AN INTERVIEW WITH MAURICE SENDAK ~R.iver b ankR ev1ew . -::::;--- - ~~ --~--===------ of l>ooks for .Young -readers
Ten Great Baby Books
A Visit to the Native American Preparatory School
Truth in Storytelling: An Essay by Jennifer Annstrong
Books That Aren't Afraid of the Dark
Beyond Guidebooks: Reading on the Road
A Profile of Dayal Kaur Khalsa
PLUS ~ New Books for Summer
SUMMER 1999 $5 .00
PUBLISHE D AT THE UNI VERSITY OF S . Summertime treate ... FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX Books for Young Readers
THE BIRD, THE MONKEY, GUS AND GRANDPA AND THE SNAKE IN THE JUNGLE AND THE TWO-WHEELED BIKE Kate Banks Claudia Mills Pictures by Tomek Bogacki Pictures by Catherine Stock *"Rebus books can be entertaining, "A charming look at a rite of passage for challenging, and useful for teaching reading, many young children." -School Library but when written with the delicacy of Banks Journal. "Right on target for the age group, ... and illustrated with the warmth of and the intergenerational relationship is a Bogacki, such a book [becomes] something sweet bonus." - Book list really special." -Starred, Book list $13.00 I 0-374-32821-8 I Ages 6-8 $16.00 I 0-374-30729-61Ages3 up Frances Foster Books NOW IT IS MORNING Candace Whitman TWISTER "This attractive picture book follows three Darleen Bailey Beard families from very different settings as they Pictures by Nancy Carpenter start the day." -Booklist. "The luminous * "Vividly written." -Starred, School Library scenes make the author's point: there are Journal. "A riveting adventure ... vibrates many ways to start the day, no matter with the intensity of nature unleashed." where morning arrives." -Kirkus Reviews - Kirkus Reviews $15.00 I 0-374-35527-4 /Ages 2-4 $16.00 I 0-374-37977-71Ages4- 8
THE ABSENTMINDED FELLOW Samuel Marshak Pictures by Marc Rosenthal Translated by Richard Pevear "Defying gravity and exuding antic glee, Rosenthal's figures hurl themselves across pages rendered in a style bold enough to engage a group yet with plenty of entertaining details ... Funny and childlike." - The Horn Book $16.00 I 0-374-30013-5 Ages 3 up
Illustration by Nancy Carpenter from TWISTER Summer 1999
- contents About the Cover Artist MEILO SO
Essays I am a Hong Kong-born Chinese. I ~ attended secondary school and art college Books That Aren't Afraid of the Dark ...... 7 in Britain. In 1987 I returned to Hong By Christine Alfano Kong and started working as an illustrator. I am now living in the south of England Truth in Storytelling ...... 14 with my husband and a ginger cat. By Jennifer Armstrong Being born in a concrete jungle, I had Beyond Guidebooks ...... 21 very little contact with nature. Not until I By Roz Ramstad Hawley was fourteen did I see a proper river, the river Thames in Oxfordshire. When I was Reviews asked to make an illustra ~ tion for the Riverbank New Books for Summer ...... 28 Review cover, I thought immediately of water Features lilies. Water lilies have always been a favorite flower ~ for the Chinese. We praise it as the flower Books of Summer of gentility because of its quality of grow On the Banks ofPlum Creek ...... 5 ing out of the muddiest water yet remain Charlotte's 'Web ...... 8 ing fresh, straight, and beautiful. Sketching Outdoors in Summer ...... 9 A favorite river memory of mine is Time of Wonder ...... 13 of visiting my sister and her family in Dandelion Wine ...... 16 Freiburg, a pretty German city by the "Bad Influence" ...... 20 Black Forest. Every day I took my two nieces for walks by the river. I couldn't I N TERVI EW Maurice Sendak ...... 10 help envying their joy at wading and By Michael Patrick Hearn swimming in the clean water, watching tadpoles and dragonflies, and learning all TH E TEACHER'S ART Writing within the Magic ...... 17 the names of wildflowers and grasses By john G. Ramsay along the bank (in both Chinese and Ger man). We strolled for hours but never got BOOKMARK Ten Great Baby Books ...... 23 lost, because they knew that if one follows the direction the river is moving in, one PROFILE Dayal Kaur Khalsa ...... 24 will never get lost there. By Mary Lou Burket A POEM Meilo So is the illustratorefThe Beauty of FOR S U MMER "Ode to the Sprinkler'' ...... 27 the Beast: Poems from the Animal King By Gary Soto dom, selected by jack Prelutsky (Knopf, 1997), ONE FOR andTasty Baby Belly Buttons, by Judy Sierra THE SHELF Scooter, by Vera B. Williams ...... 48 (Knopf, 1999). 1 ~Riverbank Review ~....=----of \,ooJ,;s..-=-=---=---=- for }'011ng~ readers..,_=---=
Editor Martha Davis Beck Art Director Kristi Anderson Two Spruce Design Marketing Director Christine Alfano rom Hampton Roads, publishers of the Conversations with God series and The Little Soul Circulation Manager F Christine Heppermann and the Sun. Young Spirit books stimulate the intellect, Editorial Committee teach valuable lessons about spirituality and metaphysics, Christine Alfano and help young spirits grow. We invite you to bring these Martha Davis Beck wonderful books into the lives of the new readers you love, Mary Lou Burket and give them the key to a whole new world. Christine Heppermann Susan Marie Swanson Copy Editor OBO David Caligiuri Bob Anderson House Artist Julie Delton Where is Paradise? When an adorable monkey Computer Consultant named "Obo" hears of a place called "paradise:' Eric Hinsdale he sets off in search of this magical land. OBO Cattails engages children in learning respect for our Andy Nelson fragile natural environment. Hardcover with Advisory Board color illustrations. Rudine Sims Bishop, Susan Bloom, Barbara Elleman, Carol Erdahl, Karen Nelson Hoyle, Susan Huber, Ginny Moore Kruse, Margaret O'Neill Herman's Magical Universe Ligon, Trudi Taylor, Mary Wagner Becky Mccarley Summer 1999 While searching for serious answers about the Volume II, Number 2 Copyright © 1999 by the Riverbank Review. world, Herman discovers the seven metaphysical All rights reserved.
laws of the universe that explain how things really NEW ADDRESS work and why. Hardcover with color illustrations Please direct correspondence to: Riverbank Review by the artist of seven Moody Blues album covers, University of St. Thomas Phil Travers. 1000 LaSalle Avenue, MOH-217 Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 Phone: (65 I) 962-5372 Fax: (651) 962-5169 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.stthomas.edu/www/rbr_http
The Riverbank Review (ISSN 1099-6389) is pub lished quarterly, in March, June, September, and H AM PT 0 N R0 A D S P U BL I S H I N G C 0 M PA N Y, I NC. December. Subscriptions are $20 for one year (four issues), $35 for two years. The Rivubank Available from your local bookseller or order direct • 1-800-766-8009 · www.hrpub.com Review is published in affiliation with the School of Education at the University of St. Thomas.
2 what have you lost?
An antholosv of poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye Photo5raphs by Michael Nye
* "Each poem pierces and then releases readers, who pocket a new treasure at the end of each page."-School Library journal (starred review) * "Rich in quantity, quality, and variety." -Bulletin ofthe Center for ChiUlren's Books (starred review) • "Young adults ... will appreciate this collection about losing-and regaining-oneself through the experience of loss ." - The Horn Book • "Thought provoking."-Kirkus Reviews • ''A great stimulus for students' personal writing." -ALA Booklist liilJ Greenwillow Books A division of William Morrow & Co., Inc. Ages 12 up. 224 pp. 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 • www.williammorrow.com RTE $19.00/ 0-688-16184-7 Riverbank Review ~ editors note
This spring I had the opportunity to revisit a place that I and somehow, I believed, existing beyond-the book. love. With memory as my guide, I found the unmarked Rereading was the best way to get to that larger, imagined road that leads down through woods to a stretch of wild world, by going deeper and deeper into the story. Some and beautiful Northern California shoreline, a place I time later, I read Charlotte's Wt!b aloud to my sister on a used to hike to as a teenager. Once again, I heard the sea long car trip. How important I felt, entrusted with this wind in the trees and watched waves smash through the task! (No doubt, I entrusted myself with it-but nobody opening in a massive arch of rock. I clambered up the stopped me.) To take on the role of reader for someone steep dunes (with more effort than it took twenty-five else is, for a child, a powerful way to revisit a book. years ago) until I was high enough to look out. Wild Sharing books with children is often an act of reread flowers bloomed on the cliffs. Below me, small birds tip ing. When you read a book aloud that you remember tapped along, poking their beaks into wet sand. The from your childhood, you hear it in a new way. Your ocean beyond was dazzling. young listener may surprise you by being amused, per There are lots of beautiful places in the world, and a plexed, frightened, moved in places you don't expect. Or good many may be as beautiful as this spot. But I went by being utterly unmoved by a book that meant some out of my way to visit this particular windblown beach. thing to you. Loving a place and knowing it well-going back to it, As readers, our perspectives and insights are contin either in your imagination or in person-gives it power ually developing, which is why time, as well as familiari as a presence in your life. ty with a story, often enrich our experience of a book. I feel much the same way about books. Though I Reentering Narnia, we want Lucy to step more carefully know there are hundreds of stories I haven't read that I in the witch's snow, and we feel sad the moment we meet might love, I'm at peace with the fact that I'll never dis Mr. Tumnus, knowing the punishment to befall him. We cover most of them. Accepting this, it becomes easier to also feel more kindly toward Edmund, whom we know spend time engaged in the activity that, for me, is one of will eventually mend his ways. For a child, such fore life's great pleasures: rereading. knowledge allows for a growing understanding of how Part of what led me to the work I do today was my and why events in a story transpire: on the first read, a inability to resist rereading the books of my childhood. bullying character is an annoyance, or a threat. The sec Long before I had children (and therefore an excuse) I ond time through, a reader may look into why such a was in the habit of pulling old favorites off the shelf. This character behaves the way they do. habit is not restricted to children's books- I regularly My younger son is finally ready for Treasure Island, reread "adult" authors as well. I never feel that I've and I hope to read it to him this summer. I wouldn't be absorbed all that a great novel or poem has to offer, the surprised if his older brother joins us-for the pleasure first time through. Return trips yield new discoveries. of rereading. I look forward to the first scenes featuring For children, rereading brings comfort and a sense of LongJohn Silver. Knowing how dastardly, how immoral, mastery. Sometimes it takes a few passes through a book how murderous this man turns out to be, won't a shiver for it to fully "take." Other times, a book simply brings go through us as we see him through Jim Hawkins's so much pleasure, once is not enough. I remember the eyes, so charming, so adventurous, so debonair! On a wonder I felt when my mother read Charlotte's Wt!b to me second reading, a little knowledge is a marvelous thing; when I was in second grade. I also remember rereading but since one of us will be enjoying this book for the first the book on my own, longing for the world created by- time, we'll have to be careful not to give it all away. These
4 Summer 1999
BOOKS of SUMMER
,S.SJ"~-==-.,;;;;;;;;: .. - ...... ~~~ __.. _ __... ___n:-o;; nuances of knowing and not knowing, of sharing without telling, are part of On the Banks of Plum Creek the pleasure of reading things twice. Scattered throughout this issue of he weather was very hot. The thin, high sky was too hot to look at. Air the Riverbank Review are snippets of Trose up in waves from the whole prairie, as it does from a hot stove. In favorite "Books of Summer" and other the schoolhouse the children panted like lizards, and the sticky pine-juice features that take a fresh look at old or dripped down the board walls. familiar work. As you look ahead to Saturday morning Laura went walking with Pa to look at the wheat. It your summer reading, perhaps you will was almost as tall as Pa. He lifted her onto his shoulder so that she could think of a favorite story that you could see over the heavy, bending tops. The field was greeny gold. At the dinner table Pa told Ma about it. He had never seen such a crop. enjoy again. Or, if you're already pre There were forty bushels to the acre, and wheat was a dollar a bushel. They pared for the season with a stack of were rich now. This was a wonderful country. Now they could have anything new books, go ahead-dig in. You can they wanted. Laura listened and thought, now Pa would get his new boots. always reread them next year. She sat facing the open door and the sunshine streaming through it. Some -Martha Davis Beck thing seemed to dim the sunshine. Laura rubbed her eyes and looked again. The sunshine really was dim. It grew dimmer until there was no sunshine. "I do believe a storm is coming up," said Ma. "There must be a cloud over the sun." We've moved ... across the river. Pa got up quickly and went to the door. A storm might hurt the wheat. He looked out, then he went out. Effective June 1, 1999, please The light was queer. It was not like the changed light before a storm. address all correspondence to: The air did not press down as it did before a storm. Laura was frightened, she did not know why. Riverbank Review She ran outdoors, where Pa stood looking up at the sky. Ma and Mary University of St. Thomas came out, too, and Pa asked, "What do you make of that, Caroline?" 1000 LaSalle Avenue, MOH-217 A cloud was over the sun. It was not like any cloud they had ever seen Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 before. It was a cloud of something like snowflakes, but they were larger flicker ~ than snowflakes, and thin and glittering. Light shone through each ing particle. Acknowledgments There was no wind. The grasses were still and the hot air did not stir, but the edge of the cloud came on across the sky faster than wind. The hair Publication of the Riverbank Review is stood up on Jack's neck. All at once he made a frightful sound up at that made possible in part by a gift from cloud, a growl and a whine. Margaret S. Hubbs, and by a grant from Plunk! something hit Laura's head and fell to the ground. She looked the Minnesota Humanities II down and saw the largest grasshopper she had ever seen. Then huge brown Commission, in cooperation with the National Endow- grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and ment for the Humanities and M INNESOTA her face and her arms. They came thudding down like hail. . HUMANITIES the Mmnesota State Legisla- coMM1 ss io N ture. The magazine gratefully acknowl From On the Banks of Plum Creek, by laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Garth edges this support, along with the con Williams (Harper & Row, 1953). Text copyright © 1937 by laura Ingalls Wilder. Copy tributions of individual donors. right © renewed by Roger l. MacBride, 1963. Repn'nted by permission o/HarperCollins.
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Books That Aren't Afraid of the Dark
By Christine Alfano
am not a particularly brave or adventurous person, and I am another page we stand back, viewing only a little embarrassed, at the age of forty-two, to admit that the path of a shooting star in the wide moonlit sky. Hunter's eloquent cross I I'm afraid of the dark. All day long I walk about in the world, hatchings cast deep shadows across the head held high, as ifl owned the place. But at night the world tilts, expanse of every page, and the story's its ownership changes hands, and for a few hours it belongs to characters are rendered in a simple, sweetly human way. By story's end the someone or something else-bears, large and pairs nighttime things that might boy is pleased enough with his outdoor nocturnal insects, packs of hungry rac seem strange with warmly familiar trek to dream of the night in his sleep. coons. After the sun goes down I'm images: "moths flutter up, flutter down, Tag along with a little girl and her happiest near the safe and cheery glow like wind-up toys, without the noise." older cousin on a moonlit, seashore of my living-room lamp. But some Anne Hunter's understated pictures treasure hunt in Liz Rosenberg's thing funny happens when you have hold the loftier qualities ofYolen's text charmed Moonbathing(Harcourt Brace, children-if they need you to show down to earth, and, through them, 1996). This is a special event, not done courage, you can usually find at least a readers experience both the closing in just any old time: "You need a clear smidgen of it. And when they want to of night and its vastness. We peek over night. A full moon." Rosenberg's poet go for a walk at night, somehow you the boy's shoulder as he closely exam ic approach revels in the physical and find yourself leading the way. ines lightning bugs in a bush; on grants access to the wonder of the Many children's books regard night time with the same wariness that I usu ally do, but there are several striking exceptions. These books love the night and work to nudge us out the door after dusk. When the sun sets, darkness closes in; at the same time, magnificent starry skies open up to provide a glimpse of the infinite. This dichotomy is grace fully explored in Jane Yolen's Nocturne (Harcourt Brace, 1997), the story of a young boy taking a walk in the dark with his mother. The boy carries his flashlight-at first switched off, but in ready position. A nervous sideways glance tells us he's not convinced that going out at night is such a good idea. But Yolen's spare and lulling verse reas sures. She repeats words and sounds, mustration by Maurice Sendak,from The Moon Jumpers
7 Riverbank Review
world at night: "The waves rush into shore, white-topped, spreading sideways and foaming on the sand. They look B 0 0 KS of like dancers holding hands. Moonbath SUMME R ing." Pastel illustrations by Stephen ,s.sJ".c.:t ______-- Lambert have a rounded friendliness, and each one is imbued with the moon's silver light. Though the little girl begins her night by seeking tangible bits of Charlotte's Web shoreline treasure for her pirate chest back home-speckled pebbles, shells, r. Zuckerman had the best swing in the county. It was a and driftwood-she and we soon realize M single long piece of heavy rope tied to the beam over the that the real treasures are the sounds north doorway. At the bottom end of the rope was a fat knot to and smells and sights of the night, a harbor seal's quick visit, this magic sit on. It was arranged so that you could swing without being time spent outside with her cousin. pushed. You climbed a ladder to the hayloft. Then, holding the What is it about a full moon that rope, you stood at the edge and looked down, and were scared attracts us? Our blood responds to the and dizzy. Then you straddled the knot, so that it acted as a seat. sight like the pull of a tide, and we are Then you got up all your nerve, took a deep breath, and jumped. drawn outdoors to look up, to ponder. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, In The Moon jumpers (Harper & Row, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you 1959; reissue: HarperCollins, 1999), would sail through the barn door going a mile a minute, with the Janice May Udry and Maurice Sendak venture outside into wind whistling in your eyes and ears and hair. Then you would the moonlight and then travel further, into the emo zoom upward into the sky, and look up at the clouds, and the tional landscape of childhood, where rope would twist and you would twist and tum with the rope. parents stay indoors and the night is Then you would drop down, down, down out of the sky and ripe for play. Udry suggests that night come sai ling back into the barn almost into the hayloft, then sail is necessary for rejuvenation: "The sun out again (not quite so far this time), then in again (not quite so is tired. It goes down the sky into the high), then out again, then in again, then out, then in; and then drowsy hills. The sunflowers lean. They you'd jump off and fall down and let somebody else try it. fall asleep to dream of tomorrow's sun." Mothers for miles around worried about Zuckerman's swing. Most of the world winds down, but the door of one house opens and They feared some child would fall off. But no child ever did. Chil four children step, like dancers, onto dren almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents the magically lit stage of the yard at think they will. night. The moon changes them: " ... we're not children, we're the Moon Jumpers!" From Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams (Harper & Dancing in the grass and turning som Row, 1952). Copynght 1952 by E. B. White. Copyright © renewed by E. B. ersaults, White, 1980. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. they define the odd allure of nighttime play by declaring: "We climb the tree just to be in a tree at night." Seven double-page-spread illus trations, exempt from text, splendidly express the qualities of moonlight on grass and leaves and children's hair, how it makes its path through branch es, the way it hits a pitch of roof just so. Sendak's pictures are all etched tex ture; his greens and purples pulsate in
8 Summer 1999
room; he's got the paper, she's wearing pearls and a dress and working on her needlepoint. But the decorative quality of Adams's work retains its appeal, and her depictions of the outdoors are superb. The illustrations for this poem alternate between black-and-white and color, and Adams uses this to her advan tage: on one page, the white stripe of a skunk stands out against the black and Sketching gray grasses in the field, and startles us Outdoors in with its intense brightness. On another Summer page, the saturated blue wash of night sky provides a contrasting background s there anything more for the deep browns of angular branch I shapely than a canoe? es and the thin white sliver of moon. In Fisher's poem a child's intelligence When sketching a canoe, you and curiosity are honored. As the sun have to be loving and exacting. hints at the horizon, the young girl con Carefully copy the graceful veys how going out at night is not quite Illustration by Adrienne Adams,Jrom In the curving lines of the gunwales. Middle the same as time spent in the day: of the Night Show the slight bulge in the It was even better hull. Capture the upward the light. This book describes the trans than I had dreamed; sweep of the bow. formative powers of moonlight, but and my Father seemed not tall, and me small, Make the thwart look firm in more importantly, it reminds us of but as if we'd become the breadth of childhood's its place across the canoe's imaginative sort-of-the-same size, beam. Be sure the seats are domain. looking with surprise Aileen Fisher's In the Middle of the through the same kind of eyes. constructed properly and look Night (Crowell, 1965: currently out of strong enough to sit on. print) introduces an inquisitive girl With my children along, I am brave whose single, vehement birthday wish and foolhardy enough to walk through Master drawing canoes and is to stay outside and explore the world the woods on a summer night. Fireflies you will be able to draw any for one night. Initially, her parents are keep us company. The earth feels cool other boat a person can build. dismissive: and firm beneath our bare feet. Flash lights stay off until we reach the dock's From Sketching Outdoors in Sum You're not an owl creaking planks. Once there, we lie on mer, by Jim Arnosky. Copyright With night-looking eyes in your head. our stomachs and feel the day's heat © 19 8 8by Jim Arno sky. Reprinted by You're not a bat still stored in the boards. We want to permission ofLothrop lee & Shepard, to go batting around in the dark a division of William Morrow & look at the lake, so we shine our for a lark, flash Company. like that. lights down into the water and capture swaying weeds and rocks and rippled But the girl's curiosity about the sand inside our moving beams oflight. night persists through all four seasons, We've spent all day in the water, but and when her birthday rolls around never seen it like this. What we really once more, her father agrees on a night capture is a sense of ourselves alive in long stroll. Because the book was pub a different world. We are outside at lished in the 1960s, Adrienne Adams's night!-=- illustrations can seem quaint: Father and Mother sit together in the living ChristineAlfanolivesandworksinMinneapolis.
9 Riverbank Review
Maurice Sendak
For the renowned children's book artist, illustrating a story /Jy his friend, the late James Marshall was an emotional experience. By Michael Patrick Hearn
t seventy years old, Maurice Sendak seems busier than ever. of fish. But once the emotional and HarperCollins is reissuing his backlist in handsome new technical aspects of the project were resolved, I had a marvelous time. Aeditions. His production of two one-act Ravel operas, L'heure I worked on it all oflast summer. It espagnole and L'enfant et les sortileges, just opened at the New York City was one of the best summers of my life because in a sense it was spent with Jim. Opera. He is planning to reillustrate Ruth Krauss's Bears and his And I was doing a book that was hilar first book by Margaret Wise Brown. Didyou have fun doing the book? ious. As is well known, I do not write Also there is the Little Bear TV show on MS: Yes ... can't you tell? Once I hilarious books! So, it was a great salve Nickelodeon, rumors of a feature film got over the hump of digesting that for me, it was very good for my spirit. based on U/7Jere the Wild Things Are, and this was not my book-that it was James's I think you've capturedJim's spirit with several works in progress with The Night book; and then the ghostly ramifica out compromisingyour own personality. Kitchen, the children's theater he found tions of that, the memories. It took Well, that was the other trick. Some ed with Arthur Yorinks. But the things I obviously stole for senti project that may have meant mental reasons, because I know the most to him oflate is Swine that people who read Jim Mar Lake, the last story written by shall want to see certain things. his friend, James Marshall, who I fought long and hard over died in 1992. In this witty, mas what elements I could take that terfully illustrated tale, a wolf would not compromise me and attends a ballet performed by yet would keep him in the book. pigs, intending to have them for I decided on the eyes, which are his supper; instead, he becomes so emblematic and hysterically enthralled with the 10 Summer 1999 illustration by Maurice Sendak,from Swine Lake know, once he'd gotten started with it New York City], which is a gorgeous I always work in sequence. Always, he would have enhanced it, enlarged theater. There are human figures up always, always. I never could imagine it; he would have made something there, and I just changed them to pigs. going to an easy picture and then com more. That's why he was so great. It was nice to use that theater marquee, ing back, which is of course extraordi There was no dummy for the book, no because it's very sumptuous. narily tempting. If you do that you preliminary sketches? Your pictures never intrude on the text. lose the tension, which I hope emanates Nothing at all, just the manu You let Jim speak for himself. from your fingertips onto the page, as script. In a way, I was grateful for this. If I hadn't, it would have been a if you're going along with the reader. That would have been too hard. This total failure, however charming the pic You're building a certain tension into way it was blank, I could start wherever tures were. Sometimes illustrators use a the drawings. You can't skip around. I wanted with it. More than anything, book as a great portfolio, and the poor You've got to go boom, boom, boom! It what I felt I had to add was a prelude, little text is choking to death. An illus happened boom, boom, boom. a little overture that would establish trator should have the gravest respect I'm sure you noticed the obituary the wolf as having this taste and style for texts. page floating for Francelia Butler [chil before he gets into Pigtown at all. So Jim was such a master ofthe felicitous dren's literature professor at the Uni you see him first in his grungy room, phrase. He writes in Swine Lake, "In the versity of Connecticut]. She died just with his ballet books and the little middle of the next block, the wolf's nose then [during the making of the book]. pinned-up picture of a ballerina over began to twitch uncontrollab{y. A delicious And Roddy McDowall, an old friend, his bed. aroma permeated the air. " Sounds like also died and is mentioned on the title And all the ballet posters. The Picasso Beatrix Potter. page ... also Kurosawa. Remember that from Parade. She didn't hesitate to use fine lan story-I hope you've read it, and you I can't tell you what a joy it was to guage. I remember the letter somebody should if you haven't, "The Altar of copy that Picasso. I've always loved it, wrote to Beatrix Potter complaining the Dead," by Henry James? It's one of and to really find a reason to do it bitterly that in Benjamin Bunny there my favorite short stories. [Stransom] wow! It's funny to see the wolf, all was a difficult word and how did she lights all the candles in the church, sloppy, grungy, and wolfy, and behind expect her little daughter to know because friends forget friends, and he him these soigne posters. what that meant. Her answer to that remembers all the friends. His burden I love all the porcine puns throughout was, in Victorian language of course, is to remember all the dead, and he the book. They sound so much like Jim. "Get off your butt and get a dictionary lights those candles. I know how much Well, I hope they do. Those pigs on and figure it out, dope head!" those people meant to Jim, too. top of the theater are copied very care Did you create the illustrations for It's almost as if the wolf is emerging fully from the New Amsterdam [in Swine Lake in sequence? from a period of mourning. The town is 11 Riverbank Review dying all around him. I feel for the loss of was Meindert Dejong and there was so many live people are not living and that oldfashioned bookshop. Randall Jarrell-unique people whom breathing, and are getting awards! Poor Melville, poor James! Yes, it I really loved. And Iona Opie, may she Jim was self-taught as an artist, wasn't was my snarly little comment. It is a live forever. I Saw Esau is good because he? dead town. It's kaput! And he's all mangy of her. I treasure her. Yes, but so am I, which was anoth and old, and does he fit in anymore? What didyou think ofJim as an artist? er thing we had in common. We were All the squirrels are making fun of him. There was an urgency to his talent, both unschooled. There are any num But he kicks up his heels in the end. that was just so there. It was so seem ber of us like that. Leaming in the con It 's the peifect note on which to conclude ingly casual, so gifted, so unegotistical. ventional fashion was out of the ques the book. Thank God he worked so much: there tion. I'm not saying that cockily, because And the young squirrels are left to is so much work of his. When I saw his there are humongous holes in my edu wonder, "Gee! How did he do that? illustrations for The Owl and the Pussycat cation. I'd give anything now to have He looked so old!" [subsequently published by Harper- read more books than I did when I was How did you andJim meet? young. But Jim and I were both driven, Oh, I remember very specifically and in the same way. We had to learn how we met. It was at the Caldecott Award through the work. And that drew us dinner in San Francisco for Margot together. And our education as we grew Zemach, who was one of my very best older drew us together, the endless dis friends. I wouldn't have schlepped all cussion of things that were happening the way to San Francisco except for that we saw and loved and culled into Margot. I was at the dinner, and sud our work. There has been no one else denly this guy slid over on his knees, in the profession that I shared so much like he was on an ice-skating rink, with. I'm very good friends with Chris bumped into my table, and then I saw Van Allsburg, and I enjoy that friend his head peering up-"Oh, master!" ship, so I don't want to leave him out. This was so typical of him, that tongue But not much with anybody else any in-cheek obeisance. He had all this more. The field has become a desert cockiness in his face, "don't take this maybe I have just withdrawn so much seriously" in his eyes. I think George that it appears as a desert to me. and Martha came out right around You've also gone in other directions. then, and I had loved it on sight and Detail of illustration by James Marshall, from Yes. So many things happened to thought, well, finally somebody good ... The Owl and the Pussycat publishing that were so detrimental; somebody really good ... somebody with the whole reason why we did books taste, somebody with irony; somebody Collins, in 1998], that was the only went out of it. The opera career was who has been looking at European time my gut ached, because there was wonderful, but it was absolutely books. And-there he was! something new happening. I'm not because I couldn't face doing books. Jim was the only colleague, the only going to go near the word "profound," In the past decade, I have done books, person I broke through the sound bar but there was something happening but I've done many more stage pro riers of age and reputation with, and we there. The color harmonies and the ductions. Yet, I've done a lot of home became immediate friends, immediate tonalities and the line- he was chang work over these years. It's been a huge admirers of each other's work. There ing! He was so young. That was the ly experimental time for me: deciding was no false homage, it was the real only time it hurt, when I saw that hap to illustrate a Melville novel and a thing. And we loved music, and opera, pening and that it was so aborted. Kleist play; reading Shakespeare and and endless gossiping. It was one of I thought it was a masterpiece. And Keats, and Emily Dickinson, preparing those dream relationships in a profes your afterword was in just the right spirit. If for a big book of mine that is now ger sion. You don't have that often- well, I the Caldecott committee had the courage to minating. did when I was young. I've really been recognize posthumous achievement, The You appear to be going through a lucky in my long, long career-there Owl and the Pussycat should have won a renaissance of activity. You 're planning to was Ruth Krauss and Crockett John medal. illustrate Ruth Krauss 's Bears and a lullaby son, Else Holmelund Minarik; there They only give it to live people ... book by Margaret Wise Brown. 12 Summer 1999 I hope it's not what people in America refer to, ad nauseam, as "clo sure." Coming back to your roots and then you crap out! I hope you're right. There is something oddly satisfying in BOOKS of coming back to Ruth. This is the book SUMMER I wanted to do and just missed. ~-.s..r~------It's so wonderful to be reading Emily Dickinson now, a great biography of the intense struggle. I can't believe how she had to depend upon herself for Time of Wonder everything. It's given me a wonderful sense that the creative process doesn't he rock on the point of the island is very old. It was fiery hot age. The body ages, but the creative T when the world was new. It was icy cold when a glacier cov process is an endlessly noisy baby cry ered it with grinding weight. ing for attention. This morning the rock is warm in the sun, and loud with happy Didyou have a chance to discuss Swine noise of children who have come to spend the day. Lake with Jim at all? They dive off the rock and swim, then stretch out, dripping, in We had talked for a long time about doing a book together. The impasse the sun, making salty young silhouettes on the old. scars made by was self-evident; it was simply that he the glacier. wrote strictly for himself to illustrate In the afternoon, when the tide is out, they build a castle out and so do I. Why would we do other of rocks and driftwood below the spot where they had belly-whop wise? We always said we would put pered and dog-paddled during the morning. aside time to do this, but the inevitable In the evening, when the tide is high again, and all your guests bursts of creativity came and his were are gone, you row around to the point, feeling lonely, until an owl his own and mine were my own. So, of asks a question. A heron croaks an answer. course, the sad irony is that his grave ill ness presented the only time and rea A seal sniffs softly as he recognizes you, and eider ducks and son to do it. And then we did discuss it. fishhawks-all are listening, all are watching as you row. By the But his mind was elsewhere. I don't rock, you shine a light down into the water. There is a crab on the mean that he wasn't alert, but the bottom where you were playing this afternoon. prospect of this book was not urgent. He tiptoes sideways through the castle gate and disappears And he trusted me. into its watery keep. I think Jim must be smiling now. You snap off the light and row toward the dock as the stars are Ifyou believe in such things, you're gazing down, their reflections gazing up. In the quiet of the night lucky. I wish I could think that. All I you, while one pair of eyes can go by is that I've tried to do my one hundred pairs of eyes are watching own kind of justice by him, and to is watching over all. show how much he meant to me. And if the book does anything approaching From Time of Wonder, by Robert McClosluy. Copyright © by Robert 1985. Reprinted that, that's almost sufficient. I know McClosluy, 1958. Copyright © renewed by Robert McClosluy, by arrangement with Viking Children's Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. that sounds terribly pious, but it's true. To order a copy of the book, please call 1-800-253-6476. I miss him terribly. There is no one to fill his place. -=- Michael Patrick Heam is currently writing a biography ofl. Frank Baum, the author ofThe Wizard of Oz. 13 Riverbank Review • Truth lll Storytelling Digging into the past, to create works offiction or nonfiction, brings certain responsibilities. By Jennifer Armstrong y the time I was in first grade, I knew I was going to be an broke up around them. Eventually they author. The only time I briefly considered a different career were forced to take to the boats, where upon they sailed for a week through B was in sixth grade, when we were studying ancient Egypt in fiendish winter weather to tiny, unin social studies, and I decided to become an archaeologist. I loved habited Elephant Island, landing at the limit of their strength those mummies. My enthusiasm for a life in archaeology eventually and sanity. Shackleton, fearing that his crew could waned, however; I was always, first and If ever there was a darn good story, not survive the winter on Elephant last, an author. the adventure in Shipwreck at the Bot Island, and knowing that not a soul in Recently, it has dawned on me that tom ofthe World (Crown, 1998) is it. It the world knew where they were (or, indeed I have been pursuing those has all the ingredients a story needs: a indeed, if they were alive), took five buried bones all along, without know beginning, a middle, a satisfying end; men in the sturdiest boat and sailed ing it. In my work as a writer of histor heroes, a not-quite-villain, and a vari for two weeks, across 800 miles of gale ical fiction and nonfiction, I have ety of eccentric supporting characters; lashed ocean, back to South Georgia been digging up the past, brushing the excitement, suspense, pathos. Island, where, after additional feats of dust off the relics, and studying them In a nutshell, these are the events: endurance and courage, crossing the in order to write about them. Writing the explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, set island's rugged mountains, they in an informed way about the past is a out to lead the first expedition across reached help. At last, a rescue ship was tricky pursuit. You do have to know Antarctica. Weather conditions were sent for the remaining crewmembers. what you're talking about. And even unexpectedly severe on the voyage In all, it was a fifteen-month ordeal, then, complete authenticity is impossi from South Georgia Island (southeast and not one man out of twenty-eight per- ble; it can only be approximated. of South America) to the Weddell ished. Incredible! The techniques for achieving this Sea, and the ship, Endurance, My challenge with this authenticity are different for fiction was trapped by ice. For book was not to make and nonfiction. When I write a novel, I eight months, the ship the story inter am fictionalizing historical events; when and crew drifted help esting (it would I write nonfiction, I am dramatizing his lessly in the grip of be a challenge to torical events. My responsibility is two the frozen sea until make it uninter fold in each case: to write a good story, Endurance was crushed esting) but to make and to make the history that surrounds and sank. At that the historical context legible. it legible. The emphasis in the case of point, there was no Not only did Shackleton and his historical fiction is to tell a good story hope of crossing the - crew go through this adventure first, and then to be careful that it is continent; the goal had they did it in 1915. I knew that chil well supported by the history. In the become survival. For several months, dren reading this book might not case of historical nonfiction, the prior the crew camped on the floes, dragging appreciate how remarkable the events ity is to make the history legible, and their three lifeboats and their supplies of the story were, without understand then to make sure it's a darn good story. from one position to another as the ice ing some things about the time period. 14 Summer 1999 What was polar exploration, and what will bring all my imaginative and nar fact that trade books are used in the concerns (nationalistic, scientific, ide rative skills to the task-but only to classroom to support social studies alistic) propelled it? What were the dramatize what I can document as curricula makes the writer's responsi tools and resources at the explorers' fact. Dramatization is not the place bility even greater. There's enough disposal? How did they manage? for imaginative speculation. shabby history out there already; let's What did people know about Antarcti The place for that is in fiction, not compound the problem. ca at the time, and about survival in where the imperatives of good story It is true that by placing real peo extreme cold? What scientific princi telling take precedence, and elucidat ple-Walt Whitiman, for example ples do we need to know in order to ing history takes, if not a back seat, into fictional scenes, I am inventing understand what Shackleton and his let's say the passenger seat, as naviga something that didn't happen. There's crew accomplished? tor. As a writer of historical fiction, I a fine line to be walked here. I can't have If there were aspects to the adven bring whatever understand Whitman in a scene cheer ture that I didn't understand myself, ing I have about the human ing bloodthirstily for these were areas I had to study in order experience to imagine the war and cussing to explain them to children. I didn't effect of events on peo the Rebs, because understand celestial navigation when I ple's lives. To borrow an Whitman was not started, but I do now. I didn't know example from above, if I that kind of man. how you get fresh water from sea ice, believe that in the narra But I think I can but I do now. I didn't know why the tive context I've created, my be allowed to show oceans around Antarctica are so vio character would have wept in de him sitting by the lent, but I do now. Setting the Endur spair, I can say so. side of a dying soldier, ance voyage in history didn't mean The Dreams efMairhe Mehan (Knopf, and consoling a frightened girl with weighing down the text with dreary 1996) is a novel I wrote about Irish the hope of a greater good to come, exposition: it meant making the story immigrants living in Washington, D.C., because Whitman was that kind of even more dramatic by clarifying the during the Civil War. What historical man. He could have befriended an difficulties these men faced. Can you facts went into this book? Civil War Irish girl in Washington, and he cer eat penguins? Yes! Can you cook with battles, political decisions, Walt Whit tainly kept watch over many a dying their skins? Yes! Can a killer whale get man's presence in the capital during soldier. These scenes cannot be said you if you are on the middle of an ice 1863, the conditions of the Irish to be authentic, because they are in floe? Yes! Do you really need a tooth slums, the reconstruction of the Capi vented, but I believe they are entirely brush and clean clothes if you're living tol dome, the many tragedies of lre plausible. in constant peril? No! land' s diaspora. These facts are there The great peril of fictionalizing With nonfiction, the invention and to make possible a story that is entire historical material lies in the potential art of the writer are applied to weaving ly imaginative speculation. But even confusion of a reader, who might the elements of story, history, and sci in a novel, if I distort the facts that come away with the impression that ence together to form a satisfying serve as the story's framework, I lose the invented story is biographical. The read. But fudging the facts to make the credibility as a writer of historical fic Dreams ofMairhe Mehan is a challeng story more dramatic is out of the ques tion; if I'm squishy with the facts, I'm ing novel to read, and I can only hope tion. Putting yourself into the story, writing fantasy. that any reader stalwart enough to imagining your own responses to The temptation, I must admit, can read it is sophisticated enough to events and then ascribing them to the be great. Sometimes you'd just have a know that a book subtitled A Novel of real characters, is also out of the ques better story if things had happened the Civil "ITTlr is precisely that: a novel. tion. I can't say that sometimes the this way instead of that. But the histori There are many rhetorical devices at a men wept with despair just because I cal-fiction writer's challenge is to cre writer's diposal, such as invented let believe I would have, and that there ate a great story without that kind of ters or diary entries, which help to sup fore they probably did; but if I know fudging. I have no sympathy for writ port the verisimilitude of the narrative from their diaries that they wept, then ers who tell themselves, "No one will world the writer creates. It takes a I can use it. If I am to have any credi know this isn't quite accurate," simply sophisticated reader-or good guid bility as a nonfiction writer, I must because history education in our ance from a teacher or librarian-to only write what is true. Of course, I country isn't what it should be. The understand that such rhetorical devices 15 Riverbank Review are just tools in the writer's toolbox. For The Dreams ofMairhe Mehan, I took what I knew about being Irish, poor, female, and an immigrant; I took what I knew about the Civil War, and about the reconstruction of the Capitol; I took what I knew about Whitman and his poetry; I took what I BOOKS of knew about race relations, President SUMMER Lincoln, and the cadences oflrish ~-.s.r~ ------poet ry. I took all these things and more, and imagined a story where they all came together. But I could not make Dandelion Wine Whitman something he was not; I could not make an Irish slum some itting on the summer-night porch was so good, so easy thing it was not; I could not make Sand so reassuring that it could never be done away with. Civil War battles something they were not. In some strange dog-chasing-its These were rituals that were right and lasting; the lighting of tail way, historical fiction takes all pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting needles in the dim those things that were (the history) and ness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chilled Eskimo Pies, the com turns something that was not (an imag ing and going of all the people. For at some time or other dur ined story) into something that could ing the evening, everyone visited here; the neighbors down have been. That, I'd say, is truth in sto the way, the people across the street; Miss Fern and Miss rytelling. Roberta humming by in their electric runabout, giving Tom or I think this is similar to what archae Douglas a ride around the block and then coming up to sit ologists do. They dig, and dig, trying to collect down and fan away the fever in their cheeks; or Mr. Jonas, the as much information as they can. Sometimes they unearth a lot and junkman, having left his horse and wagon hidden in the alley, can say, unequivocally, this is what and ripe to bursting with words, would come up the steps happened. Sometimes they find only looking as fresh as if his talk had never been said before, and bits and pieces, and they interpret the somehow it never had. And last of all, the children, who had relics the best they can, saying, this is been off squinting their way through a last hide-and-seek or what might have happened-these facts kick-the-can, panting, glowing, would sickle quietly back like support the story. The novelist takes boomerangs along the soundless lawn, to sink beneath the these relics and creates a fiction that talking talking talking of the porch voices which would weigh we know didn't happen, but which we believe could have. Sixth grade is long and gentle them down ... behind me, but my enthusiasm for my own form of archaeology is with me From Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury (Doubleday, 1957). Available in still. I will continue to dig up the hardcover through Avon and in paperback through Bantam Books. Copy relics, piece them together, and right renewed by Ray Bradbury, 1985. Reprinted by permission ofDon try to Congdon Associates, Inc. tell the truth. -=- Jennifer Armstrong has written over fr.fty books far children and young adults, and is the recipi ent ef many awards for her work, including the 1999 Orbis Pictus Award for Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. She lives in Sarato ga Springs, New York, with her husband and her pets. 16 NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT N0.1538 ST. PAUL MN POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE Riverbank Review MOH-217 University of St. Thomas 1000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 1.1.1 .. 1.1 .... 1111 .... 1.1.1.1 •• 1.1 .. 11 •••• 1•• 1•• 1.11 NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT N0.1538 ST. PAUL MN POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE Riverbank Review MOH-217 University of St. Thomas 1000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 1.1.1 •• 1.1 .... 1111 .... 1.1.1.1 •• 1.1 .. 11 •••• 1•• 1•• 1.11 ~\ueberries for Sa.1 Kids find what they need in the best children's books. Explore the world of children's literature. Subscribe to the Riverbank Review. To receive a subscription, fill out the form below and drop in the mail or send with a check to the address on the back of this card. Yes! I would like a D one-year subscription (4 issues): $20 D two-year subscription: $35 D Check enclosed. D Bill me later. Name (please print) ------Address------Apt. ____ City ______State _____ Zip ______ For more information, call (651) 962-5372. Riverbank Review _1 d J Kids find what dreao an am they need in the best D for Frances chitdren'sbooks. Explore the world of children's literature. Subscribe to the Riverbank Review. To receive a subscription, fill out the form below and drop in the mail or send with a check to the address on the back of this card. Yes! I would like a ~ one-year subscription (4 issues): $20 two-year subscription: $35 Check enclosed. Bill me later. Name (please print) ------Address------Apt. ____ City ______State _____ Zip ______ For more information, call (651) 962-5372. Riverbank Review Summer 1999 the teacher's art Writing within the Magic Teen writers thrive at New Mexico's Native American Prep School. By John G. Ramsay wo teenagers are standing face-to-face in the parking lot of well, Rea might not make it to Nation Taos High School. I can't hear a word they're saying, but I als, and vice versa. I'm puzzled by these intense poets on the brink of competi T think I can see what they're doing: revising and rehearsing. tion acting like paid professional tutors, It is an hour before the start of the fourth annual New Mexico as opposed to rivals. High School Poetry Slam, and Justin Abeita and Rea Cisneros are Dr. Milledge Bennett, a NAPS his tory teacher, sees nothing odd in this editing their poems and refining their collusion. He sees it all the time at deliveries. NAPS: "It's part of the magic of the Justin and Rea are students at the place." Bennett's family heritage is Native American Prep School (NAPS), Creek, Cherokee, African American, a four-year-old boarding school on the Scots-Irish, and Scottish. He explains Pecos River in Rowe, New Mexico. that Native American students arrive Their coach, Dr. Steve Pett, has driven at the school with a strong, active them and a dozen other NAPS students sense of communalism. two hours to Taos on a Saturday for From their homes, they bring an the Slam. Excitement and seriousness ethic of peer support and a distaste for are running equally high. The top four fake status, bogus hierarchies. I recall poets will represent the state at the what Dean of Students Edison Eskeets National Poetry Slam in Albuquerque. told me when I arrived, "At NAPS, we I'm a white-guy guest at NAPS, are all teachers." Pett observes, "They feeling dense and inferentially chal take great pride in each other's achieve lenged among these young people from ments." 0.. 2 over thirty Native American tribes across When I talk to Justin later on, he ..c: t the United States. I've spent a fair bit of confirms this commitment to mutual z0 respect and assistance. He reports: ~ time as a teacher and observer in high H 17 Riverbank Review the one-upmanship that I've seen so Adams' s Education for Extinction (Uni With the help of Pett, Bennett, and frequently among other high school versity Press of Kansas, 1995). Alfredo Lujan, an English teacher, I begin students are amazingly, refreshingly But these challenges make the magic to unlearn the logic of pubescent absent at this moment. all the more valuable, indispensable. It pecking orders. Slowly, ploddingly, I When the judges' scores are tallied nurtures the NAPS community as begin to see and hear what these teach at the end of the day, disappointment they affirm that this boarding school ers see and hear daily. The magic is sewn sets in. None of the NAPS poets will story will turn out differently. For this is into the fabric of the NAPS morning advance to Nationals. But the disap the heart of the NAPS prophecy: that meeting, when all faculty, staff, and pointment passes quickly. They give the education at this school will enable students gather to exchange ideas, learn each other reassuring hugs, and give the each Justin and Rea to become both col more about each other, and discuss com top four finishers encouraging applause. lege graduates with stellar credentials mon problems. It is also there when Bennett's phrase "part of the magic and powerful leaders of their peoples. the entire school convenes to share of the place" echoes through my mind. meals and stories, three times a day. He explains that these moments are But I keep coming back to Justin born of Native American teachers' Ears Do the Trick for Me and Rea, their poetry manuscripts in hand, delight at finding students they've passionately reading to each other, offer longed to teach. And Native American They say ing advice, pencils poised for revisions. students' discovery of each other and that the eyes are the window to I remember the proximity of Pett and of teachers who will support them and the soul Bennett. How they stood on call-on challenge them to do their best work. but I a Saturday-to counsel, console, and As I'm listening I realize that "the I am an exception proofread. I learn that within the cul magic of the place" is his way of describ ears do the trick for me tural and social magic of NAPS, writ ing all of the unheralded arts that he ing is a primary vehicle for learning. and his colleagues practice day in and Ears do the trick for me because It is too soon to know how much day out. when the music pours in of the ambitious NAPS prophecy will "Magic" describes the mutual trust my soul pours out be realized. The school's first senior the NAPS faculty has created by build we dance class graduates this year and heads to ing on student strengths rather than we dance the night to day college in the fall. But it isn't too soon harping on weaknesses. It's shorthand weave together like lace to see what a powerful tool writing has for their willingness to listen to students' become for NAPS students. To see how questions, and on occasion to disclose So quiet writing unlocks both beautiful and the emotional and the personal in soft troubling memories. To hear how writ their own lives. It's also the insider I just might jump off ing- poetry, essays, stories, commen jokes and slang, the style of talk that this world tary-allows students to protest injus binds the NAPS community together. curl tices, explore voices, forge identities. "Magic" gives an outsider a name for into the rolling sounds To observe how writing thrives within the many ways that NAPS teachers and it's bound to be the NAPS magic and, at the same students have fashioned a unique and receive time, builds the trust that sustains it. intensely engaging style of education. receive Several students in Pett's eleventh I don't mean to paint an overly rosy, and twelfth-grade English classes, includ romanticized picture of NAPS. There Musician's block of happiness ing Rea, are already published writers. is homesickness and heartache, as there ears do the trick for me Responding to a Santa Fe newspaper's is at any boarding school. The week -&a Cisneros question, "Who Are Our Heroes and ends can be long and dull. The academ Role Models?" Rea writes a critique of ic challenges can seem overwhelming Rea Cisneros is a student al the contemporary popular culture: "Hey, at times. Cultural tensions can go un Native American Preparatory School whatever brings in the green is what attended. And there is the weight of in Rowe, New Mexico. She is a mem occupies the screen. Our greed has caused ber of the Lac Courte OreiUes tribe, the history of other boarding schools heroism to be devalued. The caliber of from Hayward, Wt'sconsin. for Native Americans, a horrible lega heroism has gone from a five-star hotel cy recently detailed in David Wallace to a roach motel." 18 Summer 1999 Wizipan Garriott is a post resilience ("When you see 'prim graduate at NAPS who will It was a simple house that I loved, but I didn't itive cultures' in the index, don't attend Yale in the fall. He comes tell anyone. It had these pictures of Jesus and just throw up in a bag"), and at the "heroes" question from Mary hanging up on the white walls. A small reminds students of the task the perspective of traditional iron stove sat next to one of the windows, and a at hand ("Remember it's your Lakota culture. Wizipan argues pile of wood sat next to the door. In the kitchen culture, not mine: you have that Lakota rites of passage to explain it to me"). All to the there was this old-time stove that required the and tribal ceremonies confer amused benefit of his students. wood to heat up the food. A small cupboard adult status and responsibility And he negotiates the most lined the tops of the small shelves, which my on boys and girls. Similar mark delicate of cultural areas when grandpa built. A small white sink sat against the ers of transition are absent from he works with Veronica Padil wall, its feet ever so slightly sinking into the dirt mainstream society. He writes: la on her report on the creation "In a society with no initiation floor. My grandma would sprinkle water on the stories of the Navajo. He wants rites a person can stay a child floor to keep the dust down. The dirt would her to interview her mother, throughout his or her entire smell like wet clay, and make me want to stay encourages her to learn the oral life." He cites the extramarital inside forever. When she would do this, she history of her tribe. But he also escapades of President Clin would sing songs her mom taught her. wants her to be cautiously re ton as a case in point. -Thomas Vallo, from "Down spectful of her people's sacred Wizipan credits Pett with Where My Grandpa Lives" secrets. He insists that she ask improving his writing skills, her elders about what to put in and giving him confidence in Thomas Vallo, an Acoma Pueblo .from Acoma, New Mexi print, and what to guard with co, is a student at the Native American Preparatory School. himself as a writer. "Steve said silence, to leave unwritten. I was holding back. He told me After Alfredo Lujan's class, to be more bold. To be more open to my by her experience at schools run by the I walk with two of his students down to experience. He's a cool guy. He's the Bureau of Indian Affairs: "All childish the Pecos River. They're taking me to most knowledgeable guy I know about fears of BIA schools fell away from my the places they perched a few days ago, English, and he's pretty knowledgeable mind and body with the rhythm of the when Lujan asked them to write about for a white guy about Native issues." twin rocking chairs on the front porch their physical environment. Lujan is a In 1998 NAPS students voted Pett ofKenny and Jeff's house. The soothing native northern New Mexican. His "Teacher of the Year," an award Pett calls rocking motion calmed all the hatred I passion for the rugged beauty of the the "highest honor of my professional felt for school and the teachers that NAPS campus is unmistakable, conta career." On a two-year leave from the told me I would never amount to much." gious. He says, "I am intimate with the English Department at Iowa State, Pett In the NAPS library, Milledge Ben landscape. I grew up wandering through savors the joys of teaching at NAPS. nett is prepping his ninth-grade Native the arroyos, picking piiion, making "I'm delighted when someone writes History students for their research pro adobes, eating tortillas and frijoles." something that I'm jealous of. It hap jects. Many of the students have elect The assignment he gives is to compare pens here all of the time. These stu ed to research some aspect of the histo the terrain of their school to The Dalles, dents are emotional and they've been ry of their own tribes, and Bennett begins as described in Ken Kesey's One Flew through a lot. Their anger is from car by setting expectations. He is quick to Over the Cuckoo 's Nest. ing, and it brings a passion to their head off possible misunderstandings Chrissie Cook points to the boul writing. In writing they've discovered a about the kind of research and writing ders atop a small mesa where she sat power they can use." he wants. "We're here to nail down our and wrote. Joan Whitelightning shows Pett has asked his eleventh graders topics. Take the library apart. We're doing me a trail to the river, to the spot she to write a series of essays about four the college-level gig. We're doing later has found to observe, think, and write. places that are sites of important per al, cross-disciplinary research. You When indoors, Lujan tells them repeat sonal knowledge for them, places that can't just tell a single, narrow, 'This is edly, "Our classroom is outside this have shaped their identities. He calls the my Native history' story." classroom." As Chrissie and Joan walk assignment "Compass Points." Crystal Bennett is a verbal virtuoso, a talent back from the river, they talk about Salas writes of her home in Zia Pueblo, ed mimic with a comic flair. He invents their writing and how it has improved New Mexico, and the tensions created phrases ("Conquistadudes!"), teaches under Lujan's care. 19 Riverbank Review Chrissie says, "I think of it different ly as I negotiate the trail in my penny prose and moving poetry. These young ly. In my old school, writing was a task, loafers. I'm impressed by the expres writers are on the verge of turning the a chore. Here is it more like a hobby." Joan siveness of these young people and by NAPS prophecy into truth. -=- adds, "Our writing is something to work the vibrant culture that supports them on. Something to play with. We don't at their school. So many of these stu j ohn G. Ramsay is the Hollis L. Caswell Profes write just for the teachers. We keep our dents are finding their voices, strength sor ofEdu cational Studies at Carleton College in writing in portfolios. Writing is ours." ening and honing them in powerful Northfield, Minnesota, where his three sons I follow Chrissie and Joan back up attend Greenvale Park Elementary School and from the river, listening to them intent- he serves on the school board. BOOKS of SUMMER ~~.r ~ · - ---- ~ ---- "Bad Influence" hen I stepped off that airplane in San Juan, it headache. I excused myself from my welcoming com Wwas like I had opened an oven door. I was mittee, handed the damp baby (she was really cute) immediately drenched in sweat, and felt like I was over to her grandmother, and went to lie down in the breathing water. To make matters worse, there were room where Papa Juan had put my bags. Papa Juan, Mama Ana, and about a dozen other peo Of course there was no AC. The window was ple waiting to hug me and ask me a million questions thrown wide open, and right outside, perched on a in Spanish- not my best language. The others were fence separating our house from the neighbors' by vecinos, neighbors who had nothing better to do than about six inches, there was a red rooster. When I come to the airport to pick me up in a caravan of looked at him, he started screeching at the top of his cars. My friends from Central High would have died lungs. I closed the window, but I could still hear him laughing if they had seen the women with their fans crowing; then someone turned on a radio, loud. I put going back and forth across their shiny faces fighting a pillow over my head and decided to commit suicide over who was going to take my bags, and who was by sweating to death. I must have dozed off, because going to sit next to whom in the cars for the fifteen when I opened my eyes, I saw my grandfather sitting minute drive home. Someone put a chubby brown on a chair outside my window, which had been baby on my lap, and even though I tried to ignore opened again. He was stroking the rooster's feathers her, she curled up around me like a koala bear and and seemed to be whispering something in his ear. went to sleep. I felt her little chest going up and down He finally noticed me sitting in a daze on the edge of and I made my breath match hers. I sat in the back of my four-poster bed, which was about ten feet off the Papa Juan's un-air-conditioned subcompact in ground. between Dona This and Dona That, practicing Zen. I "You were dreaming about your boyfriend," he had been reading about it in a magazine on the air said to me. "It was not a pleasant dream. No, I don't plane, about how to lower your blood pressure by think it was muy bueno." concentrating on your breathing, so I decided to give Great. My mother hadn't told me that her father it a try. My grandmother turned around with a wor had gone senile. But I had been dreaming about John ried look on her face and said, "Rita, do you have ny Ruiz, one of the reasons I had been sent away for asthma? Your mother didn't tell me." the summer. Before I could say anything, everybody in the car From "Bad Influence," included in the story collection An Island started talking at once, telling asthma stories. I con Like You : Stories of the Barrio, by}udith Ortiz Cofer. Copy tinued to take deep breaths, but it didn't help. By the right © 1995 by Judith Ortiz Cofer. Reprinted by permission of time we got to Mama Ana's house, I had a pounding Orchard Books. 20 Summer 1999 Beyond Guidebooks All kinds of books-not just Fodor's and Frommer's-can enrich a family vacation. By Roz Ramstad Hawley t's summer. Where are you going? Is this the year you show made an offer: "Let me read you a chap your children the Grand Canyon at sunrise, when the enor ter from my book." Within minutes all three children were hooked on Cross I mous, striated walls have the same rosy glow as a small, raw Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's col agate? Are you looking forward to teaching your kids how to dig lection of essays written in the 1930s. Set in an orange grove in rural Florida, coquina-and-cockleshell-filled treasure pits at the seashore? Are many of Rawlings's tales feature the you driving to the great north woods? guide with a sky blue cover carries in antics of her pets-skinks and skunks To the mountains? formation and photos on everything with attitude as well as a hard-bitten Wherever you go, first you will atmospheric-mountain sun dogs, flat cat and an orphan hound or two. They probably gather in a supply of guide land tornadoes, even the mysterious also feature Rawlings's employees, black books. They'll help you to find a great "green flash" of an ocean sunset.) So people who become close to but can place to stay and good food to eat, and naturally, when my family first came to not ever be.friendswith a white woman will let you know the best times to visit Florida four years ago we acquired a from the North. In part a bittersweet local attractions. But what guidebooks stack of guidebooks and photo refer portrait of race relations, this book gave can't tell you are the stories that truly ences. My six-year-old son took his our family an introduction to Florida's define a place, the idiosyncratic narra Guide to Subtropical Frogs everywhere complicated Southern cultural identi tives we inherit as a matter of course if until the damp air caused the thin ty. It also expanded our definition of we live in the city where our parents pages to bloom like a crinkly peony. "guidebook," which now includes just were children or in the state where our And every day my daughters brought about anything we find, just about great-grandparents put down roots. home seashells and exotic blossoms to anywhere. This isn't to say that I don't under identify (quick: porn-porns and jewel Some time later, in the "Florida" stand the lure of a good guidebook. I boxes-flowers or shells?*). section of a national book retailer, I do. (My all-time favorite? The Nation But one evening at bedtime, too found the autobiography of Marjory al Audubon Society's Guide to North tired to exchange the book in my hands Stoneman Douglas, author of The Ever American Weather. This hip-pocket-sized for one from the children's bookshelf, I glades: River of Grass. Voice of the River is *One ofeach. Both are also names.for mushrooms! 21 Riverbank Review a frank and rambling account of the satisfy the poet in your household as to have been built.) Still, to one worker, newspaperwoman's life, the Florida well as the scientist. Hoover Dam stands as such an emblem part of which began in 1915 when she Currently, in preparation for a July of pure American achievement that he was twenty-five years old. Anecdote by vacation on a Canadian lake, and still reflexively covers his heart with his anecdote, her reminiscences of pre-air in the seasonal-journal mode, we are hand when he visits the structure. conditioned Florida entered our fami perusing works by Sigurd Olson and We are lucky in America to have so ly's shared memory bank as would the Gary Paulsen-The Singing Wilderness much of our history within reach. Even oft-told tales of a favorite great-aunt. (Knopf, 1956) and Father "Water, Mother in areas seemingly anchored in the pre A feeling of extended family con WtJods (Delacorte, 1994), respectively. sent, the past and its stories lie just nection is a lovely benefit of this kind beneath the surface. Take a suburban of geographical story sleuthing, and community like Wayzata, Minnesota. though Rawlings and Douglas are both cc••• what guidebooks can't Today Wayzata is the well-tamed heart well-known writers, fame is certainly of an exclusive Midwestern enclave on tell you are the stories that not a prerequisite for a satisfying read. the shores of Lake Minnetonka; it's A very lively account oflife in the Pacif truly define a place, the staid and friendly, a good place to go ic Northwest came to us via a book idiovncratic narratives we for a day of sailing or fishing. In the lit purchased in a tiny local history muse tle shopping district across the bay, um in Ilwaco, Washington, written by inherit as a matter of people browse in boutiques or eat lunch an army bride in 1865-69 (So Far.from course if we live in the city at an upscale deli. But-in a big, old Home, Oregon Historical Press, 1993). house nearby, you might find (as I did) The letters Julia Gillis wrote to her where our parents were a book like Once upon a Lake, by Thel family back in Washington, D.C., offer children or in the state ma Jones (Ross and Haines, 1957). a glimpse of an unaffected young Using every resource of her day, woman of leisure who has no idea she where our great-grand- Jones, a librarian from the area, con is a chronicler of her times. parents put down roots." structed a narrative by retelling stories By the time our family visited the about those who first lived on Lake Gillis's army base in Fort Stevens, Ore Minnetonka, starting with the Dakota gon, we were full of information about We have Mr. Olson to thank as we antic people. Reading the passionate stories the nearby "beach road" (oops, not ipate getting up with the summer sun, the early settlers tell of their lives on when the tide's in!) and the "good old listening to "the violin notes of the the shores of this lake (many drown days" of highly profitable beachcomb hermit thrushes" and the "soft breath ings, a goodly amount of madness, ing (mostly a sad by-product of mar ing of the lake." some starvation) is a bit like finding a itime disasters, shipwrecks being quite Rental houses, if you can find one picture of your children's Nana danc common on the rocky and stormy free of Danielle Steel paperbacks, may ing on a tabletop: initially hard to rec coast). yield some great treasures. A stay in an ognize, but at second glance, not such Essays, autobiographies, letters adobe-style bungalow in northern Ari a surprise after all. seasonal journals were the next discov zona introduced us to an amazing group So, wherever your travels take you, ery. For a springtime trip to New En of stories. Building Hoover Dam: An rummage around in the attic of that gland, our reading included selections Oral Tradition ofthe Great Depression, by old house. Visit the town library, his from Hal Borland's engaging Book of Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride torical society, or museum. Stop by a Days (Knopf, 1976). Book ef Days is a (fwayne, 1993), features tales of the fam garage sale. Find a dusty book written nature diary, with an entry for each day ilies who came to the brand-new desert by someone you've never heard of, of the year. Did the robins return on town of Boulder City to work on the printed by a publisher long gone. Read your birthday? Was there a wild rain major engineering project of the first the stories collected by someone who storm yesterday? Will the ranunculus half of the century. These unvarnished lived in and loved the area long before be in bloom tomorrow? Find out! A stories share a sense of the sheer enor you were born. And tell these stories to seasonal journal can bridge the gap mity of the project: it seemed to dwarf your children. -=- between the types of books different any concern for human suffering. (Some children enjoy: a description of the readers, young and old, may be remind Roz Ramstad Hawley lives in Sarasota, Flori feathery newborn grass of April will ed of how the pyramids at Giza are said da. She and her husband have three children. 22 Summer 1999 \,ookmar Ten Great Baby Books Count on Me: 10 Books in a Box My Very First Mother Goose By Alice Provensen Edited by Iona Opie BROWNDEERIHARCOURT BRACE, 1998 Illustrated by Rosemary Wells board book: $14.95 CANDLEWICK, 1996 I hardcover: $21. 99 Sized to fit small hands, ten miniature In this big, sunny volume, Wells uses her board books, each devoted to a different recognizably witty and accessible style number from one to ten, contain charming to invigorate old favon'tes, such as 'Jack depictions ofbirds , farm animals, fruit, and fill" and "Pat-a-Cake," and also to and other items waiting to be counted. introduce lesser-known rhymes. Good Night, Gorilla Sam's Wagon By Peggy Rathmann By Barbro Lindgren PUTNAM, 1994 I board book: $6.95 Illustrated by Eva Eriksson The pictures tell all in this sweet,funny WIWAM MORROW, 1986 I hardcover: $6.95 account !.if a zookeeper and the sneaky gorilla A rambunctious toddler's antics provide who fallows behind him unlocking cages as he the subject matter far this and seven other simple, says good-night to the animals. comical smallformat books starring Sam. I Am a Bunny A Teeny Tiny Baby By Ole Risom By Arny Schwartz Illustrated by Richard Scarry ORCHARD, 1994 I hardcover: $15 .95 GOLDEN/WESTERN, 1963 (Currently out ofprint-check your library!) New parents especially will appreciate A bunny named Nicholas enjoys watching this gently humorous baby's-eye view of the seasons go by in this tall tranquil, and life in which the infant narrator has vividly colored classic board book. adults jumping to meet his every need. Lullabies: An Illustrated Songbook Tickle, Tickle Music arranged by Richard Kapp By Helen Oxenbury Artwork from the Metropolitan SIMON & SCHUSTER, 1999 (reissue) I board book: $6.99 Museum of Art This friendly, oversized board book, GUWVER/HARCOURT BRACE, 1997 I hardcover: $23.00 one !.iffour in a sen.es, features a diverse array ofrotundly drawn babies having U!Ords, music, and brief histories far thirty-seven fun getting dirty, then clean. lullabies from various cultures are gorgeously accompanied by child- and family-related pieces from the museum 's collection. You Be Good and fll Be Night By Eve Merriam Illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt "More More More,'' Said the Baby By Vera B.Williams WIWAM MORROW, 1988 I paperback: $4.95 GREENWILLOW, 1990 I hardcover: $16.00, The bouncy rhymes in this playful picture-book paperback: $6.95, board book: $6.95 poetry collection are as fan far adults to read aloud as they are far babies to hear. Brimming with warmth and color, each ofthis book's three joyous vignettes centers around a different toddler who is caught, cuddled, and playfully adored. 23 Riverbank Review ~profile Dayal Kaur Khalsa A gi.rl from Queens grew up to create vividly distinct picture books inspired 'fry her suburban childhood. By Mary Lou Burket erhaps it was the memory of the little black shoe her grand about-what else?-May's wanting a ma lost as she fled Russia that made Dayal Kaur Khalsa so dog, consists of crazy schemes May hopes will persuade her parents to Psensitive to imagery, suggestible to pattern. One shoe on grant her wish. her grandma's foot, the other left behind-the pair would never be May's inspired observation that her complete. In 1982, when Khalsa first appeared at Tundra Books roller skate looks like a little dog when it goes bumping down the stairs has with art she hoped to publish in a book, refrigerator"). Khalsa describes outings more than one surprising effect. For she had an unusual sense of color. Her with her grandma, the treasures Grandma one thing, because the skate feels editor observed that she could mix stores beside her bed (hairpins, pen almost like a puppy when May pulls it competing colors like a weaver "and nies, and her strange false teeth), and on a leash, she starts to take it every come up with a vibrant and united stories she tells beneath the willow in where she goes. For another, it evokes whole." Rapidly, Khalsa's other gifts the yard-how much of what Khalsa protective feelings. May's parents sober emerged-her flair for comedy and remembers is true? "My grandma sat ly commend her for attending to her incident and character-expressing like a flowering mountain," she remarks, skate with such devotion, but from the themselves in her stories and her art, as if to settle the question of truth by reader's point of view the joke is on creating patterns of their own. recalling the vividness, the largeness, them, for by the time May is allowed All the elements that make Khal and the wonder of the person she loved to have a dog, it is the skate that their sa's work seem fresh today appear in most. Though it troubled one reviewer daughter loves. Taken trick-or-treating, her debut picture book, Tales ofa Gam that this unconventional lady cheats at dragged on a sled, and parked outside bling Grandma (1986). This story of a cards, it is simply the truth, the comic when signs declare "No Dogs Allowed," child and her immigrant grandmother truth, that Grandma gambles with an it has its own tender glow. By this time, introduces the setting, suburban ~eens, ace tucked up her sleeve. all the other kids want skates on leash where Khalsa was raised, as well as the Some reviewers missed the mark es too. (Khalsa herself was never allowed child who appears in most of Khalsa's again with Khalsa's I Wtint aDog(l 987). to have a dog.) books-the russet-haired girl (whom They liked the book, but for contradic "All the books are based on things I she later calls May) who is Khalsa her tory reasons. Was it "offbeat," or did it experienced as a child," Khalsa said. self Tales of a Gambling Grandma also send a mainstream message, teaching "The pictures look just like the house introduces the visual style that distin May about the care a pet requires? Actu and neighbourhood where I grew up, guishes all of Khalsa's work. ally, the book is an ascending series of as do the people." Adult reminiscence Khalsa's grandma gives her lots of jokes, no moral in sight. On the cover, isn't always fun for children, but Khal bad advice-anachronistic and anom Georges Seurat's pointillist painting, Sun sa's writing has a quality of immediacy alous advice-having to do with avoid dqy Afternoon on the Island ofLa Grande to it. In How Pizza Came to Queens ing Gypsies ("Never, ever go into the woods }atte, is spoofed, with the people of (1989), published in Canada as How alone") and feeding hungry Cossacks ~eens (including May) arranged in a Pizza Came to Our Town, the past itself ("always keep plenty of borscht in the park, surrounded by dogs. The story, is funny-none of the children have 24 Summer 1999 An excerpt from Tales ofa Gambling Grandma It was just around then that Grandma decided it was time for me to learn how to play cards. After supper one night Grandma cleared the dining room table quickly. She lined up little piles of pennies and set out a fresh deck of cards. She taught me how to play go fish, old maid, and gin rummy. At first we played just to win those dusty pennies brought down from her drawer. But after a few weeks of lessons, when I had learned how to hold my cards close to my chest so no one could see them, and to not bounce up and down yelling "Guess what I have!" every time I got a good hand-then she taught me how to play what she called "real cards" -straight poker, five-card stud, three-card monte, chicago, and blackjack. Grandma kept using the old pennies from her drawer. I used my allowance. "To make it more inter esting," my grandma suggested. Grandma wiped me out. ever eaten pizza. They don't know tration of the friends tossing pizzas in famous painting has been slipped in what it is! the air. This is another satisfying story, just for fun-this time, it's an Edward May and three neighborhood girls with exuberant details-books, cheeses, Hopper nightscape, hanging just above are determined to make an Italian jumpers, blouses-forming patterns the couch. guest, whose language they don't almost everywhere you look. The book May's big brother Richie, who tor understand, enjoy her stay. They put was a New York Times Best Illustrated ments her in My Family Vacation (1988), on a play to please her; they display Book of the year. is the only boy featured in Khalsa's their toys in the yard in a guaranteed Insistence is a quality pervading books. The story, about a traditional to-cheer-you pile. They even invite her Khalsa's work. You see it in the charac winter trip from way up north to way to play in the store they have made ters-their longings and their actions down south, has sibling conflict at its from a giant box. Though Mrs. Pelli and you see it in the art, in its vivid core, but what we care about is May grino seems to like playing store, tones. It's the central theme in Sleepers May and her intractable delight. nothing lifts her underlying sadness: (1988), a book about a child who will When they got to the motel that "The girls had grown very fond of not sleep. The child (who looks like night May was so excited she Mrs. Pelligrino. They wanted to make May) relates how loved ones, pets, and couldn't fall asleep. She had never her really happy at least once before heroes sleep-in a hammock, on a slept away from home before. She she had to leave. The key seemed to be park bench, underneath a baby grand. loved everything about the place connected to the word pizza. If only (A clown sleeps "with a great big smile, from the big bouncy beds to the they could find out what it meant." of course.") But the child insists, "I paper covers on the drinking glass Indeed they do find out, a happy never sleep," right up to the inevitable es to the writing paper and enve outcome that is forecast in a cover illus- end. As in all of Khalsa's books, a lopes in the night-table drawer. The 25 Riverbank Review miniature bars of soap, 1broughout Khalsa's work, though, were her favorites. motifs appear and reappear. She took them all as sou The color green, for instance, venirs. wraps the rolling pin that "You're such a baby," Mrs. Pelligrino carries all the sneered Richie. "It's just a bunch of soap." way from Italy. It softly warms But May knew it was the child who will not sleep. very special soap. "It's vaca It covers the chairs, the walls, tion soap," she told him. the cupboards, and the stairs. It paints the ever-present Who wouldn't cheer for lawns. The saddle shoes May May when she jumps off the often wears are part of her per extra high high-dive at their sona, but some details-the Miami Beach hotel? ("Jump sleek sedans, for instance from the top," Richie dares have a prominence surpass her.) The picture of May fall ing their importance to the ing, pink and small, against a story. Khalsa simply likes void of cloudless sky, is one the way they look. And she of Khalsa's most arresting positively revels in placing images. her own designs on the bor Julian (1989), a book in ders of rugs, on upholstery, which there is no child-and dresses, shirts, and drapes, in no suburban setting-seems From My Family Vacation her vivid interior scenes. Out- exceptional for Khalsa. In side, she finds patterns in the fact, it too describes a time, a place, a garden. He's good at it, but can't be trees, lights, and bricks. need, in her remembered life. In this stopped from chasing every living, Khalsa's readers must have smiled case, the location is the farm outside moving thing. There's a fair amount when, in 1990, Cowboy Dreams appeared. Toronto where she lived as an adult. "I of liveliness and sweetness in this tale Khalsa's way of making patterns out had always wanted a dog," the narrator set memorably on green and rolling of everything-this time out of clouds, declares. (Where have we heard that hills. On the endpapers, Julian runs buttes, and lassos-made the wild West before?) Julian has an important role against a regiment of calmer, browner, seem quite safe. May had been seen in chasing away the groundhogs in the more conformist dogs. cowboy boots before; the surprise is to see her, in all this scenery, riding a toy, a horse on wheels, straight from a store! The story fades away with passages of lyrics from the cowboy songs that help to shape May's view of cowboy life. These were songs that Khalsa loved. Most of Khalsa's books were writ ten while she knew that she had can cer. After Khalsa died in 1989 at the age of forty-six, Elizabeth MacCallum said of Cowboy Dreams in the Toronto Globe and Mail that it was "a song of freedom and beauty, a tribute to life," and a brave good-bye. Canadians felt they had lost a Canadian author, for though she was born in New York and rambled around the U.S. when she From Cowboy Dreams was young, Khalsa spent her most pro- 26 Summer 1999 ductive years in Canada. She named 3 poetn her alter ego for her editor and pub for summer lisher in Canada, May Cutler. Khalsa's work is so much of a piece the that liking one of her books means lik to .· .. ing almost all the books she wrote. .... Z" Regrettably, almost all of them are ., : ~· ~ ' .r now unavailable from Random House, ~re is no swimming Like a balloan J. the parent company of Clarkson Pot Pool on On its way up. ter, her U.S. publisher. Given the cur Our street, -~· I cned a d rent vogue for 1940s and '50s design Only sprinklers • • '!.!' l • ~at on the porch. exactly the kind of retro sensibility we .. ·;"- On lawns, .,, ~ The wa 'r on see in Khalsa's books-Clarkson Pot ~-. ter would be smart to bring them all The helicdpter '• ·- My face was not , back in print. Khalsa's publisher in Ofwater, , ; :..;t;" ' Water om the sprinkler, Canada, Tundra Books, has been more Slicing our legs. But water from loyal, and wiser. We run through Inside my body, sensitivity Originality and humor, The sprinkler, Way down where to children, these will always be in Wateron our Pain says, iHijole! vogue. Khalsa's books about enduring Lips, water :~ ;That hurts! and very American childhood dreams- ... ;: ? • to have a dog, to stay awake, to ride Dripping 'fJ.om brought me ' 1 into the sunset on a horse-should be rom eyelashes, A glass of Kool-Aid. available to children for many years to Water like '1 1 drank some come.-=- Fat raindrops And then pressed That fall from The icy glass Mary Lou Burket has never been to Queens, but .'' Skinny trees when Against my throbbing toe. she has jumped the high dive once or twice. You're not looking. The toe I run como Shrank back Un chango, Into place, In my orange And on that day Khalsa Exhibit Swimming trunks, I began to think On the 10th anniversary of the Jumping up and Of Kool-Aid not death of this gifted children's Down, pounding As sugar on book author and illustrator, the The mushy grass The tongue National Library of Canada in With my feet. But as medicine. Ottawa is mounting a retrospec One time a bee And as for the bees, tive of Dayal Kaur Khalsa's Stung my toe, You have to watch For them. They buzz body of work. The exhibition The next-to-the-biggdt Toe. Then that toe The lawn for will run from June through the Got bigger end ofJuly 1999. For informa· Than my real tion, please visit the National Big toe, -Gary Soto Library of Canada website at www.nlc-bnc.ca or call Tundra Books at 1-800-788-1074, ext. 268. From Neighborhood Odes, ry Gary Soto, illustrated ry David Diaz (Harcourt Brace, 1992). Repn'nted with permission from the publisher. 27 Riverbank Review Picture Books dismay, our narrator sees his own dad rather, he quietly replaces him as the selling apples. All at once he realizes family breadwinner. The truth comes ~ how his father had earned that birth out in a poignant exchange between the The Babe and I day dime, and he's sorry for how easily boy and his father about the "newspa By David A. Adler he spent it. Jacob, already a "newsie," per business." The boy assures his father Illustrated by Terry Widener suggests that the two of them form a that he hasn't told his mom their secret. G u w v ER/ HARCOURT BRACE team, selling newspapers to help their The next day, during the boy's stint 32 pages, Ages 5-9, $16.00 families. They cook up a sales scheme: outside Yankee Stadium, Babe Ruth ISBN 0-15-201378-4 selling papers outside Yankee Stadium himself walks up to him and buys a by hawking exciting headlines about paper. Dressed regally in a bright yel The Babe and I, a father-son saga set in Babe Ruth. They sell out of papers, low zoot suit, The Babe hands the boy a the Bronx during the Great Depres return the next day and sell out again. five and says, "Keep the change." This sion, is an unusual picture book in that Our hero doesn't tell his father that he stroke of luck leads to the purchase of it depicts the coping skills of individu knows what he does on Webster Street; two tickets to a ballgame, a chance for als and families during "hard times," yet is not in the least depressing or dis turbing. David Adler's story is upbeat in a no-nonsense way that seems par ticularly fitting to the setting and the times. The story's young, unnamed narrator, a Babe Ruth fan and plucky paperboy, explains his circumstances and his actions in a forthright way that does not feel falsely cheerful but gen uinely optimistic. The result is a story with both heart and spunk, like base ball at its best. The Babe and I opens with an account of a disappointing birthday; the boy's present is a thin dime, rather than the bicycle he'd hoped for. But, he tells us matter-of-factly, in the Bronx of 1932 "everyone is poor." One day after his father leaves for work, the boy takes off with his friend Jacob, and the two later buy apples from a street ven dor on Webster Street. There, to his Illustration by Terry Widener,from The Babe and I 28 Summer 1999 the two friends to see The Babe play and a means to support themselves and against the Red Sox. As it turns out, their school become personal, suspense Babe Ruth is nursing a sore leg and ful, even. When Aunt Beth and Ella sing walks to first-no headline home runs some of the freedom songs the Jubilee this time. But that doesn't diminish Singers performed, readers get to join the boys' thrill at being inside the stadi in on familiar spirituals like "Swing um. "I think I cheered the loudest," Low, Sweet Chariot." our hero tell us, and we have no trou The warm, colored-pencil drawings ble believing it. by Raul Colon beautifully convey At book's end, the narrator realizes the book's story within a story. Ella that, in 1932, he and The Babe were a and Aunt Beth sing together in color team. He says, "As I left Yankee Stadi against a sepia portrait of the older um, with the coins I had earned mak Ella, forming a singing trio that spans ing that nice jingling sound in my generations. The book's final drawing, pocket, I knew Dad and I were also a again combining a sepia past with a team. We were both working to get our full-color present, shows the two Elias, family through hard times." A nice Illustration by Raul Col6n,from a smiling elder who sacrificed her philosophical note, with a cautionary A Band of Angels degree to work for the survival of her P.S.-no one can hit a home run every school, and a singing youngster who time, not even The Babe. to save Fisk School with earnings from vows to finish her education in memo Terry Widener's illustrations are styl their touring performances. They were ry of her forebear. ized and cartoonish-not the best fit among the first to perform for a gener The triumph of the Singers in sav for certain emotionally complex scenes, al public the spirituals and slave songs ing their school is crowned by the con like the father-son conversations. But that had been, up until then, a part of struction of]ubilee Hall, "the first per the puppetlike characters and the skewed the personal worship and expression manent structure in the South for the perspectives have a definite charm, espe of African Americans. Appreciation education of black students," as the cially in the street scenes of the busy for their music was so widespread that historical notes at the end of the book neighborhoods of the Bronx. I liked best they earned enough money to trans tell us. As the daughter of a Fisk Univer the view from the back of the stands: form Fisk School into Fisk University. sity graduate, I have heard Jubilee Hall the overview of the baseball stadium, What's fictional is the clever way the evoked with reverence all my life. That all those hollering men and boys in story is structured in layers of genera this book tells its story and honors hats, their vigor and their sense of fra tional telling. Young Ella, the great those who made Fisk University possi ternity. The Babe and I is a boy's story, a great-granddaughter of Ella Sheppard, ble is a personal satisfaction. Deborah generous, friendly one with an under one of the original Jubilee Singers, is Hopkinson previously took on the stated message about carrying on against the narrator. She recounts to us how task of fashioning events in black his adversity. her Aunt Beth told her the story of tory for the understanding and reading -Margaret Willey their common ancestor: "My Aunt pleasure of children in Sweet Clara and Beth calls herself a treasure-keeper. the Freedom Quilt. A Band ofAngels is an Her treasures are the stories about our excellent addition to her list of credits. A Band of Angels: family she keeps in her heart." -Mary Moore Easter A Story Inspired by the As the often-told story unfolds, Ella Jubilee Singers imagines the feelings and motivations By Deborah Hopkinson I Love You, Blue Kangaroo! of her great-great-grandmother and takes Illustrated by Raul Colon By Emma Chichester Clark many lessons from the perseverance ATHENEUM DouBumAY 40 pages, Ages 5-9, $16.00 and imagination she and the other 32 pages, Ages 2-5, $15.95 Jubilee Singers displayed. Through this ISBN 0-689-81062-8 ISBN 0-385-32638-6 device, a contemporary child's point of A Band efAngels is a fictionalized story view gives entree to a story from anoth As children know, stuffed animals have of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a singing er era. The trials and challenges of the more in their heads than cotton or beans. group of former slaves who were able former slaves as they seek an education Of course toys can think and feel, and 29 Riverbank Review at this point, is crowded out of bed. Lottie's New Friend Clark's watercolor paintings, bright and By Petra Mathers cheery as a spring garden, insure that ATHENEUM Blue Kangaroo's dark mood doesn't 32 pages, Ages 3-8, $15.00 overtake the story. Still, we feel the lit ISBN 0-689-82014-3 tle guy's pain. Small and alone in the shadowy hallway, he hops off to find Lottie, the intrepid, domestic, highly unhappy refuge in Lily's baby broth organized chicken is best friends with er's crib. The baby has been seen in Herbie, a slightly slovenly, seafaring the background throughout the book, duck. As we've seen in their previous playing with Blue Kangaroo when adventure, Lottie's New Beach Towel Lily was too enthralled by the latest (Atheneum, 1998), Herbie generally addition to her menagerie to remem falls victim to his impulsiveness and ber him. Yet the poor kangaroo obvi his lack of planning; Lottie, unfazed, ously doesn't want affection from just usually rectifies the situation. The pair Illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark, anybody. In the crib, caught in the of them are yin and yang, peaches from I Love You, Blue Kangaroo! and embrace of the blissfully sleeping cream. He brings her flowers cut from baby, he faces away, eyes open, arms his potted patio plant; she keeps his when a favored plaything notices its outstretched, no doubt toward Lily's picture on her immaculate desk. He owner's attention drifting toward a new room. visits her every day, rain or shine, and bear, bunny, or crocodile, that plaything Other picture books dealing with a she is a doting and attentive hostess. begins to worry. Does she still similar situation have ended with We shrug our shoulders and think, love me best? Is there still the message that the human "Well, as long as she's happy .. ." room in her arms for me? heart is big enough to love One drizzly day, Herbie goes for his Emma Chichester Clark's '\0 many people or pets or toys daily visit and discovers an interloper fresh and inviting picture book equally. Not this book. Instead sitting in Lottie's bright, cozy kitchen. humorously explores the inten- of allowing her brother to keep The kettle is boiling and Herbie's posy sity of the child-toy relationship, Blue Kangaroo, as Mom suggests, of flowers droops as Lottie brightly seen from the toy's point of view. When Lily, finally returning to her senses, introduces their new neighbor, Dodo, the story opens, Blue Kangaroo and his offers him all the other animals. "He who is fixing up the old Bufflehead place owner, Lily, are shown tucked in bed, can have all of these," she announces, nearby. The tall, glamorous Dodo (she's gazing adoringly at one another as they "but nobody can have Blue Kanga even been in the movies!) has great perform their nightly ritual. Every night roo!" It's what we all want, isn't it, to accessories; worst of all, she and Lottie Lily says, "I love you, Blue Kangaroo!" be our beloved's one and only? have a lot to talk about. Which they do. after which the two cuddle up to sleep. -Chn'stine Heppermann We think to ourselves, "Thank good- But the gift of a teddy bear from Lily's aunt causes a cloud to form over Blue Kangaroo's paradise. Now another animal occupies the space between him and Lily, and Lily adds "I love Wild Brown Bear" to her recitation. Beneath the ostensibly cozy bedtime scene, Clark places a circular close-up of the wide eyed, definitely not relaxed Blue Kan garoo, who "didn't sleep quite so well after that." The pattern continues. More and more people give Lily more and more stuffed animals until one night the angst ridden marsupial, a veritable insomniac Illustration by Petra Mathers,from Lottie's New Friend 30 Summer 1999 ness! Lottie has finally found a friend animals with personality, and an ing, defeated oni when Uriko who isn't such a big goon!" Mean easily remembered chant that saves the day. while, Herbie eats too many cookies, listeners can readily chime Meilo So's energetic illus- tries to act interested, gets bored, and in on. Joy of joys-Tasty Baby trations take their inspiration ultimately embarrasses himself. Belly Buttons has them all! from traditional Japanese water When Lottie is called away unex This fresh rendition of the color paintings, and lend an pectedly to help an ailing relative, Her Japanese Momotaro (Peach essential comic element to the bie is left to his own devices. Typically, Boy) folktale features, tale: ofcourse, the odious this would include eating too many instead of a brave horned oni have moo- Qiack snacks, watching too much tele young boy born strous masklike faces, vision, and making many fruitless trips out of a peach, a bulging eyes, and to the mailbox. Such a goon ... Out of brave young girl sharp-toothed gri sheer boredom, he reluctantly decides who has emerged Illustration by Meilo So,.from Tasty Baby maces, but they also Belly Buttons to see how the renovation is coming miraculously from have great, wobbling along on Dodo's new house. Donning a split watermelon. U riko-hime ("melon potbellies and ridiculous, hairy knees. a clever disguise, he creeps over for a princess") lives with her parents in a Combining thick, fluid watercolor quick peek. His discovery and his sub small village that is routinely terror strokes with intricate pen-and-ink draw sequent swift action lead to a lovely ized by a rowdy gang of oni (giants). ing, So conveys the quick wisps of ani resolution, showing us the sterling The oni venture into the village for one mal motion, the plodding movement qualities that Lottie has seen in him all reason only: to satisfy their insatiable of dim-witted giants, and most impor along. That chicken is so smart. cravings for tantly, the steely cast of a young girl's Petra Mathers's wonderful illustra determined eyes. "Belly buttons, -Christine Alfano tions speak volumes. Details such as the Belly buttons, tears rolling off Dodo's roof, the unfin Tasty baby belly buttons!" ished state of her sumptuous bathroom Trashy Town in-progress, and Lottie's postcard are When the oni kidnap all of the By Andrea Zimmerman and significant to the story and a pleasure babies from her village, Uriko is furi David Clemesha for the adult reader. The story contains ous. Left behind because she has no Illustrated by Dan Yaccarino just the right amount of words for an navel, she determines that it is her HARPERCOWNS early picture book: not very many. Lot duty to get the babies back. After ask 28 pages, Ages 3-7, $14.95 tie's New Friend sets the stage for more ing her father to make her a sword and ISBN 0-06-027139-6 books about the adventures of these her mother to cook her a big batch of three now-fast friends. More impor millet dumplings, Uriko bravely sets "Mr. Gilly is a trashman." So begins this tantly, it begins to answer a question out for the horrible island of Oni delightful picture book about a day in many children will ask themselves over gashima, recruiting three helpful ani the life of a garbageman. Children's and over on the road to adulthood: mal friends along the way. endless fascination with vehicles, big "What on earth does she see in him?" Courage, generosity, and wisdom machinery, and friendly community -Betsy Thomas are the winning qualities in Tasty Baby workers all come together in a very Belly Buttons, and author Judy Sierra jolly and funny story that's chock-full provides plenty of humor to counter of the elements little kids love-repet Tasty Baby Belly Buttons act the tale's grimmer elements. It is itive text, simple questions that have By Judy Sierra obvious that Sierra is a storyteller as predictable answers, and immensely Illustrated by Meilo So well as a writer-throughout the book, appealing illustrations by the very kid KNOPF 40 pages, Ages 5-8, $17.00 she employs repeated sounds to draw friendly Dan Yaccarino. How will any ISBN 0-679-89369-5 listeners in, and to define the story's child be able to resist the refrain key moments and characters. The phrase "Dump it in, smash it down, drive The best books to read aloud to chil "tontolw, tontolw" lets us know that Uriko around the Trashy Town! Is the trash dren incorporate as many of these impor is marching ahead; "Baro, boro, boro!" is truck full yet? NO"? tant elements as possible: a young hero the sound that wailing babies make-it Mr. Gilly picks up garbage all over or heroine, at least one very scary giant, is also the cry emitted by the blubber- town until he finally drives his load of 31 Riverbank Review ... the sixth egg, which takes an inordi nately long time to hatch, finally cracks ... apart and out comes not a fluffy yel ITOP! low duckling but-well, we all know .... the story. There are Pinkney stays close to the bones of trath cant the Hans Christian Andersen telling, by the fir• adding a bit more dialogue between ttation. animals and more descriptive passages, Mr. Gilly and a different turn of phrase at the emptiu story's conclusion, but his gorgeous the cent watercolors-of rural landscapes, altered Into the truck. by the changing seasons, and the many plants and animals rendered in great detail-really make this Ugly Duckling distinctive. The ducks, geese, and final ly swans are painted en masse with drama mustration by Dan Yaccarino,from Trashy Town and vigor. As with many of his other books, Pinkney uses a signature com trash to the dump. "I dumped it in. I collectors. Their dedication reads, "To bination of watercolor and pencil, but smashed it down. I love to clean up all the wonderful trash collectors who these paintings have tones of mystery Trashy Town!" Mr. Gilly ends his very wave at little children like Chase." and melancholy that set them apart. messy day with a ritual familiar to chil Here's hoping that all the trash collec Pinkney's scenes of the fading color of dren, the evening bath. tors out there will be as friendly to fall and the stillness of winter are par The whimsical pictures (one shows children as Mr. Gilly is. ticularly subtle and evocative. Mr. Gilly juggling nine garbage cans) -Andrea Wilk Often in The Ugly Duckling, Pinkney are both simple enough to entertain paints extreme close-ups of the ani young children and sophisticated enough mals. We see them at eye-level; some The Ugly Duckling to keep the adult reader amused. Two times it's as though we are watching By Hans Christian Andersen adorable mice appear on every two the drama from behind marsh grasses Adapted and illustrated by page spread, evidently keeping an eye at the pond's edge. This perspective Jerry Pinkney on Mr. Gilly. Fortunately, he seems W 1UJAM M O RROW unperturbed by them. The design is 40 pages, Age 3 and up, $16.00 lots of fun, and while it verges on the ISBN 0-688-15932-X trendy, this isn't one of those books in which the art and the humor are above Jerry Pinkney, recipient of a Caldecott the heads of little kids and really Honor in 1994 for john Henry and in meant for adults. Trashy Town is a book 1996 for Sam and the Tigers, is not that will appeal to kids and to the adults known first and foremost as a nature who will no doubt end up reading it artist, beautiful as the settings of his again and again. The warm, slightly stories usually are. His most recent muted colors of the illustrations are book may change that. Pinkney has extremely inviting and eye-catching. chosen to adapt and illustrate Hans The text's basic vocabulary, pleasing Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale, rhythm, humor, and repetition make The Ugly Duckling. for a great read-aloud or a good choice The book begins in a secluded nest for beginning readers. of grass and leaves, "alive with the The authors (a married couple with music and color oflife." There, beside three children) have obviously had the pond, a mother duck sits on six Detail ofan illustration by Jerry Pinkney, some happy experiences with garbage eggs. Five ducks are hatched to life; .from The Ugly Duckling 32 Count on Me: 10 Books in a Box By Alice Provensen BROWNDEERI HARCOURT BRACE, 1998 board book: Sl4.95 Sized to fit smaU hands, ten miniature board books, each devoted to a different number from one to ten, contain charming depictions of birds.Jann animals, fruit, and other items waiting to be counted. Good Night, Gorilla By Peggy Rathmann PUTNAM, 1994 I board book: S6.95 The pictures tell all in this sweet.funny account ofa zoolueper and the sneaky gorilla who follows behind him unlocking cages as he says good-night to the animals. IAm a Bunny By Ole Risom Illustrated by Richard Scarry GOWEN/ W ESTERN, 1963 (Cumnt/y out ofprint-dJtckyour library.ry A bunny named Nicholas enjoys watching the seasons go by in this tall, tranquil, and vividly colored classic board book. Lullabies: An lliustrated Songbook Music arranged by Richard Kapp Artwork from the Metropolitan Museum of Art GUWVERI HARCOU RT BRACE, 1997 I hardcfYtNT: S23 .00 Words, music, and brief histories for thirty seven lullabies from various cultures are gorgeously accompanied by child- and family related pieces from the museum's colkction. "More More More," Said the Baby By Vera B.Williams GREENWILLOW, 1990 I hardcuver:S16.00, pap CANDLEWICK, 1996 / hardc()'l)(T: S21.99 In this big, sunny volume, Wells uses her recognizably witty and accessible style to invigorate old favorites, such as "jack and Jill" and "Pat-a-Cake," and also to introduce lesser-known rhymes. Sam's Wagon By Barbro Lindgren Illustrated by Eva Eriksson W111JAM MORROW, 1986 I hardc!W A Teeny Tmy Baby By Amy Schwartz ORCHARD, 1994 / hardcOV Tickle, Tickle By Helen Oxenbury SIMON & SCHUSTER, 1999 (rmsue) board book .- $6.99 This friendly, oversized board book, one offour in a series,Jeatures a diverse array ofrotundly drawn babies having fun gelling dirty, then clean. You Be Good and PU Be Night By Eve Merriam Illustrated by Karen Lee Schmidt W IWAM MORROW, 1988 pt1perback: $4 .95 771e bouncy rhymes in this playful picture-book poetry collection are as fun for adults lo read aloud as thry are for babies to hear. Summer 1999 creates an immediacy, almost an ferent tool, from ruler to axe to grinder and to respect it. There is a conceptual urgency, even when the paintings are to chisel to drill, to name a few. clarity and vigor to his descriptions: sad or quiet, as many are. The Ug!J The book's scheme is clever, and "Drill spins in. I Drill finds the center. Duckling is, after all, the saddest of owes its success to both the art and the I Drill makes room for itself."" ... Anvil tales, featuring an abandoned animal text. Wisniewski's tactile and striking is below, hammer above. I Whatever baby coping with exile. Pinkney dives illustrations express the very qualities comes between is changed. I Anvil is into the sadness, much as the duckling of the carousel: they are created with not moved." himself dives into the dark waters of meticulous care by an accomplished Workshop is in part a book of defi the pond. It's as though Pinkney has hand. His pictures are wonderfully nitions, in part a tribute to collabora something to communicate beyond three-dimensional, the paper cuttings tion and craftsmanship. Clements per- the tale itself, something about living through a time of disconnection. "I think I must go back to the wide, wide world," the duckling says, after a brief respite in a warm house. For the duck ling, the wide world is the cold, blue river in which he feels both his alone ness and "a thrill of joy" to be swim ming again. The book manages to combine the sorrows of an orphaned state with the joys and mysteries of the natural world in a way that a child would respond to, but not be over whelmed by. I actually found the book quite soothing. I especially liked the story's quietly triumphant final line. In my Hans Christian Andersen ver sion, the duckling-turned-swan says, "I Illustration by David Wisniewski,.from Workshop never dreamt that such happiness could ever be when I was the ugly layered to create subtle depth and shad suades us of the importance of knowing duckling." Pinkney's swan, bathed in ow. Bright red confetti stands in for our tools, whatever they may be; Wis yellow sunlight, says more succinctly, embers, a spray of white starbursts for niewski inspires us to use them. "I never dreamed of such peace." sparks, but real sawdust is produced by -Martha Davis Beck -Margaret Willey a man sawing boards. Andrew Clements uses concise, poetic phrases to define the function of Fiction Workshop each tool: "Pliers pinch and pull. I Pliers By Andrew Clements ~ grip-long, strong fingers. I Pliers hold Illustrated by David Wisniewski tight." Sometimes his words offer subtle The Birchbark House CLARION 32 pages, Ages 4-8, $16.00 tips for the user of a tool: "Chisel is a By Louise Erdrich chipper, a nibbler, a digger. I Chisel is a Black-and-white illustrations ISBN 0-395-85579-9 little-by-little shaper of wood and metal, by the author In this colorful new picture book, fea I brick and stone. I Chisel is patient." HYPERION turing the splendid cut-paper art of Those young and old who have taken 256 pages, Age 9 and up, $14.99 David Wisniewski, a young boy helps shortcuts and gotten burned may take ISBN 0-7868-0300-2 with the construction of an old-fash these words to heart: "Ruler knows how ioned carousel. In a succession of vivid long and wide and deep and high. I At some time in your life, haven't you two-page spreads, he is shown working Ruler never guesses. I Ruler knows." imagined what it would have been like as an apprentice to thirteen craftsmen Clements encourages readers to to be an Indian long ago? When children who each demonstrate the use of a dif- understand the purpose of each tool, immerse themselves in this tender story, 33 Riverbank Review they live in ten-year-old Little Frog's visit, the "scratching sickness" strikes. Bird Boy (Omakayas's) moccasins for a year. With a full-blown smallpox epidemic and By Elizabeth Starr Hill The Birchbark House, by Ojibwe author death encircling her people, Omakayas Illustrated by Lesley Liu Louise Erdrich, weaves a tale of the helps her family, because she has spe FARRAR, STRAUS & G IROUX Ojibwe people in the mid-nineteenth cial healing powers and immunity to 64 pages, Age 8 and up, $15.00 century, on Madeline Island in Lake the disease. Later, during a severe win ISBN 0-3 74 -3 0723-7 Superior. Omakayas's father is a mixed ter, the family again faces tragedy blood Indian who must be absent when they eat the last of their food What could be more exotic to an Amer from the home from time to time to reserves and nearly starve. But spring ican child than a depiction of life on a work in the fur trade. Omakayas, her comes, and with it the knowledge that houseboat on a river in southern China? mother, grandmother, and siblings build Omakayas is finally ready to hear. Then again, what could be more famil a warm house for winter, collect iar than the story of a kid who must and prepare plants to eat, and talk cope with the taunts and trickery with the trees and animals every of a bully? In Bird Boy, Elizabeth day. When Gramma finds the per Starr Hill capably blends the exot fect birch tree she will use to make ic and the familiar, offering young the house, she speaks to the tree: readers a fascinating glimpse into a "Old Sister. .. we need your skin different world, as well as a buoy for our shelter." When Omakayas ant, tender portrait of a boy learn and her sister Angeline have to cap ing about trust and responsibility ture crows with a net to prevent them and friendship. from devouring the corn, Omakayas Born mute, Chang (known as asks the birds to forgive her. (One "Bird Boy") is only able to make crow with a wounded wing she keeps odd squawks with his voice; he for a pet, and it perches on her head cannot speak to people, but seems, or shoulder thereafter.) somehow, to communicate with his Erdrich's delicate, black line family's small flock of fishing cor drawings depict scenes such as Illustration by Louise Erdrich,from morants. Chang is anxious to show Omakayas's funny encounters with The Birchbark House that he's strong and skilled enough roly-poly, potbellied bear cubs and to accompany his father on fishing a stem mother bear. Omakayas talks to Old Tallow tells Omakayas that expeditions; he knows that if he can the bears without gaining so much as a when she was a baby she was found on prove himself with the birds on the scratch. a nearby island by a group of men that fishing boat, he'll be granted the cov Erdrich's graceful, v ivid language included Old Tallow's former hus eted task of raising and training a engages the reader with her interesting band: "an island called Spirit Island newly hatched cormorant. Unexpect characters, such as fierce and wise Old where everyone but you died of the ed run-ins with a bully stymie Chang's Tallow, Omakayas's adventurous, sto itching sickness- you were the tough efforts and add realistic touches of dif rytelling father, her tender baby broth est one, the littlest one, and you sur ficulty and confusion to his story. A er, and her energetic cousin Two Strike vived them all." Old Tallow's husband growing friendship with the bully's sis Girl. told her what they had seen, and Old ter, Mei-Mei, sustains the lonely boy Erdrich does not idealize family Tallow went back to the island by her and helps him toward his goal. relationships in the story. Omakayas self, in her canoe, to bring Omakayas Hill fleshes out the story's strong, has an irritating younger brother named to her present home and loving family simple plotline with intriguing descrip Pinch, whom she can barely endure on Madeline Island. tions of Chang's daily life. She entices (because he has "an eager, greedy, Filled with humor, adventure, and readers with an array of interesting pushing nature"), but their interac serious topics true to this period of detail, and makes us wonder: Why do tions create some humorous reading. history, The Birchbark House allows these cormorants wear strands of grass One of the most serious scenes modern children to peek into the tied around their necks? What does occurs when a very ill, mysterious vis long-ago world of the Ojibwe. the start of day on a small houseboat itor enters the lodge. Shortly after his - Sally M. Hunter sound like? What incredible story will 34 Summer 1999 the blind and lame Bo Wan tell next? California coast, on the lookout, once who's been in a wheelchair all his life. How do you keep a stolen cormorant again, for her unreliable boyfriend, Their unlikely friendship anchors the egg warm enough to hatch? Red. She and Carolina don't know story, and their common interest in Lesley Liu's illustrations are light that they've camped on the property raising an abandoned baby crow pro and emotionally vibrant. Her precise of the wealthiest family in town. And vides the novel's central metaphor. pencil drawings bring the mountains, Carolina hasn't met Stefan Crouch III, From the start, Hobbs dazzles read birds, and river of Chang's world clear the overprotected, very bright, rich kid ers with sure, mood-setting descriptions: ly into view, while her clean, softly curved line defines each character and often suggests a graceful happiness. The tale of a twelve-year-old girl and Bird Boy is a wonderful story that her landmark scientific discovery manages to whisk readers to a far cor ner of the world. Children who read this novel get a rare double opportuni Stone (/irl, ty to travel far outside their own expe rience, and then, like Chang, to travel Bone(/irl inward. The Story of Mary Anning -Christine Alfano by Laurence Anholt illustrated by Sheila Moxley Carolina Crow Girl By Valerie Hobbs * "The story of Mary Anning, a young FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX British fossil hunter, who in the early nine 144 pages, Ages 9-12, $16.00 teenth century found a 'sea monster,' an IS BN 0-374-31153-6 ichthyosaur skeleton .. .. Using a folk art-style, Back in the '70s, it was popular to take Moxley adroitly combines visions of a a van or a bus and fix it up a bit to turn prehistoric past with young Mary's present it into a "house on wheels," complete as she climbs, collects, and discovers. with mattress, a few cooking utensils, Although this works well as biography some storage space, and easy access to and history, it is also a fine piece of the mythical glories of "the road." storytelling." Valerie Hobbs's new novel harkens back to that era. Eleven-year-old Car - Booklist, starred review olina travels from town to town with her baby sister and her mother "Involving, accessible prose." Melanie in an old made-over school - The Bulletin of the Center for bus. Her mother is convinced that the bus is the perfect solution to their problems with rent and bad neighbor "An atmospheric, crackling hoods: "They were going to live just rendition." like gypsies. Take off whenever they wanted, go wherever they wanted to go, see the whole country." The trouble is, Carolina is beginning to feel the Ages 5-9 burden of all this "freedom"; she's $15.95 TR0-531-30148-6 questioning her mom's lifestyle and trying hard to figure out what a family ought to be. Orchard Books At the outset of the novel, Melanie A Grolier Company has parked the bus in a field near the 35 Riverbank Review "The wind called Carolina from sleep. to the furthest reaches of their person can't make a commitment, and the Or a voice in the wind. Or a cry. Over ality types: compare the freewheeling, clinging, too-forgiving Melanie. head, through the mud-smeared win suntanned Carolina and pale, wheel Hobbs gives herself ample oppor dows of the bus, she could see a zillion chair-bound Stefan; dirt-poor, wild tunity to explore ideas in this novel, stars. Black, black sky and stars too haired Melanie and Stefan's very and throughout she asks readers to many to count." Her characters, how proper, bun-wearing mum; ramblin', confront notions of what it means to ever, feel as though they've been pushed hard-drinking seaman Red, who just be rich or poor, stable or uprooted, wild or caged. Carolina Crow Girl is an intriguing examination of the deeper meanings of freedom and love. It's also the remarkable story of two out siders who find it posible, through friendship, to unlock the doors of their own cages. -Christine Alfano The Good Liar By Gregory Maguire CUJUON 129 pages, Ages 8-12, $15.00 ISBN 0-395-90697--0 Is there such a thing as an ethical lie? This question sits at the heart ofGregory Maguire's thought-provoking wartime novel, which, at the very least, shows that not all "good" lies are alike. There are those like the whoppers Marcel, the narrator, and his two older broth ers told compulsively while growing up in occupied France. It was a matter of honor among the Delarue boys never to tell the truth about anything, from their absent father's occupation *"None of the previous versions [of Lear's ballad] achieves (that he was training "wild camels in such a perfect match to the lighthearted nonsense as the moonlight" in Africa sounded much Marshall's captivating, droll artwork. This nonsense verse more exciting than his real work, "build has delighted generations ... Marshall has improved on perfection." ing a bridge in Lorraine") to who knocked -Starred review I School Library Journal the pie into the sink. Then there are those like the elaborate facade Mar *"Lear's pea-green boat sails again, this time with the inimitable James Marshall at the helm [as] the famous cel's mother constructed to hide a Jew poem receives an irreverent, gently playful rendition.'' ish woman and her daughter from -Starred review I The Horn Book the Nazis. Revealed late in the novel, *"In true Marshall fashion, the artist lifts Lear's quirky duo Madame Oelarue's lies kept her own to new heights. It would be difficult to imagine a better sons oblivious for a whole year to the couple to set sail with than Marshall's Owl and Pussycat." dangerous deception occurring within -Starred review I Publishers Weekly their home. All ages. • $I 5.95TR (0-06-2050 I 0-9) • $15.89LB (0-06-205011-7) According to Marcel's narrative, presented as a response to a letter from Michael di Capua Books • HarperColllns Publishers three modem-day American girls research- 36 Summer 1999 ing a school project on World War II, Goodbye, Walter Malinski cause him to clash with his father. The his brothers and he lived a fairy-tale By Helen Recorvits father is ashamed of his circumstances, childhood. They spent their days play Illustrated By Lloyd Bloom embarrassed to beg for food, yet will ing and getting into trouble, ignorant FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX not let his family starve. When he tells of how the war was affecting those 85 pages, Age 9 and up, $15.00 Walter to go and ask for throwaway around them. When the Jewish mother ISBN 0-374-3 2747-5 produce at nearby Podorozny's Mar and daughter come for a visit that lasts ket, Walter refuses. The resulting strug longer than intended, the boys don't This lovely novel, set during the Great gle between them is a moving depic understand their situation. They find Depression, tells the story of a family's tion of the strain economic hardship the guests a nuisance, and deride them hardship and loss, and their ability to can place on families. to each other. About the daughter, make it through. Lloyd Bloom's soft Despite the stresses of poverty, Marcel recalls "she was an ugly thing of pencil illustrations convey the range of there is richness in Wanda's life. On a child, with heavyset shoulders and an emotion experienced by the charac her birthday her older sister Victoria, odd pelvis, which, we thought, might ters. He is able to suggest much in his who is dating the son of the wealthy have been more at home on a zebra." graceful positioning of figures-the mill owner, brings home half of a cake. One day, the day the Germans round tilt of a head in reverie, the curve of a Wanda's father appears with a box of up all the foreign Jews in the village, caring hand, the droop of sad, defeated discarded books from the library, which the mother and daughter disappear shoulders. Wanda, Walter, and Wanda's friend Ida while Marcel and his brother Rene are The narrator is young Wanda pore over with delight: the most popu out on an errand. The boys feel briefly Malinski, a Polish American girl whose lar item in the box is the fascinating guilty for the way they treated their father has been laid off from the Doctor's Guide, with "naked bodies in it guests. Marcel also expresses relief. With town's cotton mill. The Malinskis have and pictures of all sorts of warts and out the extra mouths to feed, he figures been able to keep their apartment, but rashes." there will be more food to go around. money is scarce, their situation tenu Wanda is smart and does well in Maguire's framing device is clunky, ous. Depressed and anxious for his school. Her teacher, Miss Rosalie Smith, and he tends to summarize rather than family, Mr. Malinski takes out his frus entrusts her with weekly errands, reward allow readers to make connections on tration on Wanda's older brother Wal ing her with a dime each time. But the their own. Nonetheless, he does an excel ter, a boy whose pride and principles most important person in Wanda's life lent job of conveying his charac is Walter, whom she adores. They ters' humanity, their flaws, and are each other's companion and their vulnerabilities, in his almost defender. He shields her from bul folkloric storytelling style. When lies and encourages her in her Marcel and Rene secretly befriend dream to become a teacher; she a German soldier, the young man sticks up for him at home. is not a monster. In fact he has a The novel takes a turn when more likable personality than the tragedy disrupts the Malinskis' Jewish houseguests. Yet the appall lives. On a walk home during the ing facts of the Holocaust remain. winter, Walter spies a parcel on The adult Marcel blames his coun the ice. Ignoring Wanda's warn try's government for how it "caved ings, he ventures out to investi in and cooperated" with the invad gate, falls through the ice, and ing Germans instead of putting drowns. No family is prepared for up a fight. He also decides the such a loss, and sadness permeates time has come to take a measure the latter part of Goodbye, Walter of personal responsibility. His Malinski. Yet, the tragedy illumi letter to the girls seems the begin nates the love within this immi ning of a commitment to look grant family and the kindness of beyond the sunny skies of his neighbors who help them pick up childhood to the dark truth. mustration by Lloyd Bloom,from the pieces. -Christine Heppermann Goodbye, Walter Malinski -Martha Davis Beck 37 Riverbank Review Unbroken more than enough time in school, but her former life took place, or on the By Jessie Haas it was Ellen's unshakable plan that her farm with the people who are now her G REENWlUOW daughter should get an education so guardians, even though she has noth 186 pages, Ages 9-13, $15.00 that she could someday be indepen ing in common with them other than ISBN 0-688-16260-6 dent and support herself. the tie of family? Over the course of Harry, stubborn and spunky, won't the summer, Harry comes to realize In the spring of 1911, in Vermont, let her mother down. Determined to that her aunt is someone with a sad thirteen-year-old Harriet Gibson's life continue in the fall at Barrett Acade history of her own. While Sarah can be is turned upside down when her moth my, the school she loves, and knowing difficult to get along with, Harry tries to er, Ellen, is injured in an accident rid that this will only be possible if she understand the prickly and contrary ing her horse and dies shortly after has a horse to ride there, Harry spends person that she is, and to make some ward. "Harry" is sent to live with her the summer trying to break the colt compromises so that they can have a aunt, whom she barely knows and has that she has brought with her to the workable relationship. always disliked. But her mother's instruc farm. The colt (whose mother was Ellen's Harry is a very appealing character tions are explicit-if anything happens horse) is one of the few possessions bright, strong, and determined to fight to her, Harry is to live with Aunt Sarah. Harry has, and a reminder of her old her own battles. I didn't believe that Harry's aunt is a bitter, cold, and life in the town of West Barrett. she would have been quite so resolute insensitive woman. She makes no effort Unbroken weaves together many about sticking it out with Aunt Sarah, to disguise her poor opinion of Harry's interesting themes-the experiences even when more appealing alterna mother, and she and Harry butt heads of grief and mourning, connections to tives emerged, but the story is involv from the first, arguing about whether family versus those to friends, and strug ing enough that I was willing to put Harry should continue her schooling. gles related to belonging and identity. such quibbles aside. The parallels be Sarah thinks Harry has already spent Does Harry belong in the town where tween Harry trying to break her colt and Aunt Sarah trying to control her niece should intrigue many readers. Unbroken is a compelling novel, even for a reader with no special interest in horses. That element of the story will be one more enticement for those who love the animals. Written and illustrated -Andrea Wilk by Steve Jenkins Welcome to Your Life: * "Mount Everest may be Writings for the Heart of imposing, but Steve Jenkins Young America takes its measure in a strikingly Edited by David Haynes executed picture book. ... and Julie Landsman From start to finish, Jenkins M ILKWEED has created a breathtaking 324 pages, Age 12 and up, $15.95 tour-de-force." -Horn Book, ISBN 1-57131-0 17-7 starred review In a quiet moment of Charles Baxter's story "Gryphon," an unusual substi "This is an invigorating and tute teacher instructs, "Take out your fact-filled look at the great reading book. I believe it is called Broad peak." -The Bulletin Horizons, or something along those lines." Miss Ferenczi knows to expect a 0-395-94218-7 $15.00 generic title and bland insides. No won der the substitute's increasingly fantas tic stories draw the narrator in; he wants 38 Summer 1999 to believe her even after she is dis Many pieces share a wry humor and Peterson Field Guides for missed for using tarot cards to predict a a preference for the misbehaving out Young Naturalists boy's death. Miss Ferenczi's dangerous sider. One narrator sells religious testi (Backyard Birds, Birds ofPrey, and weird world rings true for him, far monials at Bible camp; another allows a Bizarre Birds, Shorebirds) truer than the world of Broad Horizons. woman to steal from his father's gro By Jonathan P. Latimer and This anthology is no Broad Hori cery; another falsely accuses his delin Karen Stray Nolting zons. "Gryphon" is emblematic-engag quent brother of trying to kill him; Illustrations by Roger Tory Peterson ing, funny, a little troubling, and smart. another betrays a classmate to avoid H OUGHTON M IFFLIN Many of the selections, like Miss Fer getting beaten up. The narrators bring 48 pages each, Ages 8- 12, $5.95 (paperback) enczi, offer hints of the forbidden and us inside their actions, so we can't dis ISBN 0-395-92276-3 (Backyard BirdJ) the strange. For example, two pieces miss them with a pat judgment. concern cigarette smoking, a topic Fathers are the anthology's most What should one look for in a field likely to cross high school students' sympathetic adults, portrayed with guide for children? Field guides have minds but not likely, these days, to tenderness in the "Fathers" section been published for well over a hun find its way into a young people's and elsewhere. They are sometimes dred years, in much the same format anthology-particularly one that might damaged, sometimes bewildered, always and with the same narrow goal: to be chosen for classroom use. In Lorna human, almost always concerned. In attach a name to the plant or creature Crozier's poem "Qyitting Smoking," Afaa Michael Weaver's poem "Impro observed. What's wrong with that? obsessive desire transforms the quit visation for Piano," a father worries Too often children are encouraged to ter's surroundings into metaphors for about his son: "He is leaving home, learn a name as an end in itself. Once cigarettes. Essayist David Sedaris, on and I am sending I another black man they have a label to apply, it's easy for the other hand, writes with gentle irony into life's teeth and jaws." The son them to tape it over the picture in their about his plight as a smoker struggling walks out confident and untested, mind's eye and lose interest in what for space in an era of self-righteous while the father aches with the fore they've just "covered." Whether deal "aggressive nonsmokers." He smokes knowledge of what his son must learn. ing with wildflowers, trees, or birds, out of something like respect for fami In keeping with the emphasis on traditional field guides encourage the ly tradition, remembering with fond fatherhood, more selections focus on user to look at the living subject in iso ness that "Over Christmas we looked boys and men than on girls and lation, separated from its context. But through boxes of family pictures and women (though authorship is almost for a century now we have been learn played a game we call 'Find Mom, find evenly split). The writers explore ing ecology (the science of natural rela Mom's cigarettes.'" His contrarian essay racism, while sexism remains unac tionships), and field guides for chil will needle nonsmokers, but it won't knowledged. Even so, reluctant and dren ought to reflect the knowledge we win new customers for the tobacco avid readers alike-regardless of gen have gained from this study. industry. der-will find these voices believably From bacteria to whales, all living All of the selections were written complex. beings are immersed in community. within the last twenty years, which does -Jessica Roeder Relationships and behavior are as impor not guarantee that today's adolescents tant a part of each living thing as a nose, will find their experiences represented. a tail, or a leaf. A field guide for a young More likely, they'll connect to the naturalist should teach about an organ anthology through the mostly first ism's web of relationships: Where does person voices, with their contempo it get its energy? What might take its rary diction, energy, pacing, and diver First Field Guide Series energy? What is its role? Its behavior? sity. Included are poems, personal National Audubon Society Where is it likely to be found? essays, short stories, even an interview. (Birds, Insects, Mammals, Reptiles, Rocks and The Audubon First Field Guides rise A one-sentence, unpunctuated, all-low Minerals, Trees, Weather, Wil4flowers) above the field-guide tradition. They do ercase prose poem by w. r. rodriguez Various authors incorporate ecology, as suggested above. precedes a traditional personal essay SCHOLASTIC Impressive in scope and inclusiveness, by Andre Dubus; we leap from rodriguez's 160 pages each, Ages 8- 12, they offer readers an introduction to lively Bronx neighborhood to Dubus's $JO. 9 5(paperpa ck) Earth's diverse systems, from animals to almost armored Manhattan. ISBN 0-590-05482-1 (BirdJ) plants to rocks to weather. The first third 39 Riverbank Review of each book teaches how to be a natu ed. Each guide ends with a reference guides are a visual feast, making beau ralist and provides habitat overviews section: a glossary, resources (includ tiful use of graphics. They are too wide as well as, in the bird and animal guides, ing some websites), and an index. for a pocket, but have flexible, sewn mini-essays on anatomy and behavior. I wish the Audubon guides had bindings and waterproof covers. The field guide proper is replete with explicitly emphasized that young natu In contrast, the new Peterson guides, excellent photos, range maps, tracks, ralists should tread lightly on the earth which focus on birds, give short shrift and photos of "Look-alikes," species and be as low-impact as possible; but to behavior, habitat, and community apparently similar to the subjects treat- perhaps the message is implicit. These (four pages in each book), and unfortu nately contain some foolish and sub stantial errors. Birds ofPrey presents six THE GOODBYE BOAT owls, nine hawks, two eagles, and two vultures. Vultures are emphatically not Written by Mary Joslin > birds of prey. Vultures neither hunt nor kill; they are scavengers, which play an Illustrated by Claire St. Louis Little important ecological role entirely dif Saying goodbye to some ferent from that of predators. The books' authors and editors clearly know better, one you love is always so we must ask, Why did they include hard. Saying goodbye vultures? The most likely rationale: when someone you love "Vultures have big hooked beaks, large dies is perhaps the hardest wingspans, and a sinister reputation. thing of all . With simple Kids will go for that." text and evocative illustra Bizarre Birds is even more offensive and more disrespectful of children. tions, this book explores "Bizarre" means fantastic, grotesque, the pain and grief of say far-fetched. According to this far-fetched ing goodbye. Even more book, whooping cranes, loons, white important, The Goodbye Boat provides a message of hope that pelicans, and pileated woodpeckers are sadness will ease and that death is not the end. "bizarre." Pelicans are bizarre because they "catch food together." Whooping cranes are bizarre because they are "on "A beautiful little boo " -Booklist the way back from extinction." (Well, maybe that is fantastic.) Pileated wood "Comforting." peckers "do all that hammering!" and loons make "wild laughter on the water." Bizarre Birds is itself grotesque, dimin ishing its subjects in tabloid fashion to play to a lowest-common-denominator, Saturday-morning-TV sensibility. Shorebirds and Backyard Birds are reasonably good guides with fine iden tification paintings, but their treat · Hardcovtr · ISBN 0-80 ments of each bird are shallow, and the • 28 pagts • $f6.DO ever-present "Did You Know?" boxes are rather cloying. Like the two Peter 90Hi ~EERDMANS BOOKS son books discussed above, they leave the impression that the writers and edi To order, call 800-:253-75:21 for MJung Readers Fax: 616-459-6540 255 Jeffcnon Ave S.E./Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 tors have little sense of children's nat ural curiosity and capacity to bond E-mail: [email protected] Ao imprint of WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co. with the world they live in. 40 Summer 1999 The Audubon series is well ground illustrated books is to pause at the end well suited to the giant shapes and sub ed in nature, accurate, well presented, of every page with the end of a sentence, tle tones of Mount Rushmore. In other and, although a bit pricey at $10.95 here the sentences are carried from books his style has tended to appear apiece, a good bargain. Don't bother page to page as the text in a longer somewhat static, but here it is agree with the Peterson guides. They are a book would be. Yet the text is so com ably matched with a monumental sub disservice to the great ornithologist pact, it can be read in a single sitting. ject, which he brings to life by adding whose name they exploit. Rushmore is an account of how the dangling carvers, bursts of light, and -John Caddy world's biggest carving came to be. brilliant sky. Conceived by a state historian and What of the Crazy Horse Memori championed by a senator, the monu al, being completed less than twenty Rushmore ment took fourteen years to finish miles away? Commemorating a great By Lynn Curlee years filled with frequent deviation SCHOLASTIC Lakota warrior, it is now promoted in 48pages, Ages 7-10, $17.95 from the plan. The work was slow, the travel brochures as a tribute to Native revenues uncertain, and the sculptor, people. ISBN 0-590-22573-1 Curlee should have mentioned Gutzon Borglum, temperamental. ("He it because it so plainly exists as a rebuke In many ways, this striking book exem would be in control of his sculpture.") to the carving of presidents on sacred plifies the best of what is being done in From the beginning, the carving was Native land. Though he acknowledges children's books today. The cover asserts intended to draw the public to the scenic detractors-those who have objected to that it is a book to be seen, a visual work. Black Hills of South Dakota, but Mount Rushmore as sacrilegious, arro The large, squarish shape, the hand Curlee contends that Rushmore is "far gant, expensive, or passe-they are not some lettering, the towering image of more than a tourist attraction. Planned the subject of this work. Washington-all suggest a rather grand in an era of national prosperity, built Curlee makes no secret of his admi approach to a glorious subject. during a time of economic hardship, ration for the monument. "Mount The artist, Lynn Curlee, paints in a and finished on the eve of one of his Rushmore is gigantic," he writes, "but way that emphasizes some details and tory's most terrible wars, it is a symbol it is also beautiful. .. few images have leaves out many others. His writing style of American optimism and a tribute to become more familiar and beloved is similar; beautifully shaped and care the power of the individual in a free than these four faces carved on a fully phrased, it is an equal partner to the society." It is a great achievement. mountain." art. Though the trend in such heavily Curlee's eye for mass and color is -Mary Lou Burket Illustration by Lynn Curlee,from Rushmore 41 Riverbank Review Sebastian: and space, and taken on a life of its own But the illustrations! At once stately A Book about Bach in the universe. and lively, playful and sublime, Win By Jeanette Winter Born into a musical German family ter's art conveys the magic of music B ROWNDEERIHARCOURT BRACE with a long lineage of fathers teaching moving through the world-connect 40 pages, Ages 5-8, $16.00 sons to play the violin, Bach learned in ing buildings and towns and genera ISBN 0-15-200629-X the cradle that music was a part of daily tions-with bright colors and simple life as well as a cherished gift passed down shapes. I especially love the nightscapes, Jeanette Winter begins Sebastian with from earlier generations. Orphaned at in which a bright foreground scene is the following inscription: "The first the age of nine, he lived briefly with an contrasted with black cutouts against Voyager spacecraft was launched in older brother, who taught him to play dark blocks of color. Nights were 1977. On the spacecraft there is a the clavichord. While still a child, Bach important to Bach, and Winter's ren recording of sounds from Earth. began a lifetime habit of writing music derings of the artist composing while Should the spacecraft encounter any by moonlight, and soon he began a family and town are sleeping capture remarkable career playing both his industry and his spirituality. organ, violin, and harp The paintings of the elaborate church sichord "from one church organ with its arch of angels and to another, from one cherubs, Bach himself at the keyboard palace to another." He in joyful profile, are also wonderful. wrote for all the instru Recurring images of birds, along with ments, each with its own the trails of brightly colored music voice as "the music he flowing from church to church, house heard in his head came to house, and page to page, link song to to life all around him." flight-one can almost hear the music In both the illustra lifting off the page. In the final illustra tions and the text of tion of dancing constellations in the Sebastian, Wmter makes nighttime sky, Winter sends us, along the ordinary details in with the music of Johann Sebastian the life of this great musi Bach, "into the heavens and maybe cian-like his trek, on even far out beyond the farthest star." foot, to and from board -Margaret Willey ing school, his late-night composing, evenings spent Stone Girl, Bone Girl: with family in the busy The Story of Mary Anning Bach household (twen By Laurence Anholt ty children!)-take on a Illustrated by Sheila Moxley mustration by Jeanette Winter,ftom Sebastian kind of grandeur, in part ORCHARD through her poetic text. 32 pages, Ages 5- 9, $15.95 life beyond our galaxy, the first sound Of Bach's nocturnal composing, Win- ISBN 0-53 1-30 148-6 that will be heard is the music of ter writes: Johann Sebastian Bach." Above the Mary Anning (1799-1847) is an ideal When the moon was high in inscription is a disk of night sky filled subject for a picture book. The little the sky with galaxies, candy-colored planets, and all th e children asleep, girl who roamed the muddy cliffs of and shooting stars. Thus, Winter sets a new music filled Sebastian's head. the English coast made a truly great mystical tone for her biography of one He wrote and wrote until the discovery-the remains of a giant fish, of the most beloved composers in the candles burned low the most important fossil yet uncov Western world. Although Sebastian as the sun came up. ered. Eventually called the ichthyosaur, relays the particulars of the life of it was , according to Laurence Anholt, Johann Sebastian Bach, it is more Winter's writing, although never "only the first of Mary's many finds importantly a celebration of the ways preachy or solemn, reveals her rever that played an important part in the that his music has transcended time ence for both the music and the man. new science of evolution-eventually 42 Summer 1999 Tradition and Invention "Biblical stories eschew details," observes Julius Lester in the did for the ancients who added them to the biblical account. introduction to When the Beginning Began: Stories about God, In Moses and the Angels (Delacorte), Ileene Smith Sobel the Creatures, and Us (Harcourt Brace). Not so Lester's stories, presents the life of Moses in ten chapters, drawing on the noisy with talkative angels and animals. In his Eden, after Bible and on classic Jewish Midrash and folklore. Her text Eve eats the forbidden fruit, she burps. Butterflies that once and Mark Podwal's accompanying paintings are both refresh spoke to her flit right past, and deer bound away. Lester ing and solemn. In his rendering, the roots of the burning explains that his work is rooted in the Jewish tradition of bush are pictured as a menorah, and in her telling, God midrash, a way of interpreting scripture through story speaks out of the bush in the voice of Moses' father, so that telling. Tradition is a jumping-off place for Lester, and he Moses will not be afraid. takes long leaps. In What a Truly Cool World (Scholastic), In journeys with Elijah: Eight Tales ofthe Prophet (Harcourt Lester begins with the story of creation and an African Brace), Barbara Diamond Goldin retells legends in which American folktale, and ends up with a God who has a com Elijah appears to faithful Jews around the globe, blessing a puter-literate angel-assistant, illustrated by Joe Cepeda as a poor farmer in Argentina, a childless couple in Israel, a character with strap-on wings and high-tops. despondent weaver in Persia. Where Lester is boisterous, Other new books are notable for more restrained ways of Goldin is elegant, but her project is no less contemporary. honoring treasured lore. In Noah and the Great Flood (Simon These stories, masterfully illustrated by Jerry Pinkney with & Schuster), author-illustrator Mordicai Gerstein augments watercolor paintings rich in cultural detail, celebrate wis the Bible story with Jewish legends which, he claims, "fill out dom, compassion, and gratitude. journeys with Elijah is a the stories with details that bring us closer to the action." Do book for the tum of the millennium. -=- the giants, angels, and ogs in this book "bring us closer"? They -Susan Marie Swanson leading to Darwin's On the Origin of dies, leaving her impoverished. When ter of the story, a little girl who should Species, published in 1859." a little dog appears to show Mary the have been afraid of dangerous cliffs, If Mary Anning's story has scientif way to the giant fish, it is almost as if afraid of many things, but never was. ic significance, it also has adventure, her father's spirit were beside her, con -Mary Lou Burket loss, joy, vindication, and, as told by firming the worth of her pursuits. The Anhalt, just a hint of magic. Hit by town, too, begins to see Mary differ Talking with Artists, Volume 1hree lightning as a baby, Mary survived to ently: "An excited crowd gathered on Edited by Pat Cummings be jolted again, by a love of climbing the beach to watch the excavation. The C L4.RION on the rocks beside the sea in search of Misses Philpot arrived in their fine 96 pages, Age 8 and up, $20.00 fairy's heart and other "curiosities," clothes and made a tremendous fuss ISBN 0-395-89132-9 which she considered treasures. Befriend over Mary. Even the children who had ed by a family of scientists who lived teased her came to watch, but they In the first volume of this series, pub above the town-the Misses Philpot weren't laughing now." Eventually, lished in 1992, illustrator Steven Kel Mary learned that her findings were Mary sells the fossils and is able to sup logg describes how when he was young actually the bones of ancient creatures port herself and her mother on the it bothered him to watch neighbors from the sea, preserved in clay. She proceeds. drag themselves to and from work each learned to call them "fossils." Sheila Moxley attentively illustrates day. "I saw, even as a kid," he explains, Woven within the story of a child's the cliffs, the town, and the creatures "that a lot of people didn't know fascination with discovery is the story trapped in sediment, never losing sight of themselves very well, and as a result ofa somewhat outcast child whose father the plain and passionate child at the cen- they were ill-fitted to their lives." The 43 Riverbank Review working in a studio at home allows When I Was Your Age, Volume Two: him to meet his daughter's school Original Stories about Growing Up bus and later paint far into the night. Edited by Amy Ehrlich After telling how she began first grade CANDLEWICK without knowing English, Keiko Nara 187 pages, Ages 10-14, $16.99 hashi reflects, "drawing and painting ISBN 0-7636-0407-0 still do for me what [they] did back then as a confused first-grader in a "Our minds, our memories, are like strange, new country-[ they help me erratic cameras," says Norma Fox Mazer to] figure out who I am and to com in the notes following her contribu municate with the world." tion to When I "Was Your Age, Volume Why read a book about Two, a collection of autobiographical picture-book artists? To gain vignettes by ten prominent authors for insights into their books, per young people. Who knows why some haps, and to discover some moments stay fixed in our heads, like thing about art and illustra snapshots in an album, while others tion. It's interesting to learn fade? By asking these authors the ques that when Kevin Hawkes tion "What was it like when you were a illustrates a story he begins child?" editor Amy Ehrlich invites by pretending he is a fly: "I them to sort through their mental pic buzz around the scenes in tures and choose one that stands out. my mind, flying low and fly The responses Ehrlich received are ing high to see what catches generally not as distinctive or comple my eye." But what makes mentary to one another as those she Talking with Artists signifi assembled for the first volume of this cant is the window it offers project. But they do highlight the wide into the lives of creative peo variety of backgrounds from which ple. Looking through such a writers come, and the many different window, we might gain per approaches they can use to shape their Top: "My Dogjenny," drawn by Kevin Hawkes at spective on our own lives, lives into story. age ten. Bottom: Hawkes 's illustration.from memories, and hopes. The best stories in the collection My Little Sister Ate One Hare. Both appear in Though editor Cummings aren't the most obviously dramatic. Talking with Artists, Volume Three. does not show such an aware- Kyoko Mori's clear-eyed and forceful ness in her introductions to "Learning to Swim" builds eloquently interviews with children's book illus the books in the series (chatty missives to a tense climax in which she and her trators in this third volume of Pat that focus on technical matters), the mother come close to drowning in the Cummings's Talking with Artists series overarching concept is inspired. Pho Sea of Japan. Yet her emphasis is not introduce thirteen individuals who, tographs of artists as adults and as chil on her own fear but on how her quick through hard work, strokes of luck, dren, and samples of childhood artwork, thinking mother acted to boost her and unexpected turns, have come to as well as picture-book art, accompany courage both during and after the know themselves quite well. reflections on life stories, daily routines, experience. Years later, in the grips of Lisa Desimini tells about an art and working methods. Where volume two relentless depression, Mori's mother teacher she had as a teenager, "an older featured photos of artists' work spaces, committed suicide, and Mori connects woman with a crooked spine and a volume three, alas, features snapshots what her mother said in her final note great collection of music" who taught of pets. The dogs and cats don't tell us to her with the way she convinced her Desimini how to use watercolors and nearly so much about their owners as to "let go" during the near-drowning charcoal, "but mostly helped me begin do scarred worktables, cups full of brush incident. "She was asking me, again, to to pay attention to what I loved and es, and pictures and papers tacked to let her go-to let her float deeper out what I wanted to surround myself walls. to the sea, where she could be at peace, with." Peter Catalanotto describes how -Susan Marie Swanson while I swam with all my strength back 44 Summer 1999 to the rocks." Other contributors, such Wanamaker, a twentieth-century "actor, satisfy an already established thirst. It can as Jane Yolen and Karen Hesse, deal director, visionary" who realized his dream also serve as a tourist guide with its list with emotionally painful events, but of reconstructing the Globe Theatre as of current-day sites to visit in London their pieces are neither as subtle nor as a tribute to the great playwright and poet. and Stratford-upon-Avon. resonant as Mori's. Much of the useful and fact-filled -Mary Moore Easter About an equal number of the writers text is formatted like poetry, which I take a humorous route. Rita Williams found misleading and distracting as I Yukon Gold: Garcia's idiosyncratic "Food from the tried to scan it, finally discovering that The Story of the Klondike Outside" revolves around her moth wasn't the point. This is history: names, Gold Rush er's terrible cooking. Miss Essie, as her dates, places, circumstances, and con By Charlotte Foltz Jones mother was known in the neighbor text. The information is enlivened by H OLIDAY HOUSE hood, would never allow her three illustrations of all sizes, from small draw 99 pages, Ages 9-13, $18.95 children to eat at friends' homes. Thus ings in bookplate style, which accom ISBN 0-8234- 1403-5 it took them a while to discover that pany quotations from the plays, to a oily, dark french fries and flat, brick frieze of major characters in climactic Between 1896 and 1899, after gold was hard pork chops weren't standard fare dramatic moments: Othello about to found in Rabbit Creek in the Klondike, everywhere. Paul Fleischman conducts seize Desdemona, Lear in rags, Caesar about 100,000 people began the ardu his piece as if someone were interview declaiming, Cleopatra and asp, Lady ous and dangerous trip to the Yukon. ing him about his CSD-Chronic Macbeth with a dripping dagger. Only somewhere around 4,000 ever Stature Deficiency. "Being short led The book tries to do a lot, and per found any gold, and of those, only a naturally into being a writer for me," haps this mini-encyclopedic approach few hundred found enough to be con he says in his notes, because "It was is just what a young fan of the Bard sidered rich. Charlotte Foltz Jones's very clear that I'd make my living with my would cherish. In additon to the lives readable and accessible book is a fine brains, not my body." His comment of Shakespeare and Sam Wanamaker, introduction to this episode in North illustrates why the When I ITTzs Your we get chronologies of the plays and American history. Age books provide more than just poems, maps of London in the six After outfitting themselves (no small entertaining reminiscences. They give teenth century, drawings of major dra task-the list of required supplies for each young readers incentive to consider matic scenes, a record of the excavation man contained at least 80 items, includ how their own experiences relate to of the original Globe site, and descrip ing 200 pounds of bacon, 24 pounds of who they are now and who they are tions of each stage in the process of its coffee, 100 pounds ofsugar, a steel stove, becoming. reconstruction. and pots and pans) the stampeders, as -Christine Heppermann I was intrigued by a picture-filled they were called, set out from Seattle. glossary ofwords and expressions invent Most of the stampeders traveled part ed by Shakespeare that have found way by ship and the rest of the way by William Shakespeare common use today. Perhaps you knew overland trails. Skagway, a launching and the Globe that expressions as varied as "puke," place for one stage of the trip, was called By Aliki "every inch a king," and "wild-goose chase" "the roughest place in the world" by a HARPERCOWNS of the Canadian North-West 48 pages, All ages, $15.95 came from his writing. I didn't. He was member master of the compound word, origi Mounted Police. Crooks and con men ISBN 0-06-027820-X nating such descriptions as "long-legged," abounded, taking advantage of the thou William Shakespeare and the Globe is an "pale-faced," "hot-blooded," and "well sands of men who, in such an alien envi interesting picture-book compilation behaved," as well as many words ronment, were easy pickings. of the facts of Shakespeare's life, ~~~=--11 with the suffix "-less": The overland routes were the hard loosely arranged in the structure of useless, worthless, est and most dangerous. Jones describes a play. Act I, Scene I is Childhood, dauntless, noiseless. the conditions of three of these: "Of Act II contains three scenes: Lon This is a terrific book to the 6,500 people who took these trails, don, The Q!ieen, The Theatre; spark a new interest or to only 200 to 300 actually reached Daw and so on. What's unique about the son. At least half of the stampeders book is that, starting with Act V, it Illustration by Aliki,from William turned back. Many died by drowning, also chronicles the life of Sam Shakespeare and the Globe of disease, or from the terrible weather 45 Riverbank Review conditions. Murder and suicide were were? Despite these few flaws, this is a common." The cold was intense. Even well-written story about an intriguing though most of the men had no ther piece of America's past. mometers, they had ways of measuring -Andrea Wilk the temperature-a vial of mercury would freeze at -38°F, whiskey froze at -55°F, and kerosene froze at -65°F. Poetry Ironically, when the stampeders arrived ~ in Dawson after suffering unspeakable hardships, there were often no claims Isn't My Name Magical? left to stake. Jones's description oflife Sister and Brother Poems in Dawson, a town full of men with no By James Berry claims and no jobs, is fascinating. Illustrated by Shelly Hehenberger Yukon Gold has a strong narrative SIMON & SCHUSTER that reads like a novel. With its wealth 32 pages, Age 5 and up, $16.00 of information and its colorful cast of ISBN 0-689-80013-4 characters, the book has considerable appeal for its audience. Unfortunately, This collection of twelve poems by the visual aspects of the book don't do Jamaican author James Berry follows Illustration by Shelly Hehenberger, justice to the text. The photos are inter the days of two black siblings and their from Isn't My Name Magical? esting, but the single, mediocre map is family. Dreena, the dreaming sister, far from sufficient, and the design of and Delroy, the skateboarding brother, the book is humdrum. are lively and charming characters ren ing such impetus in the rest of the book. The author's conclusion, that "Almost dered by illustrator Shelly Hehenberg In other verses I found myself experi everyone who survived was a better er in gorgeous compositions of saturat menting with different word choices to person for the experience ... Each man ed color. In fact, for me it was the try to reproduce the effects of the final and woman had a new sense of his or charm and color of the drawings that poems. her own incredible potential," seems carried the day in this picture book. Berry is a much-honored writer, hav awfully contemporary, a tad presump The scenes of flower-filled sun gazing, ing received, among other distinctions, tuous, and ultimately unprovable. How playground friendships, Daddy driving the Order of the British Empire for his could Jones possibly know what the a train, Mom making masks, of kite contribution to poetry in England, where feelings of all those men and women flying and lawn mowing, delight and he lives. He is also the author of the engage beyond a rather banal text. strikingly truthful and moving children's Two Delroy poems at the end of the novel Ajeemah and His Son, the story of Donald heard a mermaid sing, book got me moving as I went under an African father and son separated by Susy spied an elf, water with "Delroy the Dancer-Explorer." their capture into slavery. But all the magic I have known Isn't My Name Magical? does not Again spinning on my top I've had to make myself. have the impact of that work. Despite doing body break and body pop the inspiration of Delroy's exploits, REMEMBE RING people start moving at once, wheeling, hip-hopping, with dance. these poems mostly read as statements SHEL SILVERSTEIN of fact, without the flash of the sub 1932-1999 "Delroy the Skateboard Roller," my conscious that illuminates characters' favorite in this collection, is even jazzier: deeper responses and connects to our own. Children need this presence in Alone on my skateboard run their poems just as adults do. A certain I'm havin some lonesome fun. awkwardness of phraseology ("On The above excerpt is from Here on my freetime ride "Magic, "from Where the I leap and drop, I roll, I glide. way to school," "on playground flat") Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silver further distresses me. If this is British stein (HarperCollins, 1974). So do the words roll and glide in slang with which I'm unfamiliar, the these two poems. I had a hard time find- poems do not justify it for the foreign 46 Summer 1999 reader. The imagination in Hehenberg free comparison between observing Reviewers in This Issue er's drawings, however, attests to the and being suggests how fluid the bor .....-...... =- fact that someone was wonderfully ders between the empirical world and inspired by these characters and the the imagined world can be. When Lee Christine Alfano lives in Minneapolis with her family. A former bookseller, she has written a poem with text. Maybe your child will find similar Bennett Hopkins ends about children's books for the Hungry Mind pleasure. the stanza, "it's miraculous I what I a Review and other publications. -Mary Moore Easter microscope I can do," he's nurturing a Martha Davis Beck is the editor of feeling for what the microscope reveals, the Riverbank Review. She lives in not objectively describing how it works. with her husband and two sons. Spectacular Science: Minneapolis The distinction is important, since the A Book of Poems Mary Lou Burket is a longtime reader poems in Spectacular Science are often Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins ofchi ldren 's literature whose reviews have based in fact, whether it's the spectrum appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Five Illustrated by Virginia Halstead seen through a crystal, "a rainbow in Owls, and other publications. SIMON & SCHUSTER 40 pages, Age 5 and up, $17.00 my hands" (Lawrence Schimel), or a John Caddy is an award-winning poet prehistoric bone "keeping a secret I who currently produces Se!f Expressing Earth ISBN 0-689-81283-3 old as stone" (Alice Schertle). Through (SEE), an Internet-based program for classrooms, which teaches ecological literacy Two seemingly distant realms, science figurative language, the poems convey through making art. and poetry, come together in this whim a variety of feelings, but their emphasis sical collection, a book that is as fine a is squarely on amazement with a scien Mary Moore Easter is a poet/ writer, a dancer/choreographer, and professor of as for the library or class tific world, a factual world. choice for home dance at Carleton College in Northfield, room. Science and poetry both describe, Virginia Halstead's art is a swirling Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in the and science and poetry quantify-they mix of smiling moons and rosy rep Hungry Mind Review, Sing Heavenly quantify snowflakes, sand, and stars. tiles. These sweet personifications help Muse!, Water-Stone, and other magazines. Science and poetry also share a state of to make the book lighthearted and Christine Heppermann is a.freelance writer contemplation so profound that, as attractive, but a few of them go a long and reviewer who lives in Minneapolis with John Moffitt suggests in a poem called way. More effective are the images of her husband and daughter. A former book "To Look at Any Thing," to understand human hands and faces: hands holding seller, she writes a regular column for the Hom Book Magazine. what you are seeing, "you must I Be the up a magnet or a seed, faces gazing to thing you see." the side or looking out, through doors Sally M. Hunter, a member ofthe Ojibwe Nation,.from White Earth, Minnesota, is cur The pairing of science and poetry is and spectacles. rently assistant professor ofchildren's apt, yet Moffitt's eloquent and rather -Mary Lou Burket literature at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Jessica Roeder's writing has appeared in the Pushcart Prize, The Threepenny Review, The American Poetry Review, and Denver Quarterly. She lives with her husband and two rabbits in a very small apartment. Susan Marie Swanson is the author of Letter to the Lake and Getting Used to the Dark (both DK Ink). She reads and writes poems with children in her work as a visiting poet in schools. Betsy Thomas, the author of Green Beans (Carolrhoda), is a writer who lives in Minneapolis. Andrea Wilk works for Henry Holt and Company in New York City. A former children's bookseller, she often writes about children's books. Margaret Willey is the author, most recently, oJThanksgiving with Me, illustrated by mustration by Virginia Halstead,.from Spectacular Science Lloyd Bloom (HarperCollins, 1998). 47 Riverbank Review 1 one for the sbe\f Elana Rose Rosen has so much to tell us! Scooter thing looked like a big, like a huge, like a Scooter is the story of her first two months By Vera B. Williams giant flower." and one week (99,360 minutes, or Each chapter opens with one of Elana's GREENWILLOW, 1993 5,961,600 seconds, according to Elana's acrostics, like this one for chapter one, 150 pages, Ages 8-12 chart) of life in apartment 8E of the when she is uneasy in her new city home, hardcover: $15.00 Melon Hill Houses. Vera B. Williams, standing on her scooter at the window of known for her picture books, has made a the eighth-floor apartment: whole novel for this girl to talk to us in and has filled the Scooter margins with beguiling drawings in black ink, besides. Can't you Elana is as full oflife as any child we could hope to meet in Open the door? Open that front door! the pages of a book. Take The plot of Scooter is absorbing. We turn the pages to Elana out ... find out how things work out for Elana in the big city, to Ride and ride learn how things go for Petey, the sweet and complicated little boy that she befriends, to discover what Elana's The acrostics are more than just a clever touch; they tell beloved cousin Nanette will be like when she finally comes the whole story in miniature. We meet characters in them, to visit. We want to be there on field day at the park and see learn Elana's philosophy of life, and watch her figure how the races turn out. Besides, it's a lot of fun just listen things out. ing to Elana's voice. Things aren't easy. Elana's mother has packed up, moved When the posters go up for field day, she describes her out of her parents' home, and driven a thousand miles to excitement. "It's real lucky it will be at the end of set up household with her daughter in a one-room the summer, because Petey will just be five then, apartment. She works, takes classes, and by Friday, and it does say you must be over five [to race]. Elana tells us, "most everything good to eat is And we hope hope hope that Petey's mother gone." Seen through Elana's eyes, she is spirited, will be all better then." When that exciting day sometimes cranky, capable, and affectionate. The at the park comes and she is chided for get two of them befriend old Mrs. Greiner, who takes care ting so flushed and hot, Elana puts her of Petey and strings beads to help make ends meet. hand in front of her face-"! liked my "My mom says Rachel Greiner is both wise and true hot face." She pulls her T-shirt out blue," says Elana. "And they agree about politics and from her stomach "so the breeze women's rights." In Scooter we find characters who get tired, lose their tempers, and do their best to take good care of each other. At the close of the novel, it is run into each other so every- the end of a long day, and Elana's mother is too exhausted to talk much. Elana and her cousin don't let her weariness get them down. They chant the words of her mother, their grandmother: "No one in the whole wide world will ever be able to tell all the wonderful places we will go and all the wonderful things we will do."-= -Susan Marie Swanson 48 Pictures and Words from favorite children's books! ..... '.::•! Story Sticke~ Stor;s;;ke~~" = =:,;..--====. Introducing a new product line that includes Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You™, Toot & Puddle, Arthur, Lilly, and many more! ~~ p//:.bUV 2 sheets per package Stickers are acid & lignin free! 1-aoo-444-n1a Available at fine bookstores, gift and toy stores everywhere THE BIRCHBARK HOUSE By Louise Erdrielt witlt blaelt-and-wltite illustrations hy tlte author lOUISt tRDRICH Laura lnjalls Wilder's "Little Hou11e" Loolu eLronicled tLe life of a pioneer family a& tLey moved we8l acro88 America. But tLe otLer side of tLat story L.. THE remained untold: tLe story oftLe Native Amerieans forced from tLeir ance&tral BIRCHBARK land.. In tLe Gnt of a cyele of novels partly L..ed on Ler own family Li&tory, Loui11e ErdrieL Leflins to tell tLis story from tLe point ofview ofa younfl OjiLwa HousE flirl on an island in Lal.e Superior in IM7. "WLy Lllll no one written tLis story before? WLy are tLere so few flood eLildren's l.ool.s al.out tLe people displaeed by tLe little Louse in tLe I.if! wood.!' In (tLis) novel, ErdrieL mal.es us imafline wLat it W88 lil.e for an Ojibwa Indian eLild wLen tLe clrimool.oman (non-Indian wLite people) were openinfl up tLe land. TI.ere is a real plot from tLe dev88talinij Arst paraflrapL. [R)eaders will discover a new world, a different version of story tLey tLouf!Lt tLey I.new." -BoolJist, Boxed Review "ErdrieL erafu imafles oflender beauty wLile weavinfl Ojibwa words 11eatnle..ly into Ler text. Her flentle spot art a la GartL William• tLrouijLout complements tLe sweelne811, SBdne!lll, and Lumor of tLe (•lory)." - Tl.e Horn Hool. 256pages ISBN0-7868-0300-2 Sl4.99 Ages9andup HYPERION BOOKS FOR CHILDREN ··~ . •1("...... ~ . . ,,. ..,.., ,,: '\. \,~ ,, ., I . ...:~~ .~'61•,1, } , ..~, . :) . ·7~ .;( ~ · ...... /"'' ...... ,, .,...... ,. . ,.,,... ,,.. . ~.. • ...... !' _.. : ,../ ,.. ;•• 'I., d•• \ ... • / \., . \ ~ . ~\, /• I '" , •"', \ '• ...... , , '..J' ....., ,, • l' '-"' • ...... y ••' •••·•• ,...,.- ..,,,,. . .. • Bulk Rate stf86MAS U.S. Postage ~ PAID ... RIVERBANK REVIEW University of ,, MOH-217 St. Thomas I 000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009