Senor Parrot's Perch

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:

Everybody knows that a dog is man’s best friend. How about his or her best audience? Dogs are now being used as ‘nonjudgemental’ audiences for children learning to read. Found in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, we read that young children are reading to dogs in order to build up their literacy, i.e. reading, skills.

The friendly beasts known as “Reading Education Assistance Dogs”, sit quietly,� wag their tails approvingly, and drool, while your kid gets to forge all the way through a book, maybe for the first time.

Yet again, dogs step in where nature or a parent is lacking, and provide a friendly, keen, ear, a lick and a snuggle. Better by far than nothing, but wouldn’t a parent be a grand improvement. Parents should listen as well as read aloud.

Siblings, especially younger ones, love to be read to. If your budding reader has any, the younger siblings are also better than dogs, and the time together forms lifelong bonds, and sparks a conversation, not just barks.

Seems that this approach is nothing new, as this older article from the NY Times indicates. That mysterious bond between man and dog will never be plumbed to it’s full depths, it seems.

Nick Mangiaracina notes some disturbing statistics about the trend of American high school students in his article “Reading, writing are one of our last bonds” , published in the University Daily Kansan.� This information, culled from the well known National Endowment for the Arts survey completed in 2004, has been noted elsewhere many times before, but it bears repeating:

According to a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, the percentage of people reading literature dropped 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002. More significant was the 17 percentage point decline of reading literature of those between the ages of 18 and 24 during the same time period.

Standardized test scores support this trend. The Center for Pubic Education reported a 6 percentage point decline on National Assessment of Education Progress reading test scores among 12th graders between 1992 and 2005. As the name suggests, this test is used to measure progress in education, especially in math and reading.

Its easy to point our blame at schools, especially public schools, but really, there are many fine teachers just trying to maintain as best as they can. What we, as parents or students, can do, is do our best for ourselves in the sphere of influence that we have.

We have to monitor our our kids’ progress and supplement where we can. We don’t have to pay for expensive tutoring, if we can’t afford it, but we can get supplementary materials and start where our kids are at, work with them, and help them reach and exceed their expected grade level of performance.

Isn’t this what homeschoolers do? They have a growing network online and offline where they discuss curriculum and learning experiences and they do very well. As a supplement, some of these same strategies would work for our non-home schooled kids.

Anyone with kids knows how much they want a pet of their own. And, anyone who was a kid remembers wanting and hoping for a pet of their own. There’s a magic that exists between a child and his pet that adults never have with their own pets. Much of that magic is in the mind of the child, but mostly it seems to be a bonding of peers, becoming close and best friends.

But when the child is very young, they don’t understand their pets and often are unwittingly harmful to them. Its hard to teach them ahead of time. We catch them picking up the cat by the hind leg and getting scratched, or scrunching the dog’s ear and getting bitten.

Children need to learn how to live with their pet, and that’s where Tails Are Not For Pulling comes in handy. Simply and clearly written by Elizabeth Verdick and perfectly illustrated by Marieka Heinlen, it is a great, fun read for young children already have or will be getting a pet soon.

It starts with the simple, fun, question for your child, “If pets could talk, what do you think they’d say?” Then it delivers the answers, teaching your child to think about what his or her pet is saying with their posture, actions, and noises.

Like most of the other books I write about, I’ve tested, this one on #2 the five year old, still young enough to misunderstand what Sherlock the cat is telling her, and not yet realizing how she might be hurting him. It was a real eye opener for her. The lessons are so simply presented. The illustrations are so appropriate. The message really took hold. It’s an excellent pick for a young child who will be receiving a new pet in the house.

Tails Are Not For Pulling is part of a series from Free Spirit Publishing for teaching behavior to young children written and illustrated by this same duo.

Some time last summer I got the bug to build a robot. I wanted to get my oldest daughter, age 11, involved, too. Lots of things about robots appeal to me. They are very much the nexus for a lot of cool, current and emerging technology: (more…)

Just over a week ago I was with the family at the bookstore. The kids were looking at books that interested them and I was browsing in the kid’s poetry section. There I found John Updike’s A Child’s Calendar, and perfectly illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Until then I hadn’t any idea that John Updike had written anything for children. I opened it and began reading, and after half-way through the first poem decided I had to have this book. You should have it, too.

The poems are simple rhymes perfectly suited for children, one for every month. Each captures the essence of that month in the way a child sees it, experiences it, and remembers it. Each poem in turn develops and carries forward the rhythm of the year as it opens and closes and opens again. And each awakens in you your own memories. (more…)

For a couple years now we’ve been reading King Cat, written and illustrated by Tracy Gallup, to the kids at night. Its a frequent choice. Perhaps because King Cat is a bit like our own cat, sometimes a wild animal exploring and hunting the neighborhood yards and the woods out back, sometimes aloof and snooty, other times affectionate and companionable, winding himself around our legs and trailing us everywhere.

Gallup’s King Cat lives the comfy life with the Petticombs. Riding comfortably on the shoulders of Mr. Petticomb as if he were a piece of clothing, it occurs to King Cat that he might be seen. Other cats might get the wrong impression, thinking him a mere pet. Petulantly leaping from Mr. Petticomb’s shoulders, he declares himself King Cat and sets off to romp and rule in the garden … for a while, at least, until a few things change.

The illustrations excellently expand the story telling the story as much as the text written mostly in rhyming couplets. This makes it a great lap book that can be returned to many times.

We have a couple other books by Tracy Gallup from her “A Crazy Little Series” of books. Each of these unique little stories is illustrated with her curious dolls and natural objects; Shell Crazy with shells and sand and Tree Crazy with twigs, bark, seeds and roots. The girls are fixated by the fun little stories and� the amusing little characters.

Any of these would be great gifts for young kids and the books from the “A Crazy Little Series” would be excellent for some adults, as well.

Tracy Gallup’s books are published by Mackinac Island Press.

If you’ve read The Mysterious Benedict Society then you’ll remember that Mr. Curtain, the bad guy in the story, had developed his own power system using wave and tidal power. Here is a YouTube video of the AP news story with a brief report and description of actual work to harness the power of waves to produce electricity. Its a neat video showing some actual devices and deployments in the lab.

This is an exciting new direction, especially in light of the renewed interest in alternative sources of energy. Think of all the engineering challenges. What sort of materials will withstand the ocean environment for long periods of time and still maintain their functionality? What about barnacles and other ocean flora and fauna? Will they glom onto the apparatuses and bog them down or stop them dead in their tracks?

There are political challenges, as well. Where will these be placed? Will they interfere with fishing and recreation to a great enough extent that political barriers will be raised against their use? Doubtless, there are many challenges to satisfying our never ending needs for new sources of energy.

Here are two other interesting lines of questions I’m interested in here. What ecological effect would wave-energy farms have on ocean habitats and what economic conditions will need to exist for us to really break free of our dependence on oil and coal as our major sources of energy?

Wow, I’m not waiting for this one. Seems Danielle Steel, author of best selling, steamy, adult fare, is entering the kid’s book market with The Happiest Hippo in the World about a hippo born, not gray, but green. It’s expected to be published in the later part of next year by HarperCollins Children’s.

Nothing in the story about what the message might be. Hmm… born green instead of gray. It wouldn’t be about trying to fit in when we’re born with differences, but resolving to accept ourselves the way we are and just be happy about it. Naw, that’s been done before, at least once.

Maybe this green hippo has super magical powers that explain the why of being green and that enable, no, obligate, this hippo to save the world… naw, not from Steel.

The story is at theBookseller.com.