Author: Loree Burns

ESTELLE TAKES A BATH
By Jill Esbaum
Illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma
Henry Holt, 2006

Category: Picture book fiction

A naked woman. A bubblebath. A mouse. Unlikely ingredients for a picture book, you say? Think again.

Amidst the hoopla over Susan Patron’s use of the word “scrotum” in her Newbery-medal winning novel THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY, I thoroughly enjoyed this risqué picture book. Dear Estelle is surprised by a mouse while taking her bath, and she freaks. Chaos ensues. Estelle leaps from the tub, grabs a broom, and gives chase … all in the nude. The mouse—also nude—runs for his life. The art is outrageous and the language is bouncy and the combination is fun, Fun, FUN.

A WRINKLE IN TIME
By Madeleine L’Engle
Dell Yearling, 1962

Category: Middle Grade Fantasy

Yesterday LOVE TO READ day with the second graders, today COMMUNITY READING day for the fifth graders. There is so much to love about the life of a writer!

I got the invitation to be a Community Reader months ago and my first thought was this: who picks the book? I was sorta hoping it would be me, because, well, I am picky about the books I read. Turns out the teachers and the PTA get to pick the books, but since the teachers and PTA folks around here rock, I got to read one of the most fabulous books on the planet (or off the planet!) … A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle.

I decided to read the first chapter, which introduces the book’s heroine, Meg Murray, and her strange circumstances. Meg’s father, a scientist, has gone away. No one, including Meg’s mother, knows where he is or when he will be back. For reasons Meg can’t grasp, Mrs. Murray is nonchalant about the disappearace. But not Meg. She is frightened. And angry. At the same time. Meg’s confusion only worsens when a mysterious old woman shows up in the Murray kitchen late one dark and stormy night to say “there is such a thing as a tesseract.” Who is Mrs. Whatsit? What is a tesseract? And why does news of its reality unhinge Meg’s mother?

It’s a great chapter. And because we had a little time left, I also read the bit where Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin arrive on Camazotz, the planet where Mr. Murray is trapped. Quite an eerie little scene and one that has haunted me since I first read this book twenty-five years ago.

At the end of my reading, most of the kids said they wanted to hear the rest of Meg’s story. Perhaps they heard something in the confusing reality of Meg’s adolescence that resonated with them, despite the outrageously unreal circumstances of her life? Perhaps the book touched their imaginations the same way it touched mine all those years ago? Not bad for a book published in 1962.

I’ve never read the rest of the books in L’Engles Time Quartet. Has anyone out there read A WIND IN THE DOOR, A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET or MANY WATERS? They are officially called “companions” to A WRINKLE IN TIME, and they are now on my TO READ list. How is it that I adored this book as a kid and never knew it had companions?!

BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
By Kate DiCamillo
Candlewick, 2000

Today was LOVE TO READ day in our local elementary school, and I was invited to participate. Kids were encouraged to bring slippers, a cuddly, and their favorite book to school for a celebration of the written word. My job was to engage the second grade for forty minutes in a conversation about writing and reading. The teachers suggested I bring a copy of my own favorite book to read from. I tucked BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE in with my supplies and set off for the school as cool as a February icicle … because walking into a room of eighty-six second graders at the very end of a busy school day isn’t the least bit scary when you have Kate DiCamillo—quite literally—in your back pocket.

“My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog. This is what happened …”

Who wouldn’t want to snuggle in and hear India Opal tell how it all happened? I suspect that if I had read the second graders this opening line they would have begged for more. As it turns out, the completely fabulous second graders at LOVE TO READ day were not interested in anything but TRACKING TRASH! These eighty-six slippered second graders (along with their eighty-six furry friends) were astoundingly well-behaved, incredibly insightful with their questions, and wonderfully attentive to my answers. When our time ran out, they clapped like I was a rock star. And when I told them I was leaving a signed copy of my book in their library, they cheered some more.

I love LOVE TO READ day. I love second graders. And I love Kate DiCamillo and BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE. A gal couldn’t ask for better backup.

THE TREE OF LIFE, A Book Depicting the Life of Charles Darwin Naturalist, Geologist & Thinker
By Peter Sis
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (Frances Foster Books), 2003

Category: Picture book biography

Happy Darwin Day!

Yes, today is the 198th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and scientists and laypeople around the world are marking the occasion with celebrations of science and humanity. How do I know this? Well, because there is this web site detailing such events the world over. And, perhaps more importantly, because I will be attending a Darwin Day event myself. Tomorrow, at my Unitarian Universalist church, Worcester State College professor Sandy Paracer (a friend of mine!) will lecture on Darwin and his ideas. I will be there, in the front row, clutching my copy of THE TREE OF LIFE.

There is a book for every day, I tell you, and a day for every book. I love it.

THE PULL OF THE OCEAN
By Jean-Claude Mourlevat
Translated from the French by Y. Maudet
Delacorte Press, 1999

Category: Middle Grade Fiction

My friend Jane, librarian extraordinaire, handed me this book the other day and said, “This is a very odd little book. It made me think of you.”

I was offended, of course. (I am not THAT odd!)

But I took the book. I read it in a single sitting and I have to agree with Jane. This is the most oddly compelling book I have read. Ever. In my entire life. I cannot stop thinking about it. What does it all mean? Who is this book written for? Why did Yann do it? Why? Why?

Okay, let me back up.

THE PULL OF THE OCEAN is the story of Yann Doutreleau, a ten-year old midget (that is the term used in the book) and the seventh son of Marthe and Louis Doutreleau. The other Doutreleau boys are twins, three sets: Remy and Fabien (fourteen), Pierre and Paul (thirteen), Victor and Max (eleven). Yann? “Yann came last and alone. Like the period at the end of a sentence.”

The story is told through a series of first-person testimonials from the people Yann saw or who saw him as he led his brothers on their flight to the ocean. Their flight, somewhat mysterious to the reader, is clearly a matter of life and death to the Doutreleau boys. Mourlevat deals insight slowly, letting the story of Yann and his brothers unfold in small moments of shocking revelation. Several times I whispered—out loud and to myself— “Good Lord!” I was watching a tragedy unfold, I knew it was going to be horrible, but I could not look away. I can’t tell you more without spoiling the story; you will have to read it.

And I am hoping you will. Then you can tell me what it all means, who the book is written for and why (Oh, Why?!) Yann did it …

FOSSIL FISH FOUND ALIVE
By Sally M. Walker
Carolrhoda Books, 2002

Category: Middle Grade Non-Fiction

Reading this book was an awakening for me. It was while turning its pages that I finally realized I could combine my passion for science (not to mention my years of training) and my love of story. It seems obvious now that I was destined to write about science for children, but it was glaringly unobvious for most of my early adulthood. Science was what I did during the day, writing was what I did in my spare time. But In 2003, after reading FOSSIL FISH FOUND ALIVE, all that changed. I started writing about science and the scientists who most intrigued me. Four years later, my first book is about to hit bookshelves, and I will always credit Sally Walker’s book for its part in that miracle.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I found in my Inbox the other day an email from … Sally Walker. I kid you not. She wrote to congratulate me on TRACKING TRASH, and to tell me how much she enjoyed it. Sally Walker wrote to me. And she said, about my little book, “Congratulations! It’s totally fascinating.”

Woo-hoo!

So, of course, I had to re-read FOSSIL FISH FOUND ALIVE. The story intrigued me all over again:

In 1938, a museum curator in South Africa stumbles upon an unusual fish in the market, and she brings it back to her museum for further study. There is something about the fish that tickles her memory; it reminds her of fossil fishes she learned about as a student, fishes long thought to be extinct. In hard-to-resist narrative, Walker takes readers from the shores of South Africa to the islands of Indonesia to the depths of the oceans to discover if the coelacanth, a fish that predates dinosaurs by millions of years, is actually still alive. This is one fishing trip you don’t want to miss.

TOYS GO OUT
By Emily Jenkins
Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky
Schwartz & Wade Books, 2006

Category: Elementary/Middle Grade Fiction

The life of a toy is an awful lot like the life of a kid: spectacular one moment, traumatic the next, fraught with hard lessons—some of them scary—but quite bearable when teachers and protectors stay close. In TOYS GO OUT, Emily Jenkins explores the joys and sorrows of childhood … through the tiny, painted eyes of a “knowledgeable stingray, a toughly little buffalo, and someone called Plastic.”

This, dear readers, is a family story for the ages. Read it out loud and remember the animals you loved as a kid (Sheepy-Sheep was my own favorite), and remember what it was like to know in your heart that they felt your pain.

KIMCHI & CALAMARI
By Rose Kent
HarperCollins, 2007

Category: Middle Grade Fiction

I haven’t read this book … but only because it hasn’t been published yet. When it is available, however, I plan to be first in line. Because I had the great pleasure of meeting Rose Kent at Rising River Retreat this past weekend and, I am telling you, this woman can write.

Rose read a chapter from her newest novel at the retreat. Within a line or two I knew I was in the hands of a grand storyteller. Rose’s characters are vital, their dialogue natural, their problems compelling. Her prose grounded me in a time and a place and, frankly, I didn’t want to leave it. Alas, she only read us the one chapter.

So, while I wait for the new novel to be born (Hurry, Rose, hurry!), I will satisfy my urge to experience more of her work by reading KIMCHI & CALAMARI. It is the story of Joseph Calderaro, a Korean boy adopted into an Italian American family and feeling, well, like an exotic combo platter. You can read a nice review of the book here and you can pre-order a copy, if you are so inclined, here.