On Saturday my daughter and I hauled a giant pile of old sneakers to Wellesley Booksmith, where green-thinking booksellers were collecting them in honor of America Recycles Day. Author Nancy F. Castaldo was on hand to share even more ideas for preserving our planet and its resources, and she signed copies of her Kids Can! Book, KEEPING OUR EARTH GREEN.
Well done, Wellesley Booksmith! It was lovely to meet you, Nancy!
MANFISH,A Story of Jacques Cousteau
By Jennifer Berne
Illustrated by Éric Puybaret
Chronicle Books, 2008
Category: Picture book biography
Now that the bee book is off my desk for a while, I have turned my attention to a little book that I have been working on for years. It’s a biography, in picture book format, of a great naturalist: Jean Henri Fabre. This book has been through many revisions, has been read by many-an editor, has even seen the bright promise of an acquisitions meeting.
Alas, it is still a manuscript. And a “quiet” manuscript at that. (How quiet can it be if it keeps me awake, slips into my daydreams, won’t let go?) No matter. As a reward for completing the bee book, I am giving myself a week to play, once more, with this quiet book that I adore.
For inspiration, I am letting myself linger over some new picture book biographies. MANFISH was nominated for a 2008 Cybils Award in the Nonfiction Picture Books category. With it, Berne and Puybaret tell the story of Jacques Cousteau in fine style. Puybaret’s long lines and palette choices remind me of Barbara Cooney, and Berne’s text manages to convey Cousteau’s wonder for the world beneath the ocean, his genius for sharing that world with others, and his passion for protecting it.
MANFISH is a quiet book, but the quiet resonates. It is the quiet of the deep sea, the quiet of a watery place without cell phones and traffic jams and road rage, the stirring quiet of a man who “dreamed that someday it would be you, exploring worlds never seen, never imagined.”
It’s official. I like quiet books.
BUTTERFLY
Written by Ben Morgan
Photographs By Thomas Marent
DK Publishing, 2008
Category: Nonfiction for any age
What can I say about this book? If you are the least bit interested in butterflies you will be mesmerized. If you appreciate photography, you will be inspired. If you admire gorgeous books in which concept, content, layout, and design merge perfectly, you will be impressed.
The images are astonishingly beautiful, but I lingered longest over those taken at the Mexican wintering roosts of the monarch butterflies. If all goes according to plan, I will have the chance to visit those roosts this winter. I also spent a good bit of time grinning at the image of pine processionary caterpillars marching head-to-rear through leaf litter. To those poor friends who have seen my fork-and-knife pine processionary presentation: the real thing is so much more beautiful!
Treat yourself to a peek at this book if you can …
PETE PUFFIN’S WILD RIDE
By Libby Hatton
Alaska Geographic, 2008
Category: Picture book, fiction
Author/Illustrator Libby Hatton recently sent me “a note of appreciation” … and I am sending her one right back with this blog post.
Libby’s latest picture book, like TRACKING TRASH, was inspired by the 1992 spill of 28,800 plastic bathtub toys into the Pacific Ocean. After an unfortunate fall from an Alaskan cruise ship, the titular Pete Puffin—a wooden toy—narrates the story of his epic adventures afloat on Alaskan currents. Lift-and-read postcards from Pete’s owner, a boy named Eddy, complete the tale while adding an interactive element that younger readers will surely appreciate.
Libby’s book joins a rather long list of children’s books inspired by the 1992 cargo spill that released 28,800 plastic ducks, beavers, frogs, and turtles into the Pacific Ocean:
DUCKY, by Eve Bunting
10 LITTLE RUBBER DUCKS, by Eric Carle
DEXTER’S JOURNEY, by Chris d’Lacey
TRACKING TRASH, by me
This ever-growing list excites me to no end, and not just because I am on it. No, the list excites me because I talk with students in schools all the time about telling stories, and one of the messages I try to impart is this one:
WRITE THE STORY THAT EXCITES YOU, EVEN IF IT HAS BEEN TOLD BEFORE. JUST TELL IT YOUR WAY!
Each of the writers in the list above has taken the story of an amazing accident and turned it into a way of sharing their passions. Eve Bunting explores emotion (she tells the spill story through the eyes of a single lost duck), Eric Carle used the story to explore a concept through art (the concept: ordinal numbers), Chris d’Lacey created a story to entice beginning readers, I delved into the science, and Libby Hatton uses the story to share her passion for Alaska and its environs. Each of us told the same story, but by drawing on our unique passions and interests.
Thank you for your book, Libby. And welcome to the ducky-spill book club!
CLAN APIS
By Jay Hosler, Ph.D.
Active Synapse, 2000
Category: Graphic Novel
I’m still working, working, working on THE HIVE DETECTIVES manuscript. At this stage—the end of the ‘first complete draft’ stage—I am mostly polishing and refining with snippets of fresh writing thrown in as needed.
I’m also still reviewing the cool bee stuff (books, videos, websites, etc) I’ve noted during the last eighteen months … with an eye toward useful materials to include in the book’s back matter. Some of what I have collected is interesting to me, like this website of honey recipes, but won’t be particularly interesting to my middle grade readers.
Other things on my list, however, are so freakin’ cool that I plan to include them in the backmatter AND to shout about them at every opportunity. Jay Hosler’s CLAN APIS falls into this latter category.
CLAN APIS is a graphic novel about honey bees. I know. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect myself. But let me tell you … this is a a totally fun and scientifically accurate graphic novel introduction to the world of the honey bee. I kid you not. It is a honey bee must read.
Hosler is a neurobiologist at Juniata College, where he studies—you guessed it—honey bees. In his spare time he cartoons, mostly about sciencey stuff. Can’t remember the last sciencey cartoon you came across? Then check out Killer Bee, Hosler’s cartoon look at the life-or-death struggle of one honey bee scientist. It’s a gem.
Hosler has also explored Darwin’s theory of natural selection in comic book form. Do I even need to tell you that THE SANDWALK ADVENTURES is now at the tippy-top of my wish list?
Science rocks! As do scientists who share their work with the world in unexpected and completely effective ways.
CHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE
By Kate Messner
North Country Books, 2008
Category: Middle Grade Historical Fiction
What happens when a head cold keeps you home from school and your mother has a deadline to meet? You get put to work, that’s what…
It’s not all bad. First the dear boy with the head cold was given a chance to thumb through my To Read pile. At the top was my crispy new copy of Kate Messner’s CHAMPLAIN AND THE SILENT ONE; he got to be the first Burns to read it. But then he couldn’t stop talking about it. Seriously, he was at my elbow talking about Iroquois and Innu tribes and alliances and battles and, well, I wasn’t getting much done. So I heard him out one last time, and then I set him to work. Here’s the fan letter he wrote to Kate:
Dear Mrs. Messner,
Your book Champlain and the Silent One is awesome! My mom got it in the mail yesterday and let me read it. (I finished it this morning.) I liked how it always had more action or drama on the next page! You do a good job of keeping the story lively and fun instead of droning on and on.Hope you keep writing,
You heard it here first. Kate Messner never drones on and on … and her new book is awesome!
THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD BIRD
By Phillip Hoose
Melanie Kroupa Books, 2004
Category: Knowledge for middle-grade readers
“There is probably more passion, sadness, villainy, heroism and sheer suspense in this account of the decline of the ivory-billed woodpecker than in any other book, of any genre, destined for young readers’ shelves this year…a magnificent book, and not just for kids.”
—Washington Post Book World
I heartily concur with these thoughts, though I would take out the phrase ‘this year’ … THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD BIRD is one of the greatest nonfiction books I’ve read ever. Hoose pulls reader into the life, times, and probable extinction of one of the most revered birds of all time, the Ivory-billed woodpecker. He does it in fine style and while at the same time planting the delicate seeds of a conservation ethic. I don’t think you can read this book and not blush at the audacity of mankind, or bristle at the idea that this bird’s greatest enemy was … is … us.
As you probably know, an Ivory-bill was sighted again in 2004 and a small population appears to exist in the United States. When you have finished reading THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD BIRD, you can rejoice at The Nature Conservancy’s Ivory-billed Woodpecker site.
HOW TO PAINT THE PORTRAIT OF A BIRD
Poem by Jacques Prévert
Translation and Illustration by Mordicai Gerstein
Roaring Brook Press, 2008
Category: Picture book
“First paint a cage with an open door.”
So begins Mordicai Gerstein’s translation of Jacques Prévert’s 1949 poem Pour faire le portrait d’un oiseau. From this simple beginning, Gerstein and Prévert bring readers through the creative process in all its frustrating, finicky, heart-stopping and spirit-soaring glory.
Frustrating? “If the bird doesn’t come right away, don’t be discouraged. Wait.”
Finicky? “When the bird comes, if it comes, remain absolutely silent.”
Heart-stopping? “If it doesn’t sing, don’t be sad.”
Spirit-soaring? “But if the bird sings, it’s a very good sign.”
Oh, I adore this poem, these illustrations, this gem of a meditation on art. This is the perfect book for creative people. I’ve been reading it every morning to remind myself to embrace the process, my process … and I’ve been reading it again every night just to hear Gerstein and Prévert assure me, “Tomorrow you can paint another one.”
Happy reading! Happy creating!
(Those who read this post last week will now understand why I am so in love with this painting. It was created by Mordicai Gerstein, based on the art from HOW TO PAINT THE PORTRAIT OF A BIRD, to raise funds for The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Sigh.)
QUAKING
By Kathryn Erskine
Philomel, 2007
Category: Young adult fiction
I met Kathryn Erskine this summer at a retreat, and we traded copies of our respective books. I finally found time to read hers, and the experience was so powerful and so timely that I want to tell the world about it. Or, at least tell the part of the world that happens across my blog now and again.
QUAKING is the story of fourteen-year old Matt (not Mattie, and definitely not Matilda), who has lost both parents to domestic violence and who seems, when we first meet her, as if she might never recover. She is a bitter and closed off young woman, she is mean to the people around her—especially the Quaker parents who take her in—and for a few chapters I didn’t like her at all. But Erskine pulled me in slowly, revealing pieces of Matt at just the right moments, and in just the right doses. By the end of the book, when Matt has to choose between remaining invisible (and safe) and standing up for what she truly believes in, I was completely won over.
The timeliness of the book is tied up in its backdrop: the state of our national psyche in the days, weeks, and months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Matt’s story will make you remember those times, and it will make you think hard about war and peace and what being patriotic means to you. These questions are woven into Matt’s story, and the result is the best kind of novel: one that makes you think.
Thank you for writing this book, Kathy, and for sharing it with me.
FRUITLESS FALL
By Rowan Jacobsen
Bloomsbury, 2008
Category: Non-fiction for adult readers
It is probably impossible to have lived through the last two years and not at least heard about Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious ailment that has ravaged the world’s population of managed honeybees. CCD has been covered in every major newspaper and in magazines from The New Yorker to Martha Stewart Living. This fall, several adult books on the topic are being released. Here’s a tip: Rowan Jacobsen’s FRUITLESS FALL is the one to read.
Despite the media frenzy, very few people understand what is and isn’t true about CCD, or what the collapse of the honeybee will mean to humankind. Jacobsen’s straightforward, no-punches-pulled style forces readers to see the honeybee collapse for what it is: yet another indication that bigger is not always better.
If you are at all interested in the subject–and Good Lord, who isn’t?–I highly recommend this book. And you can think of it as a primer; once you’ve read FRUITLESS FALL you will be ready for THE HIVE DETECTIVES, written by yours truly and to be published as part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s ‘Scientists in the Field’ series in Spring 2010.
(Yes, I just gave you a homework assignment!)
