The Tree Lady - a review

Hopkins, H. Joseph. 2013. The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever. Ill. by Jill McElmurry.

From her school, Kate could see City Park in the hills above town.  It was called a park, but it didn't look like one.  It was where people grazed cattle and dumped garbage.    

Most San Diegans didn't think trees could ever grow there.

But Kate did.

With a recurring theme of "but Kate did," The Tree Lady recounts how Kate Sessions (1857-1940), defied all expectations by enjoying the outdoors as a young girl, obtaining a science degree from a prestigious university (unheard of for a woman in 1881!), and resolutely turning a barren, desert park into a green and leafy oasis that remains a jewel of the City of San Diego to this day.  McElmurry's painted, double-spread illustrations get the colors just right and project an "old-timey" feeling that kids will immediately recognize. Katherine Olivia Sessions' story, The Tree Lady, is an inspiring and informative book for anyone, but should most definitely be in every elementary school in San Diego, where she is known as "The Mother of Balboa Park," the name given to City Park in 1915.

Having lived for many years in the Northern reaches of San Diego County, I was thrilled to learn the history behind one of my favorite places. Balboa Park is the larges urban park in North America, containing more than 1200 acres of land. By comparison, Central Park in New York consists of about 778 acres.

In addition to Kate Sessions' trees, the park houses the world famous San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Museum of Art and more than ten other museums, the Old Globe theater, the Starlight Bowl, more than fifteen individual gardens, restaurants, trails, a Spanish village, a United Nations Building, a carousel (circa 1910), and more.  Located in the heart of town, it is open and accessible to all, with many roads running through it.  No trip to San Diego is complete without a visit to Balboa Park.  I'm wistful just thinking of it.

Food for thought:
Kate Sessions imported trees and plants from around the globe that she knew would prosper in San Diego's unique climate.  Given the current focus on sustainability and native plantings, I wonder if such a project would or could ever be undertaken today. This would be an interesting topic to explore in the higher grades.


Nonfiction Monday is hosted today by Perogies & Gyoza.  All of today's nonfiction posts will be featured there.

For those of us in the U.S. (our meme host today is in Japan), enjoy your Columbus Day!  Hopefully, for you, it is a holiday from work.

A Tangle of Knots - a review

Graff, Lisa. 2013. A Tangle of Knots. New York: Philomel.

A travelling salesman with a Talent for tying knots. "The Owner," a man with no discernible Talent of his own, other than perhaps floating a few inches above the ground. Miss Mallory, who has a Talent for matching orphans with new families. And Cadence,

If you peeked in the window of the orphanage you would see her,

"Cadence, that was her name.
She was standing there now, Cady, deciding what to add to her bowl of batter.  If you squinted through the window, you could just make her out from the chin up (Cady was barely a wisp of a thing). You'd see the shiny, crow-black hair that hung smooth as paper from the top of her head to the bottom of her earlobes.  And you'd see the petite - pixieish, Miss Mallory called them - features of her face.  Tiny nose, tiny mouth, tiny ears.  Cady's eyes, however, those were large in comparison to the rest of her.  Large and dark and round, and set just so on a face the color of a leaf that has clung too long to its tree."

Cady has a Talent for baking the perfect cake.

A chance encounter in a long ago bus station,  a powder blue suitcase, a boy with a Talent for getting lost - these and hundreds of other threads are tangled together, and slowly unravel to reveal a mystery of love and longing and desire and family. A wonderful book!

If you read no other middle grade fiction book this year, you will have made a good choice.

Tuesday (not the book)

A few notes for today, Tuesday, October 8, 2013

• If you're looking for a final wrap-up of all the Nonfiction Monday posts (I didn't get them all added until late last night), scroll down to yesterday's post, or click here.
  

• Stop by the ALSC Blog today if you want to hear about my latest musical endeavors. 
  

• Check out the Cybils site if you're a blogger interested in nominating your favorite juvenile or YA books for this annual award.  Time is running out.  http://www.cybils.com/2013/10/the-clock-is-ticking.html

• Rick Riordan's House of Hades hits the shelves today!  Get ready for a crush of customers looking for this one!  If your library doesn't have enough copies, don't send kids away completely empty-handed.  They can read the first chapter of House of Hades here.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Enjoy your Tuesday, the day and the book!
  
  
  

Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History - a review

Huey, Lois Miner. 2014. Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History. Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook.

Imagine that you have the ability to travel  to America, circa 1770.  You'll be able to blend in and talk with people who will have no idea that you have traveled back in time.  That's the fun premise of Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History, just the kind of book that I love -- one that brings history alive as no textbook can do.

From "The Awful Smells,"

Your nose runs as you approach the people in a room.  When a woman smiles at you, you see she's missing several teeth.  Her breath is horrid.  You can't escape it.  Almost everyone in the room has bad breath from rotting teeth.  Plus, both men and women smoke white clay pipes.  So their breath (and clothes and hair) also smells of strong tobacco.  People aren't completely unaware of the smells. They know they have bad breath.  Women try to hide it by chewing cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, and honey melted in ashes.  Men don't bother.  Women mostly wave fans to keep the smell away and to cover their own black smiles. 

 As a traveler from the future, you'll visit a cobbler's shop (also full of stomach-churning smells), a tavern complete with bedbugs and rotting food, a barbershop (where people go to have their rotting teeth ripped from their jaws), and the homes and wardrobes of wealthy, poor and working class Americans.

Colorful inset boxes offer facts about smallpox, bathing habits, and other public health issues of the time. Period illustrations, photographed realia, and other buggy and bloody spot illustrations, add interest and break up the small text.

An introduction, "The Yucky Past," and four chapters, "The Awful Smells," "The Creepy-Crawly Bugs," "The Nasty Germs," and "The Uncomfortable Fashions," are followed by an Author's Note, Glossary, Source Notes, Selected Bibliography, Further Reading, Places to Visit and Index.

The author's note is well worth reading, and finishes with,

I don't think we should feel superior to the people of the past. They knew of nothing better than the conditions in which they lived. Despite all the hardships they faced, they worked hard, raised their children, and made the best of what they had.

A well-done look at our nation's earliest days.  How will we be viewed by citizens from the centuries to come?

You're in the right place!  Nonfiction Monday is here today. 

 Please add your post to this Google form. 

If you have trouble with the form, leave a link in the comments.

Thanks for participating in today's Nonfiction Monday roundup!

• At NC Teacher Stuff, Jeff is our first contributor of the day with "Two Creepy Titles from National Geographic."  That's Creepy! and Weird but True! should be great kid-pleasers.

• At Randomly Reading, Alex offers "Three Books About Nature," On the Move: Mass Migrations, Animal Helpers: Sanctuaries, and Nature Recycles: How About You?  all published by Sylvan Dell.

• At Jean Little Library, Jennifer is featuring Secrets of the Ancient Gods: Anubis Speaks!   A slightly gruesome book, "narrated" by the god, Anubis, this one is not for the picture book crowd. 
  

• Brick by Brick is the nonfiction picture book selection of Jeanne at True Tales and a Cherry on Top this week.  It is the story of the construction of the White House, created by many workers, including slaves who endured horrible working conditions.
  

• Jennie at Biblio File shares Hacking Your Future: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More than Your Peers Ever Will, a manifesto espousing the benefits of self-directed learning as opposed to the college experience. An interesting concept, but one I'm hoping that my son doesn't choose. ;) 

• Eggs 1, 2, 3: Who Will the Babies Be? is today's offering from Jen at Perogies and Gyoza. Eggs ... is one of last year's Cybils' finalists and Jen declares it "an adorable book on numbers and eggs for preschoolers." She also reminds us to nominate our favorites for consideration in this year's Cybils voting!

• Over at Booktalking, Anastasia reviews a book that will "help students learn critical thinking skills by examining the different types of questions they can ask as they do research." Be sure to check out Know What to Ask: Forming Great Research Questions.

• At Geo Librarian, Heidi has a brief review of "a fabulous MG/YA nonfiction book about the art of drawing/sculpting dinosaurs."  Head over to Geo Librarian to read about Scaly Spotted Feathered Frilled: How do we know what dinosaurs really looked like?

• Cindy, one half of the duo that makes up Bookends, has just added her featured book, Things that Float and Things that Don't, a picture book for young readers about flotation and density.

• Today at Sonderbooks, you'll find a review of Revolutionary Friends: George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette.  Read this one with Ick! Yuck! Eew! and you'll imagine history with your nose as well as your eyes and ears!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 Note:
 I'll be working all day, and will update the post with your links later in the day.

How Big Were Dinosaurs? a review

Judge, Lita. 2013. How Big Were Dinosaurs? New York: Roaring Brook Press.

Just how big were dinosaurs? Well, it's easy to offer an approximate size in feet or meters or tons or pounds - but what does that mean to the average child?  Not too much.  How Big Were Dinosaurs? uses cheerful comparative artwork to make common comparisons that children will easily understand.

Twelve dinosaurs are featured.

From the small,

MICRORAPTOR was a deadly hunter, but he would barely be able to look a modern-day chicken in the eye,

To the enormous,

ARGENTINOSAURUS. As long as four school buses, this dinosaur was probably the biggest animal ever to walk on land.  A full-grown adult weighed more than a herd of seventeen elephants.

A  double fold-out featuring each of the dinosaurs in the book is accompanied by a few pages titled, "How do we know how big dinosaurs were? A few suggested websites and books are also included.

Kids will finish this book with a great sense of the comparative sizes of dinosaurs.



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