“I wish for a change and a friend,” says Little Pig, when he learns these three new words. And just like that, it happens. Simple, easy, wonderful!

Wish, Change, Friend, which is written by Ian Whybrow and illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke (and which seems to be, sadly, out of print) is a brilliant, charmingly illustrated picture book that tells the story of someone - Little Pig - who inspired to get outside of his box. Little Pig lives alone in the forest. He loves to read, and he has all the books and acorns and twigs that he needs. Until one day he finds three words in one of his books: wish, change, and friend.

The next morning, after making his wish for a change and a friend, he wakes up to find that it’s snowed (a change). He makes a snowman, who comes alive (a friend). Little Pig decides he likes these new experiences, and so he and his snow friend take a journey. They meet a penguin, who himself has been reading and who is learning new words: pig and together. Well, what do you know? Pig is there! And he and his snow friend are together with the penguin! They ponder the fantasticness of this, and then decide that together is the best word of all. The end!

I read this book with kindergartners right before the holiday break (winter theme) and I was a tad worried that the book was too existential for them. But it wasn’t. They got it. They really did. Just like Little Pig, they make text to self connections all the time. And if you’re going to believe a talking, reading pig whose snowman comes alive, the coincidence of wandering off and finding a talking, reading penguin who just happens to be learning new vocabulary about YOU makes total sense!

After I read it (twice) we did some really fun collage art, too!

Snow, by Uri Shulevitz, is a wonderful celebration of what a pure JOY snow can be, especially through the eyes of a child. It sums up that feeling you had when you were a kid (and can still have now you’re a grown-up), when you wish and wish and wish for it to snow…and then it does. Even when the radio and tv say differently:

But snowflakes don’t listen to radio,

snowflakes don’t watch television.

All snowflakes know is snow, snow, and snow.

This book has a very few words mixed in with marvelous, humorous illustrations that you need to pause and pore over before turning the page. When I read it to a group of 1st graders last year we looked at each page slowly, then the next, and the next, until I got to the final, satisfying page. Everyone was quiet when I was done. We were all wishing for snow.

This morning I could not get the song “Let it Snow” out of my head. Probably because we’re listening to a streaming Christmas radio station in the library, or maybe because it’s almost Thanksgiving break, which makes it almost Christmas break, which leads to January, which is pretty much the only month in central NC when we might get snow.

In honor of that song (which is now once again stuck in my head), I want to talk about a sweet little picture book about snow: Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee. This is a cozy little book about a girl who takes a walk in the snow, following some mysterious tracks: “Tracks in the snow / Tracks in the snow / Who made the tracks? / Where do they go?” goes the refrain, and the little girl speculates it could be a rabbit, a bear, a hippopotamus, a duck, a woodchuck, or a number of other animals.

Wong Herbert Yee, who I know from the Fireman Small books (a favorite to read during Fire Safety week or any time kindergarten and 1st grade talk about community helpers), illustrates the story with soft, stippled watercolors that somehow make me think of the quiet inherent in walking by oneself through a snowy landscape.

Tomorrow: more books on snow!

How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell

Hands down, Cressida Cowell’s adventures of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III have been my favorite bedtime reads with my 9-year-old that we’ve done in our 3-year history of reading chapter books. And we’ve read a lot of books that way. Some, we’ve had to give up on the reading-out-loud midstream, as they’ve been too, too long and we realized we just wanted it over with (most recently Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke fit this bill). But that hasn’t happened once with the Hiccup books - although my son did jump the gun and read the last one in one night without me since he couldn’t wait to see what happened!

The reason these books, starting with How to Train a Dragon (book 1), moving up to How to Ride a Dragon’s Storm (this is the UK title for book 7; it may be changed once it’s put out in the U.S.), are so great is that Hiccup, the hero of the books, is a fantastic character. The books take place when the Vikings ruled the seas (although this should *not* be considered historical fiction. I mean, I guess it is, but it’s pretty loosely based on those times and most of the details are comical and stereotypical as opposed to accurate), and Hiccup’s father, Stoick the Vast, is the ruler of all the Vikings in his tribe: the Hairy Hooligans. Hiccup is the heir to this throne, but he is nothing like his father. He’s skinny, weak, a bit timid, and most unlikely to lead anyone into battle. But he is smart, and we know he eventually grows up to be a great leader because the books are presented as his grown-up accounts of how he came to rule his Viking tribe.

These books are funny, poignant, and fast-moving - all qualities I *love* in a book. Someone I work with says that I’m secretly a 10-year-old boy because of my taste in chapter books, but I think it’s that I have little boys in my house and I see no need to read books that will bore them! There’s so much great stuff out there, like the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock series, that we don’t need to waste our time reading anything but the best!

And…apparently they’re making a movie of this book, which is very fun! It’ll come out in 2010, so if you give the little boy in your life this series now, he’ll have them all read by the time the movie comes out. Or if he’s anything like my son, he’ll have them read by the end of January!

If you Google the phrase, “Mommy and I are one,” you’ll find links to conflicting evidence that that phrase, communicated either subliminally or directly, can elicit positive biofeedback in people who hear it. I don’t know if it really can make people relax or not, but as the mother of small children it seems plausible. Mommy and I are one; no boundaries between mother and child. A completely comforting and thrilling thought for a little one.

Owl Babies, by Martin Waddell, is one of my favorite picture books of all time - both to recommend for the kids at my school (we also have Las Lechucitas) and to read to my own children - probably because its theme is so universal and similar to the “Mommy and I are one” sentiment: Mommy may go, but Mommy comes back. It’s a sweet, slightly funny, and reassuring book, with some of the most clearly delineated characters of any picture book: Sarah, Percy, and Bill.

When Mama Owl goes out hunting for food, Sarah tries to reassure her owl baby brothers, Percy worries that something will happen, and Bill can only repeat, “I want my mommy.” Each owl echoes the conflicting wants, needs, and knowledge of any child whose mother has gone away for a while, and when she finally comes back, their relief, along with the reader’s, is tangible. Perfectly illustrated with gorgeous woodcuts, Owl Babies belongs on every young childs’ bookshelf.

Say that five times fast!

If you have a child, say, under 2, and if you are looking for board books for said child..yet don’t want to be bored yourself (get it? get it? board…bored), Leslie Patricelli has a series of hilarious board books that are fun for kids and for moms and dads. That’s a monumental task that she achieves quite nicely!

Patricelli’s book feature a smiley, oval-headed baby who she uses to illustrate concepts such as opposites (yummy, yucky; big, small; quiet, loud) or familiar baby things like a blankie or a pacifier. The baby itself is simply drawn, but it is his expressions and reactions that are what brings the humor (I think the baby is a boy baby although it’s not obvious its gender). That, and the word choices she makes to illustrate the concepts.

Here’s a sample from Yummy, Yucky:

Apple pie is yummy.

Mud pie is yucky.

You can probably guess the illustrations for this: the baby is trying the apple pie with a lick-smacking grin. On the page about mud pie, he’s holding a glob of mud (with a worm sticking out), with a grossed-out look on his face.

Very cute!

Leslie Petricelli also has a website with a very cute yummy/yucky game that would be fun to play with baby on your lap!

Scared Witless: Thirteen Eerie Tales to Tell, is by far the best read-aloud I’ve done in my career as a librarian. I found it because I knew I wanted to do scary stories the week before Halloween, and I didn’t want to do stories from the books we already had in the library since so many of the kids had already read them..over and over and over again. So I scoured the Internet for scary stories and this book was recommended - and for very good reason! Every story in the book has a “gotcha” moment - some scary, some silly - and they all worked wonderfully to scare the pants off the kids I read them to!

I really liked the silly stories in the book. “The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers” is a classic, of course, and I ended up telling it to all the kids, from pre-k to 5th grade, but “The Graveyard Voice” got gasps and screams, then groans and giggles, from the upper grades, as did “The Mysterious Rapping Noise.”

A few of the stories were of the plain old scary “BOO!” variety, like “Lost in the Dark,” one of my favorites. I really, really enjoyed reading this book to my kids, and while the stories weren’t great literature, they were great read-alouds!

The author and her husband, professional storytellers who have teamed up for other books, have a great little website: Beauty and the Beast Storytellers.

The only bad thing about this book is that all the kids wanted it after I read it! So now I’ll need another book to read next year…Any suggestions?

I know I’m a week late for the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos), but at my school we’ve been celebrating all week long, and I probably will do some mini-celebrations this coming week as well. The school in which I work is 87% Hispanic, and the majority of our kids’ families come from Mexico or Central America, so studying Day of the Dead, while presented to the kids as studying the holidays of “other cultures” (that’s the curricular link), is actually putting a little time and energy into a holiday most of them are very familiar with. They LOVE telling me what they do in their families. They LOVE that I care what they think. And they also love reading books about it, because no matter what they might do in their family, the truth is that we are not in Mexico or Honduras or El Salvador, so we all can learn a little something about how it’s done in other places.

Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston, is a great little (and I do mean little: it measures 5×5″) book in which a large Mexican family readies itself for the holiday. They cook, they shop, they prepare…all the while telling the children Espérense! Wait! Finally, the day comes and the family gathers up all the food and decorations and heads to the graveyard where they build an altar to their loved ones and finally have a feast.

It’s a beautifully illustrated book, and while small, can be used in an intimate setting or with a document camera, if you have one available. It’s not non-fiction, but it comes pretty close, since the plot is essentially festival preparations and then the holiday itself.

After we read this book we made masks of Senor Calavera, or, as some of the kids called him, Mister Eskeleto. You could also do some papel picado, since the cover and some of the interior illustrations are reminiscent of the traditional paper cutting craft. We topped off our Day of the Dead festivities with a great little music video called “Viva Calaca,” which the kids told me means living skeleton or living bones. Two warnings about this video: first, while highly entertaining, it’s also pretty violent (hey, we’re talking about the Day of the DEAD here) and even has a “sexy” moment; and two, the song will stick in your head AND NEVER LEAVE if you listen to it over and over again, as I did last week.

__________

Another excellent book for The Day of the Dead is Yuyi Morales’ book, Just a Minute. This book features Senor Calaveras (this is the Day of the Dead connection), who comes knocking on Grandma Beetle’s door, ready for her to come with him…but Grandma Beetle is too busy to come with him just then. She has way too much to do! Just a Minute’s subtitle is “A Trickster Tale and Counting Book,” and the fun part of the book is for kids to realize WHO is the trickster in the tale. They always guess that it’s Senor Calveras, but of course, it’s Grandma Beetle.

This book got a Pura Belpre medal for its illustrations. My favorite is Senor Calaveras having a temper tantrum when he realizes that he may never get Grandma Beetle to come with him.

This is a very fun book to read aloud because, in addition to the marvelous illustrations and Grandma Beetle’s innocent (?) trickiness, there is also a natural call-and-answer sequence to the book. I have the kids practice Grandma Beetle’s responses to Senor Calveras - “Just a minute!” a few times before we start, and they love yelling it out to him as he slowly loses his patience with the not-so-naive Grandmother.

To top off this book, you could do a Senor Calavera mask or a skeleton puppet or eat some of the delicious feista foods Grandma Beetle prepares, but I have a sequencing activity that the kids and I do together using our interactive whiteboard.

November is National Adoption Month, a fact I know well as the author of two children’s books about adoption. Because of that, I’ll be spending lots of time this month reviewing my favorite adoption books for children.

Adoption books are kind of funny: a few are really great, but most are really didactic and spend a lot of energy trying to make the adopted child feel ok about being adopted. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but the children’s books about adoption that are also children’s literature are few and far between. Many of them are low on plot and high on sentiment. Or rather, the plot is the sentiment.

What really great books about adoption manage to accomplish is to be a great little book for children first, and a book about adoption second. The adoption stuff is almost after the fact. It can be the main point of the book, and often is, but the book doesn’t scream: Hello! I’m an adoption book!

A good example of what I’m talking about is A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kaska. In the book, Choco is a cute yellow bird in search of a mother. (Sound familiar? It should…this is the exact same premise of the book I learned to read by reading it over and over to my mother when I was 4: Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. More on that book below**).

Choco looks and looks for a mother. He asks a series of creatures if they’re his mother but they all laugh at him. Yes, the giraffe is yellow, but it’s far too tall to be his mother. Mrs. Penguin is approximately the right shape and size, but she doesn’t have stripey feet like Choco does. Choco is sad! No one will be his mother. But then he meets Mrs. Bear, who looks nothing like Choco but has the one element that all mothers have in common: love

Awww.

A perfect book for all adoptees, but particularly transracial adoptees, A Mother for Choco is that rare adoption book that, in addition to being a great read for adopted children, is a great read for all children.

——

**Okay, back to Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. As I admitted, I learned to read with this book, and I readily admit it is a classic early great 1st reader…but if you really think about it, it’s a fairly cruel tale with two basic morals to it: first, don’t leave home, or else, and second, if you think anyone who doesn’t look exactly like you could possibly be your mother, you’re a nutball. The first lesson I can live with, the second I can’t.

Martina

Catalina

Josephina

Cucaracha…

Beautiful muchacha!

Won’t you be my wife?

So say Martina’s suitors in this wonderful retold tale of Old Havana, written by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Michael Austin. The best thing about Martina, the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale is how wonderful it is to read aloud. Reading it out loud is so fun, you can almost hear Tito Puente in the background.

Martina the Beautiful Cockroach starts with Martina, the most beautiful cockroach in all of Old Havana, readying herself to meet potential suitors. She worries that she won’t know how to pick from all the eligible bachelors who want to woo her, but her grandmother tells her the secret to finding out who will make the best husband. Martina is to offer them a cup of coffee, and then “accidentally” spill it on their shoes. How the beaus react to this accident will show her at their worst, and she’ll know their true temperament.

One by one, the suitors come to visit: the overblown Rooster, the piggish Pig, the slimy lizard…and one by one, they fail abuela’s coffee test. Will Martina ever find true love? Maybe…Perez the mouse is quietly waiting for his audience with Martina, and he has a Cuban grandmother too!

This book is a Pura Belpré honor book for 2008, and it’s easy to see why. Fun to read, full of quirky cultural references, this book teaches that beauty is as beauty does…and Cuban grandmothers always know best.

The Spanish version is also available: Martina, una Cucracha Muy Linda: Un Cuento Cubano