New Books: House Held Up by Trees

I do try, in children's books as in life, not to judge books by their covers. But it is a fact that with picture books, you often can pick out the ones that at least could be great before you ever crack the spine—since the illustrations are so vital, and you can usually get a sense of exceptional art from the cover.

Still, the cliché holds: Just looking great from the outside doesn't mean what's inside is going to live up to that promise. Sometimes the writing or even the overall concept is dull or lackluster, and even the most brilliant illustrations can't overcome that. And then there are what I've come to think of as "picture books for parents"—children's books that we find irresistible but that don't speak to our children in the slightest. (I know there are a few of these gathering dust as de facto bookends on our shelves.)

The worst of these kinds of books is that once you've encountered a couple, they make you doubt your own judgment: If it's this appealing to me, you think, does that mean it's going to bore my three-year-old silly? It was with such worries that I started reading a book I had gotten very excited about—House Held Up by Trees, by Ted Kooser and illustrated by Jon Klassen—to my younger son.

On the one hand, Kooser is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate, and Klassen is responsible for one of the very, very best picture books of the last few years, the delightful best seller I Want My Hat Back. And this book certainly passed the cover test with flying colors, thanks to Klassen's evocative, leafy rendition of the titular structure on it. On the other, well, Kooser is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate, and this is a children's picture book, and those sorts of factors do sometimes combine to create bookends.

Kooser's text was a little alarming at first, for being set in passages that are unusually long for a picture book of this type. But the simple, somewhat wistful tale of a house that, over many years, goes from being a beloved family home to an abandoned, delapidated one before being "rescued" by a ring of wild trees that sprout up around it—well, it mesmerized Griffin from the start. Kooser's placid style, matched wonderfully by Klassen's gorgeous illustrations, put Griff in a similarly peaceful place, a reflective one he reaches when we read bittersweet stories like The Giving Tree and The Birthday Tree—books House Held Up by Trees is quite reminiscent of. (Say, what is it about trees, anyway?)

So for the moment, I can trust my cover judgment again. House Held Up by Trees looks, at first glance, like a special book, maybe an instant classic. And, in fact, I think that's just what it is.

[Cover image courtesy of Candlewick Press]

New Music: Make Believers

Spring brings many wonderful things each year, but I only recently realized that one of them is "new albums from all my family's favorite kids' musicians." Lo and behold, what do we have here but Make Believers, a brand-new release from another top-of-the-personal-charts artist, the man who made hip-hop safe for kids' music and vice versa, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo?

First off, to anyone who isn't already familiar with 23 Skidoo, and is therefore sensibly skeptical that hip-hop for kids can be any good: This guy is the real deal, an Asheville, North Carolina–based hip-hop veteran who's spent the last five years or so bringing serious old-school beats and rhymes—think the late 1980s—to a pint-size audience. (As is so often the case, having a kid of his own—who's a featured rapper on every one of his albums, by the way—seems to have had something to do with that.) Yes, the subject matter is a little different than that of your average Public Enemy or KRS-One track, but the music and the flow will definitely set parental heads bouncing properly while they bring our kids to their feet.

23 Skidoo is letting his music for kids grow with his family, logically enough, and so Make Believers is aimed at a slightly older audience than his previous albums were: preteens, rather than the youngest elementary school kids and preschoolers. Accordingly, there's a shift in the sound—while the album as a whole remains family-friendly, a couple of tracks, like the hard-edged "Brainstorm" and the dance-friendly "Gotta Be You," (check out the video, below!) push the envelope of kids' music in satisfying ways, as 23 Skidoo has always done. There's a similar shift in the words, with an eye to the issues preteens face in school and life in general.

Then of course, there are the guest artists. For 23 Skidoo, who seems to be uncommonly plugged into the entire eastern seaboard's worth of musicians, that includes both another of our family's favorite kids' artists (Molly Ledford of Lunch Money, who's guested with so many of our favorite artists already that we're half expecting her to turn up on the next Radiohead album) and some remarkable talent we weren't previously aware of (singer Kellin Watson, indie-folk cellist Ben Sollee).

It's yet another story in the brick house of great music 23 Skidoo has been building over the years. And while I can't quite imagine what he's going to do when he gets to his teen album—doesn't it stop being kids' music at that point, and isn't there quite a bit of music-industry hip-hop marketed to that age group already?—I must also remember that there was a time I couldn't imagine good hip-hop for kids to begin with. And that this is the guy who changed all that. In fact, if there's one thing I've learned covering this beat, it's this: Never underestimate Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.

[Images courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo]

New Music: Can You Canoe?

The good news first: The fourth album from the Okee Dokee Brothers, the guys who helped bring bluegrass into the modern kindie-music mix, is their best yet. Themed around a real canoe trip the two band members, Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing (who've been friends since childhood) took down the Mississippi River last summer from Minnesota to St. Louis, Can You Canoe? features snappy versions of classic American folk songs ("Haul Away Joe," "The Boatman's Dance," "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O") as well as their own original compositions, all created on the trip itself. All 15 tracks, new and old, are played masterfully, and are full of an infectious, upbeat spirit that will appeal to kids and parents alike.

Now, the great news: The audio CD (as opposed to the MP3 download) comes with a supplemental DVD, featuring a 40-minute film about the Okee Dokees' canoe trip, shot on location along the entire journey. And it's spellbinding—the kind of DVD your kids make you play again immediately the moment it's over. You won't mind, either, because the film is remarkably well done, and endearing to boot. (I've embedded a preview that captures the feel of the film perfectly below.) The two friends entertainingly show kids how much fun an outdoors trip can be, offer them a rare window into the creative process of songwriting, and even provide some impromptu geography lessons. (Both our kids now have a much better idea of where in the country the Gateway Arch is located.) It's a real achievement.

Combine the two, and Can You Canoe? offers kids more than an hour's worth of enjoyable entertainment that's no less fun for being, well, kinda wholesome. (It's like one of those high-fiber, low-sugar cereals your kid miraculously can't get enough of.) And the Okee Dokees are clearly having such a good time making it that it may well inspire your kids to ask for some family outdoorsy adventures of their own this summer.

P.S.: If you happen to be in the Minneapolis area this weekend, you can even catch the official CD-release show—a free show, I should add—at Father Hennepin Bluffs Park tomorrow, Saturday, May 19th, at 11 a.m.



[Cover image courtesy of the Okee Dokee Brothers]

New Books: Hippopposites

Griffin, our three-year-old, is having a little trouble with opposites; he transposes them. On a cold night, when he wants another blanket, he'll say, "I'm so hot! I need to cool down." And now that spring is here and he doesn't need so many blankets, he'll push them off, complaining that he's cold. It's not just temperature, either--high and low, up and down—you name the pair of opposites, and he consistently switches 'em.

To the rescue comes Hippopposites, a new board book by Janik Coat in which an iconographic  hippopotamus goes through variations illustrating opposites of all sorts, from the simple (small and large, thick and thin) to the more ambitious (opaque and transparent—for which even our seven-year-old poked his head in for an explanation). Like most themed board books, it's simple in aim and execution, but it covers a remarkably wide range of examples, even moving beyond the strictly visual to the tactile (soft and rough).

The mod, colorful hippo icon makes it a quick favorite with the three-year-old set. While I don't know if it will put an end Griff's transpositions, it can't hurt, and in the meantime he's certainly having a lot of fun.

Plus, the book's title put me in mind of this Flight of the Conchords classic, always a bonus. (And while this song isn't, in fact, for kids, I never need much excuse to embed a video. If I did, I'd just reference Bret McKenzie's Oscar-winning song in The Muppets and the use of the Conchords' hysterical "I'm Not Crying" in the currently playing The Pirates: Band of Misfits—more about which soon....)



[Cover image courtesy of Abrams Books for Young Readers]

Maurice Sendak, 1928–2012

It seems like a lot of icons have been leaving us lately—Levon Helm a couple of weeks ago, followed by the equally terrible news last week of Adam Yauch's death. And this morning I see that now Maurice Sendak is gone.

The loss of MCA is more associated with my teenage and adult memories, and my shocked feelings with the fact that he was more or less a contemporary from my hometown. But some of my earliest memories involve Helm (my dad used to play a particular Band album a lot back then) and Sendak (for somewhat more obvious reasons). So, as happens more and more as one grows older, I feel like another piece of my childhood has disappeared.

But that's not quite right. Sendak (and Helm, and MCA) will always be with us, really. If I think about it, he's responsible for a couple of glorious firsts in my life already: My own first favorite book (In the Night Kitchen), and then, more recently, my first taste of that marvelous experience of reading a book I'd loved to my own child. With luck, someday his work will be part of a first moment with a grandchild someday, as well. 

And so my sadness at the author's passing should, really, be tempered by my gratitude at the joy he brought me and so many others when he was alive—and, even better, will keep on bringing to countless generations in the future. 

[Cover image courtesy of HarperCollins]

Role Models

At the Recess Monkey show in New York last weekend (fantastic, of course), I finally had the pleasure of meeting two fellow kid-entertainment bloggers whom I've known virtually for some time but never had actually met in person: Jeff Bogle of Out with the Kids, and Stefan Shepherd of Zooglobble.

And it occurs to me that, while I do have both sites linked somewhere over there on the sidebar, I have never taken the time to tell the readers of this blog: You'll get more useful information, more detail, and just way more good stuff in general on the subjects I cover at those two sites. (OTWK covers all the subjects I cover and more, while Zooglobble focuses specifically—and very, very comprehensively—on kids' music.) They are what I, in my most dreamlike moments, aspire to achieve with YKFK, pretty much always falling short.

On the probably very remote chance that you don't already, you should definitely check both of 'em out.

New Music: Invisible Friends

Dean Jones is everywhere. In the kindie-music scene, anyway: Producing albums by leading lights of the genre like Recess Monkey, The Deedle Deedle Dees, and Elizabeth Mitchell, as well as the wonderful Many Hands kids'-music compilation, which has raised more than $60,000 for Haiti earthquake relief to date. (He also collaborated with folk-rock band the Felice Brothers on a solo kids' album of his own, Rock, Paper, Scissors, back in 2010.)

But somehow, amid all that, Jones is still also the frontman of a leading-light kindie band of his own, Dog on Fleas, whose seventh CD, Invisible Friends, just came out. It's another toe-tapping, dance-inducing pleasure all the way through its 16 tracks, from the catchy "Treehouse" and the sweet, Paul Simon–esque "Fortunate Mistake" to the reggae-tinged "Charm Them Birdies."

The whole album is equally diverse in its influences, which range from late Talking Heads to Jack Johnson and Dan Zanes to both the adult and kid albums of They Might Be Giants to Deee-Lite to...is that Nino Rota? Like the prior Dog on Fleas albums, it's all upbeat and lots of fun for kids and parents alike.

And those kids and parents from the area around lower New York state will have a few chances to see Dog on Fleas live in June—first at the official party for this very CD on June 9 in the band's hometown of Rosendale; then on June 16 at the massive Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson (hey, that's my hometown!); and finally in what I suppose must be one of all kindie music's hometowns, Brooklyn, at Albee Square Park on June 28.

[Cover image courtesy of Dog on Fleas]

Chris Healy's Great New Book Hits Stores Today

Christopher Healy's The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom—which I was unable to resist posting about several weeks ago, so enthusiastic was I about it—officially comes out today. I'd been planning to put up a quick post today with a link to my original review anyway, but then I got some great news about the book that makes the perfect peg: Fox Animation has optioned the movie rights. 

It'll make a wonderful film, and I can't wait to see it. In the meantime, go and get your copy now, so your family can be part of the knowing crowd that "read the book first"! You and your kids will be so glad you did.

[Cover image courtesy of HarperCollins]

New Books: Arthur's Dream Boat

A quick post about a book I meant to write about back in March but that somehow got lost in the shuffle back then: Arthur's Dream Boat, another marvelous product of British author-illustrator Polly Dunbar's imagination. We've been fans ever since she came out with the quietly hilarious Penguin, which has long held a treasured place on the bookshelf of first our older son, and now our younger one (with an occasional revisit from the seven-year-old, even now).

This time, though, Dunbar is dealing in dreams, with all their surrealism infused with perfectly sensible internal logic. The title character, a young boy, wakes up one morning and tells his family about a remarkable dream he's just had, about a "pink-and-green boat with a striped mast." He adds detail after detail as he describes the boat to various members of his family, but no one pays much attention, not even to the fact that the very ship he's describing is growing on Arthur's head as he speaks!

Finally, Arthur shouts "Listen to me!"—and a huge wave breaks over the whole family, which finds itself suddenly all at sea in the boat with Arthur, sailing off into the setting sun. As is usually the case in Dunbar's work, the text is simple and spare, but the subtext could hardly be thicker or richer.

The idea for the book, the author explains in a note, came from a trick of visual perspective: Her view from a beach of a far-off sailboat seemingly perched atop the head of a young boy sitting near her on the shore. Illustrated in pencil and vivid watercolor, and pleasingly reminiscent of, without being imitative of, the best work of Maurice Sendak, Arthur's Dream Boat is an unusual, special picture book.

[Cover image courtesy of Candlewick Press]

New Books: Robot Zombie Frankenstein!

It's finally arrived: the picture book that has everything! This new arrival from author-illustrator Annette Simon not only features not only the three kid favorites mentioned in the title, but also pirates, superheroes...even, yes, pie. Basically, I thought my three-year-old son was going to explode the moment I read him the title.

But lest you think Robot Zombie Frankenstein! is merely something your kids will see as you stroll by it at Barnes & Noble and require that you purchase, let me assure you: This is actually a clever little story about two best-friend robots in a friendly game of costume one-upmanship. It effortlessly incorporates a whole series of different colored shapes, to address that whole child-development thing. It even has a truly sweet ending.

Which means that what's on its face simply an irresistible book for your kids will also turn out to be kinda irresistible to you, too.

P.S.: At the author's own website, there's a free PDF of RZF-related activity sheets fans of the book can download...

[Cover image courtesy of Candlewick Press]

In Concert: Recess Monkey

Regular readers of this blog are likely tired of hearing me rave about my family's fave kids' musicians by now, so let me try to encapsulate for newcomers: Recess Monkey is three Seattle schoolteachers, who come out with an album a year (at least!), all of which are fabulous. Yes, Beatles comparisons in any musical genre are absurd, but that's what you inevitably find yourself coming back to when searching for ways to describe their music.

And if it's spring, that means it's nearly time for the next Recess Monkey album! As ever, there's a unifying theme—the circus, this time around—and a nice punning title to go along: In Tents. The band has teamed up with producer Dean Jones (whose own group, Dog on Fleas, is another of the kindie genre's leading lights), and the result is yet another sublimely silly yet musically sophisticated gem of a CD. (I'll have lots more to say about the album closer to its actual release date in June, never fear.)

But that's not all the Recess Monkey news. They have upcoming live shows! Those in the NYC area can catch the guys at the 92 Y Tribeca this coming Sunday, April 29, at 11 a.m., as my family will be doing (look for us if you go!). And back in their native Seattle, they'll be previewing the new album at four early May shows at a real live circus setting, Teatro Zinanni. My seven-year-old and I can attest that they put on an irresistible live stage show—so if you're near either city, don't miss them!

[Cover image: Kevin Fry/Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Band photo with Dean Jones: Kevin Fry. Both courtesy of Recess Monkey.]

New Books: Taka-chan and I

I'd mostly seen chapter books thus far from the New York Review Children's Collection, those masters of reissuing forgotten classics of children's lit. Not that this was a bad thing, mind you—we've discovered many of our favorite kids' books from the collection, from the infinitely charming "cookbook" Mud Pies and Other Recipes to the irresistible Terrible, Horrible Edie (part of a series I still can't believe isn't better known to modern audiences).

But while everything the NYRCC puts out is marvelous, I hadn't seen much in the way of your typical big, square children's picture book from them (perhaps because the classic picture books tend to stay in print in the first place far longer than the chapter books do?). I should have known it was only a matter of time: Taka-chan and I: A Dog's Journey to Japan, by Betty Jean Lifton and illustrated with photographs by Eikoh Hosoe, originally published in 1967, has arrived—and is equally marvelous.

The book tells the fable of Runcible, a Weimaraner from Massachusetts who gets especially forceful with his beach digging one day and tunnels through the earth to emerge in Japan. (Or rather, I should say, the fable is told by Runcible in first-person narration.) There he meets a little girl named Taka-chan, who has been taken captive by a sea dragon. When Runcible meets the dragon, it explains that it is angry because the girl's father and other local fishermen no longer pay their respects to him, but that it will let Taka-chan go if Runcible can find the most loyal creature in Japan. He accepts this quest, which leads dog and girl deep into the teeming crowds of Tokyo.

Each page is illustrated with a black-and-white photograph by Hosoe, a renowned Japanese artistic photographer and filmmaker who's worked with the likes of Yukio Mishima. While each obviously had to have been carefully staged and directed to fit the narrative, there's an inherent naturalism to Hosoe's images that clicks perfectly with this book's conceit. If Taka-chan and I feels at all dated, it's simply because there aren't many children's books using this kind of framework anymore—and even that effect is only noticeable to parents, I think. Both my sons took to the book, and its typically expressive Weimaraner (photographed some years before Wegman!), right off, much as they take to any other picture book.

In other words, the NYRCC has done it again. May it continue forever!

[Cover image courtesy of NYRCC]

In Concert: Kindiefest 2012

A quick Friday bulletin to parents in the NYC area: The annual Kindiefest music conference is coming up later this month in Brooklyn, the weekend of April 27 to 29. There are lots of speakers and events—check out the details at the website linked just above if you're a musician yourself and interested to know more—but as always, the festivities end with a public concert on Sunday, April 29 (at Brooklyn's Littlefield) featuring some of kindie music's leading lights.

This year's roster includes SteveSongs, WeBop, Moona Luna, and Big Bang Boom. Tickets are $12 apiece (infants get in free), and the show starts at 12 noon. (It is, as they say, an all-ages show.) If you're going to be in or near Brooklyn in late April, check it out!

New Books: Outside Your Window/Step Gently Out

Spring is here (we'll ignore the fact that winter never really came to speak of, at least in the Northeast), and as always, with the season come nature-oriented children's books. Two from Candlewick Press stand out, both celebrating the arrival of new creatures and plants, both using simple poetry as their text, and both featuring astonishing and very, very beautiful images.

The first, Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature, is a set of nature poems for toddlers by writer (and biologist) Nicola Davies. Each page or spread offers a few lines of simple free verse on one aspect of nature a child might encounter (in any season, not just spring)—a feather on the ground, say, or tadpoles in a pond, or a formation of geese in the sky. And each subject is illustrated by Mark Hearld with big, vivid strokes of brush, pen, and collage—a style reminiscent of old Golden Books editions I remember from my childhood. If that's any indication, Hearld's illustrations, and this book, will have a lasting impression on the young kids reading it now.

The second, Step Gently Out, has a similar theme of new creatures in springtime, but with two main differences. First, its text is one poem by Helen Frost that stretches through the entire book, just a few words on each page or spread. And second, its poetry is illustrated by often mind-blowing photography by Rick Lieder. It's the kind of imagery you usually see in science books for kids these days, or on video in nature documentaries—incredibly detailed and precise close-ups of bees gathering pollen from a flower, or butterflies drinking drops off a leaf. Using these photographs as the illustration for a poetry book, however, was a stroke of brilliance: It removes the clinical scientific aspect that nonfiction biology books for kids often find hard to shake, and replaces it with a reinforcement of the sense of wonder that's always been my first impression of images of this kind.

Each book is marvelous and even gasp-inducing at times on is own, but they also complement each other particularly well as a matching pair.

[Cover images courtesy of Candlewick Press]

New Books: The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

As I've written before, it's always a thrill to discover a great new voice in kid lit. It's even more exciting when the new voice is someone you know. My former colleague Christopher Healy—who taught me all I know about children's entertainment, and is really the one who inspired me to take up writing this blog after the magazine closed—has written his first children's book. Which would be enough of an achievement on its own to congratulate him for, but I'm going to breeze right by that. Because The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom is easily the best kids' chapter book from a new author I've encountered since I started covering them. (It doesn't actually arrive in stores till May 1, but I can't hold back from writing about it any longer. And hey, you can preorder!)

As the title suggests, Healy (it feels odd to refer to him this way, but I may as well stick to blog precedent) has selected the world of classic fairy tales as the setting for his debut. And he's found a clever twist that none of the other great fractured-fairy-tale authors, from Scieszka and Smith to Goldman to Sondheim and Lapine, ever hit upon, to my knowledge: telling the stories of the various anonymous princes lumped under the name "Charming."

As the author explains, the bards who tell these tales tend to focus on the princesses and the witches and giants and such, and some of the facts—like the individual names and characteristics of the heroes involved, say—generally get lost. And so four princes as wildly different as Prince Frederick (Cinderella's prince, dashing and elegant but with no adventuring experience whatsoever), Prince Gustav (Rapunzel's, big and gruff and always ready to fight—and lose to—anyone or anything), Prince Liam (Sleeping Beauty's, a doer of deeds, and the only classic hero of the lot, really), and Prince Duncan (Snow White's, sweet but…a bit eccentric, let's say) all find themselves marginalized in their own stories under a single name that's not even theirs. Naturally, they're a bit resentful.

They also find themselves not as happily-ever-after as the bard tales would have people think. Liam, for instance, discovers that when she's awake, Sleeping Beauty is a remarkably unpleasant princess, and not the sort of woman he wants to marry at all; for his part, Frederick finds that Cinderella, after her years of toil, wants an adventurous life and is terribly bored by the cushy, luxurious one he's accustomed to. Trying to solve their personal problems—and eventually noticing that the bards they each loathe so much have all mysteriously vanished—the four princes wind up meeting and joining forces. At which point they realize two things: First, with the exception of Liam, they are not the most competent of heroic teammates. Second, they're up against a much more fearsome foe than any of them had suspected, one who threatens all their kingdoms.

Healy keeps the pace quick and the tone wonderfully light throughout—if you imagine a combination of The Princess Bride and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll have a sense of how funny this book is. He also proves expert at sharp characterization, from the four princes themselves to ingenious supporting characters like a bratty ten-year-old boy who's so evil and so devious that he's become the Bandit King and now runs the whole region's criminal element; a benign and pleasant giant who, unfortunately, has to work for an evil witch because he needs the job; and the land's best bounty hunter, who also happens to have a severe case of clinical depression.

The result is a true page-turner of an adventure story that also has its readers—young and old, but especially young—constantly in stitches. When I was reading the book to my seven-year-old at bedtime, I had to take lengthy pauses many times to allow Dash to recover from paroxysms of laughter. At the same time, he was always pushing to read more chapters than we had time for in a given evening, eager to find out what happened next.

Frankly, if I'd known he was going to be this good at this back when I was editing his section at Cookie magazine, I'd have encouraged Chris to miss a few deadlines and start writing his book sooner! I suspect this is the beginning of a long and ever more fruitful career for him, and as with all the other leading lights of the genre, I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. I also, of course, couldn't be more pleased to give The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom my highest recommendation.

[Cover image courtesy of HarperCollins]

New Books: Black Gold

Since my sons are still just seven and three years old, my coverage of history books for kids doesn't usually get out of the picture-book genre. But I'm enough of a general nonfiction reader myself that occasionally I run across something for older readers that I have to mention here (and save for my own children till they're a bit older).

The history of oil—that is, the petroleum kind—doesn't seem at first like much of a topic for a children's-book author. It's complicated, chemistry-laden, and politically, well, explosive. But the subject is, one must admit, one of the vital ones of our time, and writer Albert Marrin has taken a crack at a short history for middle- and high-schoolers of the greasy, precious stuff and humankind's interactions with it in Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives.

It's an ambitious crack at that, starting with the geological and chemical science of how oil and the other fossil fuels come to exist. Marrin then moves chronologically through man's first fleeting brushes against these powerful energy sources, up through the explosion (that word again) of their use beginning in—fueling, actually, if you will—the Industrial Revolution.

From this point on, the author does a commendable job of balancing the massively positive short-term (no more giant piles of horse waste fouling city streets) and long-term (um...all of modern technology) effects these energy sources have had with their negative counterparts (air and water becoming fouled in different ways; global warming). He concludes with a forthright presentation of the energy challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, from peak oil to melting icecaps to geopolitical power struggles. Somehow he does all this in a remarkably gentle, even-handed, and readable fashion that I think most parents of any nonradical political persuasion will be comfortable with. (Needless to say, those for whom any nonderisive mention of the words global warming is anathema may wish to stay away from this book. As well as most other nonfiction.)

It's a remarkable achievement, presenting this much information in such digestible fashion, and in a mere 181 pages. And when Dash or Griff in future years comes to me saying he has a report to write for school on oil, or energy in general, this is the book I'm going to send him to first.

[Cover image courtesy of Random House]

New Music: The Little Red Hen & Other Stories

The Good Ms. Padgett is something of a throwback, in these days of ultrahip, genre-hopping children's music. Her second kids' CD, The Good Ms. Padgett Sings the Little Red Hen and Other Stories, contains four classic children's stories told in a combination of spoken word and song, with acoustic-guitar accompaniment that put me immediately in a retro frame of mind, as if I'd suddenly switched on an old TV set and found myself watching Carole and Paula on The Magic Garden. (I suppose I am forgetting that retro is ultrahip...)

But Padgett, whose real first name is Anna rather than The Good Ms., knows what she's doing. She honed her storytelling skills in front of some of our nation's most demanding audiences—Brooklyn preschoolers—and it shows. (It doesn't hurt, of course, that she has naturally great pacing and a lovely singing voice.)

She's savvy enough to have chosen stories—including one of my own childhood favorites, the Billy Goats Gruff—that fall into repeating patterns, allowing for the kind of musical repetition that hooks preschool-age kids immediately. They learn the simple melody the first time through, and then can sing along themselves each time the pattern comes around again.

Yes, Pete Seeger and hundreds before him have been using this technique for years, but there's a reason for that: It works. As proof, I offer up my three-year-old, Griff, who was mesmerized by The Good Ms. from hello. Since he is not, as a rule, mesmeriz-able at this age by anything, even ice cream, for much more than a minute, that's a pretty serious recommendation right there.

[Cover image courtesy of The Good Ms. Padgett]

New Books: Up, Tall and High

Didactic books for beginning readers...well, just look at the phrase. Sounds like the kiss of death already, no? Yet in the right hands, books that teach basic linguistic concepts—like author-illustrator Ethan Long's Up, Tall and High—can be both irresistibly charming and remarkably effective.

In this book, a cast of three Mo Willems–esque birds demonstrate the practical meaning of the three somewhat related words in the title. Each lesson is very short and very simple, yet manages to get across surprising levels of complexity (the relativity of the word tall, for example). And each ends with a little punch line, revealed by opening a flap.

It's the kind of book our three-year-old keeps coming back to; the whimsical characters delight him. And while I don't plan to test the depth of his knowledge of the book's three keywords, the way he studies each little story have me convinced that the mini lessons are penetrating. Not that it matters, to be honest—his pure delight in reading the book is plenty.

[Cover image courtesy of Penguin USA]

New Music: Can't Wait

The influence of bands like Vampire Weekend (and, in some cases, the Broadway show Fela!) is widespread in today's music for kids, which is full of sunny African sounds and rhythms everywhere you turn. So when I first heard Can't Wait, the second album from Grenadilla, I first assumed it was part of that trend. (When will I learn not to assume things?)

Turns out the band's lead vocalist and songwriter, Debbie Lan, hails from Cape Town herself, and thus has a closer tie to kwela music and the African-style harmonies that inform Grenadilla's sound than the influence of any mere New York City band. Lan also happens to have a marvelous singing voice, clear and warm, that will make parents who are fans of Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, and Natalie Merchant feel right at home; the group's ensemble vocal harmonies are likewise marvelous.

And the kids? Suffice it to say that within 12 bars of the first track on Can't Wait—the infectious "Sitting on Top of the World" (an original, by the way, not the '20s classic made famous by Al Jolson)—my son Dash had left the breakfast table to start dancing in the kitchen. A song that can distract a seven-year-old from pancakes? I'm not sure there's any higher praise for its creators.

[Cover image courtesy of Grenadilla]

Security Blanket: Hands

We've recently reached yet another fascinating stage (aren't they all, really?) of parenting: Our three-year-old, Griffin, is starting to pick his way through many of the books his older brother, Dash, read back when he was three. It's interesting to see which he loves more than Dash did, and which of the old favorites he has little time for; there are ample examples of both. But the best endorsement our family can now give a children's book is that both kids have independently taken it to their hearts.

Hands: Growing Up to Be an Artist, by Lois Ehlert, is a 2004 book we'd almost forgotten about—it's been that long since Dash read it much. But Griff picked it off the shelf recently, and now it's again one of the new regulars at bedtime.

It's written from the perspective of a girl whose mother and father both work around the house in various handy, crafty ways—painting, sewing, building, planting. Ehlert illustrates this abstractly with busy close-up photo-collages of the materials and items being worked on, and cutouts of the different types of work gloves they use. The narrator then explain how she's been allowed to pitch in and learn how to do all these tasks, with a work space and tools of her own. The book ends with a series of work gloves that tie mother, father, and daughter together: one big crafty family.

This message of family creativity is, of course, nearly irresistible to parents of a certain bent, and this could have been one of those books that the adults adore but the kids are bored by. But Dash seized upon it as a toddler and didn't let go for years; it was a recurring favorite for a long, long time. Now Griff has done the same, and despite being a very different personality, seems to respond just the same way Dash did to Ehlert's simple text and multifaceted collages. 

The book also seems to magically survive toddler reads in a way most books with cutouts don't—somehow, mysteriously, those work-glove pages don't have torn fingers. Since Hands is not made of heavy-duty cardboard or anything like that, I can only attribute this to a weird respect the boys have for the book...realizing as I type it how very bizarre that statement is!

[Cover image courtesy of Harcourt Children's Books]