Pink Me

Nonfiction Monday - High Riders, Saints, and Death Cars: A life saved by art by Nicholas Herrera - review

 

It's the fortunate teenager who will come across this beautifully produced art book and its subject, self-taught folk artist Nicholas Herrera. Not only does Herrera describe his process, inspirations, and technique, but he speaks frankly about his wild youth, bad behavior, and the consequences thereof.

 

 

The Wreck, Mi Vida de 25, 1999

 

 

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.

 

Nonfiction Monday - Ancient Egypt: Tales of Gods and Pharaohs by Marcia Williams - review

Do you love Marcia Williams? I love Marcia Williams. Marcia Williams is a British illustrator and author. She writes large-format, intensively-illustrated adaptations of classical literature for kids.

Let me tell you how great this is: lots of little kids get into tales of adventure, and then their parents think to themselves, "Oh, I'll bet he would love Robin Hood!" Or King Arthur, or the story of Troy, etc. And then they ask the librarian - "I want him to read King Arthur." Whereupon the librarian is like, "Errr... you know that adultery and patricide play a big part in that story, right? Is he ready for The Sword in the Stone?"

Nonfiction Monday - Miss Etta and Dr. Claribel: Bringing Matisse to America by Susan Fillion - review

 

Art and history intertwine in the story of Claribel and Etta Cone, two sisters from Baltimore whose intellectual openness and love of art–not to mention tidy personal fortunes–brought them into contact with many pioneering minds of the early 20th century. More than mere art patrons, the sisters forged decades-long friendships with Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse.

 

The collection of art that they amassed, which includes many masterpieces of Postimpressionism as well as works from Asia and Africa (now at the Baltimore Museum of Art), liberally illustrates the gracefully designed pages of this book. So too do the author’s colorful Matisse-inspired illustrations, most of which are based on archival photographs. The book is a pleasure not only to behold but to hold, too - prestige paper and meticulous attention to color honor the author, her subjects, and the art.

 

Painting by Susan Fillion based on a famous photo from 1903.

An art educator in Baltimore, Susan Fillion has obviously spent untold hours with the Cone Collection and with the voluminous correspondence and other papers of the sisters. She frequently describes a scene or situation from Claribel’s or Etta’s perspective, an effective and engaging device. In the hands of a writer less intimate with the sisters, this might feel false or presumptive, but Fillion keeps it simple and convincing. A beautiful and accessible gateway to a study of Postimpressionism, and a moving portrait of two extraordinary women.

Adapted from a review that originally appeared in School Library Journal.

 

Today's Nonfiction Monday Round-up is at Emu's Debuts.

 

Reading on the radio: Brief lives

Why does a kid read a biography?

 

A couple of reasons. The most common reason is the old "I have to write a book report on George Washington Carver." Boy do you want to find a peppy, well-illustrated biography of George Washington Carver for that kid. A decent book, written by someone who actually cares about and is interested in George Washington Carver, as opposed to a generic series biography written by someone who got the assignment in an email, will make all the difference for that kid.

The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of George Washington Carver and Science and Invention in America by Cheryl Harness. National Geographic Children's Books.

These Cheryl Harness biographies are just the right length for older elementary school students. Heavily illustrated by the author and loaded with extras like timelines and maps, they are interestingleisure reads but work for writing reports as well.

 

Some kids will read biographies by choice: either they're interested in the subject, and they're inhaling everything they can find about, say, Jimi Hendrix in every medium available; or they're that kid who only likes true stories. That kid deserves a subscription to the National Geographic Photobiographies series.

Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Golio, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe. Clarion Books. This impressionistic book about Jimi is notable for its wild mixed-media illustrations and for an afterword that addresses his use of drugs and alcohol without being judgemental or whitewashing the facts.

 

When I asked my friend Tracy, who teaches 3rd grade, if any recent biographies jump out at her as being particularly noteworthy, she shrugged. "The Harry Houdini book," she said, "but mostly I just enjoy reading the biographies that the kids write."

Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman. Greenwillow Books. Fleischman has also written a long-form kids' biography of Mark Twain, called The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West.

 

Tracy's response, though, is a great reason to encourage kids to read biographies. Barbara Kerley's The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According To Susy) is a lively portrait of the writer as an eccentric family man, and includes portions of the biography written by his (ultimately tragically ill-fated) daughter Susy. Ms. Kerley also includes a page of entertaining instructions for writing a biography yourself.

I've been asking around, and it seems to me a lot of people can remember maybe one biography that they read as a kid that made a big impression on them. For my husband, it was a book about an ice hockey player called Roger Crozier, Daredevil Goalie. 

 

Crozier was a "daredevil" because for many years he didn't wear a facemask. I would say maybe he should have.

 

For me, it was Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, the story of six men crossing the Pacific on a handmade raft. Like-minded readers today might try Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm, or a biography of an Arctic explorer.

Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson (Photobiographies)by Dolores Johnson. National Geographic Children's Books.

 

You never know who is going to inspire a young person. It's worth asking what they're interested in, what they want to be when they grow up, what fiction books they read.

A kid who likes funny fiction will love the nonfiction stories that children's author Jon Scieszka tells about growing up with his five brothers. I would like to note that I finally found a name that stumped Maryland Morning host Tom Hall - luckily, Mr. Scieszka's website gives us a handy pronunciation guide!

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka, by Jon Scieszka. Viking Juvenile.

 

 

Audrey Hepburn with the writer Colette.

People who like princessy books will love the light, wonderfully stylish drawings of Audrey Hepburn in the picture book Just Being Audrey. Her mother was a baroness! How come I never knew that?

Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo, illustrated by Julia Denos. Balzer + Bray.

 

Kid is thinking about law? Why not think big!

Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx / La juez que crecio en el Bronx by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Bonus for being bilingual!

By the way, Jonah Winter is a name to look for when choosing biographies for children. He's written picture book bios of all kinds of people, from Frida Kahlo to Hildegard von Bingen to Sandy Koufax. He comes by his interest honestly - his mother Jeanette Winter, with whom he collaborated on the Hildegard book and a book about Diego Rivera, also writes picture book bios to watch for. She has done Jane Goodall, Georgia O'Keeffe, Bach, Emily Dickinson and more.

 

Another terrific author who has something of a specialty in biographies for kids is Kathleen Krull. Wilma Rudolph, Jim Henson, Cesar Chavez and L. Frank Baum have each caught her attention. She also has written a series of lively collected biographies - books about musicians, presidents, athletes, pirates, writers taken in context. Look for books with "(and What the Neighbors Thought)" in the title.

Lives of the Athletes: Thrills, Spills (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt. Harcourt.

Emily Arnold McCully, who is probably best known for Mirette on the High Wire, for which she won the Caldecott Medal, also writes and illustrates terrific nonfiction. Manjiro: The Boy Who Risked His Life for Two Countries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) tells about a Japanese boy who helped open up relations between Japan and the U.S. in the 1800's.

Which brings us to another important point about biographies written for children. What I just wrote about Manjiro makes it sound boring as dirt - but in the hands of a talented writer like Emily Arnold McCully, his story sings with pathos and adventure. The pictures glow and the characters come alive.

 

Biographies are written for children of all ages and reading abilities. Dan Yaccarino's book on the ocean environmentalist Jacques Cousteau has no more than two sentences per page, with bright, graphic illustrations.

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Second and third graders can handle a little more text: I love Keep Your Eye on the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton by Catherine Brighton, about Buster Keaton's early years. The way this book breaks down Keaton's pratfalls and early movie-making process, it's hard not to want to try some of his tricks out for yourself. 

 

I'm going to leave off with a book about a woman whose tricks you should maybe not try at home. Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart is probably the best of many Amelia Earhart books written for kids. The story of Amelia's life is told in strong, well-paced chapters, but between each chapter we get the hour-by-hour account of her fatal flight and the subsequent rescue efforts. Author Candace Fleming has pieced together a great deal of research, and without speculating on the fate of Amelia and her navigator, allows us to imagine her voice desperately calling out over the radio in the empty Pacific.

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming. Schwartz & Wade.

 

Nonfiction Monday is hosted today by the marvelous Travis at 100 Scope Notes. I have been M.I.A. from NF Mon for a while, but I'm happy to be back.

And be sure to listen to my conversation with host Tom Hall on this Friday's Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast on Maryland's NPR station, WYPR 88.1 FM. If you're out of the listening area, audio of the segment will be online by the end of the day on Maryland Morning's website.

Battle of the Books preview post

Do you follow the SLJ Battle of the Books? It's the kidliterati version of March Madness, pitting fiction against nonfiction, dystopic sci-fi against humor, graphic novels against verse. It's win or go home as a few elite judges (Lauren Myracle, Matt Phelan, Maggie Stiefvater, and Jonathan Stroud, among others! Wow!) debate the merits of 16 of the most highly-decorated and fulsomely-praised children's and young adult books of this year.

One of the things that I like most about the BoB brackets (besides the fact that you can call them BoB) is that the books are seeded in alphabetical order. This leads to some amusingly disjunct head-to-head beat-downs: the gritty Okay for Now versus the magic-tinged Wonderstruck, for example. It might also be the only place you'll see the sincere, informative Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans go up against the heartfelt-but-in-a-very-different-way Inside Out and Back Again.

For the first time this year, I am in prime position to follow along, having read more nine and a half of the sixteen contenders. I discussed many of the books in this year's battle in my Newbery Preview post - but the Big N has historically not conferred any advantage during Battle of the Books, past Newbery winners having gone down in early rounds. Here's the list, and it's on Goodreads too.

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!).

 

Electronic Thursday - Monkey Boy to Lunch Lady by Jarrett J Krosoczka - review

 

If success could be attained via charm and personality alone, Jarrett Krosoczka would have had this fame and fortune thing sewn up a long time ago. I'm admitting this right here - I love the guy. His books are a joy, and he's a born showman in person: at panel discussions, he sings, he draws, he engages the crowd and sometimes wears costumes. In the strange, airless space that is the online author visit or virtual storytime, he is responsive and enthusiastic and introduces his dog.

 

That's Jarrett in his red pleather suit at the Guys Read: Thriller panel at BEA last year, seated between Jack Gantos and Jon Scieszka (who is not wearing a wig) (for once).

But as important as enthusiasm and hard work are, they do not automatically translate to stardom in the demanding, puppy-eat-puppy world of children's lit. Jarrett's newest publication, From Monkey Boy to Lunch Lady: The Sketchbooks of Jarrett J. Krosoczka, tracks the ups and downs of his career as an author/illustrator and the sometimes crooked path along which an idea travels on its way to becoming a book.

A Butterfly is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long - review

I swear to God, I thought the last thing I needed was One More Butterfly Book. And I also thought, when I saw that this book had been nominated for a Cybils Award in the Nonfiction Picture Book category, for which I am a first-round judge, that maybe I had finally outgrown my susceptibility to Sylvia Long's gorgeous watercolors and graceful calligraphy.

After all, I am well aware that A Seed Is Sleepy and An Egg Is Quiet - I have bought those books, I have gifted those books, and I have recommended those books. They make good baby shower gifts, among other things. I mean, as well as being informative and inspiring. I thought there was probably not one more serene natural subject worthy of Ms. Long's well-researched scrutiny and Dianna Hutts Aston's tranquil prose.

But holy crap, I could stare at this thing for hours. Lovely.

So if you have Waiting for Wings and Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar and Laurence Pringle's An Extraordinary Life in your school or classroom library and you thought you were done, well, better make a little room on the shelf. And give your kids sketchbooks and some colored pencils - they're going to want to go outside and draw something.

 

Something like this owl butterfly, caligo memnon, with a 5-inch wingspan.

The Mary Ann, Betsy, and Paula Show - This is the moment for kidlit apps

At the SLJ Leadership Summit in Alexandria a few weeks ago, I saw a demo of the Pat the Bunny app again. Have you seen the trailer for that app? You watch. I'll wait.

 

That bunny is a total evangelist, right? That app actually does things that the book can't do, and that is a book that does things that most books can't do. Pat the Bunny is the app that turns arms-crossed, grumbly librarians into wide-eyed murmury librarians. Bobo Explores Light (reviewed earlier) does that too.

Nonfiction Monday - Bobo Explores Light by GameCollage - review

 

Just press play.

No, I mean it. You want to know what an iPad does, and why? Just hit the play button on that trailer for the new children's science app Bobo Explores Light up there.

What an iPad does, and why:

 

Nonfiction Monday - Animals with Super Powers by Natalie Lunis - review, plus A Memoriam to Charley, a Brine Shrimp

It's a bittersweet day here on the Pink Me couch. The season's changing, the pool has closed. We recently made the not-difficult-at-all decision to finally ditch this bony old beast for a new couch, one with padding in all the right places, one with cushions that have yet to be vomited on. It's an exciting moment, but I can't help wondering if we will be as happy on the new couch as we have been on the - truly repulsive - Jennifer Convertibles sofa that I bought in New York so many years ago. The frog-printed slipcover will be going too.

Will our crazy pillows fit on it? Will we all fit on it? The boys are getting bigger, and nowadays much more likely to be buried in a D&D manual than in a Hardy Boys mystery.

Added to this seasonal introspection is a sliver of bad news that has hit our family unexpectedly hard: Charley, the World's Oldest Living Brine Shrimp, has died.

 

I'm placing these droids in your care - Star Wars book roundup

Recently, I read a book written for grownups. It happens! Of course, the book I read was Nerd Do Well, the memoir of actor and comedian Simon Pegg, and Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, Star Trek) is nothing if not an overgrown eleven-year-old boy, so actually, the book didn't fall that far outside my usual purview.

It was a kind of so-so book, if you want to know. The fanboy confessional can often descend into aching self-importance (see also: Patton Oswalt), but there were some brilliant discussions of pop culture, criticism, and pop culture criticism (also see also: Patton Oswalt). Mostly about Star Wars. Simon Pegg has thought a lot about Star Wars.

As have we all, n'est-ce pas?

In my house, Star Wars is practically a family member. Storm troopers, clone troopers, Jedi, Sith, sand people - their costumes and powers find their way into every mode of imaginative play engaged in by my sons. I have fought my way to a grudging détente over what I still call the second three movies - we own them on DVD, but they cannot be watched while I am in the house.

(I mean, come on. In the second series of Star Wars movies, they named Leia's adoptive father "Bail." If that isn't telegraphing a certain abdication of commitment on the part of the filmmakers, I don't know what.)

Recently, I assembled all the Star Wars gimmick books in our house and got the boys to run 'em down. By 'gimmick books' I mean the engineered books - the DK Readers are not included in this review, nor are the nominally grown-up novels like The Thrawn Trilogy, The X-Wing Series, Jedi Academy Trilogy, The Han Solo Trilogy (I might read that), or The Bounty Hunter Wars.

 

 

Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka - audiobook review

 

Jon Scieszka has five brothers. Jon Scieszka is a funny writer. Ergo, Jon Scieszka's stories about growing up with his five brothers = funny. Oh, I laughed out loud, all right. I read bits aloud to the librarians in the workroom who wanted to know just what was so damn funny, and they laughed out loud. But we're moms. Moms of boys. We have to think boys are funny, or else go googoo and end up carted away in a van.

I first reviewed this book two years ago. I read it to myself while our house was undergoing extensive renovation. It was kind of a distracted review, touching on Peruvian hats, Luke Wilson and my great-cousin Margaret's nose.

But such a funny book. I really needed the laughs during those dark days - my kitchen was open to the outside world for about a week, making it less kitchen-y and more like, let's say, a shed.

We have revisited Knucklehead this summer, now that it is available on audio, read by Mr. Scieszka himself. I checked it out of the library specifically for the benefit of my husband and his multitude of siblings, many of whom were going to be in from out of town and spending copious hours in our minivan last week.

Nonfiction Monday: Flesh and Blood So Cheap by Albert Marrin - review

In all the brouhaha over last week's Wall Street Journal article about the apparent excess of darkness in young adult literature, I didn't see a lot of people admitting the fact that some kids - and some adults - just like to read about dreadful stuff. The sweetest looking old lady in the library will come to me inquiring about Chelsea Cain's next book. The mom with a toddler on one hip and a five-year-old trailing behind is on a Jack the Ripper kick. The lacrosse goalie in her polo shirt and bouncy ponytail is looking for "something like Isaac's Storm."

Serial killers, natural disasters, industrial accidents - I should do a display or something: "Secretly Freaky Readers Recommend."

 

And the green grass grew all around - ecology read-alouds

Sometimes I get a request from a library customer or a friend that is so inspiring, it sticks with me for days. Our friend Doug, who is finishing up a master's in education sometime in the next decade or so, is working up a model English class for middle schoolers who have been studying ecology. He figured he'd read them The Lorax as a discussion starter, but wondered if I had any other suggestions.

 

Now, The Lorax is pretty much on the nose for this purpose, but it's long, and sing-songy, and might already be familiar to middle schoolers as an environmental cautionary tale. So I rubbed my hands together and thought.

Electronic Thursday: The Strange & Wonderful World of Ants by Amos Latteier - review

Inch-long "bullet ant" in the cloud forest, Costa Rica. Photo by Your Neighborhood Librarian.

Ants. Just the word, for me, cues up Sharkey's Day. You know, that dry, surreal, scritchy-scratchy Laurie Anderson song: "Sharkey says: All of life comes from some strange lagoon. It rises up, it bucks up to its full height from a boggy swamp on a foggy night. It creeps into your house. It's life!"

Ants are that kind of strange, that kind of miraculous.

Amos Latteier, a Toronto-based performing and installation artist, seems to see them this way too. Who would not? The facts about ants will blow your mind. 22,000 species! Biomass comparable to humans!

There are ants that function as soft-serve machines, ants that squeeze goo out of their larvae in order to stick leaves together, ants that farm, ants that herd, ants whose sting feels like getting shot (see "bullet ant," above). Ant queens can live decades. Ant sperm can live decades! Heck, the little black ants that live in your yard can dig nests five feet deep!

 

 
Leaf-cutter ants, Arenal, Costa Rica. Photo by Your Neighborhood Librarian.

I could go on half the day about the weirdness of ants. Don't you wish I would? No?

Notes from the insect world

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Most of my friends have gone through it already. Some of them have had to deal with it over and over. I'm just lucky I have boys, and I can shear 'em like sheep.

It's head lice.

Gross.

Nonfiction Monday: the Star Wars Craft Book by Bonnie Burton - review

Craft books. So tempting, so cool! In my experience, no other type of book causes people to delude themselves quite so thoroughly.

The cute little R2-D2 hat? Oh My God I am SO going to learn to crochet so that I can make that hat! The AT-AT herb planter? Hey, that could happen - we have almost all those supplies laying around the house somewhere. And half the rest of this stuff is all cutting and glueing felt! Easy! Ok there's a little sewing if you want the Jar Jar Binks Voodoo Doll to look like Jar Jar Binks and not like Jabba the Hutt. And there's some embroidery. Paper mache. Hmm.

On the other hand - sticking pins into Jar Jar Binks? GENIUS.

Nonfiction Monday: Manners Mash-up - review

I'd have had this book reviewed earlier, but there was a manners emergency.

One of Zhou's teachers came into the library with her almost-three-year-old son, who has got to be one of the cutest little guys in the whole world. She was looking for ABC books, truck books, and dinosaur books (I love three-year-old boys!) - and also a manners book that wasn't too heavy-handed.

I kind of pooh-poohed her - at almost three, there's plenty of time to teach him about elbows on the table. At almost three, they're so cute that we still forgive them if they forget to say "excuse me" when they burp. We're programmed that way. But Kayisha had this story to tell:

Nonfiction Monday: World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky, illustrated by Frank Stockton - review

And what have we here? Mark Kurlansky, noted author of interesting nonfiction for adults has turned to our youth. I raise an eyebrow.

Nonfiction Monday - You Just Can't Help It! Your Guide to the Wild and Wacky World of Human Behavior by Jeff Szpirglas - review

 

Ok Jeff Szpirglas is one of my people, I can tell. Is it the pinstripe suit (below)? No. Ironic deployment of business wear is, at best, a heavily qualified predictor. Is it because, in a set of factoids about acceptable public behavior, he advises young people about proper comportment at a rock show ("Stand up, punch the air with your fist")? Not that either, although I will take this as evidence that he is one FUN classroom teacher.

Nonfiction Monday: Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities by Chris Barton, illustrations by Paul Hoppe - review

 

When I was a kid, I didn't really like children's literature. Sure, I read Five Little Peppers and How They Grew and Judy Blume (especially the spicy ones!), but mostly I would sneak books off my parents' shelves. I read Saki and All Quiet on the Western Front. I read Tropic of Cancer at about age ten. (BO-RING!)

What I liked the most, though, were the books my dad would bring home from traveling. Airport paperback crime novels and true crime. Oh, how I ate up that true crime.

Now that my job is helping kids find books that they'll want to read, I have noticed that there's not much true crime for kids. I can't give them what I read at that age - Helter Skelter gave me nightmares for years - decades! So along comes Chris Barton (The Day-Glo Brothers, Shark vs. Train) to fix this flaw.

Nonfiction Monday - Celebritrees: Historic and famous trees of the world by Margi Preus, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon - review

It's the right time of year to be thinking about trees. The gigantic willow outside my window is just beginning its annual fireworks show: today it is dripping antique gold stippled faintly with grass green. That's pollen, mostly - just a warning that this review might be a little less coherent than usual. Pollen makes me dippy.

The trees in this book are better-known than my willow. Older, for sure. Larger (the Tule Tree in Mexico measures 177 feet in circumference), taller (a coast redwood named Hyperion is 379 feet tall), more hollow (the Boab Tree, used as a prison in Australia, could fit 10 men inside).

Nonfiction Monday: Journey into the deep: Discovering new ocean creatures by Rebecca L. Johnson - review

 

What does it take to suck a kid into a book of nonfiction? You can't use a drag net, or barbed hooks. Robotic arms cannot scoop a child into a lucite barrel, and very few children old enough to read are small enough to pick up with two fingers and stuff into a test tube.

But those are just a few of the methods that scientists use to collect marine specimens for study. Rebecca Johnson tagged along with the Census of Marine Life on several collection expeditions and had a chance to observe firsthand all the going and the getting and the looking and the recording. She does an amazing job describing the research activities - clearly, economically, accurately, using sensory details to extend the you-are-there impression that begins with her use of second person narration.

And the spectacular photos of fantastic-looking creatures that accompany these descriptions - those are the seine nets, the robotic arms, the probing fingers that snag the kid reader.

Electronic Thursday: Solar System by Marcus Chown - review

 

Here is a sumptuous iPad app, a well-organized reference database, an appropriate use of available technological tools. Here is a distillation of fact, a coherent representation of material that is often too overwhelming for our petty mortal minds to comprehend, a layout that informs and is pretty at the same time.

Man.

Astro the Steller sea lion by Jeanne Walker Harvey, illustrated by Shennen Bersani - review

What do you want in a nonfiction picture book about an animal? I'll tell you what I want, and you see if that matches up.

• I want a story that will hook kids.
• I want photographs or realistic illustrations.
• I want any animal care professionals in the story depicted with rigor and respect, modeling correct postures and behavior for dealing with wild animals.
• I do not want the author to invent some internal malarkey for the animal. Not even, "Barty the tortoise was lonely." No. Unless it's a pet or some other long-observed individual (the chimps at Gombe for instance), humans may not presume to know the emotional life of an animal.

Print Workshop: Hand-printing techniques + truly original projects by Christine Schmidt - review

I am anti-craft. I don't mind saying it. The thought of gathering a fistful of pipe cleaners, glue, wobbly eyes, and children all in one place and then encouraging them to interact is just... brrrrrr. Sounds scary and sticky and nerve-racking to me. I have friends who are good at that stuff. Also, there is school, and camp, so my children are not craft-deprived in sum. I know my strengths, and I abdicate my areas of weakness.

On the other hand...

Nonfiction Monday - Code Quest: Heiroglyphs, written by Sean Callery, illustrated by Jurgen Ziewe - review

 

Here's what I wrote when I reviewed this title for School Library Journal:

Fans of Ancient Egyptian history or readers of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles will delight in learning to decode Egyptian heiroglyphs for themselves in this interactive work of nonfiction. A first-person mystery story narrated by an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist provides a slender thread upon which is hung multitudes of sidebars, factoids, captioned photos, graphic text elements, maps and diagrams. Photos of Egyptian artifacts and sites are reasonably plentiful, but of such small size they can be difficult to appreciate.

The illustrations that accompany the archaeologist's story are rendered digitally, employing exaggerated perspective and texture mapping, which gives the book a video game effect. The accompanying CD, however, includes a font for making one's own heiroglyphics on a computer - not a game. A determined reader will sift through the cacophony of clues to decode all the heiroglyphic and pictographic messages, but the design clutter and tiny typefaces will cause all but the most obsessed codebreakers to give up.

Nonfiction Monday - Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Brian Floca - review

Last night we took our kids to a concert of choral music, and right in the middle of the program, one of the second grade mommies from our school stepped to the front of the ensemble, opened her mouth, and let loose with some of the purest, most accomplished, happiest music I have ever heard a human being produce. We had no idea.

Such moments are revelatory. To see a person stand at the intersection of discipline and imagination and bring forth something as unexpected as art... well it blew my mind, I can tell you. What could you do, what could any child do, what could any child not do, with an idea and hard work and desire?

Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen - review

What god of publishing comes up with these illustrator pairings for Joyce Sidman's books? It's extraordinary. I honestly thought nothing could match the pair-up of Joyce's precise word choice and Beckie Prange's precise art in Ubiquitous. The work of both women managed to be scientifically accurate and lyrically lovely at the same time.

But in Dark Emperor, Rick Allen uses an old-fashioned medium - linoleum-block printing - to illustrate the mystery and fascinating life of the world at night, and the synergy between the images and the poems is just as perfect.

There's something about a woodcut. The organic texture of the printed ink and the shape of the gouged lines will always  invoke early illustrated books. Compositionally, because the block of wood already has a shape, woodcuts almost always have their own frame, even if it is only implied, and even if that frame is broken, as it is in many of the prints in this book. This formal quality tends to lend the images a little extra authority.

Anyway, all that gallery talk jibber-jabber aside, these illustrations are just gorgeous. I can only guess how many layers of printing Rick Allen piled up to make such sophisticated color blends and juxtapositions. Each picture is a world one could sink into.

 

Isn't that amazing?

And the poetry, shouldn't I talk about the poetry? About the mushrooms:

they spread their damp

umbrella tops

and loose their spores

with silent pops.

"Silent pops." Can't you just see it? And smell the musty damp earth? Aren't you just a kid, scrunched down close to the ground, examining the miraculous weird perfection of a mushroom?

Well I am.

And I always love Joyce Sidman for providing a paragraph or two of prose information about the subject of each poem.

Rick Allen has this to say, in part, about the process of making the illustrations for this book:

The prints for Dark Emperor were each printed from at least three blocks (and in some cases as many as six) and then hand-colored with a strongly pigmented watercolor called gouache. There are definitely faster methods of making a picture, but few more enjoyable in a backwards sort of way.

Hail. Hail to the artist/craftsman. And to the poet/scientist.

Give books

Not these books. Fun books. Pretty books. Books that kids will be excited about getting, and will be happy to own. Books like the ones in this SUPER LONG POST. Read and enjoy.

There are so many excellent things to give this year that I am just going to list them out. Here's a handy table of contents:

Nonfiction Monday: Do you Barbie?

As a parent raises a little girl, certain questions will arise.

Do we paint the room pink? What if she wants us to?

Will we ruin her life if we ban glitter? What if we teach her how to use the vacuum and therefore allow her to experience the evils of glitter herself? Will we then be reinforcing gender roles re: housework?

When do we start insisting that she wear a shirt when she goes outside?

Who the hell manufactures hot pants for toddlers and why?

And then there's Barbie.

I am the 8th dwarf: GREEDY

JUST in time for the holidays, YOU can win $500 worth of books from Chronicle Books. More importantly - *I* can win $500 worth of books from Chronicle! We love Chronicle! High production values, witty choices, verrrry nice graphic novels. All I have to do is list $500 worth of Chronicle books, and I might win that list... and all you have to do is comment on this post! They are calling it Celebrate the Haul-idays with Chronicle Books. What are we waiting for?

 

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend. You heard me. Johnny Depp's. Alien Girlfriend. It's forthcoming. French author. Excellent cover. Sounds action-packed and slightly surreal and I want to read it. $17

MORE MORE MORE said the librarian....

Nonfiction Monday: Fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada, adapted by Jamar Nicholas - review

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN. It is a brutal chant of a title, a provocative confession from an avowed defender of childhood, a clear-eyed reminiscence, and a concisely laid out description of what happens to a child when violence is an accepted aspect of his social system.

In prose, it's laudable. Everyone should read it. In graphic novel form, it's a bucket of ice water to the face. Everyone can read it.

Nonfiction Monday: Gaps

It doesn't happen often, but it happens. A mom, a little girl, a boy - most frequently a dad, and what does that say about men and reading and their interests? - approaches the librarian looking for a book that will assist a child in learning about something that he or she wants to know about... and the book does not exist.

Horrors! Gasp! But I'm not kidding here. As much as I complain and moan and groan about the formulaic nonfiction put out by so many publishing companies, I am also grateful that at least somebody has put out a kids' book on stem cell research, or Latvia, or Garrett Morgan.

Because nobody has published one (at least not recently) on radiology. Or star lacrosse players. Or Randy Rhoads (or any other rock drummer that I can think of).

Natural History by DK Publishing - review

I am intensely irritated by this book. Yet I cannot keep myself from paging through its marvels. It's like the Anthropologie catalog - you just know the clothes are poorly made and ridiculously overpriced, but ooh! that skirt is cute!

Billed as "A landmark in reference publishing,' it is instead, like many DK books, useless as a guide in any practical sense. "Over 5000" species are pictured, with little captions, grouped in taxonomic order. But the taxa are only explained in the most rudimentary terms - "The plants in this order are genetically similar but physically different." Oh? In what way? Further, there is no indication of scale, no habitat context, and, while 5000 may sound like a lot? It's not.

Half a boy and half a man - puberty for fellas

Lady comes into the library the other night, looks me straight in the eye, and says, "Where are your books on puberty? For boys." Now, I don't want to generalize, but that request, delivered with that demeanor? Single mom. Single mom who has had it up to here with B.O., secretive behavior, and shifty, monosyllabic attitude. I have so much, much respect for single moms. Every single mom should be issued a cape and tights, because they are all superheroes. Single dads too, of course. It is all on them.

Fortunately for this single mom, who I am calling SuperSingleMom, I have made something of a study of puberty books, especially puberty books for boys. In a lot of families, and certainly in single-mom families, it's mom who handles the Big Talks, and therefore girls are guaranteed a certain amount of information, instruction, and genuine commiseration when the time comes.

It falls to Dad, of course, or to the most dad-like person around, to do the puberty talk with Sonny Jim. We moms just do not have applicable firsthand experience. Now, I do not know how this goes in most families, but SuperSingleMom was frustrated with her estranged husband's reluctance to bring up the subject with their 11-year-old son. And I have to say I am dreading the day my culturally Catholic husband has to acknowledge our sons as sexual beings.

But I'm sure as hell not going to do it.

100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days by Bruce Goldstone - review

100 things I like about this 100th day book:

Ok not. What, come on, do you really need a hundred? Would you even sit still to read a hundred? Yeah one would think not. One would need to have written a book as appealing and clever and also thoughtful as Bruce Goldstone's new book in order to get a reader to actually sit still to read 100 of virtually anything. Or so one might think...

Ergo. A few things I like about this 100th day book:

Hot x: Algebra exposed! by Danica McKellar - review

On Nonfiction Monday, bloggers across the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids. Despite all the nonfiction I read, I am only an occasional contributor, mostly due to me often forgetting what day it is. Monday really creeps up on you sometimes, doesn't it? Today, the exceptional kidlit blog The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting, with links to all of this week's nonfiction posts.

Let us now praise Danica McKellar. Nonfiction Monday, prepare to eat her math.

Would you, have you, responded with knee-jerk distaste to a pretty girl, a TV star, protesting loudly that "Math Doesn't Suck"? (especially when her book with that title is subtitled "How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail"?) Do you find the magazine-style covers of the pretty girl's books, promising personality quizzes, and "boy-crazy confessionals" along with word problems and polynomials, patronizing and/or pandering?

Well, you might. You might. But don't.

Alphapets by Shiho Ishikawa and 100 Shapes by Nao Sugimoto - review

These two are gift books - not suitable for the library, because they are consumed as they are enjoyed. Thus, they're a little off my usual beat, but I couldn't resist.

Clear, happy color palettes and kicky patterns make these two little art activity books catnip for the design-inclined. Which I am. AlphaPets is a book of big block letters, each of which can be punched out, and with a few folds and a few tab A / slot A insertions, turned into a little origami-esque animal that corresponds to the letter. That is, M turns into a winsome mouse, O is a very cleverly-designed ostrich, W is a wallowing whale. We had three generations punching and bending and folding at one point, making all the animals that corresponded to our names.

Maybe a little tricky - my seven year old only managed to make a couple without help, and my mom gave up pretty quickly. Trifocals can only help so much. Also, as with plenty of origami, some animals benefited by a little dab of glue. But there are additional step-by-step photos plus videos available online (currently in Japanese but still very helpful).

100 Shapes may look like a simple book of stencils, but the suggestions for how to use them are quite sophisticated, as are some of the shapes themselves. Of course there is a tree, a house, and an elephant, but also the book includes stencils of the Eiffel Tower, a seated woman, fish, and electric guitar, and a cruise ship. Of the two books, this is the one that has longer legs. Kids are encouraged to combine the shapes to make scenes, color them in using patterns, and use them to cut shaped pictures out of colored paper or old magazines.

Available for a pretty good price, too. Just the thing for those late-summer and back-to-school birthdays!

Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill, illustrated by Bryan Collier - review

You are going to want this book.

This is a rare story, beautifully told, illustrated with power, and it has ties to things that children can touch and do.

What, you want more?

Heh, just kidding. Of course you do. How about you want a story that will help educate children about the time when slavery was legal in the United States, that does not flinch from the tragic inequities of that period, but which nonetheless is not unremittingly bleak? A story that celebrates a person whose skill and artistry transcended status and transcends time? Now you know. You want this book. I knew you would. 

Summer Birds: The butterflies of Maria Merian, by Margarita Engle, pictures by Julie Paschkis - review

Oh, here's a picture book that was just WAITING to be written. Maria Sibylla Merian, 1647-1717, was a scientific illustrator who grew up in Germany but did her most famous work in Suriname.

Look at those dates. Then think, "Suriname?" Yes my skeptical friend. In 1693, at the age of 52, Maria Merian went to South America with her sister to draw animals. Just to give some context - what else happened in 1693? Well, Louis the XIV was king. The Amish split from the Anabaptists that year. The last dodo died. And two middle-aged German women hiked up their skirts and went to South America.

Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors, poetry by Joyce Sidman, illustrations by Beckie Prange - review

When she was a kid, a woman I used to know wrote a song about a lizard for a science report. I haven't seen this woman in 25 years, but that song sticks with me:

I don't wanna (clap clap) Be an iguana (clap clap)
They have long nails
And spiny tails.
I don't wanna (clap clap)
Be an iguana (clap clap).

I don't wanna be an iguana, by Amanda Bailey, submitted in partial fulfilment of the elementary science requirement at Little Red School House, Greenwich Village, NYC, sometime in the 1970's.

Amanda, wherever you are, I hope you get your hands on this new book of poetry by Joyce Sidman. You'll like it: there's a gecko on the cover, his tail curling around the spine of the book, crunching on some unfortunate winged insect. If you're like me, and you were in 1985, you approve of poetry with a body count. And check this out:

Farm by Elisha Cooper - review

Believe it or not, sometimes I get a little tired of picture books. The tiny little morality plays, the brightly-colored cartoon children and their brightly-colored antics... I only read about twenty of these things a week, you'd get a bit jaded too.

But then Elisha Cooper comes out with a new book (or Marla Frazee or Oliver Jeffers or Linda Smith or Lane Smith or...) and I am starstruck again, savoring every word, staring deep into the witty detail of each drawing, and, in Cooper's case, kind of wondering how the heck he DOES that - that thing with his pencil, how a little wavery line is a cat, or a kid, or a cloud, or a tractor.

Let me back up. This book deserves a little perspective. Lord knows Elisha Cooper has employed it - about half the pages in this yearlong portrait of a family farm are long, lean landscapes, full of sky, with an inch of flat earth at the bottom of the page. Have you ever been out in the true Midwest? It is a marvel to me that such an astringent landscape can be so luxurious in color and texture, as if the sky has to put on a better show to compensate for the lack of earthly features. It suits Cooper's style - in books such as A Good Night Walk and Beach, his large, clean forms kept his little wiggly details from ever looking fussy, and the little wiggly details kept the large volumes from looking too austere.

Barn : bean as Big : little.

Not to slight the text. Cooper is as talented almost as talented a writer as he is an artist, and his narrative choices reflect the same little/big aesthetic as his drawings do.

After a storm, the farm swells with sound. The corn rustles. The cattle bellow. A tractor echoes in and out. Birds quarrel. Bugs hum. Their hum is constant.

This language is plain and calm but never boring. There's too much going on for it to be boring: the boy throws tomatoes at birds, the cattle poop. The imagery - "The rows look like wet hair just after it's combed" - is beautifully apt, domestic and understated, and above all, authentic. Very authentic: the family loses a rooster in September, the farmer uses pesticide and fertilizer, and some of the chipmunks don't make it across the road. You almost expect a little sketch of the farmer meeting with a banker.

To sum up, here are some of the things that I love about this book:

• clouds
• the cats that have names
• skinny wavery green beans
• hay bales like a crumbling ziggurat
• a rooster, seemingly deep in thought but really just standing there
• the girl reading in the barn
• dust

  

Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mary McKenna Siddals, illustrated by Ashley Wolff - review

So engaging and interesting, I didn't realize it was also an ABC book until I reached the letter W! Ashley Wolff's collage and gouache illustrations incorporate so many subject-appropriate scraps - food wrappers, newspaper, pictures of food and flowers - that each page is a treasure hunt. A multicultural cast of children load up the composter with garden waste, kitchen scraps, and all kinds of things that would otherwise go in the garbage. Fun to read and informative to boot.

Fierce Style: How to Be Your Most Fabulous Self by Christian Siriano - review

The fact that Christian Siriano went to prom with my longtime babysitter has NOTHING to do with how much I enjoyed leafing through this book. (It has everything to do with why I picked it up in the first place though - we miss you Marci! Hope they show Buffy on TV in Ecuador!)

Although the book is for the most part obviously written by a professional, and liberally studded with grating catchphrases that I'm sure are a lot more charming in person (if I never hear the phrase "hot mess" again I will weep not a single tear), there is plenty of real Christian in here. He lists Subway and T.G.I. Friday among his favorite places to eat, advises all women to wear heels all the time, and still has a place in his heart for Saved by the Bell. What do you think - was this tiny, marvelous, gay suburban Maryland kid a Screech or a Zack?

He also thanks my friend Kristen in the Acknowledgments - she teaches jewelry making where he and Marci went to high school. (And about those catchphrases? He provides a glossary: "I call everyone 'lady' because everyone has that inner lady who needs to wear full-length gloves and a bird hat." Here's where I shake my head and have to admit he has a point.)

I love his Manly List of Manly Things to Do: he advises buying a flannel shirt "red plaid only," buying a wallet, or playing a sport, like throwing a frisbee around in the park and then getting a frozen yogurt "with fun toppings!". At the end of the list he confesses "Okay, so apparently this is as manly-man as I get. I tried!" You have to appreciate a fellow who knows his strengths.

This. This is his strength.

In between the pictures of glamorous women and glamorous Siriano gowns (see above, the glamorous but non-model-sized Christina Hendricks, in a glamorous Siriano gown at the glamorous Golden Globes - designers who can dress non-model-sized people get my particular respect, and in this instance I venture to say the ex Mrs. Malcolm Reynolds has NEVER had her fabulous assets clad to such advantage) and snips of style advice from Tim Gunn, Vanessa Williams, Heidi Klum, and Whoopi Goldberg (of all people), there is advice about coping with disappointment and depression, finding your creative voice, and, of course, about making things work for you when you are just a little bit not like everybody else. I know a ton of teenagers who could benefit from the practical, hardworking, slightly self-indulgent advice in this book.

I picture Christian Siriano eighty years old, still tiny, still peering through his pushed-down glasses with that look of terrified resolve. He always looks like he knows damn well the situation calls for a suit and he is showing a flamenco dress, and if that flamenco dress isn't the most heart-stopping thing anyone has ever seen he is TOAST. Lucky for him, that flamenco dress is ALWAYS heart-stopping. At eighty, he will still be surrounded by towering, beautiful women, women hoping he will work his vision upon their bodies - the Valentino of the twenty-first century.

I kind of hope he will have stopped calling everyone "tranny" by then, though!

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According To Susy) by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham - review

I had a review for this book half written, and then I looked through it again. I caught the variety of voices - Twain's, his daughter Susy's, and the author's. I surveyed the back matter - author's notes on Twain and on Susy, and a one-page outline of "How To Write a Biography." And I don't know, man. I'm not sure this is so much a library book as it is a textbook, and I mean that in a good way. It's readable, entertaining, true, and totally instructive. Possibly it should be required in every elementary school classroom.

Much has been written about Mark Twain, one of America's best-known novelists. He has been biographized for all ages and all reading levels. The extraordinary Barbara Kerley (The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, You and Me Together, and Greetings From Planet Earth to name just a few) had been thinking about doing it herself when she came across an interesting fact: Twain's daughter Susy had done it, at the age of thirteen.

What a gold mine, right? Firsthand observations of the biographee by a biographer who knows what young people want to know because she is one herself! So Kerley gets her hands on microfilm of the complete manuscript, finds just the right excerpts, and fills in just the right background and geographical details.

• A cutaway of the Twain house in Hartford shows us Susy observing her Papa all over the house - talking to the cats, reading in bed, striding about the dining room pontificating between courses.
• We are taken to the family's country retreat - Susy's aunt's house - and given a rundown of daily life there.
• Twain's writing process is described in detail, including Mrs. Clemens' judicious editing - she is shown toning down the rougher areas, while the Clemens daughters look on ruefully.

The book is brilliantly designed as well. Twain quotes appear in one typeface, Susy's in another, and Susy's writing is bound into Barbara's larger book as little journal pages. I don't know who thought of that, but it's genius. Hey and speaking of larger books, could publishers please quit with the oversize? Lots of libraries cannot accomodate the tall books, especially in non-fiction, and must shelve them spine-up instead of spine-out, which means they circulate less. (This message has been brought to you by me, Charlotte, Kate, Irene, and a whole bunch of other school librarians.)

If you bought The Trouble Begins at 8 by Sid Fleischman (my respects, old man, you will be missed) last year, you might be thinking twice about buying a second Twain title so soon. But do. The two books complement each other, and this one is for a younger audience.

Susy was Twain's favorite daughter, and she died at the age of 24. As it happens, I ran across Laura Skandera Trombley's new book Mark Twain's Other Woman while I was assembling this review, and found this tragic paragraph:

Twain was alone [in London, after a twelve-month world lecture tour] when a second cable arrived... informing him that Susy, his favorite daughter and the child most similar to him in many respects, had died an agonizing death from meningitis at the family's home in Hartford while her mother and sister were still en route. For two weeks, Susy's fever spiraled and she grew delirious, sometimes wandering through the empty house... As the infection spread, she went blind. She found a gown belonging to [her mother] Olivia hanging in a closet and spent her last hours stroking and kissing the dress, believing in her delirium that her mother was dead... For the rest of his life, Twain mourned his lost daughter."

I am so glad that Barbara Kerley has given us the bright and bold Susy, as well as her famous father.

Tricia is hosting Nonfiction Monday today at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! by Jonah Winter, illustrations by Red Nose Studio - review

Let me proceed carefully here.

1. Here Comes the Garbage Barge is based on the true story of the barge loaded with Long Island garbage that meandered up and down the Atlantic coast, rejected at every port from New York to Belize, during the summer of 1987.

2. Jonah Winter is a terrific author of children's nonfiction. I would not and will not assemble a school library without his biographies of Sandy Koufax, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonia Sotomayor, Diego Rivera, and others.

3. The miniatures that illustrate this book, made of polymer clay, trash, household items, paint, glue, spit and banana peels by the immensely clever (and, one suspects, just a teeny bit OCD) Red Nose Studio, are worth spending about a month poring over. As the garbage ages, it gets visibly grosser. It's like a Claymation Christmas special made by the Spitting Image folks. Which - yay!

BUT.

In order, one presumes, to make the people and locations in the story more personable, the characteristics of each are exaggerated. Vernacular spelling is used to distinguish the North Carolinians who don't want the garbage from the Louisianans who don't want the garbage. The Floridians who don't want the garbage are old folks floating in swim rings and the Texan who doesn't want the garbage is riding a horse in a boat dressed like Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum. Ok so far. Cute.

BUT I SAID BUT.

The "boss," the waste management guy back in Long Island, is named Gino Stroffolino. He tawks wit' a Noo Yawk accent and looks like Fredo in The Godfather. Gino makes arrangements with various other characters: Joey LaMotta, who is shown doing business out of a phone booth and who also looks like Fredo; "dis guy down in Mexico... goes by da name of John Smith"; and Rico D'Amico in Belize.

Now listen to me. If the waste management guys - clearly coded as shady characters - in this story were similar in that they were all African American, instead of having a vowel at the end of their names, we'd be up in arms about this depiction. I lived in New York City and I know that the waste management industry was dominated by firms with Italian American names, but those firms didn't operate out of phone booths, and I'm willing to bet that the majority of them don't wear sharkskin suits to the office.

The moral of the story is "Don't make so much garbage!" but, intentionally or not, the villain is Gino. Reading the story to my kids, when we got to Gino, my six-year-old pointed, "That's the bad guy!" My son does not know the history of mobbed-up waste management in NYC - he was reading the code of slicked-back hair, ducked-down head, accent, and suit.

Maybe I was on the fence when the anti-Italian-American Defamation League or whoever they were protested that The Sopranos was making them look bad - oh it was hard to disagree with a show that brought us the comedy-drama stylings of Aida Turturro on a regular basis - but here I draw the line. I won't have a kids' book in my library that so clearly - and, I think, gratuitously - casts a single ethnic group in such a pejorative light.

And all right, blast it. Just as I was ready to regretfully reject this thing on the basis of its ethnic stereotyping, I saw this video, in which the ADORABLE Chris of Red Nose Studio lovingly describes his process in making and photographing the sculptures that make up the illustrations of the book.

You tell me. Are we won over?

All Star! Honus Wagner and the most famous baseball card ever, by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jim Burke - review

Honus Wagner: the name doesn't conjure the immediate haloed recognition that the names Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe, or Jackie Robinson do. If the average kid has heard of him, it is probably because of that fabulously valuable baseball card - the card that Honus himself had pulled from circulation because it came in packs of Piedmont cigarettes and he didn't want his young fans to think that he approved of cigarette smoking.

Right there we know we are reading about a principled athlete, a public figure conscious of his status as a role model, and we can always use more of those.

But, as we learn from Jane Yolen's heartfelt, admiring text and Jim Burke's powerful oil-on-board paintings, Honus Wagner was not only a conscientious celebrity, but also an extraordinary ballplayer, leading the league in batting EIGHT years during the years 1900 to 1911. He has a base-stealing record - three in one inning! - that still stands, and he was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yolen's bio, unlike some sports biographies that focus on a single event or character trait in an athlete's life, gives us Mr. Wagner's story from birth, through an astonishing twenty-one seasons of major-league ball, on to his retirement and Hall of Fame induction. She paints a portrait of the original lovable lug, a bow-legged coalminer's boy with long arms whose youthful strength came from loading coal.

The illustrations are notable not only for their muscular energy - one two-page spread gives us three views of Wagner's wide-legged batting style - but also for a subject-appropriate palette of sandy browns and muddy greens. Faces are often turned away or shadowed by ball caps, lending emphasis to the action. And the composition is masterful: large areas of plain or textured color give these paintings a strong feeling of space and movement.

Great sports biographies are gold in the school library, and this is absolutely one of them.