The World is a Deaf Machine

That title is a quote from a favorite picture book of mine, Shaun Tan's The Red Tree. It's being reprinted soon (coming in April, as part of a bindup of three Tan-illustrated picture books), and I'm glad to hear it. The Red Tree is really a picture book for grownups, as many are, and it combines Tan's rich paintings with simple, poetic text about how bad a bad day can feel.

It seems like this past winter, a lot of people around me are having a really hard time for various reasons, and I thought about posting terrible, horrible, no good very bad day picture books in solidarity, then realized I've done that post before. So I've decided to do a post about bright, exuberant, celebratory picture books, the kind with irrepressible protagonists that somehow work even though there's not a ton of conflict, or the ones that just warm you up, even if you try hard to stay Eeyore-y. Let's go:


#1: Keisha Ann, from Keisha Ann Can! Lots of picture books, especially ones about school, are about the dark side. Separation anxiety, bad grades, bullying, scary new experiences, etc. And those are great. But other than Keisha Anna Can! I can't think of one that is just a whole book about a totally capable kid celebrating how proud she is of herself. And sometimes I need to read it to myself, to pick up some Can! when I'm all can't.


Who knows all the weekdays?
Who can read the alphabet?
Who can sharpen pencils?
Who can feed the classroom pet?

Who can count how many days
it's been since school began?
Who can pass out paints and brushes?
KEISHA ANN CAN!

Oh my gosh, Keisha Ann, meeeee tooooo!!! Now let's go kick some butt at tetherball just you and me! WOOHOO!!!


#2 Brand new Forsythia & Me, by Vincent X. Kirsch (what does the X stand for? I must know!). Forsythia is the narrator's best friend, and is rambunctious and creative and brilliant. It opens like this: "Forsythia and I are best friends. She does things that amaze me." Aw, man! I want my friends to describe me that way. What a lot in one simple sentence. And who hasn't had someone like that in their life? The next thing we hear is: "Forsythia can decorate the most incredible birthday cakes I have ever seen. This year she flew out of the cake she had made just for me." So we know it's going to be one of those wackadoodle stories that's just over-the-top enough to be worth a picture book. She performs in the circus, they have tea with zoo animals, and throughout the whole book she's wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and sticky-outy braids ('cause that's how she rolls). When she's feeling sick, it's Chester's turn to pull out all the stops to entertain his friend, and when the book heads toward the finish line with Forsythia saying, "Chester, you amaze me!" my little heart gets all squooshy.


#3 is Millie's Marvellous Hat and I cannot believe none of us has blogged about it before. The Kids Department loooooves this book, and so does everyone we sell it to (right, guys? Back me up). Great for two- or three-year-olds on up to early elementary, this'd be a perfect preschool read aloud (and it often is around here). Sometimes I find books about imaginative play kind of weird, like they're almost redundant or something. Kids know how to play make believe, and books are already fiction, so books about make believe often fall flat for me. But not Millie— for one thing, just look at her cheerful little face. Satoshi Kitamura's illustrations are always pretty and interesting, but sometimes too busy or with too many jagged angles for me. This time, the palette is great, the faces and bodies expressive, and the story is a winner. Millie can't afford the beautiful hat in the window of the hat store, so the man sells her a hat (for free) that "is a most marvellous hat, Madam...It can be any size, shape or color you wish. All you have to do is imagine it." So she goes outside, starts imagining her hat into all sorts of great things, and then moves on to imagining everyone else's hat all through the park, until she gets home and gets her parents to imagine their own hats (a penguin hat and a flowery one, if you're curious). I want the cake hat!

#4 would be Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon, by Patty Lovell and David Catrow, but we don't have a copy right now and I don't want to just write about it from memory. She's a great character, though, and just a reminder that if you embrace being weird, it can be empowering. I always need to learn/remember that.

-Anna, Kids Books

Black History Month: Picture Book Edition

It's Black History Month, and in the Kids Department, the display looks beautiful. Local blogger Kitri and the Animals recently blogged about one of the coolest books on our display, Bad News For Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshall, here (have I mentioned I'm a sucker for a super-long subtitle?). A coworker says he has to stop and look through that book almost every time he passes by. Cover art success!

Anyway, even though that display is mostly nonfiction, honoring the History part of Black History Month, there's another thing that Black History Month reminds me: there are just not enough picture books with black protagonists that aren't historical, or biographical, or dealing specifically with the topic of race, or with a focus on sports or music. It's pretty startling, if you start to go and look for a regular old narrative picture book. So I thought I'd highlight some favorite titles that do what narrative picture books do best: capture small moments in a meaningful way, keep the voice and perspective true to the age group, make the text and pictures interact and complement each other well, and work well as a read aloud. They also happen to have black main characters.

Who doesn't remember Ezra Jack Keats's Peter? From The Snowy Day to Peter's Chair to my favorite, Whistle for Willie, these books were published in the '60s and were, for a lot of people, the only African American picture book character in their house/library/school. Whistle for Willie is my favorite of them all because learning to whistle is this sort of meaningless but fun and empowering milestone for kids that grownups mostly forget about. Most kids at a storytime aren't old enough to whistle, so we often all end up trying together, and when Peter finally whistles at the end, there's a lot of triumphant smiles. Keats's stories do a great job of highlighting specific sensory and emotional experiences that stay in the realm of small moments but are really fun to read about. In The Snowy Day, Peter (in his unforgettable red snowsuit) makes lines and footprints in the snow for pages. "Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feet sank into the snow. He walked with his toes pointing out...he walked with his toes pointing in...then he dragged his feet slowly to make tracks."

In Willie, Peter tries whistling but can't. "So instead he began to turn himself around— around and around he whirled... faster and faster...." until Keats's iconic stoplight at the end of the block looks like this:

On his way home, Peter draws a chalk line all down the sidewalk, all the way back to his house. I always love Keats's brick walls and neighborhood scenes:


Once Peter gets home...

"He went into his house and put on his father's old hat to make himself feel more grown-up. He looked into the mirror to practice whistling. Still no whistle!"

Over 40 years later, Keats's books are still some of the most beloved narrative picture books around. And his life story is pretty interesting, too.

Next: The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring.

--Anna, Kids

The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring

Continuing my mini-quest to document spectacular picture books with African American protagonists...


The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring is one of those books I stumbled upon one day, I think on the bargain shelf. It's still in print, and I was thrilled to discover that we actually carried it. It's the kind of book that is totally of its time (published in 1973) but that still shines decades later. Written by Lucille Clifton and illustrated by Brinton Turkle, it's the story of a boy named King Shabazz and his friend Tony Polito, who go through their neighborhood trying to find Spring, which grownups keep assuring them is "just around the corner."

"'Where is it at?' he would holler every time his Mama talked about Spring at home."

"One day after the teacher had been talking about birds that were blue and his Mama had started talking about crops coming up, King Shabazz decided he had just had enough. He put his jacket on and his shades and went by for Tony Polito."

Just like Ezra Jack Keats's books that I talked about last post, this story is set in an urban environment that is a major character in the story. On their walk to find Spring, King Shabazz and Tony Polito go past chain link fences and mailboxes and a bakery. "They passed Weissman's. They stopped for a minute by the side door at Weissman's and smelled the buns." Fire hydrants, street signs, other people walking the sidewalks. "They passed the Church of the Solid Rock with high windows all decorated and pretty." Here's the decision to cross a street they've never crossed before:

"Then they were at the streetlight. Tony stopped and made believe his sneaker was untied to see what King was going to do. King stopped and blew on his shades to clean them and to see what Tony was going to do. They stood there for two light turns and then King Shabazz grinned at Tony Polito, and he grinned back, and the two boys ran across the street."

They finally come to an empty lot with an abandoned car in its middle. (No Spring has yet sprung, thus far.) "Then they heard the noise. It was a little long sound, like smooth things rubbing against rough, and it was coming from the car. It happened again. King looked at Tony and grabbed his hand."


WHAT DO THEY FIND??? I'm totally not telling. You'll have to come by the Kids Info Desk to find out.

--Anna, kids

Picture Book Valentines

It's February, which means it's time for displays of books covered in hearts, lace, foil, and every shade of pink and red (and sometimes purple, and occasionally, somehow, a pale yellow). It's also Black History Month, and more blogging will be done about that, but for the moment let's take a look at this valentine business.

People often stand on one side of a love/hate line when it comes to Valentine's Day, which I genuinely don't understand. There's something that irks people about either the commerciality of it, or the sort of forced-display-of-affection thing. For other people it's a super important day and you'd better propose via ring-in-food or something, or at least have hand-strewn rose petals all over the apartment. Neither of these stances is at all appealing to me. I think the idea of the holiday is dumb and fun and an excuse to make candy-heart poems in school, get crafty with tissue paper, buy yourself flowers, or just have a really excellent dinner. I have no real emotional investment in the holiday, but like to celebrate it goofily because, well, why not? The best valentine I've gotten in my life (other than my mom's sweet handmade ones) was a big stack of boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. There's something to be said for a present that says, "I know you."

Because of where I work, my favorite valentine to give is a good picture book, because if you're going to shell out $3 on a factory card or $5 on a handmade one, why not push it to $6-$8 and get a 32-page paperback? And if you're actually into gifts, just get a hardcover. They're lovely. Here are my favorite valentines:

I Like You, by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, comes as both a mini hardcover and part of Houghton Mifflin's new "Send a Story" series, where they package little paperbacks in a way that they can be sent directly through the mail. I Like You is illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast with black and white ink sketches that move just right and make me smile. It contains things like this:

...I like you because
If we go away together
And if we are in Grand Central Station
And if I get lost
Then you are the one that is yelling for me

Hey where are you
Here I am

And I like you because
When I am feeling sad
You don't always cheer me up right away

Sometimes it is better to be sad
You can't stand the others being so googly and gaggly every single minute
You want to think about things

It takes time

Well, yes. Exactly.

Leo Lionni's A Color of his Own is a favorite of mine for storytimes as well as giving to grown up friends. A little chameleon feels lonely and different because he changes colors wherever he goes, while all the other animals have a color of their own. He tries to find a solution by staying in one place, but the leaf he's on changes colors and falls. When he meets another chameleon, older and wiser, he asks, "Won't we ever have a color of our own?" and the other fellow says sadly, no, but "why don't we stay together? We will still change color wherever we go, but you and I will always be alike."

And so they remained side by side. They were green together, and purple, and yellow, and red with white polka dots. And they lived happily ever after.

Awwww. Lionni's paintings are always top shelf, but giving a chameleon such an expressive smile is one of those picture book feats that really deserves some praise.

Tiny books make great valentines, and Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library is probably the best collection of tiny books ever. One a day for the few days before the 14th, perhaps? I've written about these before. The sturdy little box contains Sendak's Alligators All Around, Chicken Soup with Rice, One Was Johnny, and the inimitable Pierre, all in tiny hardcover. Wanna be the best valentiner ever? Get 'em in french.

Not romantic, not about love, but a little charmer we've loved all winter is The Quiet Book, by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Renata Liwska. Here are some kinds of quiet that there are:

Jelly side down quiet

Car ride at night quiet

Swimming underwater quiet

Last one to get picked up from school quiet

Top of the roller coaster quiet

Best friends don't need to talk quiet

Right before you yell "SURPRISE!" quiet

And there are more, of course. The illustrations are exactly right, that's all I can say. You really need to take a minute to sit with it, to look at each moment and find all the little details that are going to win your heart. It's a bit of a valentine because of the way the friends throughout the story spend quality quiet time together, throwing stones and reading books and hiding behind furniture. And it's on the small side for a picture book, so it feels just right in your hands as a little token of affection.

-Anna, Kids Books