On her fascinating web-page about the process of writing The Snow Leopard (Frances Lincoln, 2008), author and illustrator Jackie Morris says:

Many years ago I bought The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. At last I settled to read it, thinking it was about the search for the leopard. It wasn’t, it was a search for other things, but the book created wonderful images in my head, images of wildness and patience.

Her beautiful book is about much more than the snow leopard too – I would say that she has pulled those images of wildness and patience into a magical story, which proffers inspiration both to help in the conservation of this extremely rare animal and to live in peace and harmony with our surroundings.

The story reads like a poem, in rich, sonorous prose that emphasises its sense of timelessness. To give a bare outline, the Snow Leopard is “the great ghost cat” whose song from the beginning of time “clothed the world in white and built a crackling fortress of snow […] to keep all things safe and secret”. However, she is getting old and has begun her search for a successor. There is a child asleep in the village who is dreaming her song. When soldiers attack the valley, the Snow Leopard carries her to the safety of the mountains…

The story is complex in all it has to offer about notions of identity and safety; and of respect for what is precious to life: themes which have particular resonance in today’s world. Jackie’s stunning watercolour illustrations get this across too, both through the sweeping Himalayan landscapes and in the uncanny depth of expression in her characters’ eyes. While young listeners will immediately be enchanted by the story and its illustrations, something of its deeper message will hopefully find its way into their hearts.

For more information about the snow leopard, go to the Snow Leopard Trust and the Snow Leopard Conservancy websites; and be sure to follow the other links Jackie gives towards the end of her Snow Leopard page too, including teaching resources.

…and a little aside: Jackie is one of the illustrators of our current Book of the Month, the superb We are All Born Free.

We have just broken up from school for the holidays and our thoughts are turned towards Christmas next week. As well as reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol together for the first time, which we all greatly enjoyed, we have been reading other stories with a Christmas setting, including two multicultural versions of the Nativity story, the birth of Jesus.

The first is The Road to Bethlehem: A Nativity Story from Ethiopia told by Elizabeth Laird (Collins, 1987). Elizabeth Laird has spent a lot of time in Ethiopia gathering stories from the oral tradition and her writing here certainly asks to be read aloud - not only is the story told simply with plenty of direct speech to bring it alive, but for those children who are familiar with the story from their own traditions, there is likely to be a good deal of intrigued discussion in which the differences are explored, including new characters and miracles.

The illustrations too are full of extra fascinating details - their vibrancy and appeal to young listeners/readers make it hard to take on board that they are taken from 200-year-old Ethiopian manuscripts in the British Library! Laird has added fascinating notes to each picture, which can be dipped into alongside reading the text - one Older Brother was particulary struck by was an episode on the Flight into Egypt showing arrowheads sticking out of the road to stop them: “but Mary took the hand of her Child, and walked through unharmed.”

The second book is one I blogged about last year but didn’t actually manage to share with my boys - however, we have now read together Ian Wallace’s beautifully illustrated version of The Huron Carol (Groundwood, 2006), based on an English translation of the Christmas carol written by a French Jesuit missionary, Father Jean de Brébeuf, for the Huron people in the 1600s. After reading through the first verse together line by line with its double-page-spread illustration, showing the people, landscapes and fauna of its Canadian roots, we have really enjoyed singing the whole carol from the music and words given at the end - in the original Huron, in French and in English. As we have pored over the familiar characters of the story in an unfamilar setting, and the baby Jesus wrapped in fur, surrounded by wolves and beavers, we have explored the reasons that the carol came into being.

We have all enjoyed sharing these books together - and any misgivings I might have had about confusing them with the different versions of what is to them a familiar story have been allayed - on the contrary, I believe their experience of the Christmas story has been enriched by them.

Yesterday I received a message of thanks from a friend, whose two-month-old son offered me the pleasure of giving him his very first book. “He didn’t take his eyes off it the whole time I was reading it to him,” his father announced, with pardonable pride– and I felt an immense happiness, knowing that he chose to read it to his son right away, rather than waiting until “he was old enough.”

The book my friend read to his child is not a typical first book for a baby, but it has bright, vibrant, full-page illustrations and short, bouncy verses which make it a first cousin to Mother Goose, that venerable choice for an infant’s introduction to the world of books. It’s the color,the music and cadence of the words, and the closeness and reassurance of being held that makes the experience of reading be a special time for a very new person who can’t yet speak for himself. And as far as understanding goes, who really knows how much–or how little– an infant can comprehend?

Snuggling with your father, hearing his voice directed especially toward you, seeing the glow of colors and the excitement of new shapes as the pages turn, what could be better than that? Nothing, except perhaps for the delight of choosing a book that can help this experience be as good as it can   be–and then hearing about it later from a happy parent.

Reading aloud to children is an act that needs all the encouragement it can get. We may not all be lucky enough to have children we can read to, but we can all give books so that other people can do this–and as early in a child’s life as is possible. When we give books, we give love.

Winter can pack a wallop where I live in Canada.  Because it can be so severe, stories are often about survival.  The people who immigrate here learn to adjust to winter in often unique ways that contain traces of their origins and yet orient them to this climate.  In Thor, by W.D. Valgardson (illus. Ange Zhang,) we see an Icelandic Canadian boy go out with his grandfather who is a fisherman on Lake Winnipeg, to fetch fish from his nets.  It is the dead of winter.  “The snow was at the top of the fences, as high as the windows.  The snow was so cold it crunched under their feet like dried bread under Grandmother’s rolling pin.  Their breath made white clouds.”  Thor must wear two sets of clothing and a bushy, fur-lined hat with earflaps before they set out in his grandfather’s Bombardier.  While outside, Thor and his grandfather notice some snowmobilers driving recklessly over thin ice.  One of them falls in.  It is up to Thor to to rescue him.  Will he be able to do it?

In The Big Storm by Rhea Tregebov (illus. Maryann Kovalski,) we meet a Jewish girl named Jeanette and her cat, Kitty Doyle.   It is winter in north end Winnipeg.  On the day of a snow storm, Jeanette forgets about Kitty Doyle who comes to pick her up from school every day.  After school, Jeanette plays in the snow and goes over to her friend Polly’s for latkes.  At Polly’s, she suddenly remembers that Kitty has been waiting for her all this time.   She hurries out only to find Kitty huddled under the snow in an alleyway.  Is Jeanette too late?  Will Kitty Doyle survive?

Thor and The Big Storm are stories about winter where I live.   What about where you live?  What is winter like for you and your children?

In her recent interview with PaperTigers, Deborah Ellis talked about the background to her most recent book, Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children. This is a very thought-provoking book for children aged 9+ about the effects on the children left behind of having parents fighting overseas. In a way, these are children whose day-to-day existence is not outwardly affected by conflict and yet on whose lives the consequences of war can and often do have a profound effect.

A book I have read again recently to my children is Milly Lee’s Nim and the War Effort, illustrated by Yangsook Choi (Sunburst/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Set in San Francisco during the Second World War, it tells the story of Nim, a little girl who is intent on beating her arch enemy, Garland Stephenson, an unprincipled bully, from winning the school drive to collect old newspapers “for the war effort”. She strikes lucky when she is offered a garage piled high with bundles of newspapers and resourcefully calls the police to help her to get them to the school in time…

Nim’s rather strict upbringing is ostensibly unaffected by the fact that the Second World War is going on – but it pervades her life nevertheless. Her grandfather wears a lapel pin of crossed American and Chinese flags; and she is fully aware of what certain symbols around her mean – like a gold star on a white background in a front window, to show that “the family who lived there had lost someone in the war”. At the same time, their deeper significance is perhaps lost on her. She is too young to understand that the lapel pin is there to protect her family from the prejudice against Americans of Japanese ethnicity at that time; nor what the emotional impact of losing a loved one in a war overseas actually means. However, (more…)

In the next couple of months we are going to see three theatre productions all based on classic stories – The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Being a purist in these matters, I resolved that we would have to read the books together first…

Having just read the last three chapters of Treasure Island literally today, we will be starting A Christmas Carol this week, so I’ll report back on that one. It’s a story I’ve read several times myself and we’re looking forward to sharing it with our boys; and my mother has given us the audio-book too, read by Miriam Margoyles…

The other two were unknown entities. Of course I knew of them but I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I hadn’t actually read either of these classics before… but at the same time, it’s meant that our discussions of the book have been very much from the same stand-point: what’s going to happen next? Why did they do that? Can we have just one more chapter, pleeeease?

Both books are narrated in the first person. The language at times can be challenging to a modern reader but in both instances, the plot is so exciting and the descriptions so full and vivid that it’s worth the effort. (more…)

Mexico is currently in the midst of its Día de los Muertos celebrations and there are some wonderful pictures appearing on various blogs, which highlight the color and exuberance of the festival – such as this at Zocalo de Mexican Folk Art; while Sue at Cottage in the Cedars recalls a past visit to Mexico and gives lots of background information. There are some great children’s books around – I blogged about some last year (including author René Colato Laínez’ as yet unpublished Magic Night, Noche Mágica). My Readable Feast has a new post about the Global Wonders dvd, with an extract to view about The Day of the Dead –it’s also worth scrolling down through the tag to her previous posts too, both for suggestions for children’s books and to see some very impressive home-made sugar skulls…

A new book, Abuelos, by Pat Mora and illustrated by Amelia Lau Carling (Groundwood, 2008), explores a less well-known tradition which carries traits of both Spanish and Pueblo cultures, and which (more…)