Senor Parrot's Perch

I.N.K. stands for Interesting Nonfiction for Kids. It’s a blog for writers and educators, focusing on kid’s nonfiction. I’ve read it from time to time and found it very interesting, and I returned to it again this morning. The I.N.K. blog is a good place to connect to kid’s nonfiction writers and educators and to listen into their conversation about their craft and their books.

Kid’s Nonfiction is important because it seeds the fallow ground of our kids’ minds and produces much different results than fiction. Unlike learning magic, nonfiction actually empowers kids to see the possibilities within themselves and it works like much like the yellow brick road to Oz, taking kids to a place where they can grow wiser and find answers to their questions.

I enjoyed this MovieWeb interview with children’s book author Cressida Cowell, who wrote the How to Train Your Dragon books. In the interview, she talks about her feelings about having her fantastic book made into an animated movie. She also talks about her unique summers spent on an isolated island with her family that in many ways inspired her writing.

The first time I saw How to Train Your Dragon Book 1 in a bookstore, several years back, I was hooked.  I was eager to see the movie when it came out. I took the family to see it in 3-D at the IMAX. It was too intense for the youngest, but my oldest and I enjoyed it every bit as much as we did the books.

I’m a sucker for books like this. Loving science, married to a scientist, I’m drawn to the lives of these wonderfully fascinating people. Whaling Season: A Year in the Life of an Arctic Whale Scientist by Peter Lourie details the life of John Craighead George, a field biolgist studying bowhead whales, and living with the Inupiaq Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska. Known as “Craig” to everyone around him, he has been studying the whales for most of his adult life, taking careful measurements of every harvested whale, and collecting lore from the Inupiaq over the many years he has lived among them, all the while he keeps his eye out for hungry polar bears as he travels the ice-packed landscape.

Author Peter Lourie has done an excellent job with this book. He portrays the day-to-day life of the scientist, showing how his work is done, the enjoyment and satisfaction he gains, the relationships he builds with the Inupiaq, and the valuable results of all his hard work.

From a family of scientists, it is really no surprise that John Craighead George would become one himself. From early on he loved the outdoors and spent many days in the wilderness. He spent some time when he was a young man working at a scientific station in Alaska, and after earning his Ph.D., he returned to work as a field scientist to study the bowhead whales that live year-round in the frigid arctic waters.

One facet of his work is to monitor the number of whales harvested by the Inupiaq. Each whale that is killed by the Inupiaq must be measured and samples of various parts are taken. Craig is careful to respect the Alaskan natives as they carry on their traditional livelihood. He has also carefully noted all their stories and descriptions of the bowhead whales, discovering the generations of knowledge that they have accumulated (more…)

Doppelganger is the third of the Bloodwater Mysteries series written by Pete Hautman and Mary Logue. And of the three, Doppelganger is my favorite. Like the previous two books in the Bloodwater Mysteries series, the chemistry between Roni and her sluething friend Brian is as fun as ever. However, in this story, Roni’s unbridled drive to solve every mystery nearly drives a wedge between the two friends.

Always irrepressible, Roni  is looking for a story online. She’s browsing a missing children website when she comes across a missing boy, Korean by birth, who was supposedly kidnapped by his mother at the age of three. Still missing after 10 years, the site includes an age-progressed photograph of the missing boy as he might appear now. Roni can’t believe her eyes. This photo is a dead ringer -a Doppelganger-for her friend Brian, also Korean by birth and adopted, and the age is the same.

She immediately tells Brian about the picture, hinting that maybe the missing child is him. How else could someone look so exactly like him. Brian brushes the insinuation aside, but when he questions his parents about his own adoption and they aren’t forthcoming with the facts, he begins to harbor doubts of his own. His doubts fester more deeply when he thinks back when he was three. The memories he is able to recall are not of his parents, but of two other people and a little dog.

Roni is now in motion, diving headlong into the mystery of the missing boy, almost sure that he is her friend Brian. Speeding around Minnesota and Wisconsin on her faithful Vespa named Hillary -actually speeding is way to grand a word for their putt-putting down the highway- Roni and Brian chase down clues and the people tied to the cold case until they uncover the chilling truth.

I recommend Doppelganger highly. If you haven’t read the previous two books in the Bloodwater Mysteries, get them all and start with Snatched, the first in the series, mostly because it chronicles the meeting between Roni and Brian as they wait outside the principle’s office at school, and it is in this book that the two become friends. It won’t take that much time to read through them, because you won’t want to put them down after you’ve started.

In Snatched, Roni and Brian hunt for a kidnapped teen from their school. The second book in the Bloodwater Mysteries series is Skullduggery; finding the skull of a murdered faculty member of the town college sets the two friends down the trail of another dangerous mystery.

For a lot of us,  it’s hard to get too much of Harry Potter. So the great news now is The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the Harry Potter-based theme park in Orlando, Florida, is now open. The Wall Street Journal has a nice photo journal of the park. The park seems like a certain destination in my families future.

It’s interesting to think about how much J.K. Rowling created in this fantastic set of books. At the same time, much of the world was also brought to life by the movies. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter seems as much about the movies as the books. Had the books been in existence for many years before put into movies, I wonder how well accepted the movies would have been? Would die-hard fans be griping about the characterizations and adaptions in the storyline to make the films work the in the same way that is characteristic of other film adaptions?

Probably the difference is the well known and intense involvement of Rowling in the drafting of the screenplays of the movies, ensuring that the central core of the films remained true to the books, especially choices of central characters. This isn’t always the case with adaptions. Some films that left my kids and her friends very disappointed were the recent Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief movie, or The Spiderwick Chronicles. Either events that they thought were absolutely central were omitted or the characters were so far removed from their personal conceptions from the books that they just couldn’t enjoy the movies for themselves. It fringed on a violation to them, as though the movies had performed some grossly disrespectful act to the books’ authors and their stories.

The Midwest Bookseller Association is made up of 240 or so independent, local booksellers. Annually they vote for their favorites in several categories. Today they’ve announced their award winners. Always, these are excellent picks.

At the awards dinner, to be held late this September, there are usually autographed copies available to the member booksellers. If you want to get your hands on one of these, go to your local bookseller, not Barnes and Noble, Borders, or other national chains, and find out if they’re members of the Midwest Booksellers Association and if they are going to attend the fall trade show in St. Paul, Minnesota this year. Ask, beg, or whine if they can get an autographed copy for you-you’ll need to pay, of course. They may even take your own copy to get it signed. Local booksellers are the best. In Madison, I like Booked For Murder.

These are their choices for this year:

2009 AWARD WINNERS

Fiction

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

David Wroblewski
(Ecco/HarperCollins)

Nonfiction

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting

Michael Perry
(HarperCollins)

Poetry

Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle

Freya Manfred
(Red Dragonfly Press)

Children’s Picture Book

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken

Kate DiCamillo, Illustrated by Harry Bliss
(Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins)

Children’s Literature

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman, Illustrated by Dave McKean
(HarperCollins Children’s Books)

2009 HONOR BOOKS

Fiction

A Reliable Wife

Robert Goolrick
(Algonquin Books/Workman Publishing)

Nonfiction

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

Vicki Myron with Bret Witter
(Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group USA)

Poetry

Yellowrocket

Todd Boss
(W.W. Norton & Company)

Children’s Picture Book

Snow

Cynthia Rylant, Illustrated by Lauren Stringer
(Harcourt Children’s Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Children’s Literature

Savvy

Ingrid Law
(Dial Books for Young Readers/Walden Media/
Penguin Group (USA)

The London Eye Mystery

By Siobhan Dowd

How does someone vanish into thin air? Magicians make beautiful women disappear. Harry Houdini made an elephant disappear. David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. All tricks. All illusions. But what about when your cousin disappears? Almost from before your very eyes. And he doesn’t reappear?

Ted and Kat, his older sister, wait on the ground while their cousin Salim rides the great London Eye, an enormous Ferris Wheel like ride that towers over everything nearby. Salim never appears. He’s vanished. A mysterious man had given his ticket to Salim. Then, Salim had jumped to the head of the long, snaking line waiting to board the London Eye. Ted and Kat saw him enter the car. No one saw him again.

Together, Ted and Kat work to solve the mystery of their vanished cousin. The twist is that (more…)

New cover image for the retitled book and series: Sluggers #1: Magic in the Outfield

Original cover and title for book: Barnstormers: Game 1

Magic in the Outfield (Sluggers) is the exciting and mysterious first book in the Sluggers: Three Kids, A Mystery, and a Magic Baseball series for kids. You may find this titled Game 1 (Barnstormers), which is the original name for the series. The authors, both baseball lovers, are series originator Loren Long, also very well known for his outstanding work� illustrating books, and Phil Bildner, author of Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy, as well as several other books on baseball that kids will love.

The story begins with Griffith, his sister Ruby, and young brother Graham, and a strange baseball with an odd hole nearly all the way through it. Unlike any other baseball they’d seen, it was something their dead father had carried with him during the war.� Now the ball was a reminder that they were still a family, a symbol of togetherness. They’re traveling with their mother, and eight men, a traveling baseball team, that earns its living by playing teams from the different cities they visit.

They stop first in Cincinnati, where bizarre things happen during the game, things they and their team can see, but no one else can. Is their father’s old baseball some connected to all these strange events?

I first heard about this book over at Boys Read Boys Rule! where Carl and the others have been raving about it. And now its my turn to rave. Magic in the Outfield (Sluggers) is nearly impossible to put down as the mystery mounts with every page. This book is exceptionally well written. The illustrations are amazing. The action is fast and the mystery runs high. You’ll love the characters, the team members, the mother, the children’s uncle, and especially Griffith, Ruby and Graham. You’ll want them all, too. I’m heading out this weekend for the next one in the series.

Both baseball buffs, Bildner and Long have reached back into history to describe the game as it was played in the late 1800′s. Their love of the game comes through in the great descriptions and drawings of the big game between The Travelin’ Nine and the local Cincinnati team and they incorporate the jargon that was current for the time, adding a nice sense of the times that helps you experience the game as it was played back then.

Little Rat Sets Sail by Monika Bang-Campbell, illustrated by Molly Bang.

Little Rat Sets Sail introduces kids to sailing without really downplaying their ambiguous feelings. The book depicts learning to sail pretty much the way they will experience it for themselves.� As Little Rat grows in experience and overcomes some of her fears, she grows in confidence, too. It’s also very entertaining for young readers along the way. The illustrations are great. Illustrator Molly Bang has fantastic fun exaggerating Little Rat’s fears, and she shows what it’s like to be out in the boat, the way sailing really is.

In Monika Bang-Campbell’s book, Little Rat’s parents enroll her in a sailing class, much to her dismay. She shouldn’t have been surprised, though. Pictures of sailing scenes hang from every wall in her home, evidence that her parents are passionate about sailing. But Little Rat finds danger and distress everywhere, from the steep descent from the top of the hill down to the boats, the deep water that she thinks is filled with eels and jellyfish, and even having a life jacket different from what the other kids wear, not dorky like hers. But she has a good teacher who recognizes her fears and helps her to grow in confidence and courage as the summer progresses.

Sailing can be scary for little folks. Sailboats rock. They are never level. Things happen all the time. The wind strengthens or wanes and changing direction means changing sides and ducking heads to avoid the boom, changing which line is held, and on and on.

For my kids, it wasn’t so much the depth of the water or the thought of what might be waiting just below the surface that upset them. It was the tipping and rolling with the wind and the constant sense of losing their balance. The boat would not stay level or at even the same angle. But these things, disconcerting or not, are much of what later becomes the fun of sailing.

After a while, my kids became eager to get into the boat and spend a few hours out on the lake. As long as they have enough to keep them busy, its a lot of fun. Now they’re old enough to spend some time steering at the rudder, or holding the jib or main sheets to control the sails. Videos can also be helpful. We’ve acquired several and we review them in the spring, or watch them snowy nights when we’d rather be on a warm lake soaking up the sun.

Here’s a video clip from Youtube, cut from a popular video Teaching Kids How To Sail:

Rapunzel’s Revenge is a graphic novel that had plenty of good press before it made it to the shelves of your local book store. Written by girl’s favorite Shannon Hale, along with her husband, Dean Hale, and illustrated by a non-relative coincidentally named Nathan Hale, it started out with an advantage. Later, it won the Cybils award for best graphic novel for the elementary/middle grades.

When I first heard about it, some time before the Cybils, I was excited to get it, thinking my girls would go for this tale. I had, out of curiosity picked up my oldest girl’s copy of Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale, and was very surprised that it was intelligent and well written, instead of some sort of boy-hungry clone. Now I’m a dad who doesn’t want his girls growing up to be vapid boy-hungry clones, so this left me predisposed to hunting out Rapunzel’s Revenge. Then, like a busy dad, I forgot about it.

I came across it a few weeks ago and finally picked it up. Oldest daughter couldn’t put it down, and ended up finishing it that day before she went to bed. She still lights up when I ask her about it. So I read it. It was great. Jammed with action and adventure on every page, it was a truly exciting revision of the well known fairly tale, and far more fun to read. The illustrations were an easy match for the well told tale.

And it is a revision. Somehow, Jack, of Jack and the Beanstalk fame – an occasionally cross-dressing Jack! – even gets messed up in the whole affair, too.

I generally dislike graphic novels/comic books. Usually they have a story not worth bothering to tell. If they have any value, its usually because of the illustrations, but even then, that’s not always the case. I love opera, and in many ways comic books are like opera. The music of opera is unparalleled in western civilization, but if you take the time to learn the story, that can wreck the whole experience because it can be so stupid. Take Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, for example. The story is beyond stupid and confusing, but the music is so transcendent you can’t pry it out of your head with a two-by-four! Comic books are like that. The story is too often beyond stupid, but the drawing can somehow redeem the work.

However, Rapunzel’s Revenge is a great exception to the rule. It’s story is very well told. The characters are engaging and funny. The drawing is fantastic and imaginative. I have no qualms recommending this to anyone.

So, is someone’s birthday coming up? Find out if she’s read it, and if not, go buy this book and give it to her. (That’s right, “she”. I really don’t think many “he’s” are going to really be thankful, deep down in their hearts, if they were to receive this book. Buy him Artemis Fowl instead!)

Here’s an odd little video from YouTube: