Senor Parrot’s Perch

The youngest is eagerly reading now. She had steadfastly resisted before. She enjoyed guessing words, but not memorizing them, not actually reading. She hated sounding words out, and when she did, it was “guh…aww…tuh…guh-aww-tuh…got!”  Every single word!  Her reading ability appeared to slip to what it had been nearly a year ago.

But school has started and now she’s motivated. Now she wants to read.

We bought a set of BOB books, the first set. It was sort of a start-over point. I hate the pictures, but my daughter finds humor in them. It turns out to have been a good decision. These books have the sort of repetition of sounds and word groups that helps her recognize the words more quickly. She catchess her mistakes more quickly,  she is gaining speed and confidence, she is reading with less effort and that has sparked in her quite a bit of enthusiasm for reading more. Each book in the set builds upon the one before it.  So, I repented my disdain for the BOB books and I have become an ardent convert. And, best, my girl carries them around and reads them on her own.

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)

I haven’t been getting anything done on my own reading because there is so little time. If I can read for 10 minutes, that’s like a vacation. I’m into 4 books right now, so that’s 5-10 minutes in one of those per day.

But I sometimes get a few minutes to read a review, so I thought I’d post a snippet or two of some that interested me. And, I won’t always be so insanely busy. Each of these books is going on my reading/buying list after seeing these reviews.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Reviewed by Margaret Smith at the MorningSun.net, this is the story of recovering vampires. With the help of Father Ramon, these vampires are struggling to end their blood-sucking ways. Then they find one of their members murdered.

And so a murder mystery unfolds, drawing the others together, threatening to tear them apart (literally – there is a werewolf in the picture, among other hazards) and perhaps making their condition more bearable – if they survive a staking, that is.

Witty and fast-paced, with morbid wit that evokes the spirit of Agatha Christie, “The Reformed Vampire Support Group,” by Australian author Catherine Jinks, is among the more original of the crimson wave of vampire novels for youths and teens in the wake of the “Twilight” series.

But, rather than going the romantic or melodramatic route, the book takes the less-than-serious approach. The vampires are able to regard their state with a sense of humor about pretty much everything, including stereotypes about Dracula and velvet capes.

House of Dark Shadows: Dreamhouse Kings Book I

by by Robert Liparulo.
This intriguing review is from the one and only Library Lounge Lizard, whose blog I’ve not visited before today. I liked this review, and it made me want to really get my hands on this book. Here’s a bit of what the Library Lounge Lizard has to say about House of Shadows: Dreamhouse Kings Book I:

What we have here is an intense and gripping novel for teens. There were times in the book that I found myself reading so fast to find out what happens that I ended up having to re-read parts because I knew I probably missed something, I had to make myself slow down a little! The house itself is an absorbing setting, rich with details that definitely add to the overall creepiness factor. But the heart of this story is the King family themselves. Wonderful character development had me caring and concerned about what happened to each and every one of them.

So if you haven’t guessed yet, yes I loved this book, Mr. Liparulo is a great writer! It is well paced enough to keep you turning the pages and there are some genuine surprises here! There is just enough gore and violence to keep it PG-13 but enough to make you grimace a time or two. With the well rounded plot this book has wide appeal but is a sure hit with middle school boys who are often a difficult audience to please!

The Secret Shortcut

by Mark Teague.
Here we have a review by Laurie Mayhew from Examiner.com. She selected this on the pretense that it makes a good book to help our young’uns to set their minds back to school. There are no such books! But there are fun books that concern school. Here’s one. This is some of what Laurie has to say:

This is a hilarious tale about Wendel and Floyd who always show up late for school. With aliens and pirates to circumvent, it is no wonder they are late. But their teacher, Mrs. Gernsblatt, has had it with their crazy excuses. They need to be on time . . . OR ELSE!
They start out early with the best intentions and decide to take the secret shortcut to be certain to get there on time. Jungles and crocodiles and rope bridges stand in their way, but they are determined to make it on time.
Will they make it? The hilarious result is squishy but satisfying.

Mark Teague is a big favorite at our house. And since Back-to-School shopping is the rage with Mom and the girls, I can slip this in. Laurie gave me the excellent, albeit false, excuse that this will prepare them for returning to drudgery. I can bet, too, that if it weren’t about 4 miles to their school, they’d like to walk there after reading this book, if the cover of The Secret Shortcut is any clue.

This last book has a boat on the cover, therefore it meets all criteria for being a good book. But there’s more. The review is written by the author’s daughter, so you know the reviewer loves, I mean reeeaaaally loves this book. Unfortunately, the review is reeeaaaally short, too. I would like to know more, but the cover, reeeaaaally is enough for me. I’m sure your reeeaaaally tired of this so here is the info:

Pirate’s Passage

by William Gilkerson

Reviewer Anna Gilkerson says nice things about her dad’s book. But don’t rely just on Anna. Pirate’s Passage won the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature in 2006. That makes it one of those Canadian books. Anna says:

The old bias goes: pirates were the bad boys who robbed and pillaged the innocent. In William Gilkerson’s beautifully illustrated page turner, “Pirate’s Passage,” the story follows young Jim and his mysterious mentor Captain Johnson in 1950’s Nova Scotia. A rich education coated in adventure—ideal for children or adults who find themselves in need of some sea-worthy fun-yet-educational-yet-fun reading.

She also tells us, that this book was made into a 10-part animated feature with Donald Sutherland as the voice of the Captain, who is the one telling the tale. I’m salivating over the cover of this book. I’m itching to find a copy of this film. This is going onto the top of my wishlist/gotta read list. You can tell, I’m like Ratty. Nothing beats messing around in boats.

And go here to Gilkerson’s website to read some more about this book, as well as some of his others.

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection)

By Janet Halfmann,

Illustrated by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin

Pelican’s Catch (Smithsonian Oceanic Collection) traces a single day in the life of a young brown pelican. Having just learned to fly, the 11-week old pelican awakens and joins a group of pelicans that are flying overhead on their way to catch their breakfast. Brown Pelican still has a lot to learn, diving over and over into the clear blue ocean that surrounds the mangrove tree island where it lives before it gains its first catch.

Along the way, Halfmann depicts the life of a brown pelican very well. She has written this nonfiction book in a story format which allows her to show the bird’s habitat, social life, physical characteristics and behavior withinin the interesting narrative arc of a single day. The facts about the bird aren’t presented as scientific data, but rather as the features and elements of this bird and its environment.

The illustrations by Bob Dacey and Debra Bandelin are superb. The birds soar and dive with so much life and drama. And the final page is enough to make you quit your job and move to Puerto Rico. Say- I do have a friend from Puerto Rico. I’ve met some of his family that live there. Maybe, just maybe, I could do a bit of couch surfing until I can find a job on a boat down there.

I first learned about this book through a review on someone’s blog. I really don’t recall whose it was, but it may have been this review over at The Well Read Child. It does look familiar. I checked out some of the other spots that review science and nonfiction regularly and found this excellent interview with author Janet Halfmann over at Lori Calabrese’s blog Lori Calabrese Writes! I was unfamiliar with Janet Halfmann before reading this book. But now, after reading Lori’s interview with her, I’m looking for more of Janet Halfmann’s books.

The Warlord’s Puzzle

The Warlord’s Beads

The Warlord’s Fish

The Warlord’s Messengers (Warlords)

The Warlord’s Alarm, A Mathematical Adventure

Children’s Books by Virginia Walton Pilegard
Illustrated by Nicolas Debon

Also in the series, The Warlord’s Puppeteers and The Warlord’s Kites, which I haven’t read.

Powerful, rich and proud, the Warlord always seems to find himself in a bind. Young Chuan somehow always gets him out with one sort of invention or another, and always with good, old fashioned clever thinking. Always using his brain, Chuan, and sometimes with the help of his friend Jing Jing, solves every problem using mathematical or scientific principals learned illustrated in another context.

These books are very fun to read. Despite the “Warlord” in every book, there is no violence, except in one, where the young boy, Chuan, and the artist to whom he is apprenticed are kidnapped. Each book emphasizes problem solving, which makes them ideal for stimulating younger students eager to learn. They would also make a great supplement for learning about ancient Chinese culture since they are set in feudal China. At the end of each book, author Virginia Walton Pilegard shows how the Chinese really did use solutions similar to Chuan’s and she includes a fun craft or other activity for kids that applies the same science. The publisher also has study guides available at their website.

Study Guides:
The Warlord’s Beads
The Warlord’s Fish
The Warlord’s Kites
The Warlord’s Puppeteers
The Warlord’s Puzzle

I had some hum-drum work to do so I fired up iTunes to listen to some podcasts while I hum-drummed along. From Just One More Book podcasts about kids books, I saw that they too had just reviewed You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!
These guys sound Canadian, ay!

They really liked it, too. Even more than me, by the enthusiastic sounds in their voices. And they really loved artist Andre Carrilho’s illustrations.

My review from this morning is over here.

You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!

Author: Jonah Winter

Illustrated by Andre Carrilho

When I was a kid, Sandy Koufax was greatest pitcher in the game. He threw harder, faster and better than anyone else playing at the time, or since, or before. It was still the good old days of sports, when we talked about great athletes instead of doping scandals. So I was excited to find You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!, a great children’s book about that great baseball player.

This book provides a glimpse into Sandy Koufax’s life during his brief athletic career. A natural athlete, Koufax started attracting attention for his pitching when  he was still a teen. His amazing pitching speed won him a birth with the Brooklyn Dodgers, later the Los Angeles Dodgers, after they moved.

Koufax was not an immediate success. His pitched erratically and he lacked the control to consistently pitch in the strike zone. It was some time before he displayed the greatness that he would later achieve. What happened? How did Koufax develop into one of the greatest pitchers who ever played the game of baseball? No one knows for sure, but one day, after walking four batters in a row to fill the bases, he transformed in an instant, and struck out all the remaining batters and from that minute on he became perhaps the greates pitcher of all time.

Koufax is also famous for his integrity and character. A Jew, he refused to play a game in the world series because it fell on a Jewish holy day. This honorable act showed he truly held the convictions of his faith, putting it before everything else. Nowadays, that level of commitment to one’s beliefs is so rare and almost strange to see. Personally, I find it extremely noteworthy and admirable and it reminds me of Eric Henry Liddell, the amazing athlete from Scotland who ran for England in the 1924 Olympics, who also put his faith and convictions before personal ambitions (see the great movie Chariots of Fire for a glimpse of Eric Liddel).

This book is also noteworthy for some great illustration. It’s really a picture book as much as a biography. Some of the illustrations remind me of renaissance religious paintings. The illustrations frequently emphasize oversized stylized heads, but also offer some great perspectives and convey the strength, motion and grace of baseball. You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! is a must read for your young baseball fans. Adults will enjoy it as well. And if they are around my age or older, they can enjoy recalling the glory days of the sport when character still counted for more than winning, and athletes won without drugs.

Here’s another bio of Koufax. I haven’t read this one yet, but I recall that it was very well received. Sandy Koufax, by Jane Leavy is aimed at the Young Adult and older crowd.

“Before Anyone had heard of Black Beard, Long John Silver, or Calico Jack, there was a pirate named ROGER.”

So begins Roger, the Jolly Pirate, a children’s book written and illustrated by Brett Helquist. Roger was not your scariest pirate, not by a long shot. Instead of a parrot screeching “pieces of eight!”, a chicken perched on his shoulder. He was too happy, too. Never a cause for alarm, his shipmates disparagingly named him “Jolly Roger”.

But one day, as his shipmates battle for their lives, Roger is confined below decks. To win the crews approval he bakes a cake using anything and everything he could find. His plan works, though the way he had planned.

Helquist does a good job here. His story is as silly as his illustrations. This is a good book to read aloud to your young pirates or for your older crew in the early grades to read to themselve – but only if they like to laugh aloud.

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock
Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan
ISBN 9781570916694

On the strength of several reviews a couple months ago, I went out and got Bubble Homes and Fish Farts by Fiona Bayrock and Illustrated by Carolyn Conahan. I read it through quickly and found it quite good. I thought it would be over the head of my 6-year old, but I also thought that this book may help turn her into a junior naturalist. We learn a lot looking at the world around us and books like Bubble Homes and Fish Farts help us know what to look for and how to look. In particular, this book helps explain how animals use bubbles to survive and thrive in their environment.

My family spends a lot of time exploring a local lake in kayaks or sailboats and we enjoy looking for cool stuff. My 6-year old has an old root beer bottle with a cap that she uses to collect her lake specimens, usually weeds and other floating stuff. She’s already beginning to look closely at nature. As we read through the book last night I spent time talking about what we might find in the lake that’s making those bubbles we see from time to time. Now, we have even more things to look for now. I then reminded her of the spittlebugs inside the foamy bubbles on many of the plants in the neighborhood that we look at while walking the dog. All this was fun for her and made a connection in her mind.

Along the way in this book, I did learn about fish FaRTs, that is, Fast Repetitive Ticks. Herring, at night, swallow air and pass it out the other end, possibly using this to communicate amongst themselves in the dark ocean waters. There’s an experiment for you – how do you test the communication theory? I remember when I was young, and way up north in the frigid taconite country of Hibbing, Minnesota. In winter we’d all be outside shivering and talking excitedly but never hear a word that another was saying. Our words froze up in our breath and fell onto the snow covered playground with hushed clunks. We’d pick a few of our frozen conversations up and take them inside, where they’d thaw out and produce a random, nonsense conversation as our words escaped their frosty prisons. Maybe herring farts will be like that. We just need to pop the bubbles to hear what they’re saying. I can see a research grant proposal here! Stranger ones have been funded.

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.