Reading Journal March 30, 2011

Grandma’s Gift

Written and illustrated by Eric Velasquez

Walker & Company, New York, 2010

ALA recommendation/award

A very personal narrative about the author’s boyhood memory of spending Christmas vacation at his grandmother’s apartment in El Barrio. This particular Christmas vacation was spent shopping at La Marqueta for the ingredients for Grandmother’s special holiday pasteles and visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the newly purchased painting by Diego Valazquez of Juan de Pareja.

There is a very subtle story line in which the grandmother is totally comfortable in El Barrio, where she knows almost everyone by name. When she takes the author to visit the museum she feels like a fish out of water. She is uncomfortable with the language and there are no familiar faces—until she sees the portrait of Juan de Pareja. She recognizes him from her own school days and speaks to the painting by name.

The story concludes with Grandmother presenting the author with his first set of colored pencils and a sketchbook of his very own for Christmas.

In an afterward the author asserts that seeing the painting of Juan de Pareja, who was a freed slave of African descent, and who became a famous painter in his own right, inspired him to become as artist. It was the first time he had seen a picture of an artist who looked like he could have come from El Barrio.

Boogie Knights

Words by Lisa Wheeler

Pictures by Mark Siegel

A Richard Jackson Book

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

2008

397 words

Great language, lots of fun word-play, strong steady meter, and fun, playful illustrations make this a great read-aloud, esp. at Halloween.

No traditional story-line or problem—7 sleeping knights wake up one by one and join in the monster’s ball. When night is done they go back to sleep and dream of next year’s ball.

I’m guessing that she was inspired by the title Boogie Knights—(from the movie Boogie Nights) and started to wonder who these knights would be.

Reading Journal March 28, 2011

Poetry by Heart: A Child’s Book of Poems to Remember
Compiled by Liz Attenborough
Foreward by Andrew Motion, poet laureate, UK
The Chicken House, Scholastic, Inc.
Copyright 2001
124 pages

Wide ranging in subject matter, depth, length, and age-level, this collection contains many poems by “anonymous” and poems by Shakespeare, Yeats, Langston Hughes, Edward Lear and many more. From Limericks such as THREE LITTLE OWLS WHO SANG HYMNS:

There were three little owls in a wood
Who sang hymns whenever they could;
What the words were about
One could never make out,
But one felt it was doing them good.
Anonymous

to the wordplay of A FLY AND A FLEA:

A fly and a flea in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, ‘let us flee!’
‘Let us fly!’ said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Anonymous

to WALKING THE DOG SEEMS LIKE FUN TO ME:

I said, The dog wants a walk.

Mum said to Dad, It’s your turn.
Dad said, I always walk the dog.
Mom said, Well I walked her this morning.
Dad said, She’s your dog.
I didn’t want a dog in the first place.

Mum said, It’s your turn.

Dad stood up and threw the remote control
At the pot plant.
Dad said, I’m going down the pub.
Mum said, Take the dog.

Dad shouted, No way!
Mum shouted, You’re going nowhere!

I grabbed Judy’s lead
and we both bolted out the back door.

The stars were shining like diamonds.
Judy sniffed at a hedgehog, rolled up in a ball.
She ate a discarded kebab on the pavement.
She tried to chase a cat that ran up a tree.

Walking the dog
seems like fun to me.
Roger Stevens

this collection is full of poems I want to keep close by me.

Reading Journal March 24, 2011

Small Talk: A Book of Short Poems
Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrated by Susan Gaber
Harcourt Brace & Company
Copyright 1995
48 pages
Illustrations done in watercolor and colored pencil on Strathmore Bristol board
Display type—Simoncini Garamond
Text type—Stempel Garamond

All the poems in this book are short—from 2 to 16 short lines, each poem fitting easily on a single page. Some of the poems are quite simple and some are thoughtful and resonant. All contain beautiful language. This collection will appeal to young children who enjoy words and to older children who will find the depth without struggling to read length. Most of the poets collected here are familiar—Carl Sandburg, Aileen Fisher, Eve Merriam, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Langston Hughes, et al.

Two of my favorites include:

WHAT ARE HEAVY? By Christina G. Rossetti

What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? Today and tomorrow.
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? The ocean and truth.

And:

SUMMER COOLER by X. J. Kennedy

In the summer young Angus MQuade
Carried off to his castle of shade
Two cool soothing pillows,
The Wind in the Willows,
And an ocean of iced lemondade.

Reading Journal March 22, 2011

Firefighter Ted
By Andrea Beaty and Pascal Lemaitre
Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Copyright 009
Book design by Ann Bobco
Text is set in Bliss
Illus. are done in brush and ink, colored digitally
32 pages, not counting bright orange-red end papers. 594 words

Very dryly funny picture book about a bear who pretends to be a firefighter. The pictures carry much of the humor while the text is quite deadpan. For example—text: “Firefighter Ted looked everywhere.” Picture: Ted is shown looking inside his firefighter’s hat and bending over, looking between his legs.

Good use of repetition—“The crowd was speechless. ‘No need to thank me” said Firefighter Ted”—this is an event that happens 3 different times (rule of three). Also, Ted puts out fires at home, on the way to school, and at the science fair (again, rule of three.)

The book begins and ends with Ted in bed, covering the course of one day. Ted perfectly captures the imagination and energy of a young child.