Brownie & Pearl Step Out - Cynthia Rylant

Illustrated by Brian Biggs
Beach Lane Books, 2010
24 pages
$12.99
No Dustcover - endpapers are bright pink (If this takes $4-5 off a cover price, who needs a dust cover?)

Simple verse. Too simple. It almost reads like a Dick and Jane primer. I love Cynthia Rylant's words, her voice - but this needs a little bit of word-snazzing.

"Brownie likes the party.
She plays games.
She eats cake.
She eats ice cream.
She eats more ice cream."
.....and that's four pages long!

The illustrations are fun - very pink and green and girly. Simple faces show expression, I like 'em.

Quick synopsis: A little girl, Brownie, and her cat, Pearl, go to a birthday party. She's a little shy and almost doesn't knock, but Pearl goes through the kitty door so she knocks, enters, and has fun.

The Bookshop Dog - Cynthia Rylant

1996
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Lavender with painted-on purple dog bones, coral hearts & yellow dots

Artwork: No white - all paintings. Thick painted borders (you can see the paint lines) with some sort of small embellishment (swirls/dots, whie diamonds with red dot, dots in triangular sets of three, x's, moon slivers, triangles with dots, v's, x's and o's, rectangles with dots - a great model for student-made pages! Colorful great font, great illustrations to a fun stry.

Story: A nameless lady owns a bookstore. She has a yellow lab that she LOVES and takes everywhere with her - so she renames her bookstore after Martha Jane. Everyone loves Martha Jane, and much of the community comes frequently to the bookshtore and get to know her. When the bookshop owner has to have her tonsils removed, everyone bickers over who will "babysit" Martha Jane. A happy ending ( think "Here Comes the Bride") to a dog-lovin' story.

All in a Day - Cynthia Rylant

Illustrated by Nikki McClure (with unbelievable paper cuts)
2009
$17.95
Rating: 4 (A hard book to rate. Does it work as a book? It works as a poem, and the illustrations are A+, but will it appeal to a child?)

Ten years ago, when traveling south from Maine, I routed us through West Virginia so that I could see where Cynthia Rylant "came from." Well, we went in the middle of July when everything is green and beautiful, and, as a tourist, I saw mainly touristy things - but I now love West Virginia. I've been back twice, and would love to go again. I really loved Cynthia Rylant's words. I loved her poetry and stories for young adults. Since then she's written many verses and stories that have become picture books, and I haven't been quite as excited over many of them as her previous/first work. I read them all, though!

This simple poem says so much. The illustations look so simple, but, oh my! They are paper cuts! ! ! Simply amazing. Alternating double page spreads of pale blue, black and white, with bright yellow, black, and white, are STUNNING. How can anoyone do this?

So many wasy to incorporate this into my classroom next year! I think I'll read the poem as a poem, without the illustrations. Then I'll show them the illustrations. Then I think we'll divide the poem into the number of kids in the class, with each designing their own class. Paper cuts will be encourage, or a mixture of papers cuts with other media - water color, particularly.

It would also make a wonderful whole-group activity as one of the sessions for our school's annual Passport to Peace!

A day is a perfect piece of time
to live a life,
to plant a seed,
to watch the sun go by.
A day starts early,
work to do,
beneath a brand-new sky.
A day brings hope
and kindness, too...
a day is all its own.
You can make a wish,
and start again,
you can find your way back home.
Every bird and every tree
and every living thing
loves the promise in a day,
loves what it can bring. (Gorgeous page!)
There is a faith in morningtime,
there is belief in noon.
Evening will come whispering
and shine a bright round moon.
A day can change just everything,
given half a chance.
Rain could show up at our door
and teach you how to dance.
The past is sailing off to sea,
the future's fast asleep.
A day is all you have to be,
it's all you get to keep.
Underneath that great big sky
the earth is all a-spin.
This day will soon e over
and it won't come back again.
So live it well, make it count,
fill it up with you.
The day's all yours, its waiting now...
See what you can do.