Pink Me

Pantone Colors, illustrations by Helen Dardik - review

 

Once, very briefly, I worked in publishing. I learned a lot in that short time, and I learned things that have come in handy in most of my subsequent jobs. (I have also briefly worked in museums, in software, in ice cream, and in men's pants, and the knowledge that I gained in each of those venues has had unexpected applications later in life. For example, I can still estimate a man's inseam at 25 paces.)

In my capacity as an Editorial Assistant, I had occasion to sit in on those production meetings that were really budget meetings, during which line items like color, paper, coatings, die-cuts, and binding options were discussed with a sometimes brutal disregard for the needs of the content. Those meetings would make a grown man weak in the knees.

 

Reading on the radio - Gift books 2011

 

There is a secret joy that librarians are allowed at holiday time. Although we are ardent in encouraging people to borrow, not buy, most of us... well, we're kind of into books. We can't help wanting to own them. And though librarians vary in the extent to which they successfully keep themselves out of bookstores - some don't even try - all bets are off when it comes to buying gifts for our family and friends.

I stopped in at WYPR's Maryland Morning to talk to host Tom Hall about this subject. I brought a great huge stack of books and asked Tom to pick out the ones he wanted to know more about. If you miss the broadcast, you can listen to our conversation on the Maryland Morning website by the end of the day. The station has also posted a list of the books I brought to the station, or click "Read more" to see an expanded version (book trailers! whee!).

 

123 Baltimore by Puck - review

I am still on a brief break from the teen novels about serial killers and grave robbers and cannibals and cannibalistic grave-robbing serial killers. And Direct Instruction.

I swear, it's true. Along with all the war-torn future Earths and vicious madmen I've been reading about this summer was one novel the villain of which was nominally an unknown sneaky-Pete serial killer but structurally and actually? the villain was the (admittedly rather joyless) teaching model known as Direct Instruction. Specifically, the Slavin variant of DI, developed at Johns Hopkins University right here in the beautiful burg of Baltimore.

I read that and I was like, "Hey!" Slavin's approach, called Success For All, is a wholly scripted 90-minute intensive daily session of phonics instruction, and was designed for use in failing schools in this city. And believe you me, I spent some time in Baltimore City District Court this week, and this town could use a lot more reading instruction.

But it was just kind of weird. You've got a serial killer, perhaps two, running around town murdering cats, clearly working his or her way up to killing a human, and yet a huge amount of authorial energy was expended on describing and excoriating Direct Instruction. I'm not here to defend DI, but it was like having a character attend a Waldorf school and then spending half the book describing how oppressive and creepy it is to spend one's days in a classroom with no corners.

(These are terrible sentences I'm writing. Maybe I could use a little Slavin-style finger-snapping rote learning myself.)

Anyway. That book was called Deviant, and I think I'd like to read more by Adrian McKinty (go read his blog and I think you'll fall in love), but I'm not going to actually review this one - just note its weird little obsession with educational theory and then mentally catalog it as something to recommend to those kids slouching around the teen section who roll their eyes at paranormal horror because they Just. Want. Murderers! I should not forget to also tell those kids to read Seita Parkkola's evil school novel The School of Possibilities. And then Janne Teller's Nothing. Dan Wells's I Am Not A Serial Killer and its sequelae.

Aggh! I can't quit! BUT. I am reviewing a board book here - I need to get my head out of that trunk full of disarticulated body parts and get on with it.

 

Speaking of Baltimore. This bright, fun little board book counts as a Direct Instruction tool - our friends One through Ten appear on successive pages, printed in big Arabic numerals, along with objects to be counted that demonstrate the meaning of the numerals. None of your exploratory, inquiry-based learning going on here: this is an ordinal-number practicum.

 

I jest, of course. 123 Baltimore is blissfully free of dogma, but full of love. Every Baltimorean will recognize the colors used on page four, on which four footballs bounce around the page's edges; visitors will smile at page nine, which features Baltimore's unofficial city symbol, the pink flamingo; but it may take a true city nerd (me!) to identify the seven funky robots on page seven as the World's First Robot Family by DeVon Smith on permanent display at the American Visionary Art Museum.

 

 

I also believe quite firmly that the six row houses on page six are not, as noted in the key at the end, the "Painted Ladies" of Charles Village, but rather the two-storey bowfront rowhouses on Keswick Rd. My friend and colleague (and fellow city nerd) Mrs. McSweeney fingers the porch rowhouses on Abell Avenue as the illustration source. I bet when I get home Mr. Librarian (the ultimate city nerd!) will be able to cite what exact block of which street they are.

It's a souvenir of our gritty city, a reminder of our kitsch credentials, a fun way to learn to count to ten, and does not contain even one gouged-out eyeball. 

 

Let's Play Games! by Hervé Tullet - review

 

I am going to sing a song about Hervé Tullet. Heck, his name is practically a song already.

Hervé, Hervé
The kids all say:
Let me have that!
This one's blue!
I made a match!

Hervé, Hervé,
The teachers all say:
What do you see?
Use your finger!
Can I keep this?

Hervé, Hervé,
We could play all day,
While our tiny brains develop
In a million different ways.
Hervé!

(Hmmph. This is why my husband is the extemporaneous lyricist in my house, not me. I do a good melody, but he's the guy who, pouring the bubble bath in the tub for our younger son, rhymed "car key" with "Gethsemane" in his extemporaneous Jesus bubble bath song. I can't top that.)

Little Chicken's Big Day by Katie and Jerry Davis - SPECIAL GUEST REVIEW

My guest reviewer today - my very first guest reviewer, by the way, but I have a couple more lined up - is my colleague Christina, aka Dances With Chickens.

I give most of the real people in my life blogonyms when I mention them on the interpoops, partly because I love giving people nicknames and I'll use any excuse to do it, and partly because if they get pissed off at me I can say, "Er... whaddaya talking about? When I referred to 'my colleague Token Boy Librarian' I was talking about... uh... the other... boy librarian."

Storytime books for styley babies

Here is good news: My friend Cara has opened a shop! All the stompin' sweet Coney Island tattoo-inspired, graffitiesque baby and toddler clothes (plus a few toys, accessories and books) that she has been selling online at Urban Baby are now available for fondling in a bricks and mortar space. I stopped in last week and now I need all my (younger) friends to start having babies so that I can buy them Milkshake-inspired raggedy tutus and baby-sized Carhartts-like coveralls.

Anyway, Cara was talking about maybe doing a storytime in the shop, and wondered if I had any book suggestions. And you know? It's something I have always wanted to do - compile a list of picture books that are ALL hip and illustration-y and design-y. Picture books for art school graduates. Picture books for people who listen to college radio.

BUT. While it is not too difficult to quickly I.D. the books that make design consumers go "ooooh!" I want to be sure that Cara's storytimers have books that work out loud. Not too much text, art that reads from 6 to 10 feet away, and the opportunity to bust out funny voices or do some singing. There's a science to this stuff, you know.

 

So! Let's get down to it, boppers:

SEASONS by Blexbolex - review

You are familiar with this creature Blexbolex, non? This French illustrator who works in line and silk screen?

Me neither, and Oh My God how have I missed this guy? But wait - I see that he did the illustrations for the recent edition of I Know How to Cook, and that was one big honkin doorstop of a cookbook (and it is French) but I almost had to have it anyway, because of those illustrations.

Gossie Plays Hide and Seek by Olivier Dunrea - review

Such an excellent little hide-and-seek semi-pop-up book - not too fragile, with lots of slidy flat window-y things, a couple of flaps, a squeaky, and even a scratch 'n' sniff. It's all about prepositions as Gossie the goose looks for all her goslings - in, under, through, on, etc. Olivier Dunrea draws with a light touch and a delicacy that makes these little goslings extremely endearing.

My one complaint is the board game at the end of the book. It's meant to further reinforce the directional words used in the narrative, but it is a snakes-and-ladders type game, with spaces that will send a player back to the start, or jet him or her ahead. I find these kind of games very difficult to manage with little kids. Those setbacks, unavoidable and unrelated to any ability or achievement, can be heartbreaking to a little kid who doesn't yet get the concept of blind luck, good or bad.

Wow, that makes me sound like one of those moms who makes her kids wear their bike helmets when they go sledding. I am not averse to teaching kids about luck and randomness. But I think there are better venues in which to teach it.

Books for the unborn

Yikes. That title makes it look like we're talking zombies, doesn't it? Sorry. We're not.

It all started with a novel request - and at five-plus years in the public library, those are becoming fewer and farther between. (Although the young man who asked me to tighten the screw-in barbell in his lip piercing the other day was a new one, now that I think of it. I declined.)

So, trolling the children's section looking for patrons to harass assist, I saw a beautiful young pregnant woman (and since you ask, yes I do think all pregnant women are beautiful) with a discontented expression on her face and a small stack of board books in her hands. "What can I help you find?" is my usual entree, and I was delighted and slightly startled to hear that she was looking for books to read to her unborn child. After assuring her that reading anything out loud would probably have a felicitous effect on this lucky baby, I suggested a few books with fun rhymes, onomatopoeia, singing (lots of singing), and/or laughing, plus a few gently rhythmic books for sleepytime.

I don't know if reading to the unborn has a measurable effect, but it certainly can't hurt, and it surely has a good effect on the parents. It introduces the parents to the joys of picture books, and is in some ways their last chance (for a while) to really sit and savor them without having to defend them from chubby, flaily little hands. They get to anticipate sharing familiar stories with this happy child once she or he is breathing air; and it's lovely to think of the time this woman is going to spend lavishing her undivided attention on the person to be. I am an atheist, and I do not believe in prayer, but I believe in the power of intention.

Anyway, I thought I'd share what I came up with.

Jazzy, fun-to-read books:

Chicka-chicka boom boom. Bill Martin, John Archambault, and Lois Ehlert.

Jamberry by Bruce Degen.

Click, clack, quackity-quack by doreen cronin and betsy lewin.

How Do You Wokka-Wokka? by Elizabeth Bluemle. Here's the Pink Me review.

Chicken Cheeks by Michael Ian Black. Reviewed on Pink Me.

Mr. Brown can moo, can you? (and lots of other Dr. Seuss)

We're going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. Make the "swishy-swashy" sound effects a tactile experience as well.

Quiet, soothing books:

All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon. Read the Pink Me review.

Day is done by Peter Yarrow.

This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie

Books about parents thinking about their children:

Forever Young written by Bob Dylan, illustrated by Paul Rogers. Might really be the only time for this book - it's definitely written more for adults than for children.

Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman

This is the day adapted by Phillis Gershator ; illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Made me tear up on Pink Me.

Just the two of us by Will Smith, illustrated by the breathtakingly talented Kadir Nelson.

Speaking of Kadir, He's Got the Whole World in His Hands gains a whole new meaning when singing it to your unborn child.

But I think, most of all, I'd recommend that this lovely young woman find a chapter book that makes her happy - something funny, like Nurse Matilda, or something old-fashioned, like Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, or whatever was her very favorite book when she was a kid, and read a chapter or two every evening out loud to her tummy. That is beauty with links to the past, the present, and the future.

Mazel tov to the fortunate parents, and all my fondest, strongest, best intentions to the babies of 2010,

-- your neighborhood librarian

Spot it! Find the hidden creatures by Delphine Chedru - review

Spot it! Find the hidden creatures by Delphine Chedru

Here's one for those mod parents who view having a baby as a novel opportunity to explore new applications of their beloved bright colors and bold shapes - the parents who search out stroller that looks like sculpture, who spring for the Vernor Panton kid-size chairs, and the French Bull juice cups. People who buy the Maharam fabric sample memory game, the one my six-year-old and his dad are playing at this very moment, each pattern designed by a GOD of 20th century design. You can play it online, but you can buy the cards too - I just can't remember where we found them. We can't afford those chairs, but love that game. And love this book!

Just look at this spread:

Is that not Marimekko fabric? Ok, it is not. But it could be. It also looks like a Central Asia embroidery pattern, and it is hiding a peacock. Every page has a pattern just as covetable. And, in my extensive field-testing with children, I have found those children to be very excited about finding the hidden critters on each page.

Rounded corners and soft, stiff paper reinforce the impression that this is not your everyday little kid book. Good for three year olds and up, up, up.

Over 'Goodnight, Moon' - Best board books for babies

Our favorite board books:

Hug by Jez Alborough

Moo Baa La La La by Sandra Boynton (gets a special endorsement from Big Friend's ma)

Big Red Barn Board Book by by Margaret Wise Brown

The Very Hungry Caterpillar board book by Eric Carle

Inside Freight Train by Donald Crews

Jamberry by Bruce Degen (the rhythm of this book is really jazzy and the illustrations keep even older children interested)

Touch and Feel: Pets (or any Touch and Feel book) by Nicola Deschamps

Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino. "You are right about that: I think your mama must be a bat!"

Counting Kisses: A Kiss & Read Book by Karen Katz

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. You know, I have never liked this book, but I am a member of a miniscule minority in this regard.

Baby Faces by Margaret Miller

Yummy Yucky (Leslie Patricelli board books) by Leslie Patricelli

We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury

Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman

10 Minutes till Bedtime by Peggy Rathman. These two books by Peggy Rathman are almost wordless but high on interwoven detail. They both work for a large age range.

Peekaboo Kisses by Barney Saltzberg

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Mr. Brown can moo! Can you? by Dr. Seuss

Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw. Very simple but funny and with a great rhythm plus terrific colored pencil illustrations.

Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business by Esphyr Slobodkina. The monkeys say "chee chee chee!".

Dinosaur Roar! by Henrietta Stickland and Paul Stickland. The winner and all-time champion favorite little-kid book in our house.

Tails by Matthew Van Fleet. A new entry in the canon. Lots of touchy, wiggly, shiny features.

Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus! by Mo Willems

And for your next trick... see also my list of Great Books for PreK and Great Books for Kindergarten.