I arrived home last night from a Highlights poetry workshop led by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard. I am full to the brim with writing and reading many poetry books, including Halloween ones new and old. The library there is filled with their published books new and old, as is each room and cabin with a bookshelf full! I read a lot, but didn't take note of them, just enjoyed every time I opened another book! We skyped with Jane Yolen and Nikki Grimes. It was a week I will treasure.
One book I finished before I left!
Ruta Sepetys tells stories that live (so far) in our past of historical events, some (without her deep research) we would never have known about without our own investigation. She says she took eight years to bring this to us, she's added a thorough author's note, research and notes, a bibliography, and a glossary to help us through the Spanish phrases included throughout. In this book of the Spanish Civil War and its effects that have stayed, she expands the complexity by allowing different characters a voice. Although there are a couple of main characters, others touch the heart, too, when learning about their experiences. We try to understand from the outside, as Sepetys expresses that she did herself. It's been a while since I've read a book that kept me worried about what's next at every spot. The resilience and different survival approaches show just how different everyone is. Yet, in that path of survival, one quote scratched in the dirt by a character in jail showed everyone's actions though they did take varied paths: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." It's a marvelous book!
Thanks to Candlewick Press - new Halloween books!
Kim Norman's rhyming picture book begs to be read aloud, on Halloween and perhaps on "Talk Like A Pirate" Day. The end papers themselves are delightful. In the opening, human bones are scattered and labeled, except for that peg leg! The back is vertical, showing the full skeleton of a pirate, with accompanying pirate wear, like hat, sword and spyglass. He's found all his bones! The four-line rhymes on each page after the opening are good for laughing out loud every time. A poor pirate skeleton's bones have been scattered throughout the sea bed, and he shouts for the creatures down there to help put him back together again. Bob Molar's illustrations of the ocean's dark bottom serves as backdrop for many kinds of colorful creatures and plants as well as peeks at the bones needed, skull first, and on. Each verse defines the bone called for in rollicking rhyme! Here's one from this fun book:
"Who can spot my shoulder blade,
my shrugging jacket-holder blade,
my shiver-when-I'm-colder blade?
Oh, scapula, come back!"
