriving from other
countries and beginning anew in a land called America.
Those dreamers are personified in the book by the
author's ancestral family (the Yolens) whose hopes
and fears are presented in the first person by Gitl,
the young girl relating the trials and insecurities
of transplanting a family from one side of the world
to the other.
Just as insecure was the sculptor's
dream as he lobbied American an French politicians
and businesses to secure permission to erect the
statue and raise the funds for it. Along the way,
the name of the statue -- Liberty Enlightening the
World -- was shortened to simply the Statue of Liberty.
The young Gitl, in turn, would wrestle with a similar
name challenge: should she keep her Ukrainian name
or adopt an American one like "Libby" --
short for Liberty.
Along with being a portrait of
the immigrant family (yesterday and today), the book
is brimming with fascinating historical tidbits:
the same man who designed the Eiffel Tower also designed
the interior staircase of Liberty; the model for
Liberty's face was the sculptor's mother and took
one year to construct; after being constructed in
France, it was carefully deconstructed and packed
into 214 crates and loaded aboard 70 train cars for
the trip to the harbor; the only "local" part
of the Liberty package was the pedestal, designed
by Richard Morris Hunt, an American. For a photo
essay on the history of Liberty, see: www.life.com/image/50865810/in-gallery/26432/american-classic-lady-liberty.
For the weakest humans on earth
— children — few subjects are as coveted
as strength and size. Ben Hillman, an enterprising
and extremely creative film maker, designer, writer
and illustrator, has taken his many talents and applied
them to these subjects in two books: How
Strong is it? and How Big
is it? Coupling seamless Photoshop
techniques with ingenious analogies, Hillman will
rivet the attention of young and old alike. There
is just enough text with each page to make these
books both informative and accessible — but
not overly so (a mistake that some informational
texts too often make).
Hillman and his company appear
to be a force to be reckoned with; they're creative and prolific.
Coming up from Scholastic in the fall of 2008 — How
FAST is it? and in the spring of 2009 — How
WEIRD is it?