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.