Monday Reading - Books Loved

          Visit Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.  

          The last time I posted, I shared this book by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin. Now I want to congratulate them for being chosen for as a finalist for the National Book Award! See that new shiny sticker!

            I've been visiting my son and family out of town, so read very little while there, but have tried to catch up this past weekend and want to share a variety of books!

             Yes, finally I understand why all the raving about this story. It is a beautiful read, one I had to put down for my trip away, and raced through last Thursday. There are alternating time settings, a lot of puzzles, especially brilliant that while Candice and Brandon are working out the biggest puzzle, we readers are also tested in solving Varian Johnson's puzzle challenge to us. I enjoyed adding each piece, trying a shape in one place or in another, right along with those two young kids whose friendship grows through some ups and downs, and ends with an honest partnership. There are pieces that might surprise, but ones that will show other kids how life can work out just fine through some honest talk between friends, between kids and parents, and between other kids and other adults (if only they would listen to each other). Don't miss this if you have put it off a while as I did!

             Hey, Kiddo is the graphic memoir of author-illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka. You may know his Ted talk in which he shares this story, but now, in a limited palette that fits his life, it becomes something to love despite the darkness, to admire because of the goodness that he also showed. Unsparing love from all his family, including his heroin-addicted mother whom he only wishes he could be with, and finally just be with a little bit more because full-time was never possible. They didn't count on raising another child, but his grandparents took him, ensured he was as safe as they could make him. Even in the lowest points, they supported and encouraged him. From his beginnings, I felt the underlying sadness throughout but the celebrations happened, too. Jarrett showed in examples throughout that his art passion truly became his "saving grace". Perhaps there are others who have not been touched by drug abuse and sorrow because of it, but my family has. This memoir feels like a kind of hand-holding, something young adults can hold onto with hope in Jarrett's story as inspiration.
      You can hear Terry Gross interview Jarrett on NPR here! Just by chance, I was listening while out on errands this week. It was nice to hear his voice again.

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           I've also had the joy of receiving some special books from Candlewick, some that may be the right gift for a special person or class in your life.

         Recently published in the U.S., Ingela P Arrhenius (remember her giant animal book!) has created another over-sized book all about cities. In City, she highlights all the wonders one can find, perhaps not in every city, like subways, but most pages are filled with familiar sights. There are things, like newsstands and airports and construction sites, filled with all kinds of people enjoying those places. She also included people in their own pages, like mail carriers and skateboarders! Graphic images make these city parts come alive and the endpapers also are full of smaller "city" discoveries: people like construction workers, soccer players, and vendors; things like clocks, cranes, and onions! I know that classrooms often have a yearlong theme, like Cities, to study. This is the perfect book to underpin discovering all that a city can be.

Poetry Friday - One Answer

          Brenda Harsham at Friendly Fairy Tales hosts Poetry Friday today with a sweet gathering haiku to lift our spirits.

            I missed Michelle Barnes' post last week with Today's Little Ditty's latest challenge, this time from Calef Brown. Briefly, he asked poets to "Write a poem or a story about two anthropomorphized objects. They can be an odd couple, close friends, mortal enemies, or meet each other for the first time. The poem or story can be about an adventure they have together, a conflict, a game they play, anything."

            I have been intrigued by this, enjoying the poems on the padlet so far, and wrote one and posted it. But I have had a question in the back of my mind for months that I read somewhere: "Can afraid and brave learn to get along?" I've written more than one poem this year about perspective, something that appears so challenging this politically-charged year. Thus I began a second approach to this challenge. Can I find an answer by writing? What do you think? Did I?

Sometimes It Takes Two

Afraid sees shadows lurking here,

lolling there, most everywhere!

Afraid wants others to recall

they too heard scratching in the wall.

It often queries, “Whence that smell?

What’s the strange sound of a bell?”

When it goes to sleep at night,

Afraid does not turn out the light.

Brave loves shadows as they seem

like artist’s drawings in a dream.

When its ears hear something crunch,

Brave imagines tasty lunch.

It loves all sounds - the wind in trees,

the bells that ring, a person’s sneeze.

And when it’s night, and time for bed,

Brave’s lamp turned off, it rests instead.

Perhaps Afraid can grasp Brave’s hand

to help them both to understand

another way to fill a need,

a simple act that plants a seed.

Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved

photo credit: maekke Trio via photopin (license)

Non-Fiction Picture Book Wed. - October for Monsters

art by Sarah S. Brannen

      Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy.  From her post and others, you will discover and want to celebrate terrific nonfiction picture books! 

       

         It's the bicentennial of Frankenstein and nearing Halloween, so it's a great time to share this story of Mary Shelley on the night she created a most frightening monster.

            Telling of a young woman who sits in a dark house and dreams of her life as a writer shows this one night when the idea of Mary's monster begins. She wants to be a writer like her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who passed away when Mary was very young, but the ideas just did not appear.

The poet Lord Byron and her good friend, soon to be husband, Percy Shelley, among others, were visiting and Byron set forth a challenge to them to write a ghost story. Mary wanted to write, wanted an idea, and with only one day left, still nothing. Frustrated and anxious, she went to bed. As she drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of a man that was not a man. He was a monster.

Everyone knows Frankenstein, but few know the beginnings of this story, one where Mary created this man, one not as scary as others show, but lonely and ostracized. It can be an entry to the reading of the book for older middle and high schoolers.

Felicita Sala illustrates the book in dark and dreamy gray tones, surely the atmosphere of that evening when the group spoke of vampires and ghosts, their stories already written, and the night Mary had a dream. There is an author's note where Lynn Fulton explains the changes she made that are not supported in the sources.