Monday - Many Books To Love

 

          Visit Jen at TeachMentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.  Others join Sheila to share adult books at Book Journeys. 

 

Come visit, and tweet at #IMWAYR. Thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki for hosting!


       I read so many picture books this week, and completed one chapter book, much to love, and there are some favorites. I'm just going to share the reviews of some of what I believe are the best, not to miss. If you want to see other reviews of those listed at the end, you can find them on Goodreads. Some of you liked many of those I didn't share, but there were parts that I just didn't enjoy although they were well-written.

Enchanted Air - written by Margarita Engle

            A verse memoir of Margarita Engle’s first fourteen years, especially poignant because toward the end was the time that Cuba and the United States became enemies, thus Margarita and her family no longer had a way to be with their family in Cuba. Reading a story in poetry is such fun; the poems create a tone together that doesn’t happen in prose, or at least not in the same way. In this story, the reader knows the bittersweet almost immediately when there are words about Margarita’s mother, Cuban, far away from her home. Margarita’s father is an artist, and there isn’t always money to make the trip from California. While she yearns to see what has only been described to her in words, the life lived is not a bad one; it just seems that one part is missing. In kindergarten class, “the teacher scolds me: REAL TREES/ DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT.”  They wander around Mexico, “instead of flying/through the enchanted air/to Cuba.” But Margarita sees the television news: “Revolution. Violence. Gunfire. Danger.” and she understands. An early look at the child she was is a description of her love of books, and the beginnings of writing poetry: “I carry/my own poems, inside my mind,/where no one else/can reach the words.” Slowly we the reader begins to see this growing up Margarita, lonely for that other land, set apart from those around her. She does finally get to Cuba, one time, feels that part that’s missing fulfilled. There is much more to learn, but the return to California happens so soon.  Because of the conflict, visits to Cuba won’t happen for a long time, but the wider world does happen, in Europe especially.  It’s a lovely story of only fourteen years, the beginning of a life told in poetry, the background that was poetry. The final poem is titled Hope, beginning with “All I know about the future/is that it will be beautiful.”

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Jingle Dancer - written by Cynthia Leitich Smith and illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu

          It’s often a surprise to read what seems like a simple story, and after reading the back matter, I realize there is much more in the story than I understood. Young girl Jenna daydreams of the day when she can jingle-dance like her Grandma Wolfe, but Grandma says there isn’t enough time before the Powwow to order the jingles. Jenna visits various relatives to see if she might borrow one line of jingles from their own dresses, and manages to do it. Each one has a reason to give: one isn’t strong enough anymore, another has a big case to prepare for law school, and still another will be making fry bread, too busy to dance. Jenna only needs one more, and asks Grandma Wolfe if she can spare just one row. She can, and they work hard every day to sew all those jingles onto Jenna’s dress. The backmatter shares more background of the jingles, the importance in Native American lives of the number four (four people’s jingles) and the pride of all when a child performs the “first dance”. The illustrations fill the page with beautiful scenes of the story.  This is Cynthia Leitich Smith’s first book, published a few years ago, but a good one to add to collections about different cultures.