New Books: Awesome Snake Science!

OK, I know not every kid likes snakes. A lot of adults don't like snakes, not even a little bit. But our older son does, and so when—just a few days after he'd proudly finished his first-grade year-end report on snakes—we came across Cindy Blobaum's new book Awesome Snake Science, well, it just felt like it was meant to be. (Luckily, he's not quite old enough yet to have felt cheated at not having encountered this book before he had to write his report....)

Because if Dash were to describe the perfect nonfiction snake book for a kid his age, he'd come up with this one. It's not merely full of snake facts and figures—though it certainly has enough of those to be suitably comprehensive for even the most obsessed child—but it also includes 40 fun snake-themed activities, from making a set of foldable fangs that demonstrate how the real things work with snakes' malleable jaws, to (safely) simulating cytotoxic venom. (Most parents will be pleased to know that no actual snakes are required for any of these activities.)

It's exactly the kind of hands-on learning book that takes what could be dry subject matter and makes it nearly irresistible to children—really a great achievement by Blobaum. Not that Dash cares about that; after we take this book on vacation to Canada with us, I expect he'll be mimicking rattlesnake noises all month long. (Let's hope he doesn't get too good at it.)


[Cover image courtesy of IPG]

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: 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: Winter's Tail

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.

[Photo: Whitney Webster]

New Books: A Butterfly Is Patient

 
Spring took a little longer to settle in here in the Northeast this year—at least, the aspect of spring we dreamed about all winter, the part that doesn't involve massive amounts of rain. Now, it seems, the season of balmy but not hot and sticky weather, of flowering trees, of butterflies, is finally here, for a least a few weeks before summer kicks in.

So it's appropriate that the latest book in author Dianna Hutts Aston and prolific illustrator Sylvia Long's ravishing nature series is out now, too. A Butterfly Is Patient follows in the impressive footsteps of An Egg Is Quiet and A Seed Is Sleepy, but it's my favorite entry so far, largely because the subject matter lends itself especially well to Long's vivid aesthetic. As usual, Aston's text is just the right amount of background—she has a great feel for providing enough information for a solid base of knowledge, and then allowing the art to take over. (Which it certainly does.)

So while readers of this book do in fact get a good primer on the life cycle of butterflies, it‘s nothing like a dry biology textbook, thanks to the tapestry-like pages of golds and greens and violets that often seem about to fly off the page. A Butterfly Is Patient makes for a wonderful reading experience for kids with a strong interest in science and nature (and a pretty satisfying browse even for those with less of an interest). Not to mention a great way to celebrate spring.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]