Lindy Shapiro, illustrated by Kathleen Peterson,
Moon Mangoes
BeachHouse, 2011.

Ages: 4-8

The winner of a Moonbeam Silver Medal, Moon Mangoes is an ode to children’s imagination and a meditation on parental love, by Maui-based author Lindy Shapiro.

Sitting on the front steps of their “tiny blue house with olive green shutters”, Mama and Anuenue (Anu, for short) cuddle up just before bedtime. Facing the beautiful mango tree in the front yard, they engage in a soothing and poetic dialog, prompted by Anu’s “what if” questions.

What if I ate up all those mangoes one by one, and I got so full that I turned into a mango tree?, begins Anu.

“I would bring you fresh, cool water to drink every morning. I’d gently pull out any weeds that block the sun…”, answers Mama.

Anu continues her litany of “what ifs” by asking what would happen if, instead of a tree, she turned into a kolohe ilio (dog), a pulelehua (butterfly), a pua’a (pig), a mo’o (lizard), a honu (turtle), and, finally, the moon that shines on their mango tree. Anu’s imagination, like Mama’s love, knows no boundaries.

Mama’s answer to each question assures Anu that she would be understood, cared for and loved, “no matter what if”.

Patterson’s full-page illustrations, whose wispy surfaces seem to have been wind-swept, aptly chronicle the inquisitive girl’s imagined transformations—from child to different animals to silvery moon, and back again.

This story will get a nod of recognition from parents; and any child who has ever snuggled with a loved one to imagine, read or listen to stories will enjoy the familiar feeling of connection and security the book conveys. Moon Mangoes’ many qualities make it a perfect choice for bedtime or lap reading.

Aline Pereira
March 2012

This week-end marks one year on from the devastating  Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.  As the efforts continue to rebuild homes, schools – whole towns and their infrastructure, rebuilding lives without  loved ones, friends, colleagues will  take longer. The IBBY Children in Crisis Fund was one of the many organisations that responded to the crisis, delivering books and Bibliotherapy raining, and stories will continue to play their part in the healing process.

The impact of natural disasters can be hard to grasp for grown-ups let alone children, and reading sories together is one way of facilitating discussion.  Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa and stunningly illustrated by Ed Young (Philomel Books, 2009) is a good story to read together to talk with young children about what happened in Japan.  It is based on the true story of Hamaguchi Goryou (1820-1885), as related by writer Lafcadio Hearn in “A Living God“, one of the stories in his book Gleanings in Buddha-Fields.

A wealthy landowner is so loved and respected by the people from the nearby village, that they call him Ojiisan, Grandfather.  One day, during the celebrations of the rice harvest, he is the only person who recognises that a tsunami is about to hit and realises that it is up to him to save everybody.  His grandson thinks he has gone mad when his grandfather sets the rice fields alight, but he has a special reason…

In this beautiful retelling by Kimiko Kajikawa, readers are very aware of the dangers involved but have the reassurance of a happy ending.   Ed Young’s powerful collages convey the power of nature and the many different emotions each stage of the story evokes.  And for older readers, Kimiko has excellent resouces and ideas on her website.

Monica Brown, illustrated by Sara Palacios, Spanish translation by Adriana Domínguez,
Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match / Marisol McDonald no combina
Children’s Book Press, 2011 (as of 2012 an imprint of Lee & Low Books).

Ages 4-8

Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match/Marisol McDonald no combina is a perky bilingual tale about a mixed-heritage girl with a lot of spunk, by award-winning author Monica Brown (Waiting for the Biblioburro; Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People).

Inspired by the author’s personal experience as a Peruvian-American of European, Jewish and Amerindian descent, Marisol McDonald introduces us to a one-of-a-kind girl who defies stereotypes.

Stripes, polka dots and flower prints peacefully co-exist on Marisol’s outfit ensembles. In real life, however, her looks, clothes, playground games and food preferences seem to puzzle her friends, who love to say she “doesn’t match”.

Enchanting and quirky Marisol clearly marches to the beat of her own drums. And why wouldn’t she? After all, there’s nothing wrong with liking peanut butter & jelly burritos; wanting to play a game of soccer-pirates; or signing her first name in cursive and her last in print.

When a school friend challenges her, “Marisol, you couldn’t match if you wanted to!”, Marisol sets out to prove him wrong, dressing for school the next day in a single solid color, eating a “regular” peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch, playing a “normal” game of soccer… and feeling wrong all day long, until a thoughtful note from her teacher snaps her back to her old, cheerful, “mismatched” self.

Radiating joy and fun, Sara Palacios’ Pura Belpré Honor illustrations bring Marisol to life and convey the riches of her life and heritage. Children will enjoy looking for and finding clues in the pictures to all the different cultures, as well as to the story’s geographical—and very apt—setting.

Marisol’s lively story ends on a happy and sweet note, leaving readers with the important message that diversity is something to be embraced and celebrated.

Aline Pereira
March 2012

I’m posting my week-end book review a day early to clock in with Poetry Friday as a couple of days ago I received a review copy of Kate Coombs and Meilo So‘s new book Water Sings Blue, which Kate gave us a glimpse of back in January when her first copies arrived (and if you don’t know Kate’s blog, Book Aunt, it’s well worth a read).  It arrived just in time to squeeze it into our Water in Multicultural Children’s Books theme…

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Dori at Dori Reads…

Kate Coombs, illustrated by Meilo So,
Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems
Chronicle Books, 2012.

Ages 4-11

The finely tuned observation in both the poetry and illustrations of Water Sings Blue draws young readers into that world of the shoreline where time just seems to disappear and exploration offers up endless possibilities for discovery.  Kate Coombs’ poems are satisfyingly memorable, with their cohesive patterns of meter and rhyme that, nevertheless, contain plenty of surprises – like, for example, the alliteration and internal rhyming at the end of “Sand’s Story”, in which mighty rocks have turned to sand:

Now we grind and we grumble,
humbled and grave,
at the touch of our breaker
and maker, the wave.

… Not to mention the witty pun on “breaker”: and the gentle wit of Coomb’s verse also lights the imagination throughout this collection.

Turning the pages, readers encounter a vast array of sea characters, starting in the air with the seagull; then listening to “What the Waves Say” before diving down to meet the creatures of the deep: like the shy octopus author (think ink…), or the beautiful but self-absorbed fish whose tail and fins act as brushes, and who concludes his/her soliloquy with the wonderfully evocative: “I’m a water artist. / You wouldn’t understand.”  As well as creatures like sharks and jellyfish, there are poems about fascinating, less well-known fish – “Oarfish”, “Gulper Eel” and “Nudibranch”: they could become a follow-up project by themselves!  There’s also a deep-sea shipwreck, and back on the sea shore, a gnarled “Old Driftwood” telling stories “to all the attentive / astonished twigs”, and a property agent hermit crab with a salesman’s patter.

Bringing all the poems together in a visual feast are Meilo So’s gorgeous watercolors.  As well as her depiction of jewel-colored corals and waves in every shade of blue imaginable, her illustrations are clearly also influenced by direct observation of the shoreline around her Shetland Isle home, from fishermen’s cottages to diving gannets.

Just like in real beachcombing, young readers will lose track of time as they pore over So’s seashores for what they can find.

Water Sings Blue would be the perfect picture book to bring on a trip to the beach, wherever in the world that happened to be; and if young readers can’t wait for that, it will take them there immediately in their imaginations.

And just a reminder that the count-down to World Read Aloud Day on 7th March has more than begun.  LitWorld are aiming for 1,000,000 participants this year, so do register with them and tell all your friends about it too.  It’s a win-win-win situation – somebody gets to read, somebody gets to enjoy being read to, and everyone raises their voices together to support global literacy goals of every child’s right to education…  And if you’re spreading the word on Twitter, the hashtag is #readaloud – use it to link in to the ever-widening community of WRAD supporters, and connect with LitWorld at @litworldsays.

Right now we are into the Christian season of Lent, and during this time, I often look for children’s books with spiritual content to supplement our usual bedtime reading fare.  On one of my favorite spirituality websites, Spirituality & Practice, I read a review of The Gift by the British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy (illustrated by Rob Ryan, Barefoot Books, 2010) and was intrigued and so, got a copy of the book.

The Gift is a very simple story of a young girl’s journey through life.  Beautifully illustrated with the paper-cut art of Rob Ryan (I’m quite partial to this art form as my uncle does this kind of art – kiri-e — in Japan), the story follows a young girl into the woods one day in early summer.  There, while making a buttercup necklace, she has a mystical encounter with an old woman who offers the girl her deepest desire — the wish to be buried in this very spot of her reverie in the woods — in exchange for the necklace.  Thereafter, the girl goes on living her life, fulfilling all her life’s desires, until she becomes an old woman herself, and recalls her encounter of the faraway past.   Of course, now the girl has become that old woman and the story comes full circle.  Throughout the girl’s life, the spot in the woods where she has had her encounter remains sacred to her.  She plants seeds there and takes her children and grandchildren there; they leave small tokens of their visit like stones or pebbles there as she had done when she was a child.  In a way, this girl has been preparing for her death long before it arrives because she knows and quietly celebrates the fact that she will be buried in this deeply local place for her.  This spot in the woods is her soul-home, and she will return there when she dies.

The Gift is a deceptively simple tale and yet it is one of those books worth re-reading to children to make them think about life’s small mysteries from the perspective of  a lifetime.   A contemplative book with beautiful artwork, The Gift is a good read for Lent.

Shaun Tan,
The Bird King and Other Sketches
Templar Publishing (UK), 2011; first published by Windy Hollow Books (Australia), 2010.

Ages 9 +

Shaun Tan’s beautifully produced sketchbook, The Bird King, generously lays bare the creative process of illustration. While not specifically designed for children, Tan’s familiar images are of instant, near-universal appeal, and his explanatory text will be a revelation to young fans, especially aspiring artists.

Tan’s introduction references Klee’s famous description of drawing as “taking a line for a walk.” The colored and black-and-white drawings are divided into sections. Images in which “one little drawing is enough” to suggest a whole story comprise the untold stories section. In book, theatre and film, Tan describes his preliminary sketches as “a constant reminder of what I was ‘getting at’ in the first place” during longer creative processes. In drawings from life, we see “ongoing studies in the relationship of line, form, colour and light” that are crucial to an artist’s lifelong process of learning to see. A final section, notebooks, is culled from small ball point pen sketches, doodles and scribbles, some “an equivalent to daydreaming” that Tan poetically compares to fishing: “casting loose lines into a random sea… catching ideas that might otherwise be hidden beneath the waves.”

The drawings themselves also include little notes, ideas for development, and titles that further decipher the artist’s visual language. One double-page drawing entitled “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” features a dozen of Tan’s creatures marching behind a small boy, bird on his head, palette in hand. The only color on the page is a splash of orange dropping from his brush, repeated on the body of a goldfish, held aloft in a bowl, by a large creature with a diving bell head in which a bird in a beret stands at the wheel. In Tan’s quixotic imagination, the robotic and the humanizing hover in edgy balance.

The production quality of this small hardcover book is excellent. Partially bound in red cloth, with embossed lettering on the front cover, it’s held closed with a red elastic band; a blue ribbon bookmark is sewn into the binding. The back matter includes a list of the drawings in the book (noting materials used and the original purpose of each sketch) and a bibliography of Tan’s published works.

Young artists will learn more from studying the lines Tan takes for a walk than from any number of art classes. Children who already know and love books by the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner will recognize preliminary sketches of work from favorite books. For newcomers, The Bird King is a great introduction to this evocative Australian writer-illustrator.

Charlotte Richardson
February 2012

Douglas Wood, illustrated by P. J. Lynch,
No One But You
Candlewick Press, 2011.

Ages 6+

There’s something wonderful about stimulating the senses through the simplistic beauty that Mother Nature has created. In Douglas Wood’s children’s book, No One But You, people of all ages are invited to use their five senses to discover “many important things” because “the best things, the most important ones of all, are the ones no one can teach you or show you or explain. No one can discover them but you.”

An award-winning writer and author of the best-selling book Old Turtle, Wood once again highlights his fascination with nature, this time focusing on the happiness that comes with the simple things in life: dangling your feet in a pond, eating a strawberry, gazing at the stars, laughing and smiling with loved ones. There is a rhythmic feel to his writing and the repetition of the two words “no one” throughout the book lends an almost hypnotic quality. This, paired with P. J. Lynch’s beautiful oil illustrations, makes for a winning combination. Lynch, an acclaimed illustrator and two-time winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal, has created images evocative of ones a parent would take of their own child, perhaps from the weekend getaway to the park or a camping trip by the lake. It encourages parents to contemplate whether they too can capture a loved one “set[ting] out to create their special place in the world.”

Younger children will be inspired by Wood’s beautifully crafted book, whether they set out to uncover the treasures of nature for the first time or they wish to share their enchantment with others. While this is a children’s book, adults can also take something away from the story. We live in an era where technology dominates every aspect of our lives, from how we socialize with others to how we shop. No One But You is a reminder that life is more than texting, emails, and sitting at a desk; it’s worthwhile to take time to slow down and enjoy what life and nature have to offer.

Keilin Huang
February 2012

Michael J. Caduto, illustrated by Olga Pastuchiv,
Riparia’s River
Tilbury House, 2011.

Ages 8+

Riparia’s River is author and ecologist Michael Caduto’s story of a community coming together to bring the river they love back to its natural, clean state.

Upon finding their favorite swimming hole full of slimy, smelly stuff one summer day, a group of young friends decide to follow the riverbank upstream to find out why. From a woman named Riparia, whom they find “surrounded by the arching branches of ancient trees”, they learn about the ways in which a nearby farm has been unintentionally affecting the river’s health, and come up with a plan to set things right.

Riparia gives the river voice by showing the kids how it responds to the process of human and natural disturbance. That she quietly and mysteriously disappears after showing them may leave some readers wondering… Who was she, really? If a river could talk, it is likely it would sound like Riparia.

Many of the solutions currently offered to our environmental challenges seem to rely upon a faith in the power of education, community and the human spirit, and that is precisely the message Riparia’s River conveys so well. Out of concern for their river, a group of children inspires a community to come together to restore and protect the body of water they all rely on and benefit from. Together they move the farm’s fence and transplant “wildflowers, shrubs and trees between the river and the new fence-line”to create a buffer zone.

Pastuchiv’s soft, fuzzy watercolors feature undefined characters that serve the text well. By making the children look vaguely generic (albeit clearly multicultural in their complexions), the illustrations reinforce the idea that they represent all children; that their river could be our river; their efforts, ours.

As more and more people these days learn about the importance of living in harmony with nature, this book provides a timely opportunity for parents and educators to talk to children about the role humans play in the creation of environmental imbalances—in particular those related to river habitats and their ecosystem—and how we can all be a part of the solution.

At story’s end, the children head out to the now clean swimming hole, and readers are presented with “The Fauna of Riparia’s River”, a list of birds, animals, reptiles and insects that appear throughout the book, as well as an invitation to find them all.

Aline Pereira
February 2012

Around New Year’s, there was a book table set up at our local Japanese Canadian cultural centre.  On it was a bilingual book I’d never seen before but had heard of called My Hiroshima by Junko Morimoto (Picture Puffin Book, 1992).  After flipping through it, I quickly bought it with the intention of giving it to a friend whose mother was a Hiroshima survivor.  I hadn’t really intended to read it to my daughter, but as it was now in the house I decided one evening to give it a go.  My daughter is ten; she already knows about Hiroshima.  We visited the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Japan when she was six — actually on her birthday — of which I wrote about in a piece called “Atomic Birthday” published in an anthology of writing called Northern Lights.   Understandably, my daughter was none too pleased with my choice of book that night and she protested somewhat mildly, complaining that she would have nightmares,  but then we talked a bit and recalled together our long ago Hiroshima visit in some arresting detail. As far as bedtime reading adventures went, I didn’t consider this one a particular success.

Several weeks passed when all of a sudden, I got a phone call one morning.  It was my daughter, requesting that I bring My Hiroshima to school right away so she could do a spontaneous oral report on it for her class.  Never one to resist an opportunity to promote a good book, I hurried over to the school with my copy.   At lunch, my daughter came home and told me her report was a success.  I told them Japan started the war, and America ended it with the bomb, and then I read the book to them.   That was a succinct little report in and of itself!   Although this wasn’t the first time my daughter had been inspired to recommend one of our night time reads to our classroom, I was glad she had found this particular book worth sharing.   Of course, My Hiroshima deals with a tragic story — but it is written and illustrated by a survivor who remembers not only a terrible historical event but also the delights of her childhood in the city before its demise.

Making choices for bedtime reads can be a difficult business for parents, but sometimes the results can be surprisingly positive in ways you might not expect!  Do you  have any such experiences to relate?  Do tell.

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