A Boy Called Bat, written by Elana K. Arnold, illustrated by Charles Santoso
published in 2017 by Walden Pond Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
192 pages
I thoroughly enjoyed this endearing story about a small boy with a huge heart, and one little, striped skunk.
Bat Tam is in third grade at Saw Whet School, chosen especially for him because the wonderful folks in charge accommodate Bat’s autism so well. In fact, Bat’s teacher, Mr. Grayson? You’ll all wish he lived next door!
Bat’s mom is a veterinarian and one day she winds up with a tiny, motherless skunk kit. Her plan is to care for it at home for about a month until the wildlife rescue center has a spot for it. Bat’s plan, within about a nanosecond of meeting this sweet little fella, is to keep it forever.
They are pretty cute, after all.
Earnestly attempting to grow into a capable skunk-owner while managing his autism plus the challenges of his parents’ separation is not an easy path for Bat, but with resourcefulness and immense heart, plus the support of some wise, empathetic adults, Bat succeeds. And wins our hearts in the process.
Excellent story, characters to love, and a great spotlight on autism. Read it aloud or hand it to ages 7 and up.
Cavern of Secrets, by Linda Sue Park, illustrated by James Madsen
published in 2017 by Harper
320 pages
This is the second page-turner in Linda Sue Park’s Wing & Claw trilogy. I reviewed the series’ opener here.
Though it’s been a year since that first book came out, I was immediately swept back into the world of Obsidia, where a young boy named Raffa Santana has been raised to be an apothecary, scavenging the Forest of Wonders for botanicals he can pound and mix into tinctures and powders imbued with marvelous healing capabilities. Raffa has discovered one particular vine whose properties can be used for surprising good, or immense evil.
The Chancellor of Obsidia is secretly engaged in using it for evil. It’s up to Raffa, his cousin Garith, best friend Kuma, and a handful of trustworthy others to stop her. The stakes are high and the obstacles daunting. Assisting them is an amiable, immensely-charming bat named Echo. Who talks.
The adventure and tension are definitely ratcheted up in this volume which has a cliffhanger ending. How will we wait until next year for the conclusion?! Excellent fantasy for middle graders and up and a choice candidate for reading aloud as well.
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Posted in fiction, non-fiction, tagged astrid lindgren, authors, book reviews, children's literature, fantasy, journals, non-fiction, Scandinavia, Sweden in WWII, War Diaries 1939-1945, WWII on February 8, 2017|
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War Diaries, 1939-1945, written by Astrid Lindgren, illustrated with family photos
first published in Sweden, 2015; first U.S. edition published in 2016 by Yale University Press
When I first heard late last year that Astrid Lindgren’s diaries from the World War II years were being published in the U.S., all my must-read buttons began flashing at once! Now I’ve read it, I want to pass on to you this remarkable piece of adult non-fiction.
Lindgren is Sweden’s most famous children’s author. Many
Astrid Lindgren Foto: Jacob Forsell Kod: 14
COPYRIGHT PRESSENS BILD
Americans are sadly limited in their familiarity with her books, Pippi Longstocking being the only title immediately connected with her. Lindgren, though, has written dozens of wonderful stories, many of which have been translated. In fact, almost 100 different languages host at least one of her works. In addition, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is among the most prestigious awards in children’s literature worldwide. You can read all about it here.
So, of course, as a lover of children’s literature, I am fond beyond words of Lindgren. Our family has immensely enjoyed reading aloud many of her books and we treasure our common memories of feisty Lotta, daring Bill Bergson, those darling children of Noisy Village, intrepid Ronia, and other equally vivid characters.
Christmas in Noisy Village
That’s what initially drew me to this compilation of her diary entries from 1939-1945, but what I read there goes far, far beyond children’s literature. Honestly, one gets only a glimmer of the beginnings of Lindgren’s illustrious, unexpected career in children’s literature. A glimpse of the publication of her first book, passing mentions of Pippi being written, and her surprise at Pippi’s reception are all tantalizing to come across.
Finnish victory, WWII
What took me by surprise was how engrossing it is to read about World War II from a Swedish perspective. Lindgren was deeply thoughtful about the politics and maneuverings of the Scandinavian countries throughout the war. The plight of Finland, in particular, is largely overlooked in American histories, and as a person with Swede-Finn heritage, I was grateful to read about Finland’s intense and heroic plight, squeezed as they were between Stalin and Hitler. Norwegian resistance, Danish resistance, her unease over neutrality and unique perspective on what she believed was gained by that, the massive numbers of refugees welcomed by Sweden during the war — all of this captivated me.
Lindgren’s heart ached when confronted with the immense human toll of the war on populations across Europe. Her entries lament over the vast numbers of hungry and starving civilians, communities ravaged by both Russian and German armies, Jews who were harassed out of their homelands (though she was long unaware of the full extent of the Holocaust), Norwegians executed for their resistance, and German soldiers as well, fighting a war she guessed many of them did not believe in, an extraordinary perspective for someone in the midst of this carnage.
Astrid’s war diary
Because she was employed by the Swedish government as a censor, Lindgren’s work involved reading personal letters written from all areas of Europe by ordinary people struggling to cope with war, loss, and simply putting food on the table. This gave Lindgren a much broader understanding of the impact of the war. Given the global humanitarian crisis in our world just now, this is a timely read.
Whether you pick it up as a children’s literature aficionado, a fellow Scandinavian, or a history buff, then, you’ll find a great deal to love about this remarkable, personal narrative of those strenuous years.
I decided to re-read Pippi Longstocking in light of this new, fuller understanding of both Lindgren and the context in which she wrote the book. My copy is this wildly colorful edition illustrated by Lauren Child, published by Viking in 2007.
I love the effervescent spunk Child introduces to the text through her explosive, personality-laden collages, and the clever manipulation of type to highlight particular shenanigans.
What I discovered was that knowing the circumstances of Lindgren’s life when she wrote Pippi, and the origins of it as bedtime stories for her daughter, made all the difference in how it reads!
What jumps off the page is the obvious appeal of what began as story-spinning for her young daughter, then for many more neighborhood children. Certainly these fantastical adventures and silly stories brought fresh vision and happy thoughts into the hearts of children, some of whom were terribly burdened with anxiety.
The life of Pippi is not only chock-full of giggleworthy episodes, it is one with no stultifying rules during a period of annoying rationing and ham-fisted Nazi demands. Free as a bird, she is. Despite having no parents, Pippi is a strong, hopeful, self-sufficient girl. No need to worry about her! In one telling incident, Pippi attends the circus and accepts the ringmaster’s challenge to defeat the strongest man in the world, a fellow not-coincidentally named Strong Adolf. Pippi neatly pins him to the mat in one blink of an eye. Immensely satisfying. European children during WWII had to rise above their circumstances in heroic proportions, and Pippi was certainly a plucky role model.
Bits and pieces from the Lindgren’s Swedish household are scattered throughout the story, too. Wouldn’t you do that, if you were spinning stories for your child? Coffee is drunk commodiously! Heart-shaped gingersnaps, August pears, sugared pancakes — lots of delicious food comes to play in this story. Household chores, 
outdoor play, making music by blowing on a comb (a trick my Swedish grandfather taught me once upon a time) — choice elements of ordinary life are effortlessly woven into the fantasy.
If you’ve never read Pippi, you really should consider it. It’s a delightful read-aloud for children ages 4 and up. If it has been awhile since you read it, I think you’d enjoy giving it another read keeping in mind the world in which Pippi was born.
Here are Amazon links for both books. I keep forgetting to put these in! I am an Amazon Associate meaning you can do me a favor by clicking through a link on my blog before purchasing something from Amazon. I get a little dab from them each time that happens. Thanks!
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Mighty Jack, written and illustrated by Ben Hatke, color by Alex Campbell and Hilary Sycamore
published in 2016 by First Second
Turning Ben Hatke loose with Jack and his magical beans is like, I don’t know, giving J.K. Rowling the keys to Oz? Letting Lewis Carroll slip into Narnia? Suddenly even the ordinarily-magical gets cranked up into neon, technicolor heights! And at the same time, a vein of tenderness wends its way through the whole account. Seriously magical.
Jack is a nice kid with a single mom working two jobs over the summer to make ends meet, and a younger, autistic sister who needs watching. Maddy clearly loves Jack, and just as clearly has intense ideas and tastes, but she doesn’t talk. At all. Which makes caring for her a tricky business.
One day at the flea market Maddy wanders off and bumbles into a mysterious sort of fellow with some peculiar seed packets for sale. Jack doesn’t have the money to pay for them but when the craziest thing happens — when Maddy suddenly does talk and begs him to buy the seeds — Jack gets tipped off balance and recklessly pays the fellow off with…No, I won’t tell you but his mom is furious!
When Jack and Maddy set to work planting those curious seeds, stranger, far more malevolent things sprout up than simply a sky-high beanstalk! It takes all Jack’s wits plus the help of a new, sizzlingly-spunky, homeschooled neighbor girl, Lilly, and her rad swordsmanship, to confront the menacing jungle.
Hatke’s characters knit their way into my heart with magical speed — wait’ll you meet those Onion Babies! — and the pace and electric energy of his story make this a wild page-turner. And then — cliffhanger ending! For this is Book One. The conclusion comes out later in 2017.
Turn folks ages 8 and up loose with this for a wild ride!
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Beetle Boy, by M.G. Leonard, illustrations by Júlia Sardà
published in 2016 by Chicken House, Scholastic
270 pages
It all starts with the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Bartholomew Cuttle, an enigmatic, punctilious scientist who enters the collection vaults in the Natural History Museum one ordinary day, and *poof* disappears.
12-year-old Darkus Cuttle, his son, is taken in by his uncle, Professor Maximilian Cuttle, a kind, honest, if slightly distracted archaeologist. All well and good BUT! what can have happened to his father? Despite what the detectives and journalists insinuate, Darkus is certain foul play is involved. His father would never abandon him. So where is he?
The answers to Darkus’s questions come from the most extraordinary sources beginning with a large-ish black beetle, eyes glistening like blackberries, sporting a pointy horn and capable of some downright terrifying hissing. Oh, and it understands human language. Comes when called. Darkus names him Baxter.
Baxter turns out to be just one of a whole collection of intelligent super-beetles, genetically altered in a sinister plot by the Cruella DeVille-esque Lucretia Cutter. Truly someone worth hissing about! Darkus and Baxter team up with a pair of new friends and a veritable army of phenomenal insects, but the clock is ticking. Can they find his father, plus defeat Lucretia, her sinister staff, and a pair of odious, ghoulish neighbors, in time to prevent her diabolical scheme?
This is the fast-paced first novel in a new trilogy with loud echoes of Dr. Who and Roald Dahl and a pinch of Suzanne Collins’ Gregor the Overlander series. With its fiendish, outlandish characters, crisp, polished prose, and relentless tension, it’s a sterling beginning. I know — super-beetles sound unpalatable to you. Believe me, though — you will love these guys! Their jeweled beauty and extraordinary abilities will make you not only cheer for their valor, but turn a newly-appreciative eye on their counterparts in the real, marvelous, curious world of beetles.
My U.S. copy did not have any of Júlia Sardà’s great illustrations, which is too bad. But an added Entomologist’s Dictionary helps readers understand terms used, from Coloeptera to transgenic. I thoroughly enjoyed this and recommend it for ages 10 and up.
Here’s the Amazon link: Beetle Boy
And consider this…
A fantastic pairing would be Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long’s gorgeous nonfiction book, A Beetle Is Shy. After reading about these amazing creatures’ sci-fi adventures in Beetle Boy, gazing at their true beauty and learning some amazing facts from this book will certainly appeal.
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Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure, written by Ann M. Martin with Annie Parnell, illustrated by Ben Hatke
published in 2016 by Feiwel and Friends
242 pages
How many of you have read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle? If you have, I’m guessing a warm wave of happiness just washed over you!
For those of you unacquainted with her, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is the short, plumpish little woman who lives in an upside-down house full of marvels, fresh baked cookies, and magical cures for ill-behaved children. She’s one of the most beloved characters in children’s literature, having made her first appearance in 1947, in Betty MacDonald’s collection of chapter books about her.
With her wise notions and secret potions Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is always the right person to call on whether children suffer from resisting baths, tattling, or downright selfishness. Her clever cures work like a charm every time! You can read more about her in my earlier review of that book here.
Now, almost 70 years later, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s grand-niece has arrived on the scene to welcome a whole new batch of children into that magical home. It seems that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has finally decided to find out what happened to her mysterious pirate-husband who’s been missing ever-so-long, and has left the house in charge of Missy.
Sequels written by others can be touchy things. Putting such a beloved person as Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle into another’s hand for potential mistreatment — that raises the hackles on any bonafide booklover, right? Well, rest easy. The skillful Ann M. Martin has beautifully handed over the keys of the house to this newcomer and written an excellent first entry into what I’m hoping will be several episodes.
As a matter-of-fact, I think Martin anticipates the trepidation of long-time fans. The House itself is decidedly mistrustful of Missy upon her arrival, employing all the underhanded tricks a House might have up its sleeve in order to propel her right back where she came from. As our hearts warm towards Missy, so does the House, and we all wind up happily, comfortably, nestled in together.
Missy has her own set of ill behaviors to cure in the children she meets, including greediness, gum-smacking, the ol’ just-one-more-minute-itis, and a know-it-all who needs setting straight. She tackles them with the same mix of gravity and kindness as her great-aunt, winning the trust of the townful of children and their parents. There’s also a blush of romance between Missy and the awkward young bookseller in town, Harold Spectacle, just to sweeten the deal.
Ben Hatke brings these characters into the 21st century beautifully as well, with his knack for infusing personality into his figures. He mixes the freshness needed by a new generation of readers with a lovely old-fashioned sensibility that respects the atmosphere of both the original stories and this new batch. Just look at that enticing cover!
I heartily recommend you read the original story first. No need to read all five of those previous books, but do read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Then dip into this new installment for a delightful treat. Great read-alouds for a wide age-range, or trusted staples for independent readers ages 7 and up.
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The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill
published by Algonquin Young Readers
ON SHELVES BEGINNING TUESDAY, AUGUST 9!
Minnesota-author Kelly Barnhill has come out with another powerful middle-grade fantasy starring a short, bustling witch named Xan, Glerk the swamp monster, and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon. There’s magic-aplenty in her story, not the least of which is how quickly these three will wrap themselves around your heart and cinch you into their lives, troubles, and urgent endeavors.
Life in the forest utterly changes when a small girl named Luna is
folded into this trio’s company. Rescued as an infant by Xan, Luna takes a mighty slurp of moonlight and becomes enmagicked. Oops. There’s nothing for it but to raise her as their own. But an enmagicked child, as you might guess, is quite tricky to raise. Gobs more potential for disaster than with your ordinary, mischief-making toddler!
Luna needed rescuing because of the cold, cruel practice of the Protectorate: every year the elders mercilessly abandon a child as a peace-offering to the witch of the forest. Xan, unbeknownst to them, makes a habit of rescuing those babies. Eventually, a young man rises up with a brave plan to put an end to all this unspeakable sorrow and death. By killing Xan.
Barnhill’s impeccable writing makes for effortless reading, while she spins her plot with perfect pacing. Packed within the story are some tremendously thought-provoking themes which elevate this quite beyond an ordinary fantasy and make it a superb choice for a middle-grade-and-older book club.
Appearances are not what they seem. Behind the labels we place on people, quite the opposite character might lie. The hag might be good, and the councilmen evil. The weak might be strong, and the powerful, weak. Ugliness might mask beauty.
A great deal of commentary on governance also runs through the narrative, commentary I think George Orwell would have welcomed. The rulers of the Protectorate — an ironic name if there ever was one — control the populace through fear, lies, and oppression. They brook no questions or dissent. Those who control the narrative, wield the power, so it becomes critical to utterly control the narrative. And in their power, these gluttons and cowards refuse to actually protect the weak. Instead, they feed on
them. Ordinary citizens are chained to despair through ignorance and fear.
That’s the dark side. The moonlit side of the story is that love and self-sacrifice open the way, empower, restore. It’s a treacherous road to get there, but an incredibly satisfying one.
386 pages. Ages 11 through adult. Great book to hand a fan of fantasy, but I read little fantasy and thoroughly enjoyed this so don’t simply skip it if that’s not normally your genre of choice. I predict this will garner some awards.
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Posted in fiction, picture books, poetry, recipes, tagged adult authors of children's books, chapter books, children's literature, fantasy, James Thurber, Jane Smiley, picture books, poetry, Salman Rushdie, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Toni Morrison on May 9, 2016|
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Today I’m celebrating my daughter and the four years of strenuous studies she’s completed to earn her English Literature degree! Huzzah!
Ingrid is one of the most caring human beings on the planet. She’s a sunny, strong, deeply-thoughtful, peacemaker, with more organizational savvy in her pinky finger than Leslie Knope! Yup.
And Ingrid is that person who, when you see the little quizzes to find out how many of the Top 100 Novels of All Time you’ve read — she clicks off nearly all of them. She’s amazingly well-read. Yet when she comes home to my stacks of picture books, she happily settles in to enjoy them.
So, I thought it fitting to post, in her honor, a list of children’s books written by folks known for being “adult” authors. I’ll start with one of the most recently published…
Twenty Yawns, by Jane Smiley, illustrated by Lauren Castillo
published in 2016 by Two Lions
Pulitzer-prize winning Jane Smiley has written a rare gem for little ones ages Just-One and up. It’s one of those deceptively-simple stories, gorgeously crafted, which speaks intuitively to a child’s experience of the world, intelligently, without condescension. Timeless, warm, satisfying, it burrows right into your heart.
Lucy and her parents spend a happy day at the beach, thoroughly wearing themselves out by the time the sun is setting.
Yet when it’s time for bed, Lucy has a wee bit of trouble falling asleep. Several distractions and concerns niggle at her.
Only when they are properly attended to can Lucy relax into sweet slumber. Lauren Castillo’s monumentally-comforting artwork is the perfect match. Her chalky textures, shaggy lines, toasty-warm color palette, and amiable human figures welcome us into the story like…like what?…a friendly dog, a favorite quilt, a genuine smile. Castillo exudes warmth in every story she touches.
Sprinkled in the story and pictures are twenty yawns to discover and count — such a delightful added spritz of happiness. Don’t miss this one. It’s been on shelves for just about a month.
Moving on to another bedtime story, this time with quite a different flavor:
The Bed Book, by Sylvia Plath, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully
first American edition published in 1976 by Harper & Row
Dark and broody, Sylvia Plath is not the name I’d expect to find on this utterly delightful, imaginative poem, but there it is!
I don’t know just when she wrote this. It was published after her death. In Britain, it was published with Quentin Blake’s maniac line drawings…
while in the U.S. it appears with Emily Arnold McCully’s watercolors. It’s all about the fantastical sorts of beds one might have which would definitely make going to bed a much more exciting prospect. For example, this submarine bed:
or this elephant bed:
You might not be able to locate the McCully edition, 40 years old and out of print. But you can purchase a collection of the three children’s stories Plath wrote in one volume, The It Doesn’t Matter Suit and Other Stories and…why would you not want her other two stories as well? Ages 2 and up.
Sharing a similar flavor of rambunctious playfulness is:
Peeny Butter Fudge, by Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison, illustrated by Joe Cepeda
published in 2009; a Paula Wiseman Book, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
All the rule-breaking benefits of being a grandmother, firecracker out in this happy account by the great novelist Toni Morrison.
As our story opens, Nana is left with three grandchildren while Mom exits for the day, having left detailed instructions for just what the children should do and eat at strictly-assigned hours. So organized. So responsible. So…not going to be adhered to by Nana.
Nana’s not got time for television. She’s too busy careening along in potato sack races and swing dancing with her grands. She’s got an entirely different menu in mind for lunch. And to top it off, she declares they ought to stir up a batch of an old family recipe — Peeny Butter Fudge. All this means the house is rather a disaster when Mom comes home, but oh, are they ever happy!
Illustrated in pulsing, neon colors and rambunctious line. The fudge recipe is included! A gallon of fun for ages 2 and up.
A longer, but heavily-illustrated story is next up…
The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber, illustrated by Marc Simont
published originally in 1950; published by The New York Review Children’s Collection in 2008
In his Introduction to the NYRCC edition of this book, Neil Gaiman calls this “probably the best book in the world.” So…fairly high praise from a guy who knows.
13 Clocks is quite a story! It’s a fantasy like you’ve never read before. It contains all the usual fairy tale tropes, but they’re given a huge licorice twist — somewhat of a Princess Bride, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy flavor.
There’s a princess and an evil duke and a gallant prince and a quest. There are magic spells and creepy spies and cascades of precious jewels. So — yes, it’s a fairy tale. But there’s a leapfrogging, shot-out-of-the-blue quality to the narrative that zings us around like a tilt-a-whirl. Mightily eccentric.
Besides the storyline shenanigans, the most obvious delights of this story are Thurber’s uncanny use of words. Made-up words. Crazily strung-together words. Mesmerizing, tantalizing, sparkly words! All of which make this a Read-Aloud confection.
Marc Simont, one of the most beloved illustrators, supplies fantastic characters and aura. What a team. A rollicking read-aloud for ages 6 and up. 124 pages.
Another, longer fantasy, plum-perfect for reading aloud is…
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
published in 1990 by Penguin Books
Haroun is the son of the famous storyteller Rashid Khalifa. They live in the saddest city in the world, “a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish” and its factories manufacture sadness for export. Rashid’s stories are the only source of laughter in Haroun’s world.
But one day, the stories dry up.
And that’s not just a quirk of fate nor an accident. A really-really bad guy named Khattam-Shud, the Arch-Enemy of Stories, has ordered Iff the Water Genie to turn off the story spigot in the Sea of Stories. Haroun and Rashid and a growing band of fantastical allies are determined to put an end to that villain and his gloomy vision for a cold and storyless existence.
It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland world filled with extraordinary characters and plot twists. Rushdie is a wizard of a storyteller himself, of course, and his marvelous words magically, effortlessly, gather us into this adventurous tale.
In fact, this is also an allegorical tale, one in which it’s hard not to see elements of Rushdie’s own life and the fatwa which threatened to cut off his storytelling days. Young children reading or listening will enjoy the tale at its lively surface level, while older readers may make many interesting connections or observations to their own world, to the silencing of some voices, to the power of stories, or to various forms of governance.
It’s been produced as an opera.
My library shelves this as adult fiction. It is certainly fiction that adults will thoroughly enjoy, but it is written as a children’s story, so don’t be afraid of checking this out for reading together. Ages 8 and up can listen; independent readers will need a stout vocabulary. 200 pages.
Finally, a turn towards poetry:
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot, illustrated by Edward Gorey
poems copyright 1939; this edition with Gorey’s illustrations published in 1982 by Harcourt Brace & Co.
Cascading with playful verses and with peculiar, industrious, marauding, persnickety, comedic cats, this is a volume of verse guaranteed to tickle the fancies of young and old.
If you or your children think, for instance, that poetry’s a bore, please make the acquaintance of the Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks, or Macavity the Mystery Cat. Marvelously entertaining stuff.
This is the basis for the Broadway musical “Cats” ( Marlene Danielle — Photo by Thomas Monaster/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
Delicious wordsmithing, frolicksome rhythms, idiosyncratic personalities — all served up abundantly in the collection of more than a dozen poems. Edward Gorey’s genius, droll, Victorian, line-drawings are a fantastic pairing. Share these with ages 2 to Adult.
Over the years, I’ve posted quite a few other titles that would fit in this category. Here are a few of them, with links to their reviews:
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