Picture Book: Saturday by Oge Mora

Illustrated by the author

2019 Hachette Book Group

HC $18.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.54 - 641 ratings

My rating:  4
Endpapers: monthly calendar with days crossed off, in shades of purple, lilac, and lavendar

1^st line/s:  "This morning Ava and her mother were all smiles.  It was SATURDAY!"

My comments:  Love the story, not quite so in love with the illustrations , but I do like them. done in collage where the cut paper is evident in many places.  Mom works six days a week, so when their Saturday plans keep having bumps in the road, they make the best of it.  Very upbeat, great message, positive and fun.

Goodreads: In this warm and tender story by the Caldecott Honor-winning creator of Thank You, Omu!, join a mother and daughter on an up-and-down journey that reminds them of what’s best about Saturdays: precious time together.
          Today would be special. Today would be splendid. It was Saturday! But sometimes, the best plans don’t work out exactly the way you expect….
          In this heartfelt and universal story, a mother and daughter look forward to their special Saturday routine together every single week. But this Saturday, one thing after another goes wrong–ruining storytime, salon time, picnic time, and the puppet show they’d been looking forward to going to all week. Mom is nearing a meltdown…until her loving daughter reminds her that being together is the most important thing of all.
          Author-artist Oge Mora’s highly anticipated follow up to Caldecott Honor Thank You, Omu! features the same magnificently radiant artwork and celebration of sharing so beloved in her debut picture book.

Poetry Picture Book - Every Month is a New Year by Marilyn Singer

Illustrated by Susan L. Roth

2018 Lee & Low Books

HC $20.95

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.57 - 109 ratings

My rating:  4

Endpapers: Solid bright yellow 

Oddities:  The book is read like  calendar - spine along the top.  

My comments:  What a wonderful concept for a poetry book, poems that explain or commemorate New Year celebrations (of all sorts!) in New York City, Scotland, Russia, Iran, Thailand, Jordan, New Zealand, Chile, Ancient Egypt, India, Ethiopia, Israel, Ecuador, Spain, and China!Susan L. Roth's illustration, done in cut paper, are equisite.  A lovely anthology with great resources and information at the end.

Goodreads:  Around the world, people celebrate the start of the new year at midnight when December 31 becomes January 1. But not everyone celebrates on this date. In fact, during every month of the year, some group of people in some part of the world is celebrating the new year. Chinese New Year is celebrated in January or February. Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, is celebrated on March 21. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in September or October. Diwali, celebrated in parts of India, falls in October or November. All these celebrations, and many others, have unique traditions and festivities that people observe. This collection of poems pay tribute to several of these fascinating festivities, some well-known and some lesser-known. Go on a whirlwind international tour of these diverse celebrations--enough to fill a twelve-month calendar, and more.

The Year Turns

We chose the date.

From the earth’s movement,

from the moon’s phases,

these clocks and calendars

we create.

Together

in parks and squares,

in temples and houses –

watching

the year

turn,

we

celebrate.

Casting Away Sins
Rosh Hashanah

This morning in the synagogue,
     we heard the shofar's loud, clear sound.
This evening in the house,
     we'll have apples dipped in honey,
          pomegranates with their ruby seeds.
But now, this sunny afternoon,
     we walk to the creek, our pockets full of bread.
"I'll tell you the truth.  I lost the money,"
     my big sister whispers.
"I'll tell you the truth.  I tore the dress,"
     I whisper back.
Then we toss the bread and our sins,
     and watch the flowing water carry them
          far, far away.

PICTURE BOOK - Luka's Quilt by Georgia Guback

Illustrated by the author

1994, Greenwillow Books

HC $16.99 - looks like it's still in print

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.35 - 49 ratings

My rating: 3.5

Endpapers: solid green, the color of the background of the quilt Tutu made for Luka

Illustrations are cut paper Collage!  Gorgeous

1^st line/s:  "My tutu lives with us.  Tutu.  That's Hawaiian for grandmother.  Tutu takes care of me while Mom and Dad work.  We do lots of things together.  I like that, and so does Tutu.  But all that changed when the quilt came along."

My comments:  I loved the cut paper collage illustrations (gorgeous!) and the beautiful quilt that Tutu made for Luka.  I love all the information about Hawaii.  But I don't love that Luka's pretty much a spoiled little brat.  Nothing I can change about that, it's part of the story, and the story about making the quilt, and the leis, is super. Just don't like the kid.  At all.

Goodreads:  Luka and her grandmother Tutu are best friends until Luka shows her disappointment at the traditional Hawaiian quilt that Tutu makes for her. Tutu is hurt, Luka is upset, and things just aren't the same anymore. But when Lei Day comes, the two set aside there differences to enjoy the holiday.
          "Guback's storytelling proves as affable as her bright, intricate cut-paper collages." -- Publishers Weekly.

The Twelve Days of Springtime - Deborah Lee Rose

A School Counting Book
illustrated by Carey Armstrong-Ellis
2009, Abrams Books for Young Readers
32 pages
$15.95
Endpapers:  Lime/springtime green
Title Page:  Colorful, four of the students outside playing just after a rain shower

"On the first day of springtime, my teacher gave to me . .
. . . a garden to water carefully."

There are eight kids in the class, each with their own separate personalities.  Their outfits and activities change as each day passes.  The teacher's facial expressions are great - they always react to what the kids are doing.  We watch a couple of aquariums in the classroom change as the days pass, one with caterpillars, the others with tadpoles.  There's so much to see in each illustrations, Ella and I poured over each one.

At the back, the artist described how she created the illustrations, first sketching, then outlining in pen and ink, then painting with gouache and detailing with colored pencils.  Very cool book.

Mattoo, Let's Play - Irene Luxbacher

Kids Can Press, 2010
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Dark rusty clay

Illustrations: Black and white with added colors of dark red, olive green, mustard, dark blue. Collaged a bit - mainly the fabrics, I think. It's different and very cool. All the way to the edge of the page.

Story: Simple, but boy does it bring back memories. A boisterous little girl keeps trying to get her cat, Mattoo, to play with her. She's imaginative and her ideas are clever and loud and wild. Poor Mattoo just isn't up for any of it. In each of the illustrations you can see his fluffed-up tail peeking out from wherever he's trying to hide. It isn't until the girl decides to go on a safari, where you have to be really quiet to see animals, that Mattoo comes around.

There aren't a whole lot of words in this book, there don't need to be. it's a great story, imaginative and creative.

Irene Luxbacher's website.

Tsunami - Kimiko Kajikawa

Illustrated by Ed Young
Philomel Books, 2009
(Ellsworth Library 8/3/09)
$16.99
32 pgs.
For: ages 6-10
rating: 3.5
Endpapers: orange

A "long ago in Japan" folktale, white font on black on bottom eighth of page, illustrations collaged on rest of double-page spreads.

Ojiisan - grandfather - lived high on a mountain overlooking the sea. One day, after what seemed like a minor earthquake, the sea receeded, making more and more and more beach. Ojiisan knew what would happen when the sea came back - and it would devour all 400 villagers. So he set fire to every bit of his valuable rice fields to beckon everyone up the mountan. He saved them all.

Good verbal description of a tsunami - the collages (purposely?) leave a great deal to the imagination.

Amelia to Zora - Cynthia Chin-Lee

Twenty-six Women Who Changed the World
Illustrateda by Megan Haley & Sean Addy
Charlesbridge, 2005
$15.95
Rating: 4
for: middle grades
920.72C PCPL
Endpapers: dusty purple

The illustrations for each page are done in mixed-media collage, with an actual photograph for the face. Also included on the page is a short biography and quote. This would make a great model for a class ABC book.

Women included are:

Amelia Earhart (flight, adventurer)
Babe Didrikson (golf)
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (astronomer, 1st female professor at Harvard)
Dolores Huerta (United Farm Workers co-founder)
Eleanor Roosevelt
Frida Kahlo
Grace Hopper (computer pioneer)
Helen Keller
Imogen Cunningham (photographer)
Jane Goodall (naturalist/chimps)
Kristi Yamaguchi (gold-medal figure skater)
Lena Horne (singer, activist)
Maya Line (architect/Vietnam War Memorial)
Nawal El Sadaawi (women's right's activist)
Oprah Winfrey
Patricia Shroeder (politician)
Quah Ah (Pueblo painter)
Rachel Carson (environmentalist)
Suu Kyi (soo CHEE)(activist/Burma/Myanmar)
Teresa (Mother Teresa) (missionary)
Ursula K. LeGuin (SciFi writer)
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (India/UN peace pioneer)
Wilma Mankiller (Cherokee politician)
Xiefen (she EH fun) (China/women's rights)
Yoshiko Uchido (author)
Zora Neal Hurston (Black author)

The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood - Agnese Baruzzi & Sandro Natalini

Published 2007, in US 2009
Templar/Candlewick
Rating: 4.5
Ages 3+
$14.99

This is a prequel to the originial Red Riding Hood Story with letters to pull out of envelopes, doors to open, sheer shower curtains and gingham aprons to peek behind, pages of books to turn, tabs to pull, paper wheels to rotate , popups and popouts and glitter - altogther 16 pages, plus endpapers, of interactive entertainment with a good story to boot!

Wolf want to be good, so he asks the nicest person in the forest, Little Red Riding Hood, to teach him how. First on the list is to stop eating meat. She teaches him well, he soon becomes the nices person in the forest -- to Riding Hood's chagrin. So she decides to change him back (and we know the rest of the story to come....)

Delightful!

The Imaginary Garden - Andrew Larsen

Illustrator: Irene Luxbacher
2009
For: Young Kids
Kids Can Press
Rating: 4.5 (maybe even 5?)
Endpapers: Pale Blue (why?)

The story is cool, the art is wonderful, a mixed-media collage. There is lots of dazzling white which brings out the greens, purples, and yellows of the extremely vibrant garden. Black and white line drawings enhanced by painting with subtle collage thrown in: cut paper, fabric...... Painting happens before your very eyes, page by page. They even show how to paint a bird with simple strokes of color! I may have to upgrade my rating to a five, the more I study the pages. Very, very cool.

When Theo's Poppa moves from his old house to an apartment, he has to leave his fabulous garden behind. But, on his 4th floor (I counted!) balcony, on a huge canvas he has placed against the wall, wearing gardening hats, they paint an imaginary garden from the ground up - adding elements as the growing season progresses. I love the cover - here's where I desire another poster for my room.

What a cool book. And very clever.

In the Land of Words - Eloise Greenfield

POETRY
New and Selected Poems
Illustrator: Jan Spivey Gilchrist
2004 (Why have I never seen this before? ? ?)
Rating: 5, oh yes
$16.99
Catalogued 811.54G

The library just purchased this book - I'm the first one to borrow it, it looks brand new. I've never seen or heard of it, but it was published in 2004. Where has it been hiding? It includes over twenty wonderful poems, many about poetry and poems and words and story. And Jan Spivey Gilchrist, who has teamed up with Eloise Greenfield in many of her books, has created fabric collage illustrations! She uses a running stitch about a quarter inch from the cut edge, and they look wonderful. This sure makes another great model - have kids find (or write) a poem they love and illustrate it by cutting felt. If kids are younger they can glue to adhere, but stitching could be done of at least the largest cut piece. Wonderful, wonderful.

How can I choose just one poem to include here? I can't.

In the Land of Words

In the land
of words,
I stand as still
as a tree,
and let the words
rain down on me.
Come, rain, bring
your knowledge and your
music. Sing
while I grow green
and full.
I’ll stand as still
as a tree,
and let your blessings
fall on me.

Story

I step into the story,
I leave my world behind,
I let the walls of my story
Be the walls around my mind.

New faces and new voices,
I listen and I see,
and people I have never met
mean everything to me.

I worry when they worry,
I quake when danger’s near,
I hold my breath and hope
that all their troubles disappear.

I don’t know what will happen,
I never know what I’ll find,
when I step into a story
and leave my world behind.

This is Just to Say - Joyce Sidman

POETRY
Illustrator: Pamela Zagarenski
2007
48 Pgs.
Rating: 5
For: Middle Grades
Endpapers: Azure

18 poems of apology, followed by 17 responses (one is a poem for two voices) - written to and from the students in Ms. Merz's class. They show the give and take that go on in relationships - between friends, siblings, parent and child, teacher and student, pet owner and pet. These are the inner thinkings of the kids in a class, and I read through it twice with delight. It's really splendid.

The book opens with William Carlos Willim's "This is Just to Say," an all-time favorite of mine, which is a model for the poems to follow:


This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgve me
they were delicous
so sweet
and so cold.

-----William Carlos Williams

The illustrations are very, very different- creative and fun. They appear to be collaged onto the page; bits and pieces of drawings on graph paper, notebook paper, ripped construction papers, dictionary pages. Colored-in line drawings rubber stamping, paint and creativity cover the edge-to-edge colored backgrounds. It's an picture book/altered-book-lover's dream.

I will include a poem of apology and its response. It was VERY difficult to choose which to include, so I went through and read all the poems for a delightful third time.

To Manga, My Hamster

I wish I could set you free
like that day you escaped
and ran all over the house.
That was an amazing day.
My mother screamed.
My sister cried.
All because you were loose somewhere,
burrowing through pillows and toys.

When Mom finally found you
huddled in the mop bucket
(and you bit her)
you looked so fierce,
like your wild cousins
that roam the jungles of Asia.
I wish I had jungles to give you.
I wish that could be your life.

Please forgive me.
All I have to offer
is this warm, cozy cage
and my fingers
scratching behind your ears.

--------by Ricky

Sorry Back, from the Hamster

I'm sorry I bit your mom's finger
and hung on to it like that.
Hamsters are not normally
bloodthirsty,
but I'd had a lot of adventures by then
and I was tired.
Her hand was a huge scary claw
coming at me.
The blood tasted like rust.

The truth is, at first
I was so, so happy to be free!!!
But later I was so, so glad
to be back
curled in the warm palm
of you hand.

.------by Ricky (writing for his hamster)

It would be fun to have each student in a class take a different pair of poems, read them over and over, and "learn" about their subject/s. They could then create more writing - prose or poetry, and more art, about what they have added to the picture of these subjects in their minds.

Chicken Little - Rebecca & Ed Emberley

For: Kids
2009
Rating: 4.5
$16.95
Endpapers: Bright yellow

Cute and funny.
Great, clever vocabulary.

"Chicken Little was not the brightest chicken in the coop." When an acorn hits him on the head, he runs for his life. One by one he bumps into, then adds to his flock; Henny Penny, Lucky Ducky, Loosey Goosey, and Turkey Lurky until they run into Foxy Loxy....who invites them all in to a long dark "cave" (his mouth) to hide. Luckily, the last page, which happens to open out, ends with AH CHOO -- and the yummy fowls take off in another direction.

Rebecca Emberley and her dad, Ed, created this book - Ed lives in Massachusetts and Rebecca in Maine, which was interesting to discover.

This lookes like it must be cut-paper collage - another great model!

For another blog review see: Blog from the Windowsill

An Artist's America - Michael Albert

For: All ages
Published: 2008
Rating : 5 YES! My kind of book...
48 pgs.
17.95
Endpapers: Med. Blue

Mosaic collagees from recycled consumer product boxes and labels - cereal, tea, cookies, popsicles, soup. Easy. Pop art. Very cool.

Told in the first person, Michael Albert tells about his artistic journey, detailing how he got to where he is now. He shows dozens of his works,explaining the whys and hows. Flags made from Coca-Cola and Frosted Flakes boxes, cutting and pasting a postcard of the Empire State Building. Slightly reaearranging pieces of a Frosted Flakes box; Cheerios and Trix, Captain Crunch and A to Z candy wrappers and even dollar bills! He then shows his "epic works" which are really creative, fascinating and time-consuming, including the Gettysburg Address, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a Mt. Rushmore made of Mr Clean, the Quaker Oats guy, Captain Crunch, and Colonel Sanders. He's even done a collage of the first 190 digits of Pi!

At the end of the book he shows his workshops with kids and simply tells how to do it yourself.

This book is a real winner. I want to see some of his originals! www.michaelalbert.com