Picture Book Roundup: spring, truck and mummy edition

As the co-organizer of the KidLit Celebrates Women's History Month blog, I've been very busy formatting, posting, and reading all of the great guest posts this month.  (If you haven't checked it out, you're missing some great essays and reviews.)  As a consequence, I've been neglecting to post often this month, but today I have a quick rundown of three titles that grabbed my attention this past week:

• Fogliano, Julie. 2012. And then it's spring.  Illustrated by Erin E. Stead. New York: Roaring Brook.

I loved this book from the minute I saw the cover staring at me from my book delivery bag.  It's simply perfect.  Betsy Bird, of Fuse #8, named it to her early Caldecott predictions list yesterday.  Get yourself a copy if you can.

• Sutton, Sally. 2012. Demolition. Illustrated by Brian Lovelock. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

Bright colors, realistic trucks, repeated refrains, rhymes with perfect rhythm - a storytime book doesn't get much better than this.  If you know any small children at all, you know one who will like Demolition.











And finally, a curious addition to my bag 'o books,

• Bunting, Eve. 2011. Ballywhinney Girl. Illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The hauntingly beautiful cover art caught my eye, and with St. Patrick's Day approaching, I was on the lookout for anything Irish to add to a display of Irish-themed books.  Ballywhinney Girl, however, was not what I was expecting.  It's the story of Maeve, a young Irish girl, and her grandfather, who accidentally uncover a body while digging in the peat bogs near their home.  After they report the find to the local authorities, it draws the attention of news reporters, archaeologists, and scientists, who determine that the body is that of a thousand-year-old mummified girl - a girl much like Maeve, herself.  Maeve naturally find the whole process unsettling.  Elegantly told in verse, this is a fictional story that, according to the Author's Note, happens more often than one might think.  It clearly, and rightfully, is unsettling to author, Eve Bunting, as well.  Whether your young listener will find it unsettling as well, is for you to determine.

Another picture book roundup - read on!

Once again my bags of books are overflowing! Here are a few new titles worthy of mention:

Jacobs, Paul DuBois and Jennifer Swender. 2010. Fire Drill. Ill. by JuyVoun Lee. New York: Holt.

A picture perfect, non-threatening, multicultural, rhyming book about fire drills.  What more can one ask for? A must-have for every Kindergarten teacher.

Elya, Susan Middleton. No More, Por Favor. 2010. Ill. by David Walker. New York: Putnam.

Know a picky eater? Well, he's in good company.  There are plenty of picky eaters in the rain forest too! 

Deep in the rain forest - selva, so green,

lives Papagayo, an eating machine.
"Here, Bebe Parrot, papaya is yummy."
"No!" says the baby. "No more in my tummy!
Papaya for breakfast, for lunch and la cena.
Too many times in a row no es buena!"

With cute, double-spread acrylic on paper illustrations, a glossary and pronunciation guide for the many Spanish words, and a very funny story about eight picky rain forest inhabitants, No More, Por Favor is great fun! ¡qué divertido!

Roberton, Fiona. 2010. Wanted: The Perfect Pet. New York: Putnam. (first published in Australia)

Simple ink sketches, highlighted with minimal coloration tell the simple story of Henry, who, "more than anything else in the whole wide world," wanted a dog.  It is also the story of a duck, to whom

Nobody ever wrote. Nobody ever called. Nobody ever e-mailed,

that is, until he created "The Perfect Disguise."  Funny, touching, and hilariously illustrated!
                                                                         

London, Jonathan. 2010. I'm a Truck Driver. Ill. by David Parkins. New York: Holt.

This rhyming picture book has large sturdy pages featuring trucks of all kinds - cement mixers, fire engines, power shovels, and more.  Each truck has a 2-page spread with a short rhyme.  Some of the rhymes are a little forced,

I'm a big crane operator.  I lift steel beams high and build tall buildings that scrape the blue sky,

and in others, London rhymes words with themselves, but overall this is a winning book for two reasons - kids love trucks and these personified trucks are cute! 

Pinkwater, Daniel. 2010. Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken. New York: Feiwel and Friends.

A trilingual book - English, Spanish, and Yiddish?  Yes, Yiddish - the language of Yetta, a runaway from Mr. Flegleman's organic chicken ranch!  Daniel Pinkwater has a unique sense of humor and he's obviously fond of chickens (The Hoboken Chicken Emergency comes to mind). Both of these are evident in Beautiful Yetta, in which the heroine escapes the chicken truck and finds herself in Brooklyn, where she promptly saves a small green bird, a parrot belonging to one of the local colonies,

Parrots?  ?פּאָפּוגײַ  popuGEYehn?

The chicken saved me. And look! Isn't she beautiful?
¡La gallina me salvó! ¡Y miren! ¿No es ella hermosa?
la gahYEEna me sahlVO! ee MEErehn, no ess EHya ehrMOsa?

And so begins the odd friendship and pairing of chicken and parrot, Yiddish and Spanish, on the streets of Brooklyn. The in-text pronunciation guides make it possible to share this story with only a passing ability in Spanish or Yiddish. A short explanation and chart of the Hebrew/Yiddish alphabet follows the story. A Spanish alphabet chart would have been welcome as well.

Roadwork

Sutton, Sally. 2008. Roadwork. Ill. by Brian Lovelock. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

Better than a book about bulldozers or dump trucks, Roadwork follows the sequence of events in the construction of a new road. Excavators, cranes, steamrollers and more, make their appearance in this delightful rhyming romp down the path to a new highway. Each step in the process is described (even the planting of trees along the shoulders) in fun and easy to understand language. The rhymes roll out easily and never seem forced, "Roll the tar. Roll the tar. Make it firm and flat. Squash it down and press it out. Squelch! SPLUCK! SPLAT!"
The font is large and the exclamatory words are in a concrete style, "Screech! BOOM! WHOOSH!"

Each stage has a double-spread illustration, done in bright but realistic colors in style reminiscent of folk-art. Colorful paint speckles adorn each painting, adding a touch of playfulness. In a nice touch, the construction crew is very diverse, featuring women and various ethnicities.

Roadwork is a non-fiction book that is as much fun to read as fiction.

Up Close books

Just received four new books - Fire Engines Up Close, Fighter Planes Up Close, Heavy Equipment Up Close, and Submarines Up Close. All are by Andra Serlin Abramson (Highlights for Children) and published by Sterling in 2007.

Wow! What kid would not want to look at these?! They are 15' tall, almost 1' across and they include multiple double fold-out photography pages. Each book contains at least one "full-size" photo - a fighter plane ejection button, the gauges on a nuclear sub, gears on a forestry vehicle, the levers on a pumper truck.

Short paragraphs with bold headlines break up the text into readable segments, but it's the photos that take center stage in these books. Very cool!

Smash! Crash!

Smash! Crash! is the first in the new Jon Scieszka's Trucktown series, aimed at pre-schoolers. The first book features Jack Truck and Dump Truck Dan, but the cast of characters will eventually include more than ten personified truck characters including Rescue Rita, Payloader Pete, and Hook and Ladder Lucy.

In Smash! Crash!, best friends Jack and Dan are looking for opportunities to do just that.

"'Hey, Max!' says Jack. 'Help us smashing!' 'Yeah, Max,' says Dan. 'Help us crashing!'
But Max is awfully busy. 'Sorry, guys. No can do. Got to stack these barrels by two.'
'Aw, don't be such a four-wheeler dud,' says Jack. 'Come on and ...'
SMASH! CRASH! SMASH-CRASH!"
The storyline is sure to appeal to Scieszka's favorite audience, boys.

The illustrations are a riot of action and color from the winning team of David Shannon, Loren Long, and David Gordon. The headlight eyes and grill mouths are as full of expression as the town is full of action. Even the words are busy. The text zooms and jumps through the pages with varying fonts, sizes, and cartooning effects. The final page is a vertical foldout of Wrecking Crane Rosie. At last the boys will Smash! Crash! where their help is actually wanted!

Scieszka, the newly appointed National Ambassador for Children's Literature has more than fifty books planned for the Trucktown series. Details are in the following Simon & Schuster link along with PDF activity sheets for librarians and teachers.

http://trucktown.simonsaysblogs.com/?cat=2