Senor Parrot's Perch

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.

George’s Secret Key to the Universe

by Lucy Hawking and Stephen Hawking with Christophe Galfard

Illustrated by Garry Parsons

Novelist Lucy Hawking has teamed up with her famous father, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, to write a terrific science fiction book for kids and middle grade readers. They get further assistance from Christophe Galfard and the book is illustrated by Garry Parsons. Their first effort is George’s Secret Key to the Universe. Within the framework of this novel the Hawkings have managed to create a very fun story that includes the latest fantastic facts about the universe and theories of its origin. Together they present an amazing amount of knowledge at a level that anyone can understand. Unlike much science fiction, which is really fantasy with a few smatterings of highly speculative and dubious science, with this book we have real science.

Next door to George’s home stands an old abandoned house, its yard and structure long neglected after the old man who had lived there disappeared. One night George pursues his pet pig, which had broken through a hole in the fence, into the overgrown yard. He sees lights are on and his pig has just dashed into the house through an open door. As he catches his pig, he is discovered by a girl, a bit younger, but close to his own age, who is not the least bothered by the pig.� She is Annie. George soon meets the girl’s father, Eric, also not bothered by the presence of the pig.

George discovers that his new neighbors have a secret. Not an evil secret, but a fantastic secret of great power. They possess the most powerful (more…)

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:

Just a quick note about this book: I found Lily and the Paper Man by Rebecca Upjohn and illustrated by Renne Benoit sitting out on display at the Library while my daughters and I were hunting for books to take home. I flipped through it quick and decided it would be good to read to my youngest daughter. What a pleasant surprise. I thought it would be good, based on a quick flip-through, but it turned out even much better than I was expecting.

Young Lily rides the bus or walks home from school each day with her mother. As winter approaches, she sees a disheveled, raggedy man selling papers on the street. Her mother buys a paper from him. Frightened by his appearance, she decides she wants to ride the bus home all the time, rather than walk past that scary man. In time, however, they are again walking and she notices more about him each time, and her fear diminishes, replaced by concern. Then, she has a plan.

After reading this story to my youngest, I could see that she was visibly moved. It was the perfect opportunity, so I got my bible and turned to the book of Matthew, chapter 25, and verses 31-40:

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Then we talked about how we serve Jesus when we help out unfortunate people. That Jesus takes care of their needs by using us, and that this makes him happy. It was a well taught lesson with the help of the well told story of Lily and the Paper Man.

• Title:� Lilly and the Paper Man
• Author: Rebecca Upjohn
• Illustrator: Renne Benoit
• Published 2007, Second Story Press
• ISBN: 978-1-897187-19-7

Digging for Bird Dinosaurs: An Expedition to Madagascar by Nic Bishop. ISBN-10: 0395960568.

Dinosaurs, a great fascination to younger kids, can frequently become old news by the time they’re in middle school. Colorful monsters chasing one another, eating and being eaten, after a while, gets to be the same old same old. What can we do to keep the early joy of science alive?

Nic Bishop has the cure. In his Digging for Bird Dinosaurs: An Expedition to Madagascar (Scientists in the Field Series) he trails real paleontologist Cathy Forster from her university lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to the arid island of Madagascar, a virtual treasure island of prehistoric fossils, where she is part of a dinosaur digging expedition, and back again to New York. Her return, laden with bones and fossils that she and her teammates have found buried in the sandstone hills of Madagascar, brings more hard work and more discoveries and even more questions.

What Bishop has produced is a fine portrait of science that is accessible to kids. He captures the intensity and excitement of both the search and the methodical investigation that the scientists undertake to retrieve knowledge from their finds. He also, by following a real scientist, places the life of a scientist in real perspective as someone working with others and living a life that involves both the lab and research and life within the community, as well.

This book, illustrated with photographs taken by Bishop, is an outstanding work, depicting the life of a scientist accurately: lots of hard work, sometimes tedious and exacting, sometimes exotic and adventurous, and always driven by a thirst for insight that fuels the passion to push on for answers. Science is great fun. Learning and discovery are intensely rewarding. Creating new knowledge from pieces of facts and observations is exciting. Books such as this help kids learn this lesson early, before they let adults who’ve let themselves be intimidated by science and learning get to squelch its joys.

March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris and illustrated by London Ladd is an inspring recollection of that great day, August 28, 1963, when over 250,000 people marched into Washington, D.C. to demonstrate for equal rights for black Americans and really, for all. The author, sister of Martin Luther King, Jr., paints a vivid picture of that hot summer day on the National Mall that conveys the passion and dignity of� her brother and the fellow leaders as they led the events of that day.

The book is written for middle grade kids. In fact, it was my middle school daughter who brought it home to me, insisting that I read it. How glad I am. Focusing on small scenes leading to the day, and the book then opens to a panoramic view of the day at the National Mall where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his most famous speech.

There, Martin Luther King spoke of his dream before 250,000 men, women, and children. We’ve all heard that speech many times, and yet the power of that dream as he spoke it has never faded. Because of its goodness and purity, and because of the passion in King’s voice, and because of the memorable words he spoke so well, many of us can hear it in our minds, almost as if we had been there ourselves.

In perhaps my favorite part, Christine King Farris depicts the crafting of that speech the night before. Surely he already had most of this on his mind, but he labored along, in his hotel room, through the entire night to perfect and commit to heart the words he would convey. Then he dressed and prepared to go out. Receiving a call that an enormous crowd was marching to the National Mall, he rushed out and joined the other leaders to march arm-in-arm together with the throng.

Christine King Farris paints his character in small details, pointing out how his commitment to dignity and respect was reflected even down to his manner of dress and his behavior, and how both communicating his message, as well. These little insights into his character give a great deal of strength to his message, of his dream, when men will be judged by the content of their characters and not by the color of their skin. And men’s actions do reflect their character.

She also conveys a sense the faith in God that bound King and his fellow leaders together for their cause and to each other; a faith that I believe gave them strength, that enabled them to rise above the injustice of the racial prejudice and violence that poured down on them.

August 28, 1963 was a great day, but it never would have happened without men of character and strength who had powerful vision, who labored long to see that day. Now, 45 years later, we have elected a black American as President. Such a great change we’ve seen since that day.

Title: March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World

Author: Christine King Farris

Publisher: Scholastic Press (August 1, 2008)

ISBN: 978-0545035378

My older daughter is a raving nut about Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson stories. In case you don’t know, and I know only by hearsay because I haven’t stopped to read the series yet, Percy Jackson finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, god of the sea. So of course, he’s packed of to an exclusive summer camp on Long Island where he connects up with a lot of other young demi-gods and…

These books sparked a lot of family discussions about Greek myths in the car, around the dinner table, and everywhere else we talk. My knowledge of this stuff has grown as thin as the hair on my head as I’ve aged, so I thought I’d better remedy that with a trip to the library, getting books for myself and my daughter.

My first thought was to give her Edith Hamilton’s� Mythology, a classic I read as a kid, and great source. That was way to ambitious for her at her present age. In a few years I hope I can get her to revisit that book, but I quickly nabbed a couple substitutes that she loved, finishing them off in two days.

The first book I got for my daughter was The McElderry Book of Greek Myths, retold by Eric A Kimmel and illustrated by Pep Montserrat, this was pretty good, covering many of the most popular myths.� And knowledge of the myths does have its everyday uses. Yesterday the word narcissistic came up and we were able to use her knowledge of the myth to help her understand what the common usage of the term� meant.

The second book, better than I was expecting,� was� the entertaining and informative� Mythology by Lady Hestia Evans (I bet!) and edited by Dugald A Steer (more likely the one to blame). It’s one of the ‘Ology’ series of books, along the lines of Pirateology, and the others in the series. This book covered the origins of the gods, their lineages, and several of the better known myths. This all unfolds within the story of a protege of Lady Hestia who has traveled to Greece to collect ancient articles for an antiquities dealer. Things do not go as planned.

I’d recommend both of those books to a elementary or middle schooler. I’m sure there are many other good books on the Greek myths, and I’m sure I’ll keep looking for a while until I get distracted in some other direction. And I also noticed that Rick Riordan, on his webiste, recommends Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths, by Bernard Evslin, Greek Gods and Heroes, by Robert Graves, and The Usborne Illustrated Guide to Greek Myths and Legends. I haven’t seen these before, so I may see if I can get a hold of these as well.

For books at an adult level, while looking for Hamilton’s Greek Mythology, I came across several other books by her. I checked out The Greek Way. What a marvelous book! I still have a ways to go before I’m done, but I’m already giving this one 6 stars on a scale of 1 to 5. The Greek Way focuses on the classical period of Greece, roughly 500 B.C. to 350 B.C.

Hamilton begins by comparing how differently the Greeks understood and lived in the world in comparison to the other great civilizations of their time, and how this made them utterly unique among all the ancient civilizations, and why it was that Athens became the cradle of democracy. She continues by choosing exemplary poets, philosophers and historians to further explore their unparalleled civilization. Her writing is exceptionally clear and a pleasure to read. Her passion for her subject is in every paragraph. It’s like I’m in college again, excited with learning, with a favorite professor that’s excited with sharing all he knows. I’m a smarter boy for reading this one.

My other Greek tutor is The Complete World of Greek Mythology, by R.G.A. Buxton. This is fascinating, too. It is a pleasure because of its content, but not because of its style. Its got that academic style that would do much better if it was less formal and flowed with more grace. Nevertheless, it is still worth the read.

The Complete World of Greek Mythology isn’t for kids, both for its reading level and for its contents. Its more frank in its presentation of ancient Greek lifestyle than I’m comfortable putting within reach of my kids, given their present ages. They can wait till they’re older.

Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System, written by Kathleen V. Kudlinski and illustrated by John Rocco is a very fun and instructive history of scientific thinking about our solar system. Its my most recent stop to understanding the universe.

Beginning with the belief that the Earth was the center of the solar system and continuing through current scientific theories and activities, this book follows a predictable pattern:

• This is what we thought;
• Boy were we wrong!
• This is what we’re thinking now.

What I like about this book is how it presents scientific deduction from observations and evidence, testing what we think by seeing how well it aligns with what we see. For example, the ancient Greeks determined that the Earth was round because the shadow it cast upon the moon was round. Comets streaking through the sky didn’t crack the heavenly spheres of crystal, so perhaps the Earth and the planets were drifting through space. The appearance of new stars meant that the heavens were not unchanging.

Changing our ideas based upon data and testing ideas against data is the underpinning of science. This book emphasizes that. However, it is short on how these scientific principals translated into mathematical concepts that provided data of their own. Mathematical models, be it geometrical descriptions of the orbits of the planets, or the equations of gravity are fundamental to our understanding of the universe.

The models of the universe created by Copernicus and Kepler predicted the planets’ movements much better than the old theory. That is why we accepted their ideas and rejected the others. Isaac Newton’s Theory of Gravity improved these explanations more by helping to explain variations in the planets orbits when they were near each other, even leading to the hypothesis that there was another planet beyond Saturn. Ah, Math! the language of science.

Author Kathleen V. Kudlinski has also written Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!

Book: Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System

Author: Kathleen V. Kudlinski

Illustrator: John Rocco

ISBN: 978-0-525-46979-7