Picture books to get your kids, based on the roundups I've been writing for the Star-Ledger since 2008. I've had a few friends ask me for advice, and there are few things I like better than recommending good books.
If you can, buy these books from independent bookstores, like Books of Wonder here in NYC.
Stay tuned, I'm not done digging through past columns yet. And I've got another gift roundup coming out in a week or two for the Ledger!
One of this year's best: Art and Max by David Wiesner. I think I actually didn't do a writeup of this one for the Ledger. Which was dumb of me because the illustrations are gorgeous. So put that on your list.
Wendy Ulmer's "A Isn't For Fox: An Isn't Alphabet" (Sleeping Bear Press, $16.95), illustrated by Laura Knorr, offers a whimsical poem, teaching the alphabet by describing what each letter isn't for. Lively animals balance um brellas, wear striped socks, have pillow fights and cavort through pages of read-aloud fun for ages 4 and up.
Anna Dewdney has written and charmingly illustrated "No bunny's Perfect" (Viking, 32 pp., $12.99), a sweet poem about good and bad bunny behavior, perfect for reading aloud to young children and preschoolers just learning to share their toys, show kindness to others and not spit out their carrots.
Written by Laura Bush and her daughter, Jenna, with bright, playful illustrations by Denise Brunkus, "Read All About It" (HarperCollins Children's Books, $17.99) turns the First Lady's commitment to literacy into a fun, imaginative romp, great for a young child's story time. Tyrone thinks reading is boring, until the characters in his classroom's books leap from the pages and come to life.
Each of the cats in Jessie Lynch Frees' "Jackie Winquackey and Her 43 Cats Go to Hollywood" (Tisbit, 32 pp., $14.99), il lustrated by Jaroslav Gebr, seems to have its own mischie vous personality, vibrantly painted and ready to leap from the page. When Jackie takes all 43 cats to Hollywood to be in a movie, they create giddy chaos wherever they turn. Fun for 5 and up.
Lovers of fairy tales ages 4 and up will adore Kate Bernheimer's lyrically written "The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum" (Schwartz & Wade, 40 pp., $16.99), dreamily illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli. This modern fairy tale will enchant children and their parents, although very young children may find the surreal illustrations a little spooky.
INDEPENDENT READERS 8-11
Set in Central Park, Peter Howe's "Waggit's Tale" (Harper Collins, 288 pp., $16.99) is a richly imagined story of a puppy, aban doned by his owner, who must learn to trust the misfit band of feral dogs who adopt him. The adventures of Waggit, who also learns bravery, independence and confidence, will delight readers 10 and up, and younger children are likely to enjoy it read aloud.
Marilyn Nelson’s “Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World” (Dial, 80 pages, $14.95, 2010) will interest older children, but its appeal spans all ages. Nelson uses poems to tell the story of an interracial, all-female swing band that played during World War II, and the book is lavishly illustrated by Caldecott Honor-winner Jerry Pinkney.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Don't Shoot The Dog!
Don't Shoot The Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training
Karen Pryor
$16.00 202 pages.
Behavioral scientist and animal trainer Karen Pryor explains positive reinforcement, in the context of teaching, and training and shaping behavior. Her background is in animal training, dogs, horses and dolphins. Her anecdotes of using training techniques made for a fun read that will have me looking more closely at any trained animal performance. Even the ones on TV with animal actors.
Talking about training techniques, Pryor makes it clear that a good trainer needs to have a coherent behavior shaping plan in place, and that a lot of "bad" or "stubborn" behavior comes about because an animal isn't clear what behavior is being rewarded, or is picking up on mixed signals from the trainer. A lot rests on the self-discipline and structure of the teacher. I was especially impressed with the number of well-trained cats she referenced. Because of the conventional wisdom that "herding cats" is impossible. And because of the cats I've known.
I was most interested in reading this because of the applications and explanations of using conditioning and reward training techniques to shape people's behavior. Although I felt Machiavellian, even thinking about doing that. But what else am I going to do... I don't have animals or kids to train! There were a few interesting examples-- how to deal with noisy or whining kids by not reacting at all to the behavior, but acknowledging a better tone of voice immediately. Again... not sure how it applies to dealing with adults. One thing she noted, which made me laugh was: absolutely don't tell friends or colleagues you're using training techniques on them!
I may need to go back and reread. She did a decent job of explaining and giving examples, but I don't feel like I have the level of understanding that would let me apply these principles if I wanted. To cats! I promise!
Karen Pryor
$16.00 202 pages.
Behavioral scientist and animal trainer Karen Pryor explains positive reinforcement, in the context of teaching, and training and shaping behavior. Her background is in animal training, dogs, horses and dolphins. Her anecdotes of using training techniques made for a fun read that will have me looking more closely at any trained animal performance. Even the ones on TV with animal actors.
Talking about training techniques, Pryor makes it clear that a good trainer needs to have a coherent behavior shaping plan in place, and that a lot of "bad" or "stubborn" behavior comes about because an animal isn't clear what behavior is being rewarded, or is picking up on mixed signals from the trainer. A lot rests on the self-discipline and structure of the teacher. I was especially impressed with the number of well-trained cats she referenced. Because of the conventional wisdom that "herding cats" is impossible. And because of the cats I've known.
I was most interested in reading this because of the applications and explanations of using conditioning and reward training techniques to shape people's behavior. Although I felt Machiavellian, even thinking about doing that. But what else am I going to do... I don't have animals or kids to train! There were a few interesting examples-- how to deal with noisy or whining kids by not reacting at all to the behavior, but acknowledging a better tone of voice immediately. Again... not sure how it applies to dealing with adults. One thing she noted, which made me laugh was: absolutely don't tell friends or colleagues you're using training techniques on them!
I may need to go back and reread. She did a decent job of explaining and giving examples, but I don't feel like I have the level of understanding that would let me apply these principles if I wanted. To cats! I promise!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Book Reviews, the B Sides
For a while, I've been meaning to take a second look at the book reviews I write for the Star-Ledger, and do a little added commentary, just to add a little about the thinking I did while reading and writing.
Writing a blog post about a book, I feel like I have a lot more freedom to think out loud. I don't like to snark a book too often or too much, because, believe me, I know, writing is hard. And it takes a lot of work of imagination or research. So, I don't want to be too much of a mean jerk. Even if I'm an eloquent mean jerk.
That said- right now I'm reading Christmas books, and doing a gift guide for kids' literature. Reading the Christmas books started before Halloween, which was really weird. &(You thought Christmas decorations went up early in stores? I was reading about Yuletide before there was a scrap of tinsel in any aisle anywhere!) But at least now the weather is cooperating. A good, icy blustery wind makes it much easier to read about Christmas cookies, as opposed to jean jacket weather.
And reading kids books makes me want to buy most of the picture books in bulk, to give to friends' babies and cousins' kids. Or have entire pages of the illustrations blown up to be posters for my walls.
Writing a blog post about a book, I feel like I have a lot more freedom to think out loud. I don't like to snark a book too often or too much, because, believe me, I know, writing is hard. And it takes a lot of work of imagination or research. So, I don't want to be too much of a mean jerk. Even if I'm an eloquent mean jerk.
That said- right now I'm reading Christmas books, and doing a gift guide for kids' literature. Reading the Christmas books started before Halloween, which was really weird. &(You thought Christmas decorations went up early in stores? I was reading about Yuletide before there was a scrap of tinsel in any aisle anywhere!) But at least now the weather is cooperating. A good, icy blustery wind makes it much easier to read about Christmas cookies, as opposed to jean jacket weather.
And reading kids books makes me want to buy most of the picture books in bulk, to give to friends' babies and cousins' kids. Or have entire pages of the illustrations blown up to be posters for my walls.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Spooky Halloween Reads
Some treats for your Halloween weekend
By Elizabeth Willse for the Star-Ledger 10/31/2010
Haunted Legends
Edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas
Tor, 352 pp., $25.99
The spectral hitchhiker. A portentous black dog. Drafty haunted houses.
Reinventing frights you thought you knew, and drawing from other cultures, this is a first-rate anthology.
“That Girl” by Kaaron Warren and Pat Cadigan’s “Highway To Hull” take freshly foreboding looks at the hitchhiking ghost. Kit Reed’s “Akbar” traps a suffocating marriage in a haunted town. Bizarrely, “For Those in Peril on the Sea,” by Stephen Dedman, sets a reality show aboard a haunted ship. “The Foxes,” a gruesome tale by Lily Hoang, draws on Vietnamese legends.
The nuances make the chills more potent. Both John Mantooth’s “Shoebox Train Wreck” and “La Llorona,” by Carolyn Turgeon, evoke a survivor’s grief. A creepy tale becomes an incisive modern allegory in “Following Double-Face Woman,” by Erzebet YellowBoy.
Curl up with this collection of treats for what promises to be a deliciously spooky night.
Dracula in Love
Karen Essex
Doubleday, 384 pp., $25.95
Using the familiar characters and places of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Karen Essex creates an intensely erotic story of romance and obsession. Mina is the uptight governess of a proper girls’ school, rigidly guarding a secret of sleepwalking and terrifyingly sensual dreams. The dreams and obsessions that plague Mina and Lucy make the men in their lives fear for the women’s sanity. Essex adds depth to Stoker’s original by fleshing out Lucy and Mina attentively, letting them have desires and histories. Dracula looks more like a star-crossed lover than a monster, promising Mina eternal love and luxury if she leaves behind Harker and her ordinary life. Descriptions of the asylum treatments intended to save her are far scarier than Dracula at his most shadowy.
Essex may be working with a larger agenda, using Dracula’s characters to comment on Victorian and modern women. But the writing is so vivid — lusciously sexy and outrageously chilling by turns — that the excellent story comes into its own.
Petty Magic: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker
Camille DeAngelis
Crown, 336 pp., $24
Camille DeAngelis blends historical fiction, romance, delightful whimsy and biting humor into a fantastically fun read. Evelyn Harbinger isn’t ready to act her age. Fortunately, a witch of 149 years has other options. With a little oomph of magic, she can become her younger self and have a flirtatious night out. When she meets Justin, he reminds her so much of a former lover and fellow spy from World War II that her deceptions to woo him in her younger disguise get increasingly elaborate.
Past and present romance story lines are outstanding. The witches’ world has engaging whimsical touches — ancestors giving meddling advice through puppets, a cake that automatically becomes your favorite flavor when you take a bite. Although the arc of Evelyn’s romance feels too complete to need a sequel, it would be terrific to see DeAngelis write more in this setting, because the adventure and magic are such fun.
Frankenstein’s Monster
Susan Heyboer O’Keefe
Three Rivers Press, 352 pages, $15 paperback
Picking up at the end of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” “Frankenstein’s Monster” continues the story of the monster after his creator’s death. A lonely sea captain, purely by the accident of hearing Victor Frankenstein’s deathbed vow, takes on the mission to destroy the misshapen creation.
The sea captain and the monster pursue one another through Venice, across frozen wastelands, the desolate Orkney islands and a Northumbrian coal mine. Telling the story largely in letters and the monster’s diary entries, Heyboer O’Keefe captures the language and Gothic atmosphere of Shelley’s original, even against new backgrounds like opulently decaying Venice. Read this if “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is one of your favorites; on its own, it may owe too much to its origins. While Heyboer O’Keefe adds some insight to the monster’s rage and desire to understand itself, the plot is a little too meandering to justify standing alone.
The Season of Risks
Susan Hubbard
Simon & Schuster, 290 pp., $14 paperback
If you haven’t read the previous volumes (“The Society of S” and “The Year of Disappearances”), Susan Hubbard gives you enough background to get accustomed to her take on vampires and enjoy this story.
Drinking synthetic blood, eating normal food and able to withstand sunlight for short periods, vampires are part — if an uneasy part — of everyday society. Ariella Montero attends college and navigates ordinary teen questions. Vampire politics add complications, menacing characters and mystery. Hubbard’s take on vampires is well-executed and has several unusual elements sure to appeal to fans of Sookie Stackhouse from “Dead Until Dark” (or its TV adaptation, “True Blood”).
While vampire caste feuds aren’t a new idea, grounding them in more everyday politics and technology works well. The story line about Ari’s love interest, Neil Cameron, running for political office openly as a vampire works particularly well.
By Elizabeth Willse for the Star-Ledger 10/31/2010
Haunted Legends
Edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas
Tor, 352 pp., $25.99
The spectral hitchhiker. A portentous black dog. Drafty haunted houses.
Reinventing frights you thought you knew, and drawing from other cultures, this is a first-rate anthology.
“That Girl” by Kaaron Warren and Pat Cadigan’s “Highway To Hull” take freshly foreboding looks at the hitchhiking ghost. Kit Reed’s “Akbar” traps a suffocating marriage in a haunted town. Bizarrely, “For Those in Peril on the Sea,” by Stephen Dedman, sets a reality show aboard a haunted ship. “The Foxes,” a gruesome tale by Lily Hoang, draws on Vietnamese legends.
The nuances make the chills more potent. Both John Mantooth’s “Shoebox Train Wreck” and “La Llorona,” by Carolyn Turgeon, evoke a survivor’s grief. A creepy tale becomes an incisive modern allegory in “Following Double-Face Woman,” by Erzebet YellowBoy.
Curl up with this collection of treats for what promises to be a deliciously spooky night.
Dracula in Love
Karen Essex
Doubleday, 384 pp., $25.95
Using the familiar characters and places of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Karen Essex creates an intensely erotic story of romance and obsession. Mina is the uptight governess of a proper girls’ school, rigidly guarding a secret of sleepwalking and terrifyingly sensual dreams. The dreams and obsessions that plague Mina and Lucy make the men in their lives fear for the women’s sanity. Essex adds depth to Stoker’s original by fleshing out Lucy and Mina attentively, letting them have desires and histories. Dracula looks more like a star-crossed lover than a monster, promising Mina eternal love and luxury if she leaves behind Harker and her ordinary life. Descriptions of the asylum treatments intended to save her are far scarier than Dracula at his most shadowy.
Essex may be working with a larger agenda, using Dracula’s characters to comment on Victorian and modern women. But the writing is so vivid — lusciously sexy and outrageously chilling by turns — that the excellent story comes into its own.
Petty Magic: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker
Camille DeAngelis
Crown, 336 pp., $24
Camille DeAngelis blends historical fiction, romance, delightful whimsy and biting humor into a fantastically fun read. Evelyn Harbinger isn’t ready to act her age. Fortunately, a witch of 149 years has other options. With a little oomph of magic, she can become her younger self and have a flirtatious night out. When she meets Justin, he reminds her so much of a former lover and fellow spy from World War II that her deceptions to woo him in her younger disguise get increasingly elaborate.
Past and present romance story lines are outstanding. The witches’ world has engaging whimsical touches — ancestors giving meddling advice through puppets, a cake that automatically becomes your favorite flavor when you take a bite. Although the arc of Evelyn’s romance feels too complete to need a sequel, it would be terrific to see DeAngelis write more in this setting, because the adventure and magic are such fun.
Frankenstein’s Monster
Susan Heyboer O’Keefe
Three Rivers Press, 352 pages, $15 paperback
Picking up at the end of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” “Frankenstein’s Monster” continues the story of the monster after his creator’s death. A lonely sea captain, purely by the accident of hearing Victor Frankenstein’s deathbed vow, takes on the mission to destroy the misshapen creation.
The sea captain and the monster pursue one another through Venice, across frozen wastelands, the desolate Orkney islands and a Northumbrian coal mine. Telling the story largely in letters and the monster’s diary entries, Heyboer O’Keefe captures the language and Gothic atmosphere of Shelley’s original, even against new backgrounds like opulently decaying Venice. Read this if “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is one of your favorites; on its own, it may owe too much to its origins. While Heyboer O’Keefe adds some insight to the monster’s rage and desire to understand itself, the plot is a little too meandering to justify standing alone.
The Season of Risks
Susan Hubbard
Simon & Schuster, 290 pp., $14 paperback
If you haven’t read the previous volumes (“The Society of S” and “The Year of Disappearances”), Susan Hubbard gives you enough background to get accustomed to her take on vampires and enjoy this story.
Drinking synthetic blood, eating normal food and able to withstand sunlight for short periods, vampires are part — if an uneasy part — of everyday society. Ariella Montero attends college and navigates ordinary teen questions. Vampire politics add complications, menacing characters and mystery. Hubbard’s take on vampires is well-executed and has several unusual elements sure to appeal to fans of Sookie Stackhouse from “Dead Until Dark” (or its TV adaptation, “True Blood”).
While vampire caste feuds aren’t a new idea, grounding them in more everyday politics and technology works well. The story line about Ari’s love interest, Neil Cameron, running for political office openly as a vampire works particularly well.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Buffalo Gal- Book Review
Buffalo Gal
Laura Pedersen
Fulcrum Publishing 2008 $15.00 307 pages
thanks to Nicole Bruce of AuthorsOnTheWeb for sending this.
Laura Pedersen's memoir opens with her, at 14 years old, stepping onto the floor of the American Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan. Stocks make sense to the teenage Laura, their systems, their puzzles, and the manic pace of the fast-moving, signaling traders all around her, cramming sandwiches with one hand, while gesturing with the other.
My first thought, reading this, was that I was reading Turtle Wexler's autobiography. Pedersen's gawky preteen self, smartassy, fascinated by numbers and intrigued by games of chance, has plenty in common with my favorite character in Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. Though Pedersen, master of wry self-deprecation, would have said she wasn't coordinated enough to kick shins.
Pedersen's account of her childhood also has clear outlines of what would become Hallie, in Beginner's Luck and its sequels. Hyperkinetic and curious, growing up before anyone had ever heard of ADHD, Laura Pedersen tells very funny stories of having a sharp business sense as a kid. (I see more Turtle Wexler here, of course.) She likens a teenage enterprise of working as a short order cook to the wonderful rush of playing several hands of blackjack at once. At a school without candy bars in vending machines, she bought candy in bulk and sold it on campus at a markup close to 7-Eleven's. Working at a bakery where she stored the day's cash in a paper bag, and was encouraged to toss the day's receipts, and the day's unsold bread, she took the surplus bread to families whose houses were on her way home.
Especially in the first few riffs in this book, Pedersen works to create a sense of Buffalo, and a clear sense of growing up in the seventies and early eighties. The level of detail in her descriptions of life and slang in the sixties, or of trying to save heat on a cold Buffalo night, are exactly the kind of social history I love best. But--- because the particular personal details of Laura Pedersen's family and childhood are so goofy and eccentric, the general background passages really do fade into the background. Although I love the attention she pays to language, down to how parents would call kids in for dinner, or Catholics saying "god willing," more times than a conversation demanded, it was even more fun to read about Pedersen's Scandinavian grandmother playing the stock market like a pro, or her grandfather working as a waiter.
Being an only child myself, I gave Pedersen and her parents a closer read. They seemed to move around each other like parallel adults, most of the time. At one point, young Laura railed at her mother because she didn't have a bedtime or a curfew. Her mother said something sensible along the lines of "go to bed when you're tired," leaving Hallie, I mean, Laura, (read Beginner's Luck, trust me!) to figure it out for herself. Laura's mother became a nurse, and was the kind of woman who could intimidate anyone, or diagnose pneumonia from across the street. Her father was a court reporter, wreathed in a perpetual cloud of smoke.
I like Pedersen's style for memoir as much as I liked it in her fiction: cheerfully self-deprecating, punctuated with wry asides. This would make a good audiobook, because the language is like a series of riffing vignettes, loosely holding together a larger narrative. I think, though, that I would want Laura Pedersen to read it herself.
Laura Pedersen
Fulcrum Publishing 2008 $15.00 307 pages
thanks to Nicole Bruce of AuthorsOnTheWeb for sending this.
Laura Pedersen's memoir opens with her, at 14 years old, stepping onto the floor of the American Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan. Stocks make sense to the teenage Laura, their systems, their puzzles, and the manic pace of the fast-moving, signaling traders all around her, cramming sandwiches with one hand, while gesturing with the other.
My first thought, reading this, was that I was reading Turtle Wexler's autobiography. Pedersen's gawky preteen self, smartassy, fascinated by numbers and intrigued by games of chance, has plenty in common with my favorite character in Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. Though Pedersen, master of wry self-deprecation, would have said she wasn't coordinated enough to kick shins.
Pedersen's account of her childhood also has clear outlines of what would become Hallie, in Beginner's Luck and its sequels. Hyperkinetic and curious, growing up before anyone had ever heard of ADHD, Laura Pedersen tells very funny stories of having a sharp business sense as a kid. (I see more Turtle Wexler here, of course.) She likens a teenage enterprise of working as a short order cook to the wonderful rush of playing several hands of blackjack at once. At a school without candy bars in vending machines, she bought candy in bulk and sold it on campus at a markup close to 7-Eleven's. Working at a bakery where she stored the day's cash in a paper bag, and was encouraged to toss the day's receipts, and the day's unsold bread, she took the surplus bread to families whose houses were on her way home.
Especially in the first few riffs in this book, Pedersen works to create a sense of Buffalo, and a clear sense of growing up in the seventies and early eighties. The level of detail in her descriptions of life and slang in the sixties, or of trying to save heat on a cold Buffalo night, are exactly the kind of social history I love best. But--- because the particular personal details of Laura Pedersen's family and childhood are so goofy and eccentric, the general background passages really do fade into the background. Although I love the attention she pays to language, down to how parents would call kids in for dinner, or Catholics saying "god willing," more times than a conversation demanded, it was even more fun to read about Pedersen's Scandinavian grandmother playing the stock market like a pro, or her grandfather working as a waiter.
Being an only child myself, I gave Pedersen and her parents a closer read. They seemed to move around each other like parallel adults, most of the time. At one point, young Laura railed at her mother because she didn't have a bedtime or a curfew. Her mother said something sensible along the lines of "go to bed when you're tired," leaving Hallie, I mean, Laura, (read Beginner's Luck, trust me!) to figure it out for herself. Laura's mother became a nurse, and was the kind of woman who could intimidate anyone, or diagnose pneumonia from across the street. Her father was a court reporter, wreathed in a perpetual cloud of smoke.
I like Pedersen's style for memoir as much as I liked it in her fiction: cheerfully self-deprecating, punctuated with wry asides. This would make a good audiobook, because the language is like a series of riffing vignettes, loosely holding together a larger narrative. I think, though, that I would want Laura Pedersen to read it herself.
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