It figures that as soon as I write about how difficult it can be to find standout children's nonfiction, a slew of books come along to prove me wrong. The latest discovery is Richard Panchyk's Charting the World, and where Winter's Tail played its real-life subject matter into a children's-book format, this is more an adult-style book made interesting for and accessible to children. (As a result, we're also talking slightly older children here—the book itself says ages nine and up, but its sweet spot really feels like tweens and even teens to me.)
Simply put, this is a book about maps, and Panchyk covers all the bases, starting with the history of geography itself and then moving on to that of mapmaking, from, as the subtitle says, "cave painting to GPS." It's true history, too, not dumbed down in an attempt to appeal to its younger audience in the slightest, which I know kids who are truly interested in the subject will appreciate.
But what keeps Charting the World from being nothing more than a good middle-school textbook—and mind you, it would be an excellent base for teaching classes on geography, cartography, or even certain aspects of history, I think—is the 21 activities Panchyk has interspersed through the tour. Kids are given the chance to put the skills they're reading about into direct action—using a contour map to build a 3D island model, say, or surveying their own backyard, or making a nautical map of a playground puddle.
This hands-on approach to learning is, of course, a time-tested tool of kids' science books, but it's novel and refreshing to see it applied to a nonfiction children's book that's as much about history as science. And it works like a charm in making a book that could, despite its many vivid images and illustrations of maps past and present, have seemed dry at first glance more appealing and inviting to kids.
In covering kids' music, I've found quality of all kinds and genres, but I have to admit that I gravitate toward the stuff that, even while catering to childhood interests in its subject matter, sounds like music my wife and I might have listened to before our boys were born. (I never turn down a good opportunity for denial, basically.)
The Hipwaders are a band with such a sound. As the title of their fifth CD, The Golden State, implies, this is a California group, and their music nods to a wide, eclectic range of home-state icons, from the Beach Boys to Camper Van Beethoven. Lead singer/guitarist Tito Uquillas adds his own thumbprint to the mix with his college-radio-style vocals, sort of a mix of Michael Stipe, Fred Strickland, and Cracker's David Lowery. The tunes are catchy, daring in their use of unusual harmonies and vocal lines, and altogether enjoyable to kids and parents alike.
That alone makes the Hipwaders a good choice to listen to, but this group also draws parents—who are usually, let's face it, happy when kid bands are good enough to be mere toe-tapping background music—into the lyrics more than usual. That's not because they don't cover kid subject matter; The Golden State features pet dogs, bullies, toy trains, and the like. It's more that the Hipwaders...approach everything a little differently. "Hey, Josie," for instance, is a song about a new baby on the way, but its anthemic chorus—simply "Hey, Josie, baby come on"—funnels the anticipation into power pop from some lost summer beach hit of the '80s or '90s.
They follow this offbeat way of tackling typical topics throughout the album—"Stand Up to the Bully" savvily uses a ska sound (think the English Beat by way of Vampire Weekend) to give its message proper grounding rather than the expected parental naivete; the laid-back, Cars-esque "Slow Children at Play" addresses why kids gather to play on pavement rather than in their backyards. Every song nails the perfect tone in its writing, speaking to kids the way they want to be spoken to: as an audience worthy of respect and direct discourse.
The Golden State is that rare kids' album that the whole family will listen to all the way through—and even be a little disappointed when its 16 tracks are done.
I've become, in my time-pressed adult life, a big nonfiction reader, for many reasons. But I've always found children's nonfiction—at least beyond the work of giants of the genre like David Macaulay—to be difficult territory.
It's not that there's a lack of good nonfiction kids' books out there, especially in the science-and-nature genre, which offers tons of books about all sorts of animals and bugs and plants. It's more that there's not a lot that separates any one of these titles from the rest—most are driven by gorgeous, vivid photography and feature fairly basic writing. I always find myself at a loss to find reasons to recommend any particular one.
The dolphin saga Winter's Tail, from documentary-film and nature-book veterans Juliana, Isabella, and Craig Hatkoff, however, is an exception. While it also has its share of nature photography, this book is driven by its storytelling—so much so, in fact, that its tale is the basis for a major (fictionalized) family film that's coming out this fall. The saga of a dolphin that loses its tail in a crab trap and eventually learns to survive and thrive with a prosthetic one designed by a company that makes artificial human limbs, it grabbed the imagination of our six-year-old from the start and didn't let go.
Of course, we've also added the movie to our agenda later in the year (we’ll see how the true story mixes with Hollywood screenwriters and Harry Connick), but for now, I'm just grateful to have discovered a kids' nonfiction book I can say truly is several notches above the rest.
The technology of paper crafting in publishing seems to have undergone a revolution in recent years, with the results perhaps most evident in the realm of pop-up books. No longer the simple, somewhat cheesy little books of our generation's childhood, these are now dazzling works of paper engineering, led by the amazing work of Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda.
But until now, the intricate folds and designs themselves were the wonder in these books. Ido Vaginsky's Spin takes the genre in another new direction, one of artistic double entendres. Pull the tab, and the cow head does a series of (surprisingly speedy) twirls before settling upside-down—at which point you realize that viewed this way, it's an owl. And so on with a series of cleverly designed illustrations that change form depending on how they're viewed.
The combination of paper mechanics—again, like old-fashioned tabs and pop-ups on steroids—and visual magic is dazzling and, in fact, somewhat thrilling. All of which makes Spin a whole lot of fun.
I'm starting to be grateful that my kids and I speak the same language Australians do, and can thus easily enjoy the uniquely imaginative creative works natives of that country are creating for children. The Upside Down Show,Martine Murray's Henrietta series, the illustrations of Sophie Blackall and Freya Blackwood—the list goes on and on.
Australian writer Libby Gleeson's Half a World Away(which was illustrated by Blackwood), a lovely, dreamy treatment of the childhood-friend-moves-away trope, is another product of Down Under that's become a family favorite. So we were eager to read her latest, The Great Bear, which features dark, evocative illustrations by Armin Greder, as you can see from the cover.
And that's appropriate, for this is a far darker book than Half a World Away. Set in an ambiguous time and place that feels like Europe before the Industrial Revolution, it's about a circus bear whose existence is not pleasant. The bear is dragged from town to town, then made to dance in front of jeering, often abusive crowds. Until one day, that is, when he decides he's had enough—and lets out a huge roar that frightens the audience away before simply floating up into the sky to join the stars, in a series of wordless pages reminiscent of the art-only sections of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. (Though in fact, The Great Bear's use of this technique came first—it first appeared in Australia back in 1999.)
The book's end notes explain that this story is based on a dream Gleeson had (dreams played a significant role in Half a World Away as well), and Greder's illustrations reflect that, going from slightly nightmarish to open reverie as the plot unfolds. The dark setting is a bit eyebrow-raising for a children's picture book, and I can imagine some of the younger set finding it all frightening, but our three-year-old was riveted (in a good way). And the surreal denouement is quite beautiful to watch unfold, for child and parent alike.
Like Gleeson's earlier book, The Great Bear uses words and images to express a combination of consciousness and subconsciousness, in a unique way. I think many kids—and many adults—will be irresistibly drawn to it, as we've been.
It's tempting, especially when parenthood is brand-new, to jump at every beautifully designed kids' toy you see. Then, after a few months (or, uh, years…), you realize that your son hasn't touched that gorgeous recycled-wood horse since the day it was unwrapped, and that what you have here is a very small piece of shelf art—and a present you bought, as it turns out, for yourself.
And hey, that's fine. But we do want to get toys and games our children actually enjoy, too—and yet, it would be nice if they weren't all Lightning McQueen-themed, wouldn't it? That's where Blue Orange Games comes in. For years now, the company has been making board games with lovely design and craftsmanship that are also a lot of fun to play. Most of them to this point—like most really good board games, period—have been for older kids, tweens at the youngest. But its latest, which is not, in fact, a board game, is happily for ages six and up.
One of those simple-yet-complex sorts of games, Pixy Cubes are a set of 16 cubes featuring varied designs (solids, diagonal halves, crescent shapes) in various colors (red, green, yellow, blue) on their faces. There are various ways to play, too: In the "speed" game, players race to match their cubes to a pattern on a "Challenge Card"; in the "memory" option, they have 10 seconds to memorize a card's pattern before trying to become the first to reproduce it with a combination of cubes. There are scaled levels of difficulty, and nearly endless possibilities. (The less competitive-minded may well enjoy the creativity of designing their own patterns and combinations with the cube faces.)
There's a developmental/educational aspect here as well, of course—Pixy Cubes are aimed at helping with young kids' color and shape recognition, and, obviously, memory skills and creativity. But those feel more like side effects than the main agenda. And since Blue Orange wisely made the cubes not merely attractive and fun, but also small, light, and extremely portable (not to mention quite reasonably priced at $16), Pixy Cubes are really a perfect travel game, too.
Well, it's time for me to rave about another New York Review Children's Collection release, as I do pretty much everytimeonecomesout. To recap for the uninitiated: This imprint finds great out-of-print classics of children's literature, and then reissues them in beautifully designed (and suitably old-timey-feeling) hardcover editions. I find I cannot say enough good things about the NYRCC.
My latest song of praise concerns The Rescuers, written by Margery Sharp in the late 1950s (and, in the late 1970s, adapted into a Disney film). An adventure story about three unlikely mice companions who endeavor to free a (human) poet from a fearsome prison, it's written in a style that will be familiar to anyone who's read other children's writers of the same period (E. B. White, say). Well-paced and charming (despite an occasional rather arbitrary reflection of typical 1950s sexism), the book is well-suited to entertain a new generation of young readers.
This is especially true because the evocative illustrations are by one of the masters of the time, Garth Williams, who is responsible for an absurd number of the images associated with the period's classic characters, from Wilbur and Charlotte to Stuart Little to Chester Cricket and Tucker Mouse. He's in equally fine form with The Rescuers (couldn't Disney have gotten him to do the animation for the film?), managing to get a remarkable amount of humor and expression into the faces of his mice protagonists Miss Bianca, Nils, and Bernard.
As is so often the case with NYRCC reissues, it's sort of hard to believe this book went out of print in the first place, in fact. (I suppose that's a reflection of where the book industry stands these days.) But the silver lining is that we can now own these books in the imprint's handsome hardcovers. As always, I'm waiting eagerly to see what the next one will be.
[Cover image courtesy of New York Review Children's Collection]
When I heard that Mick Cooke of Scottish band Belle and Sebastian had a children's album out, I was expecting something a little different, sure. Somehow, though, I wasn't prepared for just how eccentric it turned out to be—or, to be honest, how much fun.
Down at the Zoo emerged from what's now the album's last track, the infectious "The Monkeys Are Breaking Out the Zoo." Belle and Sebastian recorded that song for Colours Are Brighter, a 2006 charitable children's album that Cooke himself put together featuring many prominent pop artists; the response was strong enough that Cooke started writing some other zoo-centric songs for kids, which he's now released under the name Too Many Cookes.
The result is extremely quirky—in the most wonderful way. Each song is introduced by the zookeeper, voiced by B&S drummer Richard Colburn in classic "Hello, children" style (and, naturally, a lovely Scottish burr). In turn he introduces us to the various zoo residents, who do not always behave exactly as one might have expected. (The rather fierce-sounding subjects of "We Are the Tigers," for instance, reveal their fondness for chocolate pies.)
The lyrics are simple and basic enough for the very youngest children, but the pleasant and constant randomness (the pachyderms who've eaten too many buns in "The Elephants Are Feeling Sick," the penguins who enjoy playing horns and wind instruments in "Playtime for the Penguins") had my six-year-old giggling in no time as well. And the upbeat tunes follow suit. They do contain much of the complexity one might expect from a Belle and Sebastian member (more than one, actually, since several pitched in here), including some marvelous horn arrangements. But they're also a throwback to earlier and simpler styles of kids' music than you tend to hear nowadays.
It all ends up feeling something like a children's-music rock opera—as if Tommy had been made child-appropriate and then performed by the Muppets. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but also like it could be a lot of fun—and that's what Down at the Zoo is like. I can certainly attest that kids love it almost instantly, if my boys are any indication, but parents will find themselves smiling at these songs—both bemusedly and joyfully—as well.
Whenever possible, we prefer to go grocery-shopping without the kids. Yes, some children are calm, patient, and helpful in the supermarket, or so I've heard, but neither of our sons fall into that category, and when they're along we can count on endless distractions and variants of "No, we're not buying that!"
So April Stevens's Edwin Speaks Up, in which a harried mother ferret attempts to get her shopping done with her five young kids in tow, really spoke to us. Mrs. Finnemore, it must be said, reacts somewhat more calmly than I would in similar circumstances without large doses of Xanax, but the squabbles among her kids and their pleas for chocolate take their toll in another way: She keeps forgetting where she put things—her car keys, her pocketbook, even her shopping cart itself.
Luckily, her youngest child, Edwin, is one of those helpful children I mentioned before. Less luckily, he isn't quite talking yet, though if Mommy listened a little more carefully she might be able to heed his timely and sensible warnings. For example, when she can't find that pocketbook, having left it on the roof of the car while puttng Edwin in his carseat, he says, "Frigle dee ROOFY plowck"—but a fellow shopper in the parking lot has to point out to Mrs. Finnemore where it is. Edwin continues to be the garbled voice of reason throughout the trip, watching Mommy go by with the wrong cart (he's in the right one) with a glum "Gloody pooper do no LEAVEY," and finally taking matters into his own hands when his mother is about to check out without the main thing they came for.
Stevens achieves just the right tone of charming hilarity throughout, and not just for similarly harried parents—our almost-3-year-old loves this book passionately, insisting on constant re-readings. (This doubtless has more than a little to do with the typically lovely art by one of my favorite illustrators, the insanely talented Sophie Blackall, as well.)
Now, do you think there's a chance his enjoyment of the book will make Griff behave more like Edwin on our next shopping trip?
It's a wonderful feeling to share a favorite book from your own childhood with your kids, and relive the experience of that discovery. (Reliving anything through one's kids can be dangerous, admittedly, but as long as the focus remains on their interests and desires and not on the parent's, I think it can be innocent enough.)
There's an alternate way to get a similar feeling, though: the subgenre of new children's books that I'd term nostalgic. These books reproduce the feel, in illustrations or storyline or overall writing style or all of the above, of classic children's lit of a bygone age. They need to be well executed, of course—the kids who are still, after all, their primary audience won't be interested in the slightest if they're not—but when they are, they get into special territory: magical to parents and children alike.
That's pretty much what Jeanne Birdsall's Penderwicks books are like. The chapter-book series, whose first entry won a National Book Award for Children in 2005, is one of those stories of the day-to-day adventures of a tight-knit family that has been a cornerstone of children's literature going all the way back to Little Women. And without mimicking in any way—her style is her own, ultimately—Birdsall places her books firmly in that vein, as well as that of other classics like Anne of Green Gables,The Secret Garden, and The Railway Children.Parents who are fans of this kind of book—you know who you are—will melt from the moment they see the lovely, nostalgia-evocative cover art. (The only drawback for adults is that the occasional reminders that these books are set in the present are really jarring; the tone and subject matter lull you into a world that you don't expect to have call waiting!)
Birdsall grabs the kids and keeps them, too, never fear, with the adventures of Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty Penderwick, four Massachusetts sisters ranging from young teenager to preschooler. The third book in the series, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette,returns to the summer-vacation setting of the original, with the first source of tension being the fact that the younger three sisters will be separated from the oldest, Rosalind, for essentially the first time in any of their lives as they head up to their aunt's house in Maine. As in the earlier books, the author has made each of the girls so three-dimensional, so real, that their interactions, their conflicts, and their love for each other are both engrossing and ultimately endearing. (Let's just say there's a good reason Birdsall got that award.)
Kids—yes, particularly girls, but not solely—of the voracious-reader variety who are between 8 and 12 or so will adore these books. And their parents—again, not just moms—will get a nice faux-nostalgia kick at the same time.
When you see a lot of children's picture books on a daily basis, there's a danger of forgetting the old warning about books and their covers: You start to think you can tell almost at a glance whether a given book is going to be interesting or not. Hubris comes easily.
In most cases, the feeling is more or less justified, too. Most of the standouts of the genre are at least partially illustration-driven, and you can indeed tell right away, in most cases, when you're dealing with something extraordinary in that regard.
But then comes the book that serves as your comeuppance, the notice that you're not the at-a-glance expert you thought you were. For me, that book is actually a best-selling series: Judy Schachner's Skippyjon Jones books, which I first came across back in my Cookie magazine days. They were already wildly successful even then, but the first one I came across looked like a lot of other mildly interesting anthropomorphized-animal picture books out at the time, and didn't stand out all that much even after a quick read. I didn't really get it; with a shrug, I put it aside.
My older son eventually came across the series and immediately adored it, and a few bedtime readings later I belatedly saw why. Skippyjon is a Siamese kitten with big ears who likes to imagine he's a Chihuahua, with a group of imaginary Chihuahua friends, Los Chimichangos, with whom he goes on adventures. And the tales about him, which I initially found just mildly amusing and even a little silly, are in fact surprisingly interesting explorations of a family's acceptance and encouragement of a child's vivid imagination. Schachner's rhymes are subtly clever, and the storylines themselves, especially Skippyjon's relationship with his mother, are endearing. The latest entry in the series, Skippyjon Jones, Class Action, which deals with its protagonist's desire to go to school (which his mother sensibly notes is something dogs, not cats, do), is a worthy addition.
All that said, another issue turned up as I got to know the series better, one that's a subject of conversation on many a blogout thereright now. Skippyjon uses "his best Spanish accent," as the first book puts it, when he's on his Chihuahua adventures, and many of the books' rhymes rely on adding "-o" to the ends of all sorts of words. To borrow a catchphrase from Daniel Tosh, is it racist?
There's no question of anything demeaning or ugly-stereotypical about anything Skippyjon and his pals do, and the books are if anything a celebration of the Chihuahua persona, so ultimately I'd say not really. But I did have pangs of doubt when reading the book aloud for the first time, and I can certainly see how a children's book series centered around a Taco Bell chihuahua accent might be considered offensive. (Bloggers and commenters of Latino background seem to come down on both sides of the matter, from what I've been reading.) Certainly, thought-experiment parallels with other ethnicities and dialects quickly move into extremely hot water.
At any rate, the whole episode has been a reminder that a whole lot more can lie below the surface than is immediately apparent in children's books. I really can't judge them by those covers.
I like words. A lot. Heck, I have to fight verbosity in my own writing. So why is it that so many of my favorite children's books of the last few years are wordless, or nearly wordless, picture books? And why does every single one of these I come across turn out to be so good? I have theories—only the best, most accomplished author-illustrators even attempt the challenge, or are allowed to attempt it by their publishers?—but no answers.
The latest is A Ball for Daisy, by Chris Raschka, who certainly fits into my “most accomplished” theory. He's been responsible for several of our family's most treasured children's books already, and his sparing use of words or even mere sounds has always been a trademark, from the Caldecott Honor winner Yo! Yes? to the concentrated encapsulation of jazz Charlie Parker Played Be Bop.
A Ball for Daisy is about a happy little dog and her beloved red ball. The first portion of the book shows us her pure joy in it as she bats it around, bounces it, even cuddles up to sleep with it. But on a playdate with another dog outside, tragedy strikes—the other dog runs off with it, and as she chases after to get it back, the ball is punctured and destroyed. Daisy is devastated, until her little-girl owner and her friend, the owner of the second dog, come up with a solution.
It's a very simple story, serving up a gentle but effective message of sympathy to kids who've lost a treasured toy themselves on the side. The reason it's so wonderful, of course, is the illustrations themselves; Raschka is marvelous at capturing every doggie emotion, from manic upbeat energy to big-eyed sadness and disappointment to overwhelmed gratitude and final satisfaction. This may not be one of those visually stunning wordless books—it isn't trying to blow you away with the sheer gorgeousness of the art, as many do—but it's a great example of how good storytelling doesn't always require words at all. And it's a sure bet for any young child who has a doggie herself—not to mention a guaranteed smile for her parents.
We just got back from our first road trip of the summer—the first we'd ever attempted with the aid of a backseat DVD player to get our boys through the long stretches. And for a few low-on-scenery parts of New York State, they turned out to be a godsend—but we discovered that they do have their downsides. I suppose I should have known that introducing screen time to car journeys would also mean introducing the tedious tug-of-war over screen time; our six-year-old, Dash, started begging to plug in the moment we climbed into the car, and got petulant if we denied him. Two-year-old Griffin was a bit less insistent, but that was probably only because sometimes the watching seemed to be giving him motion sickness. (Thankfully for everyone, he was aware enough of the problem to say something before it was...too late.)
So we also leaned heavily on music, both the kids' variety (a lot of Recess Monkey, natch) and not (we had the Civil Wars' Barton Hollow on heavy rotation, the title track in particular). But this was also the first long car ride we've embarked on during which everyone in the vehicle is old enough to participate in traditional passing-the-time games, like I Spy, the Alphabet Game, and 20 Questions. And they were a big hit—especially the latter, which we at first thought was a little over Griff's head (he had a tendency to repeat the same question after it had been answered, always with strangely perfect comic timing) until one of his supposedly random guesses ("Is it a camper?") was exactly right.
Now, it's no news to anyone that these kinds of games are fun for family car rides, I know; there's a reason they've survived as long as they have. And God knows that sometimes parents need something, anything, to keep the "Are we there yet" refrain at bay. (Seriously, that phrase must be an innate developmental human trait, like standing upright, because both our sons started using it almost before they could say anything else.) But in our age of endless distractions and stimuli, it was a nice reminder to me, at least, that simplicity is not only still possible—sometimes it's more fun, too. I think even Dash would agree.
This is the second in a series of posts I began last fall; once again, I'm relying heavily on my blog's only assistant editor, 13-year-old Elizabeth, the older sister of one of my older son's best friends. Without her, I wouldn't have a prayer of being able to cover these books--so really, this is her post. Without further ado, here's some of Elizabeth's picks of the last six months' best novels for older kids:
The Clockwork Three, by Matthew Kirby. Three separate plotlines involving three children—an orphan street violinist, an apprentice clockmaker, and a hotel maid—are slowly woven together in this adventure mystery (the author's debut). As it turns out, each one has part of the answer to the puzzle one of the others is trying to solve, and they must learn to work together to deal with very real dangers.
Elizabeth's take: A great mystery, this book has many twists and turns, in addition to interesting characters. Once you start, you can't put it down.
The Queen of Water, by Laura Resau and MarÃa Virginia Farinango. This novel, based on a true story, tells of Virginia, a seven-year-old Andean girl in Ecuador who is sent by her desperately poor parents to be the servant in a wealthier mestizo household. It's rather like something out of a Dickens novel—she is beaten, and promises to send her to school are broken—but she educates herself nonetheless in secret, and in the meantime becomes accustomed to a very different way of life from the one she'd known. Then, at age 12, Virginia has the chance to return to her parents...and finds herself ambivalent. This is a powerful caught-between-cultures tale. Elizabeth's take: This book is touching and inspiring. It's written so well that it's almost hard to believe it's a true story. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.
The Chaos, by Rachel Ward. You didn't think we were going to get out of a teen-novel roundup in 2011 without an dystopic novel, did you? The second book in Ward's (and no, she's not that one, though she is also British) Numbers series is set 10 years after the first one, in 2026, and follows young Adam, who has inherited his mother's curse from the first book: When he looks into someone's eyes, he can see the date of their eventual death. When he notices that an awful lot of the strangers' deaths he can't help but encounter are on the same date in the future—New Year's Day 2027—he realizes that he has to try to find out what this apocalyptic event is and try to stop it. Even on just her second book, Ward writes crackling suspense and dialogue, making for a real page-turner. Elizabeth's take: This book is told from an interesting perspective: a boy who doesn't use proper grammar. And you can follow the plot without having read the first novel, Numbers. I'd recommend it to those who enjoy science fiction or apocalyptic stories.
When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. This is cheating a little—it's the paperback edition of this winner of the Newbery Medal and many other awards, and even it came out several months ago—but we missed it in hardcover, and Elizabeth was so enthusiastic that I couldn't leave it out. It's a tightly written (and fairly short, as these novels go) story about Miranda, a 1979 New York City sixth-grader whose world starts to unravel after she has a falling out with her best friend, Sal, and then starts getting mysterious anonymous notes about an upcoming tragedy she must try to prevent. Presented in Miranda's pitch-perfect first-person voice, and referring directly and indirectly to many of the classic novels sixth-graders of the 1970s and '80s would have been reading (A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy), it's pretty much an instant classic in its own right.
Elizabeth's take: I could not put this short but eventful novel down! It has that quality that makes you think, "Well, maybe just another few pages...or chapters...." The characters are believable and easy to relate to. All in all, worthy of the Newbery on its cover.
[Cover images courtesy of Scholastic (The Clockwork Three, The Chaos) and Random House (The Queen of Water, When You Reach Me)]
When a new children's book reminds me of one of the major classics of children's lit--Barrie, Hodgson Burnett, Sendak--well, that's high praise in my book, and it doesn't happen often. Maria van Lieshout's Hopper and Wilson is reminiscent, in the best possible ways, of Winnie-the-Pooh, both thematically, in its simple tale of two stuffed-animal friends, and visually, with its sweet illustrations of the friends' voyage to the end of the world (right down to the visible stitches on both Hopper, a stuffed elephant, and Wilson, his dear stuffed-mouse companion).
None of this is to say the book doesn't stand perfectly well on its own two feet, though; van Lieshout (like Milne, and Saint-Exupery, and Arnold Lobel) is one of those writers who find profundity in simplicity. Her story of the terrified bravery of both friends, as they encounter and overcome terrible dangers on their travels, is by no means complex, but children and adults alike will find it deeply moving and satisfying. (It certainly made its way into my two-year-old's bedtime rotation in short order.) And the general Pooh-ness only aids that, I think, giving Hopper and Wilson a soothing and familiar feel--a special feel, really.
Sting. Gene Simmons. Add to the list of schoolteachers-turned-star-musicians the kids'-music trio known as Recess Monkey. Okay, so maybe this Seattle-based group isn't as well-known as those other two, but to my mind they're among the true superstars of the kid-music genre, right up there with household names like Dan Zanes.
It's also a bit incorrect of me to use the word turned, since guitarist/lead vocalist Drew Holloway, bassist/pianist Jack Forman, and drummer Daron Henry are all still teachers; somehow they find the time to write and produce an album a year and even go on occasional tours on the side. (For their explanation of how that works, see my interview with them from earlier this week.) Even more remarkable is that what started out as an excellent kids' band back in the mid-2000s has gotten better and better with each CD. Their latest, Flying!, is one of the four or five most musically proficient children's albums I've heard.
By this point in their recording career, Recess Monkey has established its own confident sound, basically power pop with a strong 1980s new-wave bent (think the Cars, Joe Jackson, and XTC, though no single influence dominates). Their confidence level is audible, and with good reason—they're superb musicians, they know how to write a hook, and when they branch out into new territory—as they do several times on Flying!, swerving assuredly into Latin music on “Covered in Band Aids,” for instance—they do so expertly, the results less pastiche than just Recess Monkey songs with a twist. These are songs you find yourself humming in the shower before remembering they're for kids—and then keep on humming even after you do.
Of course, they are aimed at kids, with subject matter like Band-Aids, invisible friends, and a beloved pet fish (actually, that last one might not have been out of bounds for some adult acts of the '80s). But even lyrically these guys stand apart, finding subtly sophisticated angles and points of view for their songwriting—drawing, I suspect, on their jobs as grade-school teachers for a lot of that perspective. (“Bravest Kid in the World” in particular is one of the deeper explorations of what kids go through when they’re about to do something wrong you’ll find in a pop song.) It doesn't hurt that Holloway's vocals on these lyrics is top-notch; powerful, versatile, and always compelling, he gets my family’s vote as the best vocalist in kids' music today.
What I'm trying to say here—beyond, of course, that you should pick up Flying! at your first opportunity—is that Recess Monkey is one of those rare kids' bands that even parents who don't much care for kids' bands (you know who you are) may want to give a try. And parents who do, and aren't already aware of this still-not-quite-as-famous-as-the-Police band—well, you’ll want to go get the whole back catalog.
Regular YKFK readers will already know of myenthusiasm for Recess Monkey, the prolific (album a year!) and astonishingly talented band from Seattle. Simply put, they're part of the very top echelon of today's kids' music. And while they don't yet have quite the name recognition among parents nationwide that leading lights like Laurie Berkner and Dan Zanes do, well, I think it's only a matter of time.
So as my small part in making that happen, I'm devoting my posts this week entirely to Recess Monkey; on Friday I'll put up my review of their brand-new superhero-themed release, Flying!, here and cross-posted at Momfilter (but I'll leak the gist here: It's their best yet—go get it now!).
As for today, the band was kind enough to take time out from a hectic touring (and teaching!) schedule for an interview. (Many thanks to them for that.) Here's what (above, from left) Drew Holloway, Daron Henry, and Jack Forman had to say about their songwriting process, the Beatles, and faux facial hair:
YKFK: As I understand it, you guys are full-time schoolteachers, and at least some of you are also parents. How on earth do you find the time to write, record, and put out a great new album every single year?
Jack: It’s true—we’re all still elementary school teachers, and both Drew and I have human children; Daron has a canine child.
Drew: It takes copious amount of coffee!
Daron: Or a wormhole! No, seriously—we're really excited about the music, and working in the classroom gives us a lot of inspiration with each new album and each new song idea. We worked our recording schedule into our winter and summer breaks.
Jack: It really is true that we can’t keep up with all of the ideas that kids throw at us each day at school. I think if you were able to record every single thing that a class of kids says in a day, you’d have enough material for an entire career’s worth of albums!
YKFK: I've noticed that many of our favorite kid-music artists have been contributing as guest artists one another's albums lately, in almost a glorious chain: Molly Ledford from Lunch Money on your new album, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo on Lunch Money's last year, etc. How have those collaborations come about—meeting each other at festivals, Tor Hyams, magical brain waves, all of the above?
Drew: As a function of coming together in Seattle and jet-setting to places like Kindiefest, we’ve been able to connect with lots of different bands and musicians.
Daron: Collaboration comes pretty easy for us—we all teach in very collaborative schools, so from our first album to now, we’ve always incorporated our friends and students into the process. It just so happens now that we know more people across the country, so it’s very exciting that we get to broaden the circle.
Jack: Our schools are pretty nontraditional, and are looking for a more diverse group in the faculty than traditionally trained teachers—we learned early on how exciting a curriculum can be when you look around at talents within the faculty. That’s actually how we first discovered each other as musicians. Since forming the band, we’ve worked hard to find inspiration wherever we can. And there are tons of inspiring people in kindie music right now!
YKFK: I'll spare you the infamous "do the music or lyrics come first" question, but can you tell me a little about your songwriting process? Do the three of you write together, or do you come up with ideas separately and bring more fully formed songs to the group?
Jack: We start a new album very much the same way that we create curricula—we reflect on where we’ve been, and we set some goals about where we want to go next. That usually leads to an idea for an album theme, however comprehensive or loose that is....
Daron: The theme helps us focus on ideas that are coming at us every day. For example, when we started talking about a superhero record, I noticed that kids at camp were throwing their stuffed animals from bunk to bunk and called them “super stuffies!” [Editor's note: See the video, below.] That seemed to fit perfectly into the theme!
Jack: The theme helps us listen. So we just keep a list of ideas that fit into the theme, and talk about them. But that’s where Drew takes over.
Drew: It is very melody-driven for me, so having the brainstorm and a list of ideas helps to put words and lyrics together with the many tunes that are running through my head. Some songs are like turning on a faucet, and others are more like a trickle and require a lot of revisions and knuckling down to make progressions, lyrics, and melodies work together.
Jack: The demos are really helpful when we come into the studio, but most of these are songs that we’ve never played live when we record them. So they’re constantly changing, even from take to take. Probably the best example from the last few records is "Haven’t Got a Pet Yet"—it was very different at first, and we actually re-recorded it a little bit later in a sort of Vampire Weekend style.
YKFK: Do you feel your music has changed and evolved over the course of your…let’s see…five, six…seven CDs? Does the songwriting come easier with experience than it did when you first began?
Daron: I believe it’s changed as what we’ve listened to has changed. We continue to be inspired by all kinds of music, and as we get more connected to new kinds of music we blend those styles together and make our own sound. One thing I think we have done is that our albums more now than ever capture the energy that we bring to our live shows. I think our new records have more energy than they used to.
Drew: Through our music collections and new instrument purchases, we’re consciously exploring new ground. It influences our records, definitely, but I think at the core we’re very much still the same band that started over five years ago. It’s important to do our best work but also stretch ourselves creatively.
Jack: Each new record is very much new. We try really hard to never walk a similar path as previous albums. People all have their favorites along the way, but our favorite is always the one we’re about to start!
YKFK: I threw open a round of questions to my family, so...from my wife, Whitney, a dream/reality question: Which pop or rock stars of our youth (or today, if you prefer) did (or do) you each wish you could be? And which do you honestly think you're most like?
Daron: I’d like to be Prince before hip surgery. He’s an amazing musician, and pre–hip surgery he had all of the moves. In reality, I think I’m the child of Ringo Starr and George Harrison: a little bit goofy, a little bit mystical.
Drew: I think I fit the profile of a songwriter pretty well. I don’t know if I’d want to be Andy Partridge or Brian Wilson, because there aren’t always great moments along the way.... Maybe I could take the highs but not the lows? For all of my genre-hopping, I’m probably Paul McCartney—especially, as John Lennon said, with all of the "granny songs.”
Jack: Interesting that we think in reality that we’re the Beatles! Sticking with that theme, I wish that I were Paul McCartney, but I think I’m probably a little bit more like John Lennon...with a dose of Weird Al and maybe a hint of Burt Bacharach.
YKFK: From my six-year-old, Dash (who is obsessed with your album art for Flying!): Could you talk a little about your various superpowers?
Jack: With pleasure! My superpower is being able to put on a fake mustache in public. I keep half a dozen in the glove box in my car for unexpected mustache needs. My last mustache was used in our “Ice Pack” video!
Drew: Think a moment isn’t wistful or corny enough? THINK AGAIN! Super Cheese is here to lay it on thick! “Haven’t I heard that pun before??? YUCK!”
Daron: Not sure if that T-shirt matches those shorts? Up in the sky! It’s...PROFESSOR PINSTRIPE! Whisking you away on a fashion holiday!
YKFK: Finally, from my two-year-old, Griff: What does Mayor Monkey play?
Jack: He plays a band manager, and the cash register. In reality, he doesn’t do much beside print 8-by-10 glossy photos...of himself!
I'm not much of a reader of modern fiction (and if you're wondering what this has to do with children's books, bear with me—I'll get there). Given the limited time I have for reading at this parenting-laden time of my life, I want to be sure that when I embark on a novel, I really, really love it. And the chances of that always seem higher if the book's provenance goes back past last month's New York Times Book Review. (It's not that there isn't great stuff being written constantly—it's just that more of the mediocre stuff from ages past has fallen away; I'm increasing my odds.) So I mostly read a classic novel I somehow missed in all those high school and college classes—there are an alarming number of them!—or I stick to nonfiction.
Children's books, though, don't seem to work this way; if anything, there's an even greater focus on the present. There are classics here too, sure, but fewer of them, and I've tended to cover them with my kids quickly or not at all. To be fair, children's lit as a reputable field for "serious" writers has a relatively short history, so it's not entirely surprising the canon isn't quite as large—but I've been unable to help feeling there must have been more back there somewhere, lost in the mists of time.
Which is where the New York Review Children's Collection comes in. I've writtenbefore about its lovely editions of classic and largely out-of-print kids' classics—a few fairly well-known, but most under the radar, at least to me—but I never feel I manage to express quite how wonderful the whole enterprise is. (It's reached the point that when I see the NYRCC has something new out, I feel, a bit absurdly, rather like I did as a child on Christmas morning.)
The latest NYRCC rediscovery is Allison Uttley's A Traveller in Time, originally published in Britain in 1939. It's a cozier read than its title makes it sound—this is more Sir Walter Scott than Jules Verne—but it's nonetheless an adventure story. It's also a ghost story of sorts, in which young Penelope, sent with her siblings for the winter from London to an old family farmhouse in the English countryside, finds herself stepping through doors into the house's own past—an eventful one. She finds her own 16th-century ancestors involved in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, from her imprisonment by Queen Elizabeth, but her own 20th-century knowledge of how badly this was to turn out for all concerned is of little help in persuading her forebears to alter their course, as events move inexorably toward their bad end.
The writing is certainly British old-timey in many ways, and probably was even in 1939, but Uttley— in her own time something of a noted children's-book author, with more than a hundred titles to her credit—slowly and expertly draws the reader into a tale that proves to be as much about free will, loyalty, courage, and fatalism as about time travel. She also uses the constant and largely unchanging setting of the old English farm to illustrate Penelope's realization that whatever happens in the affairs of mankind, life goes on around us all. What appears at first a simple adventure tale turns out to have quite a lot of depth.
Now, the style and pace of Uttley's writing certainly won't be to the taste of every modern reader, child or adult; there's a lot that's dated about this book (in fact, in a way, being dated is kind of the point of this book). But I think tween-age readers (as well as those a little younger than that) in search of a compelling story with a female lead character, and patient enough to allow it to unwind on its own, bit by bit, will find A Traveller in Time exceedingly rewarding.
[Cover image courtesy of New York Review Children’s Collection.]
It seems all our two-year-old's favorite books right now are about dreams. (It's really kind of fascinating.) Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen—always a favorite of mine back when I was around his age, too—has become a nightly event before bedtime, along with another similarly magical book that came out last year: Franklin's Big Dreams, by David Teague, with illustrations by Boris Kulikov.
It's about a young boy who, upon going to bed one night, is confronted with a construction crew (shades of the opening of Time Bandits, though with more purely benign results). He's understandably surprised, but the workmen ignore him and proceed with their work laying tracks; when they finish, a train roars through the room. After it passes, the crew disassembles the track and our hero is left to dream of trains. The next week, it happens again, this time with a runway and a plane, and the following week it's a canal and a cruise ship. Each time, Franklin notices familiar figures on the various vehicles that he can't quite make out, including one very familiar one. Finally he gleans what's happening and is able to use the mysterious occurrences to go somewhere he's always dreamed of going.
Teague's text and Kulikov's suitably dreamy art work together marvelously. The words are as simple and matter-of-fact as dreams usually are in tone (that feeling that even when nothing makes any sense, everything is also somehow normal), while the illustrations are warmly dramatic and mysterious, full of possibility. There's a magic to Franklin's Big Dreams that's spot-on for this subject matter, and as with Sendak's classic, Griffin clearly finds that invigorating, asking for it to be read to him over and over again before settling in for his own evening of dreamscapes.
The categories of kids' entertainment (as of all entertainment, I guess) are blurring these days. I've covered audiobooks before, and I've covered the amazing variety of out-of-copyright (and thus free or extremely inexpensive) online books, and I've covered iPhone/iPad apps. Now there's a product that combines all three: Audiobooks for Your Kids, an $0.99 app that provides audio versions of public-domain classics, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to The Secret Garden to The Jungle Book.
All are read by volunteers from around the country (via the LibriVox project—if you find yourself so motivated, you can join in and do one yourself!), and while none of them will be mistaken for Patrick Stewart, the ones I’ve heard so far are all perfectly solid. And especially for parents traveling this summer, the price (the aforementioned 99 cents for everything, all 30 books, with more promised) and the accessibility (anywhere you have a consistent enough 3G signal for moderate streaming) can't be beat.
[Image from the 1895 edition of The Jungle Book (in the public domain) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
and where Winter's Tail played its real-life subject matter into a children's-book format, this is more an adult-style book made interesting for and accessible to children. (As a result, we're also talking slightly older children here—the book itself says ages nine and up, but its sweet spot really feels like tweens and even teens to me.)
is reminiscent, in the best possible ways, of Winnie-the-Pooh, both thematically, in its simple tale of two stuffed-animal friends, and visually, with its sweet illustrations of the friends' voyage to the end of the world (right down to the visible stitches on both Hopper, a stuffed elephant, and Wilson, his dear stuffed-mouse companion).
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