Best Books of 2010? Part Deux

Yesterday I reviewed the first half of Amazon's picks for Best Children's Books of 2010. Today we finish the list. If you like, you can look at the whole Amazon list here, and of course you can read my earlier post on the first 5 books on the list.

Brontorina, by James Howe. I like this one. Brontorina is trying something that may well not work out -- that takes some courage. The other children are portrayed as helpful and encouraging -- something all children need help being from time to time. The illustrations do a lovely job of conveying just how big Brontorina is, filling the page with her, even to the point that parts of her are off the edges and not visible to the reader. And the problem is resolved not when Brontorina changes, but when everyone around her adapts to her differences. A nice selection.

Ladybug Girl at the Beach, by David Soman: This one gets only a tepid response from me. I know some people are enchanted with this series, but it's a "meh" for me. One book about Ladybug Girl was enough, I think. A fourth book seems too much. Sorry, this one's an SMP (Shameless Marketing Plug).

Of Thee I Sing: A letter to my daughters, by Barack Obama: Well, if it's not an SMP, it's certainly an SPP (Shameless Political Plug), but for all that it's actually kind of a nice book. The illustrations are gorgeous, always a good thing, and the subject matter -- all the qualities the writer either sees in or wants for his children, exemplified by Americans of the past. Children are introduced to Georgia O'Keefe, Billie Holliday, Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller, George Washington...it's wonderfully multi-cultural, historical, even inspirational. For older kids, through 3rd grade.

Three Little Kittens, by Jerry Pinkney: Pinkney has been around quite a while, and has tackled classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes before. He's also a Caldecott Medal Winner for his 2009 The Lion and the Mouse, so anything by him packs a lot of talent and expertise. That's why I feel kind of guilty panning this one. The illustrations, normally a highlight in Pinkney's work, fell flat for me. Yes, they're lush, but they somehow looked like he was channelling Jan Brett and the fusion didn't quite work for me. And frankly, as nursery rhymes go, The Three Little Kittens is one of the more annoying ones out there, so for me this whole volume fell flat. Not an SMP, but not, for me, worth a mention on a top 10 list.

Dog Loves Books, by Louise Yates: I'm a sucker for book lovers and this one had me about 3 pages in. Dog does love books -- he loves the smell of them, the feel of them, he loves everything about them. He loves them so much, he decides to open a bookstore. This is a simple story with whimsical, soft watercolor illustrations that capture the imaginative journeys books can take us on. It will appeal to younger children, and maybe even encourage them to love books like dog does.

So there you have it: My highly opinionated take on Amazon's Best Books of 2010.

Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice

The original Skippyjon Jones was a lot of fun. My kids and I had a ball doing cheesy Mexican accents for all the chihuahuas and we laughed when Skippito Friskito punctured the Great Bumblebeeto.

The second Skippyjon book, Skippyjon Jones: In the Doghouse was a little trip into...well, trippiness. I'm not going to say anyone was smoking crack when they wrote that one, but it didn't make a ton of sense. In fact, the subsequent books made less and less sense, even for the delusional daydreams of a Siamese cat who thinks he's a chihuahua.

So now we have Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice and at last there's another SJ book that makes some sense. In this book, Skippyjon blast into space where he encounters an alien twin -- a Martian Skippyjon in glowing green. And why is he lost in spice (an inside joke only for parents)? Because the Red Planet is covered in chili powder, of course. That's why it's red.

The pictures are bright and attractive; I do like Judy Schachner's artwork. The story makes about as much sense as the first book, and considerably more sense than the second book. Worth buying in hardback? Probably not, but perhaps worth it in paperback and certainly worth checking out from the library.

Learning to Get Along

I really like this series. We got the first three books ages ago when they comprised the whole series, but now it's grown to about 15 books, covering topics like politeness, sharing, empathy, safety, fears, anger, listening, acceptance, giving, and participation. The author, Cheri Meiners, is a former elementary educator who now teaches at the university level. She does a nice job of breaking these topics down so they're approachable for the preschool/kindergarten set.

Pictures are bright and nicely rendered. They do an especially good job of conveying emotions through facial expressions. Also, the pictures are very multicultural: the central character of Understand and Care is Asian; Be Polite and Kind's central character is Latino. Other books do a similarly good job of including children of many races.

These books are also good ones for starting conversations about feelings, reactions, other people's feelings, behaviors...just about anything you might need to talk to your 2-6 year old about. My almost-4-year-old loves Understand and Care; she enjoys identifying how people feel from their facial expressions and we spent some time talking about what you might say to someone who felt afraid or sad or angry. Such a great springboard to talking about and teaching empathy -- how do other people feel? How can you use your imagination to figure out what they're feeling? We've been having a lot of tantrums around here lately, so Cool Down and Work Through Anger is looking like a good title for us to pick up. And we've been talking about blessing other people, so Reach Out and Give might be another possibility.

These may be available at your public library -- ours carries the first three titles -- and they're all available in paperback through your favorite bookseller. It might even be worth checking your church library, as they were popular with churches when they first came out.

Images courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Magazines for Kids

Access to books is a critical aspect of cultural capital. But equally important is exposure to a range of texts and formats -- it allows children to transfer the skills they learn reading fiction to other mediums, and adapt them to works of different format and lengths.

Magazines are a great way to give kids experience with different kinds of texts -- poems, non-fiction articles, short stories, song lyrics.

Back in the stone age, when Bookivore was a kid, there was one magazine for kids: Highlights. That was it, folks. Now there is a veritable feast of magazines for children, some quite excellent, some just thinly-veiled advertisements for products, TV shows and movies. Highlights is still a favorite at our house: it's far more colorful than what it was when I was a kid, and nicely multicultural too, teaching about Diwali, Ramadan, Chinese New Year and a host of other cultural celebrations and traditions. The magazine works hard at promoting good values and good behavior, which it does this from a sense of fair play rather than from any particular belief system. It's a nice blend of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comic strips and puzzles that appeals to kids from 3 to 10.


A nice addition to the Highlights stable is High Five, their magazine for 2-5 year olds. The text is much simpler, pictures are larger and fill the pages. It has the same focus on good morals, though the message is obviously greatly simplified. One lovely feature of both these magazines is no advertising.


I absolutely love these next three, put out by the National Wildlife Federation: Ranger Rick (at the top of this post) Your Big Backyard, and Wild Animal Baby.


Like the two Highlights magazines, the NWF's offerings are stepped for different age groups. Ranger Rick is for ages 7 and up, though for independent reading your child might need to be a little older. Your Big Backyard is for 3-7 year olds, and Wild Animal Baby is for 1-4 year olds.



One nice feature about Wild Animal Baby is that it comes in a board book format of heavier cardboard, rather than flimsy magazine pages. It's perfect for little hands to hold. The photography in all these magazines is fantastic and the range of articles is impressive -- whatever animals your little ones like, they'll show up eventually in these pages, one way or another. Another blessing: no ads to disrupt your reading.

National Geographic Kids is another one we get, but I would be lying if I said it was a favorite. It was a gift, otherwise I'd cancel my subscription. I find the layout overly busy and it's loaded with ads for candy and video games. Additionally, it contains feature articles on movies -- special effects, actor interviews, etc. Not strictly National Geographic stuff -- more along the lines of paid endorsements. In and among the plugs are some interesting articles about animal rescues, critter cams, and habitats, but it's pretty buried in junk. Ostensibly for 6-14 year olds, but I can't see kids sticking with it that long.

Another one for 2-6 year olds that gets good reviews is Ladybug. It's colorful and full of stories, poems. The publishers also have a magazine called Babybug, which is made of heavy stock like Wild Animal Baby. They also publish one called Click! which is geared more towards science and nature.

Of a similar nature is Spider, which is for 6-9 year olds. It includes stories, poems, articles and illustrations from around the world.

For older kids, there are magazines about science, like Odyssey.


And magazines about world history, like Calliope.


If you have a sports nut, Sports Illustrated for Kids might be a good choice. Parents rated this one very highly because it focuses on the positive achievements of athletes and their good sportsmanship, rather than on their questionable activities and sexual antics. One word of caution here would be that kids may assume the adult version of SI is okay because of their exposure to SIKids. Obviously the articles in SI are going to burst some bubbles, so that's something to consider.

Appleseeds is a magazine full of non-fiction and social studies articles for kids ages 7-9. Each issue covers a particular theme: Becoming President, Whiz Kids, Unusual Structures, Halloween. Rather a narrow age range, but the content makes it of use in giving kids experience with non-fiction text.

Ask is for 7-10 year olds covering science, inventions, recipes, web activities, projects, and other activities. Each issue is devoted to a particular theme -- water, camouflage, migration, the musical brain, etc.

Cricket has been around since the '70s and is another publication that celebrates fiction, though this time from established, even classical writers like Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, and Lloyd Alexander. It also includes games and puzzles. It's geared for 9-14 year olds.


This is really just a sampling. There are many more publications for kids, of varying quality: American Girl Magazine, Kids Discover, Boy's Life, Cobblestone, Girl's Life, Disney Princess, Dig, Nick Jr. Preschool Playroom. The list goes on and on.



Before subscribing, go to your library and see what these magazines offer -- look at several issues, if possible, to get a sense of the kind of content they regularly offer. Be leery of magazine that contain a lot of ads: they really will encourage your kids to pester you for Yogos, or whatever. And if the subscription prices seem too high, remember that magazine subscriptions make excellent birthday and Christmas gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. All of our subscriptions have been gifts and they are very much appreciated.

Images courtesy of Amazon.com and National Wildlife Federation

Happy Earth Day: Pond Circle

In honor of Earth Day, here's a book for the preschool/kindergarten set that clarifies, very simply and beautifully, the circle of life in a pond. Pond Circle, by Betsy Franco, is written on a "This is the House that Jack Built" model: "This is the algae, the jade green algae," and "This is the skunk, the shy striped skunk," etc. Each animal depends on the others for food, and they all depend, directly or indirectly, on the algae, which is the foundation of the whole pond.

If there were no algae, there would be no mayfly nymph; without the nymph, there would be no diving beetle; without the beetle, no frogs would eat, and so on through snakes and owls and raccoons until at last we meet the stalking coyote. At the very back of the book are a couple pages with more facts about each animal or plant in the story.

Love the pictures on this one; they're either painted on wood or painted to look like wood grain, the grain itself suggesting the ripples in the pond water or the eddying colors of a sunset. Pictures are all on 2-page spreads, very large and colorful, making this a good choice for a group read-aloud. This one will play especially well with preschoolers because of its engaging rhythm and repeated word patterns.

The publisher says this one is good from age 4 up through 3rd grade, but I doubt you'd find many 9 year olds wanting to read it. On the other hand, I bet they'd listen in if you were reading it to a younger child. A nice book to introduce children to the idea of the interconnectedness of our environment.

Images courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Pinkalicious

Sometimes, ideas for books just tickle me...well, pink.

Pinkalicious, the title character, eats too many pink cupcakes and voila! She turns pink from head to toe. She is thrilled. "I was so beautiful, I cried." she says. Then she runs around yelling "I'm Pinkerbelle! Look at me, I'm Pinkerbelle!"


Her mother takes her to the doctor, who prescribes a diet of green food to cure her "pinkititis." Yuck! No way Pinkalicious is signing up for that. She sneaks one more pink cupcake and wakes up...RED! Oh no, this won't do. She buckles down, eats her greens, and returns to normal.

If you have a 3-5 year old who loves pink, this book will be an instant hit, and deservedly so. It's charming, funny, and a pleasure to read.

Enter Purplicous.

Purplicious is not charming. In fact, it's rather appalling, especially following on the heels of something as sweet as Pinkalicious. It loses the light, humorous tone that made Pinkalicious so readable and gives us some mean girls, picking on Pinkalicious for her love of pink. Yes, Pink goes on to meet a girl who loves purple and admits that perhaps there's more to life than pink, but it seems to me that they've completely misjudged the target audience. The publisher lists this one as a book for 5-8 year olds, but I can't see many 7 or 8 year olds with this book. It's a preschool/kindergarten book --maybe up to age 6 -- and as such the mean-girl behavior is bewildering to kids -- why would anyone be so mean about liking pink? This is not how it is in preschool, unless your preschool has a Lord-of-the-Flies quality that ours lacks.

Enter Goldilicious.

Goldilicious has a premise that is more appropriate to the true target audience of 3-5 year olds. Goldilicious is Pink's unicorn. Adult readers will realize the unicorn is an imaginary friend (he becomes see-through whenever Pink's mom is around) and he and Pink have wonderful adventures together. And guess what? Now Pink has a fetish for all things gold! Go figure! Kind of thin, as plots go, but at least no one's being nasty to each other.

Goldilicious exists because Pinkalicious is a lucrative franchise. Anymore it seems almost any book that sells well will spawn enough sequels to completely exhaust an otherwise good idea. It happened with Skippyjon Jones (with ever-decreasing lucidity) and Walter the Farting Dog (how many books about gassy dogs do we need?) and Olivia (and you can certainly argue that Olivia's franchise was spinning out thinner and thinner until she was picked up and made into a cartoon by NickJr.)


My advice: get Pinkalicious if you have a preschooler who loves pink, check out Goldilicious from your local library, and leave Purplicious on the shelf.

Never Smile at a Monkey

Steve Jenkins, how I love your books. This is another offering from one of my favorite artists. If you've never experienced Jenkins' awesome collage work, here's your chance to pick up his newest gem.

Never Smile at a Monkey * and 17 Other Important Things to Remember is a cool book about things you don't really want to do around animals. For example, never harass a hippo: Jenkins goes on to explain that hippos are among the nastiest customers you'd ever want to meet outside a nice, safe zoo. Likewise the beautiful yellow tang, which has two vicious barbs next to its tail that can seriously wound, even kill, the unwary. I was just at the pet store buying food for our psychotic crayfish when I noticed a yellow tang swimming around in a saltwater tank. I checked and sure enough, there were the barbs. Kinda makes you look at fish with a little more respect.

The whole book is a compendium of dangerous, poisonous and scary animals (cone shells, blue ringed octopi, monkeys [!]), making it one for older kids, not toddlers and babies. Like all Jenkins books, it's very informative in a way that will appeal to children. This one is on my gift list for my 1st grader, but I know my 3rd grader will enjoy it as well and I will be cooing over the stunning pictures right along with them. These books are always a pleasure to read and I am thrilled that he's got a new one out just in time for Christmas.

Thanks, Dunderheads!

Dear Dunderheads,

Thanks for your silly story about the evil Miss Breakbone and her awful classroom tactics. Thanks for your cast of misfits, each with his or her own special talent. Thanks that those talents were somewhat off the wall -- spitballing, movie-watching, paperclip stringing, hypnosis. Thanks for your edgy, quirky illustrations by David Roberts that make the whole thing seem a little like a comic book. Thanks especially for the picture of the guard dogs being hypnotized. Loved that one.

Thanks for your reasonably big text so my 6 year old could make out your words. Thanks for including some excellent words for him to chew on: dunderheads, confiscate, maniac, briefcase, night vision. Thanks for holding his interest and inspiring him to read this one for himself.

Thanks for Miss Breakbone; part teacher, part prison matron. She makes me remember my classroom days with much fondness.

Thanks most of all for making my son laugh.

Sincerely,

Bookivore

Alphabet Week -- 5 Days of Great Alphabet Books, Day 5

Since the holidays will be upon us before we know it, I wanted to include an alphabet book that is a special favorite at our house. We use it around Christmastime not really to learn our letters, but to recount the story of Jesus' birth. If you've been reading all week, you'll know that I am biased toward alphabet books that tell a story so that the letter-learning is embedded in some context. Also, I am a sucker for beautiful artwork. B is for Bethlehem, by Isabel Wilner, has both.


The story of the nativity is told in rhyme, each rhyme beginning with a letter of the alphabet. It's a lucid and lovely retelling of the Christmas story -- perhaps not the one you'd want your kids to hear if it's their first time hearing it, but more than adequate for children who are familiar with the biblical account.


The pictures, by Elisa Kleven, are pure joy -- mixed media collage and drawing in vibrant colors that really bring the story to life. Like Steve Jenkins, I don't know anyone else who does collage quite like Kleven does. Her style is unique and gorgeous. These are pictures that I and my kids never get tired of looking at.

It's been around for a while -- long enough to be out in boardbook format -- but if you can track down a hardcover it would be worth it for the larger picture size and the durability. Especially if you, like me, want it to last for many Christmases to come.

Alphabet Week -- 5 Days of Great Alphabet Books, Day 4

This post is a bit of a cheat because I'm not going to talk about a single book. Rather, I'm going to talk about a category of books called Special Interest Alphabet Books (SAIB): books built entirely around a particular area in which your child has a marked interest. And yes, I just made that up.

This particular book, The Beetle Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallota, is a great, and at our house much-loved, example of this genre. The entire book is devoted to beetles. If you have a bug lover at your house, this is the book for you. Pallota's books are for older kids, 4 years and up. Even my 8 year old occasionally picks this one up because it's loaded with interesting factual information about beetles -- beetle characteristics, weird stuff beetles do, exotic beetles -- it reads like a children's encyclopedia. Because it's so rich with information, my children come back to it again and again. It was an excellent tool for my son's kindergarten year to reinforce letter and sound recognition and it was the hands-down choice for Bring Your Favorite Book To School Day.

Pallotta is probably the king of this kind of book. By my very unscientific count, he's got something like 21 different alphabet books, all highly specific. Here's an example from the text of The Construction Aphabet Book:

The subjects he covers range from airplanes (2 books) to boats to flowers. Vegetables, furry animals, birds, reptiles, the desert, frogs, dinosuars, the ocean, even skulls and extinct animals have their own books. You can visit his website for a complete list of books (he does some neat stuff with math concepts, too).

Two warnings about Pallotta's books: he uses different illustrators for each volume, so the quality of the artwork can sometimes be uneven. The Beetle Alphabet Book has gorgeous pictures, but The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book has a couple pictures which are dark and make it hard to pick out detail. For this reason, it might be better to go to the bookstore or library and see what you're getting. Also, on occasion he chooses something to represent a letter which doesn't make that letter's sound. This happens twice in The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book: once with Knob-Tailed Gecko (which he notes is a silent K and adds Komodo Dragon to rectify) and again with Gila Monster for G. If you grew up in the Southwest, as I did, you know that Gila is pronounced "hee-lah." Not at all an English G sound.

Beyond Pallotta, there are any number of other SIABs out there.

There's this one, above, for the dancer in the family. And this one, below, for the dog lover.

W is for Woof is part of a series of SAIBs, which are shown below. It covers some unsual interests, like travel and camping, along with more common interests like cats and horses.

The point of all this is that children always learn more when that learning is embedded in something they're already interested in. It's more than worth the time to seek out alphabet books that will build on that interest.

All images from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com

Alphabet Week -- 5 Days of Great Alphabet Books, Day 3

This is one of our favorite alphabet books. What sets it apart from other alphabet books is the stunning quality of its artwork. The rhyming text detailing all sorts of beautiful and exotic sea life also makes it worth adding to your home collection.

The pictures are all by Steven Jenkins, collage artist extrordinaire. Every time I read this book, I am struck again by the beautiful layers of torn and cut paper that make up the pictures. There just isn't anyone who does collage art like Jenkins.


The rhyming text, by Deborah Lee Rose, will introduce kids to all manner of interesting ocean life -- anemones, grey whales, dolphins, manatees, jellies, narwhals, umbrellamouths and viperfish and my favorite page, zooplankton. There's a nice balance between animals children will know (crabs, penguins, octopus) and those that will probably be new (narwhals, zooplankton, umbrellamouths). There's also a nice correspondance between the letters represented and their beginning sounds. For the letters W and X, "...blue Whales eXhale..."; maybe not the first letter of the word, but certainly a better representation of the sound X makes than the all-too-common "xylophone."

At the back of the book, as with all Jenkins books, there's a section with extra information about all the animals in the book. Excellent for older kids who are interested in ocean critters, or to incorporate this book into a larger unit about ocean life.

This book is out in paperback, but I think it's worth tracking down in hardcover; if your kids are anything like mine, this book's going to get a lot of repeat use.

All pictures via BarnesandNoble.com

Green Light Readers

photos courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Anyone with a child beginning to read knows that not all "readers" are created equal. For starters, the levelling system will vary greatly from brand to brand -- a "1" from one company might be more or less the same as a "2" from another, while a "2" from that company might look more like a "3" from still another company. Sometimes there's variability within a company -- not all "2s" are at the same level of difficulty. Frustrating if you don't have time to run out to the bookstore and thumb through books to see just how complex the text is.

Green Light Readers, therefore, were a welcome surprise for us. I was looking for something my son could read independently, but something that wouldn't intimidate him with a lot of small text. He's past most of the true #1 readers -- the kind with only 5-10 words per page, often staring Dora the Explorer or someone else that he considers "babyish." I needed something with perhaps 5-7 sentences per page, but with vocabulary he could manage, and it had to have a story he could follow and appreciate. It couldn't be Dora saying "Hop across the rocks! Hop! Hop! Hop!"

Daniel's Mystery Egg by Alma Flor Ada had a story that was interesting to my 6 year old. A boy finds an egg. His friends all predict what kind of egg it is (ostrich, alligator, duck) and what problems he's going to encounter because of it (not enough room, reptile trying to eat him, noise). Finally the egg hatches and we get to see what was in it. Daniel is quietly confident throughout the book and the pictures on each page clearly cue the reader about the content of the text. This is great for emergent readers -- if they aren't sure about a word, like ostrich, they can look at the picture and make an educated guess. If they've read it before, they can look at the pictures to remind them what that new word is. Many books do this, but this series seems particularly good at dovetailing the illustrations with the text.

The text is larger than normal, which is good for 5-6 year olds whose eyes haven't yet developed to the point that they can comfortably read smaller print (normally, this occurs between ages 6 and 7). We liked this book so much, we bought another one called Did You See Chip? by Wong Herbert Yee. The story in this one was perhaps not as compelling, but the text and illustrations were again well-coordinated for beginning readers. Both books are level 2 readers.

Another nice feature is that many of the Green Light Readers are available in Spanish, making them applicable for Elementary foreign language teachers, Bilingual teachers, bilingual families and those who just want to expose their children to another language. All the books come with suggested activities at the back of the book. While we chose not to do them, they are a nice feature for enrichment or possibly for homeschoolers.