Reviewed by Charlotte Richardson:

Andrea Curtis, photography by Yvonne Duivenvoorden,
What’s for Lunch? How Schoolchildren Eat Around the World
Red Deer Press, 2012.

Ages: 8+

What’s for Lunch? uses a comparison of school lunches around the world as a jumping off point for a wide-ranging discussion of food issues presented in a poster-like layout. Yvonne Duvenvoorden’s attractive photographs of the lunches will draw children in, as will Sophie Casson’s appealingly goofy illustrations. Children will learn not only about the varieties of foods served in schools globally but also about their presentation…

Read the full review…

Maya Ajmera, Elise Hofer Derstine, and Cynthia Pon,
What We Wear: Dressing Up Around the World
A Global Fund for Children Book/Charlesbridge, 2012.

Ages: 4-7

Dressing up means something a little different to everyone, but for children dressing up is always important.  It might mean trying on a parent’s clothes in the back of a closet, putting on a costume for a performance or holiday, painting your face, playing pretend, or wearing a team uniform for a big game.  No matter where, dressing up is special, but the details of dressing up differ considerably depending on the traditions of one’s culture.

Though the outfits vary greatly from place to place, the reasons for dressing up unite us all.  This richly photographed book of smiling children from around the world dressing up in every imaginable way will open windows onto other cultures for children everywhere.  Whether vibrant beads on the head, neck, and shoulders of a Kenyan child or identical navy blue baseball caps on a Japanese team, it is clear that children everywhere delight in dressing up, whatever the occasion.  Captions accompanying the photos suggest the different reasons people wear special clothing and where to find people wearing such garments: folk festivals, cultural events, religious rituals and even school.  A world map highlights the countries the photographed children call home, underscoring the point that dressing up is universal.

Children will recognize the familiar in these pages and will also be delighted to see their counterparts in other countries dressed so differently.  The pictures are likely to inspire a sense of wonder that may lead young children to think about what they share and how they differ from people of other cultures.  The authors also make suggestions for learning more about dressing up all over the world such as going to museums, making masks and costumes on your own, and visiting cultural institutions and festivals.

Expressing one’s self and experiencing one’s culture through clothing is an important part of developing self-identity. This makes What We Wear a perfect book to have on the shelves of a pre-school or primary grade library, inspiring kids to see themselves and children everywhere as part of a global community.

Abigail Sawyer
December 2012

Today is Peace Day.  It’s also a day of  Global Ceasefire.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the fighting stopped for this one day.  It’s certainly something to aim for, and beyond.

This week with my Cub Scout Pack in Kirkbymoorside, UK, we thought about Peace and what a global ceasefire might mean.  We made peace cranes, thanks to Stone Bridge Press’ wonderful A Thousand Cranes: Origami Projects for Peace and Happiness (2011), adapted from a book by Florence Temko (1921-2009); and then we held a short vigil by candle-light (one of our Challenges in our Diamond Jubilee Challenge was silence: hard but ultimately rewarding).

We shared Lao Tzu’s wise poem from 2,500 years ago:

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

It is one of the prayers in the beautifully presented Let There be Peace: Prayers from Around the World, selected by Jeremy Brooks, illustrated by Jude Daly (Frances Lincoln, 2009).

People around the world will be pausing for a moment’s silence today at midday local time.  Let’s hope the guns stop firing too.

This week’s Poetry Friday host Renée LaTulippe has a bowl of Poetry Candy over at No Water River, so head on over…

Sarah Garland,
Azzi In Between
Frances Lincoln, 2012.

The cover image for Azzi In Between, showing a little girl clutching her teddy bear as she looks warily behind her while walking through a war-torn landscape, sets the scene for what is to come, as Azzi and her family flee their unspecified Middle Eastern country and arrive as refugees in the Western city that will gradually become their home.  What the cover doesn’t prepare you for is the book’s graphic format and the depth of this story aimed at young readers but also a quality read for older children through to adults.

War is depicted in shades of grey that contrast strikingly with the bright colors in Azzi’s happy, relatively unaffected home-life – but the war gradually encroaches until the day Azzi’s father, a doctor, receives a phone-call warning the family they must leave.  There follow the hurried departure, a terrifying journey and the bewildering newness of everything at their destination: the food, the language, school… Azzi also desperately misses her grandmother who has stayed behind, and worries that she may never see her again.

With the help of Sabeen, an assistant at school who was once a refugee like her, Azzi begins to settle in and make friends.  Then a school gardening project reminds her of the precious beans her parents have managed to bring safely all the way with them. Determined to plant them, she rushes home that afternoon only to discover that her mother has cooked them as a special treat for Azzi’s supper.  All is not lost, however, and there is much to be positive about at the end of the story: though more mature readers will pick up on the tempered quality of Azzi’s father’s answer when she asks if he is now happy – “I think you are making me happier, Azzi.”  Indeed, all the people Azzi comes into contact with are kind and welcoming but it is clear that her parents are managing to shield her from the brunt of their worries, as revealed by the shadows under Mother’s eyes, and the fact that Father is too tired when he comes home in the evening to share the new words he has learned that day.

Sarah Garland wrote Azzi In Between, which is endorsed by Amnesty International UK, after spending time with refugees in New Zealand.  She has created a gem of a story that is told with great sensitively and insight.  A perfect choice for reluctant readers and students like Azzi, learning English as a second language, every school should have this book readily to hand for every child to read – and perhaps it should also become compulsory reading for all government employees who work with asylum seekers.

Marjorie Coughlan
August 2012

Everybody has a song,
be it short or be it long,
in the right or in the wrong key,
Like the hee-haw of a donkey,
Twitter, tweet, tu-whit, tu-whoo,
howl or growl or quack or moo.
[…]
Don’t be silent
nor afraid,
you must sing
as you’ve been made.

Translation by Stan Dragland of the South African poem “Elke outjie…” by Philip de Vos

Welcome, everybody, to this week’s Poetry Friday, which we are delighted to be hosting.  Please leave comments below with links to your “songs” and I’ll be updating this post throughout the day.

The above poem comes from the joyous anthology Under the Spell of the Moon: Art for Children from the World’s Great Illustrators.  This superb book, first published by Groundwood in Canada in 2004, then in the UK in 2006 by Frances Lincoln, is now available for the first time in paperback (Frances Lincoln, 2012). Produced by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), the book is edited by erstwhile President of IBBY and founder of Groundwood Patsy Aldana, and has a thought-provoking Foreword by award-winning author Katherine Paterson.  It provides a fantastic showcase of 32 illustrators from across the globe, who have all donated their work to benefit IBBY – indeed 12.5% of the book’s proceeds go to IBBY.  Illustrators include Piet Grobler, who illustrated the poem cited above, as well as many others of my personal favorites such as Mitsumasa Anno (Japan), Peter Sís (Czech Republic/USA), Anthony Browne (UK), Isol (Argentina), Pulak Biswas (India), Luis Garay (Nicaragua) – and the book has also introduced me to many illustrators whose work I intend to explore further…

Each illustrator was asked to “illustrate a text of his or her own choosing, be it a poem, nursery rhyme, song, piece of prose, riddle or street game.”  The result is a wonderfully eclectic gathering of mostly verse that is given in its original language, sometimes incorporated into the artwork, and, where necessary, in English translation: and indeed a special shout-out must go to Stan Dragland’s virtuoso translations.  The quirkiness of the collection probably comes from this freedom of choice given to the global spread of illustrators: so each page turn brings a surprise, both in text and artistic style.  The one thing that links every page is the joie de vivre of the texts and the virtuosity each illustrator has brought to his or her contribution.

And now we turn to the eclecticism of the Poetry Friday gathering – what a joy it is to be hosting today!

Blythe revisits Peter Pan via Helen Marshall’s Skeleton Leaves.

Mary Lee has been as amazingly creative as ever: “I’m recycling words this week. I made a Wordle of some poems I wrote recently, then used only the words I found in the Wordle to create a new poem.”

Renee LaTulippe shares a video reading by Lori Degman (1 Zany Zoo) of her poem “A Snake Ate My Homework”, plus an interview with Lori and follow-up resources.

Liz Steinglass has four witty couplets animal couplets that I know will have me chuckling for the rest of the day.

Robyn Hood Black is “offering something hot and something cold from H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)” to help counter the heatwave in the US.

Joy has been posting poems all week based on her recent field trip to the Tambopata Research Center in the Amazonian rainforest – today she has A Room in the Jungle and challenges us to write a poem about “My Room”.

Tara brings sunshine to Poetry Friday with her focus today on Sunflowers, a poem by Mary Oliver, including a video reading.

Diane has a full platter of offerings – at Kurious Kitty’s Kurio Kabinet she has a very satisfying poem, “Perpetual Between” by Maggie Dietz; there’s a neat quotation from J. Patrick Lewis at Kurious K’s Kwotes; and an ekphrastic poem about “Degas’s Laundresses” by Eavan Boland at Random Noodlings.

Steven Withrow has a new poem, Cormorant that will have you grabbing the binoculars and heading for the sea, in your mind’s eye if you can’t manage it in reality.

Jama has a fabulous, lip-smacking feast today – oodles of brown-ness as well as a proposal for the UPS man… Excuse me while I go and raid my secret stash!

Heidi shares Denise Levertov’s What My House Would Be Like If It Were A Person as she reflects on her imminent move to a new home.

Irene Latham shares her favorite beach poem, along with her own poetic descriptions accompanying photographs of both of Florida’s coasts following a recent research trip.

Laura Shoven commemorates a very special meeting with Chu Chen Po’s Hedgehog: “I’ve been teaching the poem “Hedgehog” for years, but I met my first hedgehog last week. It was love.” Check out the beautiful photos too.

Carol shares Linda Pastan’s “To a Daughter Leaving Home” because her oldest son is moving to Phoenix to attend junior college today.

Jeff has a review of Out on the Prairie, a rhyming book set in South Dakota’s Badlands region.

Violet Nesdoly has an ode to a summer storm, “Lightning”, in a dramatic string of haiku format.

Linda Baie has a great review of our fellow-blogger Greg Pincus’ ebook The Late Bird, a collection of fifty of his witty, funny and thought-provoking poems first featured on his blog.  Go Buy!  (In her Poetry Friday post, Linda also asks us to take a look at her previous post – I’m glad she did – it’s a review plus giveaway of what looks set to becomg a very important book for teens feeling vulnerable because of their sexuality – The Letter Q.)

Andi at A Wrung Sponge has an original haiku with one of her equally beautiful photographs.

April Halprin Wayland says of her post over at Teaching Authors: “We teach you how to write a Hidden Words poem and give you a pretty stinky example of one I wrote. (We’re also announcing our latest book giveaway winner and talking about taking your writing to a different locale to refresh your creativity.)”  – And by the way, it’s not a “stinky” example at all!

Tabatha Yeatts focuses on James Flecker’s work today.

Iphigene continues Gathering Books’ focus on the Festival of Asian Literature and the Immigrant Experience with Emma Lazarus’ poem The New Colossus.

Janet Squires takes a look at Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Beth Krommes.

Karen Edmisten has “some rambling”! This post about posting about poetry will make you smile and nod!

Father Goose aka Charles Ghigna has some new snickersome snickers – “a few for the funny bone”.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater has a wonderful original poem about an imaginary mechanic.

Donna has “written about farming the land this week to add to my Tugging of Tides poem…”

Betsy has been inspired by Mary Lee’s Wordle idea (see above) and Teachers Write Camp.

Kerry Aradhya highlights the rhyming picture book Subway by Anastasia Suen and Karen Katz.

Lorie Ann Grover has an original haiku “Puckered Pear” (such a great title!).

Julie Larios is on a Poetry Roller Coaster at Books Around the Table (her critique-group blog):  “I offer up some thoughts about the up-and-down nature of my love of poetry, and I post a poem by William Jay Smith titled “Moon” which is not about the moon at all.”

Ruth brings us extracts from Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey “in honor of the nature on our vacation”.

Jone has been inspired to write Summer Room by Joy Acey’s call at the beginning of the day to write a poem about “My Room” (see above).

Greg Pincus points to his interview on Katie Davis’ podcast  in which he talks “about poetry (and self-pubbing poetry, too). Ya… a self-reflexive Poetry Friday!”

What a wonderful Poetry Friday gathering – a veritable feast.  I know the day’s not over yet in some parts of the world so if any more links come in, I’ll update them on my morrow… in the meantime, happy reading!

An orphaned child
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Mother where are we?
My mind turned East, West, South and North
I could not believe
I looked all round; I could not get a sponsor

Oh! Oh! Oh!
Mother where is my father?
I cannot find my father
Who will pay my school fees?

Oh! Oh! Oh!
Mother why is there no free education for refugees?
Shall we ever go back to our country?

Oh! Oh! Oh!
Mother I wish I was in my country
I could continue with my education up to university
May god bring peace in our country Sudan?
Though I am an orphan
I would enjoy my sweet homeland

Name: Amoti Lillian, 15
School: Can-Rom Primary School, Primary 6

This poem comes from Refugee Children’s Voices: Thoughts and Art by Children Studying in UNHCR Settlements in Uganda, a booklet published by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in 2004 that can be downloaded from the Additional Resources in the Teachers’ Corner section of UNHCR’s website.

The UNHCR has just issued this video summarising the sobering 2011 UNHCR Global Trends Report…

This year the UNHCR invites us to show our support for the millions of refugees around the world by taking a pledge to spread the word of their plight – because “1 family torn apart by war is too many.”
 

We have a new interview on the PaperTigers website, with Dutch photographer Taco Anema, the author of a superb book called Tales of Water: A Child’s View/Cuentos del agua: Una visión de un niño.  Taco travelled the world photographing children interacting with water; and he spoke to them about what water means to them – how they use it, their joys and their concerns.   Sponsored by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), Taco visited at least one country in each of continents.  In the interview, Taco has given us some fascinating insight into the project and I urge you to read it.  In the meantime, for this Poetry Friday post, I want to share with you an unexpected aspect of the project:

In the book, as well as quotations from children about water, there are some poems typed over some of the photos. Can you tell us about them?

A little while ago, I read somewhere that an emotion hits the brain a thousand times faster than a word or a line of text. Photography is nothing but emotion, but regularly I find it hard to relate to the people in the picture. Sometimes it’s just not enough to know what they look like and to understand the situation they are in. I would still very much like to know something personal about them. And this is typically where the text comes in.

As mentioned earlier, we were very keen on recording the language children use to put their ideas, feelings and thoughts into words. That reinforces the message. So we talked extensively with them about their own experiences in their daily lives. Nobody had at that point thought of poems and the like.

Many people, teachers, parents, mayors and so on, attended our conversations and most likely – I can’t remember exactly – one of them suggested adding a poem by a well known poet or the lyrics of a local song. A really great idea. So we did. Together with the children we picked the ones they liked the best. The poems were important to the children. They suggested putting them in the book. So we did.

Isn’t that wonderful?  I love that poetry spontaneously became an integral part of the project.

And Taco has kindly given me permission to share some of his stunning photographs with you.  I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do, and then feel prompted to seek out the book, which has something in it for everyone, children and adults alike. And I should also point out that the text in the book is bilingual English-Spanish (and one of the reasons for that is mentioned in the interview…).

There is actually a pdf of the whole book on the IUCN website, here…

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe

Compiled by Alice Curry, illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski, with a Foreword by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,
A River of Stories: Tales and Poems from Across the Commonwealth
Commonwealth Education Trust, 2011.

Ages 8+

What a fabulous anthology!  Seaside, riverside and wellside stories; rain, dewfall and rainbows; a sea-devil from Grenada; gosile ghosts from the Solomon Islands; Rain and Fire arguing in Namibia; Hermit crabs marching in the Bahamas and mother and son crabs walking crookedly in Sri Lanka; three brothers from Mozambique and three more from Kiribati; sailors and fishermen; the beautiful goddess Mawu of the Waters from Ghana; stars in the sky and in the sea… Such a wealth of legend and contemporary observation, all brought together by the unifying theme of water and through Jan Pieńkowski’s gorgeous illustrations.

Published to commemorate the 125^th Anniversary of the Commonwealth Education Trust, A River of Stories brings together each of the 52 Member States of the Commonwealth of Nations in a vibrant mix of traditional storytelling and poetry that highlights both individual cultures and universal human concerns.  By basing the book around water, anthologist Alice Curry immediately creates the potential for empathy among the book’s readers, for water is something that we all experience, though in different ways, as indeed Curry ponders in her thought-provoking introduction. The Prince of Wales, in his Foreword, also points out the way these stories and poems from a vast array of cultures and traditions are a way of “enhancing and explaining reality” and “encourage us to think about the kind of future we will pass on to our children and grandchildren, and the central importance of water to that future.”

As well as a lavish full-bleed double-page spread given over to each section title and a delightful illuminated letter introducing each story, Pieńkowski’s bold illustrations splash across every page: a monkey hangs from the header line here; there, the green “claw-like hand” of the malignant Nkalimeva from Swaziland holds tightly onto the dismayed elephant’s nose that stretches across the whole width of the book.  Pieńkowski’s iconic silhouettes and stylised use of color echo the full gamut of the shading possibilities of silk-screen printing to great effect, from solid overlay to beautiful gradations that belie the apparent simplicity of the design.

Some of the writing may already be familiar, such as Kenya’s entry, an extract from Verna Aardema’s now classic “Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain”.  Much of it will very likely be new, and with the sources given at the end, there is plenty of scope for further exploration.  Each story or poem is no more than a five-minute read and since each one begs to be read aloud, this is the perfect book to have on stand-by to take advantage of spontaneous readaloud opportunites.  It would be a good idea to keep it to hand in any case, as it’s likely to become a firm favourite with young readers.

Marjorie Coughlan
February 2012

Edited by Radhika Menon and Sandhya Rao, illustrated by Nirupama Sekhar,
Water Stories from Around the World
Tulika, 2010.

Ages 5-11

An international assortment of water stories converge in this beautifully presented anthology, with tales from India, Botswana, Spain, Nigeria, China and Greece, as well as the Australian Aboriginal and Native American traditions, and “The Green Man”, a “story from many myths”.  This was the first one I turned to, since I’ve always been curious about him – and I loved the way the story was narrated wholly as a reported experience within the context of the here and now, making the Green Man relevant to contemporary children as a metaphor for looking after our water, whether or not we believe the story to be true.

Each of the nine storytellers represented here has a very distinctive voice but the one thing they all have in common is that they grip the reader right from the first sentence. And among the stories themselves, there’s something for everyone: magic, retribution, monsters, dragons, giants, deities, misunderstandings, humor, pride… Within so much variety, the only the thing they all have in common is water.  Perhaps my favourite story is “House of Sun and Moon”, where water herself is personified.  Water gathering up “all her children” in her skirts – and that means “oceans, seas, glaciers, rivers, streams, brooks, lakes, ponds and puddles” – plus everything plant and animal that lives in them, is just the kind of image to capture readers’ imaginations. Another story, “A Well is Born”, set in India, brings the book right up to date.  Told in verse, it reveals how the observation of a farmer saves the day for an engineer drilling for water.  Even so, the origins of the ballad go back to a traditional myth from the Ivory Coast.

Helping to bring the stories together as a collection are Niruoama Sekhar’s colourful illustrations.  Her style shifts to allow each story some individuality but certain motifs are carried through the whole book. Water splashes energetically in a pleasing variety of pattern and tone; and in those places where she incorporates the white background of the page, there is a batik-like quality to her painting.

Two double-page spreads at the end add to the educative possibilities of this excellently presented book.  Firstly, a “Water Timeline” from 10,000 BC to the present day, with an information box that asks us to ponder the question “Where have we gone wrong?”, faced as we are “with the threat of a world with less and less water”, and it suggests the relevance of creating a timeline of water for our own neighborhoods.  And secondly, a “Water Facts” spread that centers on India and will be of equal interest to readers both within and outside the country.  This is followed by an immensely readable introduction to all the contributors that connects each of them with their parts of the book. Tulika have also created a website to accompany the book, and it’s well worth a visit.

All in all, this is an excellent anthology that is likely to become a firm favourite in homes and schools alike.

Marjorie Coughlan
January 2012

[As we move into our new theme of Water, this post reprints our review of two titles in Kids Can Press' superb CitizenKid series; One Well is also our current Book of the Month]

Rochelle Strauss, illustrated by Rosemary Woods,
One Well: The Story of Water on Earth
Kids Can Press, 2007.

Ages 8-12

Herb Shoveller,
Ryan and Jimmy: And the Well in Africa That Brought Them Together
Kids Can Press 2006.

Ages 8-12

There would be no life on this planet without it: every organism on earth needs water to survive. Both One Well and Ryan and Jimmy demonstrate in different ways just how precious a resource water is and how we have a responsibility to look after it and ensure that it is kept safe and clean and indeed available.

One Well uses the symbolism of a well to represent all the water on the earth. Animals come to the well to drink; fish live in the well, we need the well for our own drinking water… but the well is now severely at risk from pollution and over-exploitation. We all have a responsibility to be “Well Aware” and to teach our children to become Well Aware also. This is a good resource to set that in motion. The enormity of the facts and figures given is by no means diminished by the symbolism here; indeed, the notion of the well allows even young children to grasp the notion of just how precious our water is and that we cannot take it for granted. Rosemary Wood’s illustrations which swirl through the text intensify the image of the well but also ensure that the metaphor is not taken too literally.

Meanwhile, Ryan and Jimmy is the truly remarkable story of a six-year-old Canadian boy’s determination to build a well in Africa and the series of life-altering events that followed. He was so horrified to hear at school that there were children in the world who did not have safe drinking-water, that he doggedly set about raising money to build a well in Africa. News of his determination filtered into other people’s lives and the ripple effect of his actions eventually gave rise to the setting up of Ryan’s Well Foundation. A class pen pal scheme brought Ryan into contact with Akana Jimmy. They then met in 2000 when Ryan and his family travelled to Uganda to see for themselves “Ryan’s well” in Jimmy’s village. Then in 2002, Jimmy’s life was dramatically changed when rebels attacked his village and captured him to be a child soldier. Although he managed to escape, his life was now at risk. Eventually, he managed to get to Canada, where he was awarded refugee status and became a member of Ryan’s family. Now, both Ryan and Jimmy are involved in the Foundation and have travelled all over the world, raising awareness about the importance of clean water. To date, 319 wells have been built in Africa, South America and India, bringing clean water to more than 450 000 people.

Full of photographs and pictures of letters and drawings, laid on a background of varying bright, earthy African colors and patterns, the book is visually exciting; the story is even more so. The writing is well paced and serves the facts up straight – if it aims to inspire, it certainly succeeds.

These two books compliment each other well (indeed One Well actually cites Ryan’s Well Foundation) and are invaluable resources both for the introduction of water as a school topic and for follow-up reading at home. One Well gives the facts and figures and reasons why we should be taking care of this precious resource; Ryan and Jimmy provides the inspiration for even young children to recognise that every little bit helps and that they can make a difference.

Marjorie Coughlan
November 2007