AN INTERVIEW WITH LUCILLE CLIFTON erbank Review ~---=-=-=-~ ~...... --- - ~~ --~--=====----~ of books foi- Young -re3ders
Dinosaurs!
THE TEACHER'S ART: A River of Words
Russell Freedman Writing History
Ten Great Easy Readers Mary Pope Osborne Distant Journeys That Lead Us Home
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contents
Essays About the Cover Art ~ Of all my books, I have a special feeling Dinosaurs! ...... 4 for Come Out, Muskrats. It's set in Picker By john Caddy el Cove, the small backwater near our barn, and it takes place just as the sun is A Healing Way: going down ... my favorite part of the Stories of Three Young Apprentices ...... 7 day. The pictures I painted for that By Mary Lou Burket book remain among my very best. I wanted to make the underappreciated Becoming the Dark-Blue Bee: muskrats' watery world the most beauti Distant Journeys That Lead Us Home ..... 10 ful setting possible. It took me nearly By Mary Pope Osborne five months to complete the art. This cover illustration is adapted from one of my favorite pictures in Reviews Come Out, Muskrats. Only, for this ren ~ dition, I've added the trail of bubbles New Books for Fall ...... 26 that give a muskrat's underwater progress away. When watching muskrats, you can see where a sub Features merged swimmer is headed by watching ~ for the line of bubbles its breathing out very lightly creates. BOOKMARK Ten Great Easy Readers ...... 13 In my books, I try to bring the essence of a place and an animal to chil INTERVIEW Lucille Clifton ...... 14 By Patricia Kirkpatrick dren. Whether I'm writing and illustrat ing about sharks and sea turtles in the HUBBS CHILDREN ' S Bringing Them Back Alive: LITERATURE Writing History and Biography tropical waters or CONFERENCE for Young Readers ...... 19 muskrats in my own Keynote address by Russell Freedman backyard, I am submerged in my sub ject matter for the entire work process. lfl am successful, my readers feel as if A POEM FOR FALL ''Words" ...... 22 By James Reeves they are right there with me as the sun goes down, and we whisper together, "Come out, muskrats ... come out." THE TEACHER'S ART A River of Words: Writing Poetry with Children ...... 23 -jimArnosky By Susan Marie Swanson Jim Arnosky's books include the Crinkleroot guides (Simon & Schuster), the All About ONE FOR THE SHELF Florence Parry Heide's series (Scholastic), and Arnosky's Ark The Shrinking of Treehorn ...... 48 (National Geographic Society). He can be By Christine Alfano reached at WWW:Jimarnosky.com.
1 Riverbank Review
A new Voung Spirit book by
Editor Peter Walpole Martha Davis Beck Art Director Kristi Anderson "(')1 . I . " Two Spruce Design '<-wet, ununous .... Marketing Director Christine Alfano -The Denver Post Circulation Manager Christine Heppermann magical story... the mystery Editorial Committee ''A beautifully written, Christine Alfano and majesty of nature come wonderfully alive." Martha Davis Beck -George Garrett Mary Lou Burket Christine Heppermann Susan Marie Swanson Copy Editor The Healer David Caligiuri House Artist Julie Delton of Harrow Point Computer Consultant Eric Hinsdale Cattails Andy Nelson Editorial Intern Every boy must choose his Jenny Sawyer path to become a man. Any Advisory Board Rudine Sims Bishop, Susan Bloom, man can kill, but who can Barbara Elleman, Carol Erdahl, Karen Nelson Hoyle, Susan Huber, heal? A coming-of-age story Ginny Moore Kruse, Margaret O'Neill Ligon, Trudi Taylor, Mary Wagner in which a boy learns the Fall 2000 folly of violence, the secrets Volume III, Number 3 Copyright 2000 by the Riverbank Review. of true friendship, and the All rights reserved. Please direct correspondence to: value of all life. Riverbank Review University of St. Thomas 1000 LaSalle Avenue, MOH-217 Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 Phone: (651) 962-4372 Fax: (651) 962-4169 E-mail: [email protected] 167-4 Website: www.riverbankreview.com - JR Young Adult, 1-57 174- 1 11 lo. t~ evolving um.Jn sp ' Trade paper, 144 pages, $ 11 . 95 pub Hampton Roads The Riverbank Revitw (ISSN 1099-6389) is lished quarterly, in March, June, September, and Publishing Company, Inc. December. Subscriptions are $20 for one year www.hrpub.com (four issues), $35 for two years. The Riverbank Review is published in affiliation with the School of Education at the University of St. Thomas.
2 Fall 2000
editors note
A picture book can shape the way a person looks at the the rain approaching in a soft curtain across the bay amazed world, not only as a child, but as the adult they become. me as a child. I had never seen rain move like that, across Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey, was such a book for water. Some time later, when I found myself at a storm me. Twice the length of most picture books, it wouldn't stopped picnic by the edge of a lake, I stood and pointed. hold the interest of every child-especially as it has another "Look: it's just like Time ofWonder!" dubious attribute: not much happens in it. Not much, that Even simple occurrences described in a picture book is, by standard measures of plot. The season of summer can be new to a child. The picture-book artist's task is not arrives on the coast of Maine, and gradually moves toward only to create a sense of recognition but to offer up enough its end. What "happens," principally, is weather. of the feeling of a thing that its importance or uniqueness In the summer, I'm reminded how worthy of notice comes through. The artist alerts children to something spe weather is . Spending a week on a lake on the Canadian bor cial that they may not already know about, helping them to der, my preferred activity is staring at the water and the sky, recognize it as special when it does enter the sphere of their swimming, it seems, in both. When I first arrive, I notice the experience. Sometimes, a child's eyes haven't opened to the lake simply as the lake. But in the course of the days that magic in an experience that she does know. In Taro unfold, I become attentive to its many moods. On a quiet Yashima's Umbrella, the sound of the rain on a child's morning, it's as dark and smooth as a mirror. That afternoon umbrella makes a distinctive music: "bolo bolo ponpolo .. . its waves sparkle like laughter. Sometimes an invisible boto boto ponpolo ... " I often hear this when I'm out in the breeze twirls above the water in patterns that gently mark its rain, thanks to Mr. Yashima. surface. On occasion it is wild and choppy, ribboned in Recently I traveled with my family to the Blue Hill gray-then, swimming is an adventure. peninsula on Penobscot Bay, a place I had never been. Time When I was a child, the excitements of the year includ efWonder helped to make me a person who loves wind, fog, ed roaring waterfalls in spring, the thrilling flash and boom starlight, and storms. It seemed time I visited the landscape of summer storms, drifts of colorful leaves to run through in its author loved and brought to life. While there, I had the the fall, and of course, the first, silent snow. Of all the things eerie experience of recognizing the shapes and hues of the that seemed bleak about adulthood, at the top of the list was Camden Hills that faced me as they had faced the author and this: how unengaged grown-ups seemed from these central artist when he created this book (published, as it happens, the dramas of the earth and sky. year I was born). But mostly my attention was caught by It's no mystery how we become unengaged. Life's strug details different from those that graced the pages of gles- and routines-can exert a grip on the mind and sens McCloskey's picture book: lupines in roadside ditches; es. But the habit of paying attention to the natural world, ospreys atop enormous "seastack" nests; fog that poured, even when it is available only in moments, or only through one afternoon, as if from a pitcher, to fill the cove we stood a window, can be learned, at any age, to wonderful effect. in; the friendly twinkle of lights from the nearest island, at Wherever you are, "you can watch the time of the world go night. What we see is our own .. . but how we see-this is by, from minute to minute, hour to hour, from day to day, what artists like Robert McCloskey help us with. season to season." -Martha Davis Beck Time ofWonder is a love poem to the weather that reach es the islands in Maine's Penobscot Bay. Written in an inti Acknowledgments mate, second-person voice, the details it lovingly evokes are those that an attentive child would draw from the scene at Publication of the Riverbank Review is made possible hand. Two girls, based on McCloskey's own children, in part by a gift from Margaret S. Hubbs, a grant from the Dewitt and Caroline Van Evera Founda- explore the world of their summer island home, focusing IIMINNESOTA tion, and a grant from the Minnesota Humanities their attention on things small (ferns, hummingbirds) HUMANITIES and coMM1ss 10N Commission, in cooperation with the National large (the sea and the sky). Endowment for the Humanities and the Minnesota State Leg McCloskey's paintings are breathtaking. His depiction of islature. The magazine gratefully acknowledges this support.
3 Riverbank Review
Dinosaurs!
By John Caddy
ifty-some years ago I gave my first-ever school report-on hind foot, like a dog or cat. Suddenly dinosaurs, of course. And it was multimedia: I used the new the terrible lizard has become a fleshly being like our itching-scratching selves. Fopaque-projector to show line drawings of dinosaurs Although this may be heresy, I sug painstakingly traced from H. G. Wells's Short History ofthe World. gest that memorizing dozens of Latin dinosaur names has little to do with exer Today Amazon.com lists over 800 dinosaur books for children. cising the imagination. This is not to Apparently, we are insatiable. We have books in which agile, active dinosaurs say that there is no room for scientific good reason: we have been swept away! are shown in vivid (if speculative) color; method in dinosaur books. But the sci The eighties saw the discovery of the in which sauropods (huge plant eaters) ence should engage readers and enlarge Yucatan asteroid, which may have moved easily on land and browsed understanding. For example, the process killed off the dinosaurs (and in any treetops; in which dinosaurs are pre of field paleontology-digging fossils case gave us a glut of asteroid books sented as social animals that lived in -is inherently interesting in a way that and films). Since then, aided by Jurassic small groups and cared for their young. lists of names are not. A fossil dig is Park, we have been immersed in a Learning about evolutionary relation exploration, adventure travel, diversity swelling tide of dinosauria, Disney's ships has been central to our recent training, camping out, and sweat and Dinosaurs this spring being just the lat dinosaur discoveries. Understanding tears all in one. Two recent "dig" books est cinematic entry in the field. With that birds probably descended from worth checking out are Nie Bishop's the collapse of the Soviet Union, one type of dinosaur requires a basic Digging/or Bird-Dinosaurs: An Expedi American paleontologists have been shift in our thinking about both. tion to Madagascar (Houghton Mifflin, welcome to hunt dinosaurs in Mongo All this news about a very different 2000) and Mark A. Norell and Lowell lia's Gobi Desert for the first time since Earth-that-was has quickened our imag Dingus's A Nest of Dinosaurs: The Story Roy Chapman Andrews's famous expe inations. The best dinosaur books, I ofOviraptor (Doubleday, 1999). ditions in the 1920s. They found mar believe, are those that most encourage Digging/or Bird-Dinosaurs is an ex vels. Velociraptor, for one. Also, final the play of imagination. One telling cellent in-depth presentation of one dig proof that dinosaurs brooded their illustration (by Gregory S. Paul) from in Madagascar. It focuses on paleontol eggs in nests, and actual fossilized dino The News about Dinosaurs shows a ogist Cathy Forster's successful search saur babies hatching from the deinonychus ("terrible claw") casually for the fragile fossils of bird-dinosaurs. egg-now available in fabric at scratching the back of its neck with its The narrative is consistently interesting Toys-R-Us. The tide has been and the photography, by author driven by such frequent suc Nie Bishop, superb. One off cess in "new" dinosaur discov shoot of the expedition eries that a new something-osaurus is building a school for is memorized almost weekly by faith the local children who ful legions of children. played soccer with the So much has changed in what we scientists in the evenings. know about dinosaurs, and how we view A Nest of Dinosaurs them, that in 1989 Patricia Lauber's details one of the American The News about Dinosaurs (Bradbury) Illustration b)• Mick Ellison, Museum of Natural History's recent began a new generation of dinosaur fro m A Nest of Dinosaurs expeditions to Mongolia, furthering
4 Fall 2000
Roy Andrews's work of the twen ago. The authors bring ancient ties. Among other achievements, New Mexico to life for us the authors rehabilitated the repu Henderson's paintings are stun tation of Oviraptor ("egg-plunder ning-and they show the reader er''), which the Andrews expedi how scientific hypotheses are tion had found with a nest of developed and tested in a series dinosaur eggs, assuming it was of mind-experiments. I highly rec eating them. In fact, it was brooding ommend this book. and guarding them as birds (and Outside and Inside Dinosaurs, pythons) do today. Lucid text dis by Sandra Markle (Atheneum, cusses their discoveries' implica 2000), shows how scientists com tions for theories of the descent of bine new technologies and fossil birds from dinosaurs like Ovirap evidence to solve dinosaur mys Photograph by Christopher G. Knight,ftom Dinosaur Dig tor. Small but strong color photos teries. By using scanning X rays nicely augment the text through- and computer modeling, scien out. Both these books refuse to stop two kids as the group prepares to travel tists infer that a long-crested Parasauro with discovery: each follows the plas to the site. Once there, they encounter lophus probably used its bony crest as ter-cast fossils back to the lab and it all: badlands and buttes, camping, a bugle, to communicate with sound. details the exacting work of prepara nose-to-ground sniffing for fossils, bag Using the electron microscope, scien tion required before study can begin. ging dirt and then sloshing it through tists have found possible blood chemi I must also mention Dingus and sieves, and, of course, getting covered cals in a T-rex bone. Photos of dinosaur Norell's earlier book, Searching for with plaster of paris. Great photographs fossils introduce a sequence ofquestions Velociraptor (HarperCollins, 1996), an and great text combine to make a real that demonstrate the process of hypo excellent book about the authors' pre dig accessible to children. Unfortunate thesis testing, teach about lab research, vious expedition to the Gobi Desert, ly, this one, too, is out of print. and provide new information. where they discover the title dinosaur. The last dig book I'll mention is A different genre of dinosaur book It's currently out of print, but check Dinosaur Ghosts: The Mystery ofCoeloph is the lavishly illustrated large-format your library. ysis (Dial, 1997), by ]. Lynette Gillette survey. Two new releases illuminate the Another must-read book in this and Douglas Henderson. This book is pleasures and the perils of this formula. genre is Dinosaur Dig, by Kathryn Lasky both a good mystery story and an Amazing Dinosaurs: The Fiercest, the (William Morrow, 1990). This is still exploration of the scientific process. Tallest, the Toughest, the Smallest, by Dou the best introduction to fossil digging Gillette and Henderson create a won gal Dixon (Boyds Mills Press, 2000), for children. The book records a Mon derful series of plausible scenarios to compiles a lot of visual information tana dig on which five families, kids explain the sudden deaths of hundreds and presents it well. He groups the included, do the digging. It begins with of small Coelophysis dinosaurs in a dinosaurs not by the title's adjectives, the dreams and imaginings ofthe author's chunk of riverbed 225 million years happily, but by family affiliation. Too
Illustration by Douglas Henderson,ftom Dinosaur Ghosts
5 Riverbank Review many illustrations lack a context, the everywhere. A foldout near the end a fossil in publishing terms, but animal simply plunked on a white back shows a whole panoply of realistic Good news! It has just been reissued. It ground. But some are excellent and dinosaurs in a Mesozoic setting, as our is still, I think, the most evocative informative, such as "Inside a Giant," a hero watches from a pool. Then we're dinosaur book around. It gives me the cutaway view of Seismosaurus's bone back in the bathroom. Mom rushes in same rush of excitement that I felt structure, muscles, and organs. All in with a towel as the last dinosaur disap when I first saw the Field Museum's all this is a fine book that begs to be pears stage left. An altogether wonder dioramas of Mesozoic Earth. Lauber's browsed. ful excursion. text and Henderson's paintings evoke Dinosaurs I The Biggest, Baddest, Strang In Stevenson's The Most Amazing the ancient ecology of North America est, Fastest, by Howard Zimmerman Dinosaur, Wilfred the rat escapes a toward the end of the Age of Dino (Atheneum, 2000), at first glance seems snowstorm and finds shelter and new saurs. As this book shows us the wide much like Dixon's, but as I variety of creatures who shared looked more carefully at the the earth with dinosaurs, it brings profusion of melodramatic to life a world of ocean in the illustrations, I was reminded present Great Plains, great swamp of old Field & Stream illus forests now become coal... trations that always showed another Earth, but still our own. grizzly bears standing, arms Henderson's paintings are entire and claws extended, every ly convincing landscapes filled tooth showing as it silently with daily scenes of Cretaceous roared. As any careful observ Illustration by Peter Sfs,.from Dinosaur! reptile life. er of nature knows, animals Douglas Henderson is our of any sort spend most of their time at friends in the American Museum of premier dinosaur artist, and in Asteroid rest, neither attacking prey nor being Natural History. Wilfred and his new Impact he turns his brush to the "iridi attacked. (At any rate, grizzlies live urban-wildlife friends, Harry the snail, um layer" asteroid strike in the Gulf of largely on bugs and berries.) On the Buxton the skunk, and Prichett the Mexico that may well have led to the upside, the illustrations in Dinosaurs! owl, explore the museum and have extinction of the dinosaurs as well as have full, often striking backgrounds many adventures and one large misad the sea's plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, and showcase the work of a dozen illus venture when they knock down a large and the pteranodons of the sky trators. Often depictions of a species allosaurus. Whimsical watercolors por almost all the large reptile fauna of the by more than one artist are shown on tray the museum behind the scenes to Mesozoic Era. While the asteroid theo the same page. The differences in appear excellent effect. After the friends ry of extinction is still debated, there is ance give readers a lesson in interpreta reassemble the bones of the tumbled no debating that the asteroid did affect tion, and let us recognize how much in skeleton into a wonderfully balletic Earth. It is a subject that allows for dinosaur portrayals is speculation. pose, Wilfred is off to another adven exquisite visual speculation, and Hen I said above that the best dinosaur ture, with Harry the snail in his pocket. derson rises to the challenge. His paint books may be those which most en How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? ings call up our compassion for a world courage the play of imagination. Three is one of those picture books we cherish dying as dinosaurs, all unwitting, watch new picture books for the younger set because it holds up a mirror. Children the great boulder streak the sky with are fine examples: Dinosaur! by Peter will recognize themselves as dinosaurs flame. In the final paintings we witness Sis (Greenwillow), The Most Amazing from ankylosaur to T-rex employ every a small mammal survivor looking over Dinosaur by James Stevenson (Green possible strategy to avoid surrender to the destruction, and finally an improb willow), and How Do Dinosaurs Say the awful moment of going to bed. ably huge mammal, Uintatherium, is Good Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark The imagination is the key to the shown strolling through a tropical Teague (Blue Sky Press). last two books I'll discuss: Living with Wyoming forest, telling us that a new The child's imagination is the sub Dinosaurs, by Patricia Lauber and Doug world has risen from the old. -=- ject ofSis's wordless Dinosaur/It begins las Henderson (Bradbury, 1991), and with a boy in the tub with his toy tyran Henderson's new solo release, Asteroid j ohn Caddy is a poet and naturalist who teach nosaur. Suddenly toothy snouts appear, Impact (Dial, 2000). es Earth education at Hamline University in and soon enormous thunder lizards are Living with Dinosaurs is itself almost St. Paul, Minnesota.
6 Fall 2000
A Healing Way
Stories of Three YtJung Apprentices By Mary Lou Burket
n the days before medical schools and labor laws, the life of a serve them well. Dr. Peale's humility doctor's apprentice was gritty and hard. An apprentice of enables him to recognize the limits of his powers. And Lep, though chastened twelve might be required to feed the I fire and groom the horse by failures, retains his desire at the end as well as diagnose disease. In exchange, a doctor offered room and of the book to learn as much as he can board and the best of his knowledge to his charge. learn, to heal as many as he can heal. Fifty years later, a boy named Lucas This is how things were done in Phil buries his mother and wanders away adelphia in 1793, the year of a deadly from the farm in Connecticut where, yellow fever epidemic, and this is the one by one, each member of his family setting of Path ofthe Pale Horse (Harper, has died. They all had consumption, 1983). The hero of Paul Fleischman's for which there is no cure, but desper fast and witty, unblinking tale is Lep, ate people speak of removing the heart who is apprenticed to the pious Dr. of someone dead to protect the living. Peale. Bright and energetic, Lep under The Apprenticeship ofLucas Whitaker takes the grinding of herbs and the (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996) traces a bleeding of patients with equal zeal. boy's development from orphan to Following his mentor to the homes apprentice at the home of a country of patients stricken with the fever, Lep doctor, a tolerant and gentle man of administers syrups and potions and science. Doc Beecher's style of medi spirits and baths and expects the best. cine contrasts with the frantic measures Alas, as Dr. Peale is forced to admit, the of the grieving and the sick. Cynthia sickness "mocks all medicine." What, Defelice has based her story on accounts then, is the cure? And how can Lep of gruesome nineteenth-century prac accept that "doing no harm" is the best without knowing the "path" of yellow tices. Like Fleischman, she is interested he can do? fever-its transmission by mosquitoes in all the things that underlie belief Written in the comic-adventure mode -doctors were helpless to find a pre appearances, coincidences, customs. of historical novels by the author's ventative or cure. "It's our nature to make connections," father, Sid Fleischman, this book has Despite its subject, Fleischman's book Doc explains, "to try to understand elements of mystery and is peopled is not an exercise in gloom. Nor is it a what happens to us, and to think we with fools and scoundrels at every turn. warning against the arrogance and greed can do something about it." But which Thus, while racing from page to page, of the healing class. IfLep and Dr. Peale connections are rational, tested, and the reader may be unaware of lessons may be faulted for anything within the true, and which are merely imagined? in the essence of science and healing. eye of the story, it is excessive virtue. Written with restraint, this rather How, for instance, is a copper ring, for Lep has an unjustified faith in medi courageous book contains some grisly sale from a shady vendor, any better or cine, and Dr. Peale is comically suspi events-- 7 Riverbank Review well as kind. He has, as one man says, "a put Lucas in mind of a world bigger This novel, too, is about "knowing healing way." than the farm, bigger than Southwick, a more" and concerns an orphan, known Lucas could not ask for a better men world that was thrilling and mysteri as Beetle, who is sheltered by a mid tor than Doc Beecher. "Doc asked big ous. It made him want to know more." wife-a necessary member of the vil questions about things that Lucas had Karen Cushman's The Midwife's lage, but no one's friend: "Because of wondered about but had never really Apprentice (Clarion, 1995) is set in the her sharp nose and sharp glance, Beetle thought to put into words ... Doc's talk Middle Ages yet has a modern temper. always thought of her as Jane Sharp. Jane Sharp became a midwife because she had given birth to six children "l\>ignant introspec (although none of them lived), went tion. sly Qbservations, Sundays to Mass, and had strong hands and clean fingernails. She did lovely images, and her job with energy and some skill, but droll commentary on without care, compassion, or joy. She was the only midwife in the village." life, school, love, and Beetle is exploited and abused by sports are all here for Jane, yet learns, by guile and accident, much of the midwife's gutsy trade. She reflection. Raschka's has no books to study and no ambitions c.alligraphic, gestural ("she dreamed of nothing, for she hoped for nothing and expected nothing"). drolleries enliven the Yet this is what gives the novel its mod ern feeling, for despite the odds against pages." her, Beetle develops a sense of self. She -Kidcus~ adopts a sweeter name, Alyce, and strives to find "a place in this world." "An anthology penned by At first, it's a cat that elicits com passion from this solitary soul. "I would teens who participated in have you live," she says to the cat after poetry workshops at the dragging it out of a pond, where some New York Public Library or bullying boys have tossed it. Later, when Jane Sharp abandons a woman submitted their work to the whose baby is breech, Alyce steps for library's Web site .... This ward and saves the child. volume will show readers In those earthy times, midwifery and aspiring writers that was far from scientific. As Cushman notes in an afterword, "Medieval com anyone can and should mon sense knew nothing of germs, lit write poetry-and that tle of anatomy, and all too much of others will listen." magic and superstition." Yet midwifery had its place, and girls grew up, as they always have, with an urge to learn and a capacity to care. That was what mid wifery required-learning and caring at times of birth and death. The stuff of life, and the stuff of some extraordi nary reading. -=- M ary Lou B urket is a member of the editorial committee of the Riverbank Review. 8 Fall 2000 C oming F all 2000 from A cclaimed S toryteller KAREN CUSHMAN H istorical F iction at I ts B est In her long-awaited new novel, witty dialogue and richly authentic Newbery Medalist Karen detail, Matilda Bone is the com Cusl1man assembles a cast pelling novel of a girl who learns to of unforgettable characters see herself and others dearly, to in a fascinating and laugh, and to live contentedly pungent setting: in this world. Author's note. the medical quarter of a medieval ALSO BY English THE AUTHOR village. Catherine, Called Birdy Here J oho Newbery Honor Book fourteen-year- o-395-bs 1Sb-3 $ ILf. 95 old MatJda, pious and learned, The Midwife's Apprentice John Newbery Medal finds herself among people o-39s...b922~ $io.95 she considers unholy and unword1y when she comes The Ballad oj Lucy Whipple to serve outspoken Red Peg o-395-J28ob-1 $i5.oo the Bonesetter. Filled with CL ARI 0 N B 0 0 KS ~ a Houg/11011 Miff/in Company imprint 215 PARK AVENUE SOUTH, NEW YORK, N .Y. 10003 Jack" ;IJ,,,.,,.;on copy"gh1 © · ~ b y T,;n .. Scha" H yman . 9 Riverbank Review Becoming the Dark-Blue Bee Distant Journeys That Lead Us Home By Mary Pope Osborne n my novel Adaline Falling Star I tell the story of a girl who is to deal with their problems. Also, I the daughter of Kit Carson and an Arapaho woman named wanted to immerse myself in the details oflife at the shelter so that I could write I Singing Wind. The book is an imagined tale based on an actu a novel about the plight of a runaway al historical figure about whom little is known. In the story, Adaline girl. Filled with a breezy confidence, I asked my constantly shifting group of runs away from cruel relatives and survives alone in the American troubled teenagers to write about their wilderness of the 1840s. Throughout adult "children's book writer" voice. lives. "Be completely honest," I urged. the book, Adaline wrestles with issues of The voice spoke softly at first, then "Tell the truth." cultural alienation and racial prejudice. louder, until the child I had been and The stories they turned in were hor Her background is so different from had forgotten was wailing. I named her rific, about rats in the kitchen, rape, my own that some might think it auda Hallie, and her sad story became my and incest. I despaired that any hope cious for me to claim the authority to first published book, Run, Run as Fast could come from these tales, and felt speak in her voice. Twenty years ago, I as You Can. Though the central tragedy depressed about these teenagers' futures might have agreed with them. of that novel had not happened in my as I watched the shelter workers teach At that time, I was struggling to life, the book was deeply personal, ing them how to fill out a job applica write my first children's books. I was exploring my childhood terror of los tion or how to care for their infants. making the mistakes of many begin ing a loved one. One day a Mexican boy who spoke lit ning children's book authors, writing Over the next three years I wrote tle English asked me how he could get in a style that was didactic, condescend three more young adult novels, each hold of a biography of John Travolta. ing, and self-conscious. I was stuck in reflecting the beginning author's cardi "What for?" I asked. "To learn how to this mode until I took a job judging a nal rule: "Write what you know." To para make it in America," he answered. A children's writing contest for Scholas phrase John Gardner, I placed imag few days later, I heard that the boy was tic magazines. The children's assignment ined characters in familiar places and in jail for possessing drugs. That day, I was to write an essay entitled "Some living people in imagined places. I used wanted to give up. I began to think thing That Brought My Family Closer my apartment, my friends, my memo there was no realistic way for such trou Together." I read thousands of entries ries, conversations overheard on the bled kids to break free from their about family togetherness. The essays street. Anything I could pilfer from con pasts-to "make it in America." that affected me most were not neces temporary American life went into my I kept gathering more grim auto sarily the most perfectly written ones tales about teenagers wrestling with prob biographical writings, and kept listless but those that were honest, simple, and lems that I myself had struggled with. ly taking notes for my own tale of a direct, such as that by an eleven-year In the summer of 1985 I volunteered runaway, until finally, an unlikely res old girl: "My father left us but he came to teach a writing workshop at a shelter cuer stepped in. He was a scary-looking home one day and took me to the zoo near Times Square for runaway teen kid dressed in black leather with skulls and we got closer by the bears." agers. I loftily imagined that by getting tattooed on his forearms. He told me Essays like hers began to draw out a kids to write about their lives, I might he wanted to write "something differ child's voice from within me, a voice help them get to know themselves bet ent from my own life." "Like what?" I stronger and more honest than my ter and maybe even find some strength asked. "Like this," he said, and out of a 10 Fall 2000 dirty folder he took a poem he'd writ progress about my own runaway and researching my book American Tall Tales. ten. It began: "In days of old, when had begun to haunt dusty library I learned that Kit Carson and an Arap there were knights and castles ... " and shelves filled with fairy tales and books aho woman named Singing Wind had went on to tell of the adventures of a on mythology. This led me into writing had a daughter named Adaline. Singing brave knight. This boy didn't want to books that retold myths, legends, and Wind died and Carson took five-year write about his own painful life. He tall tales from different cultures, pic old Adaline to St. Louis to live with rel wanted to use his imagination to explore ture books inspired by fantasy and atives. Until then, Adaline had spent another life, one filled with possibili mythology, and eventually to the her early years living between two ties that he had been denied. Magic Tree House. In that series, my worlds-the trading post of Bent's Fort That weekend, I passed a vendor on main characters, Jack and Annie, travel in Colorado and the Arapaho village of Sixth Avenue selling old National Geo her mother's people near the fort. graphic magazines. Thinking of the boy Little else is known about the real who'd shown me his poem, I bought Adaline. As I thought about her life, I all the magazines and cut out a stack of realized she must have borne witness beautiful photographs of faraway to an extraordinary time in American places-an African river, a Himalayan history, a time when a number of dif village, a South American jungle. At ferent worlds collided. Almost as a hobby, the next class I handed a photo to each while I worked on my other books I kid with the direction that they not began researching what Adaline's life write about their real lives that day. would have been like. I kept a scrap "Go there. Put yourself in the picture. book of maps, articles, and old illustra Have an adventure." tions, and I took many pages of notes The kids totally "got" the assign on the environment of Bent's Fort as ment. They instantly moved themselves well as that of an Arapaho village. into these exotic settings, telling adven I gathered a wealth of information. tures about survival. For that morning, Yet, as I began to tell Adaline's story, I their world opened to a larger reality. did not strive for the literal truth of her They were each able to set out on a life; rather, for a universal truth. I quest, not unlike those in the worlds of Mary Pope Osborne moved her age to eleven and imagined myth and legend. what might have happened to her after Hadn't that been their natural incli to other times and places around the she left Bent's Fort and the Arapaho nation in the first place? What is a run world. After each adventure, they return and found herself thrust into a racist away if not someone who has set out home changed by their experience. household in St. Louis. I conceived her on a quest? The cold reality was this: Even with all my writing about dif story as a first-person narrative, and, in only in their imaginations could these ferent cultures, until about five years the course of my writing, it became a kids really escape the streets of New ago I had never truly inhabited the matter not of my claiming the authori York. By imagining a story where they heart and mind of a character who was ty to write in Adaline's voice but of had to hunt for food and shelter in a racially or culturally different from me. responding to the authority ofher voice natural wilderness, they were free to Perhaps I unconsciously steered away as she claimed me. The Adaline in my explore their true resourcefulness. With from doing so out of fear of reprisal, story spoke in a sort of hybrid poetry in the terms set by their imagined worlds, for there is a vocal minority in the chil cobbled together from the voices of they could catch a reflection of their dren's book world who maintain that the people she must have come into authentic selves, as opposed to the authors should not try to inhabit char contact with: trappers, missionaries, selves which had been forged by urban acters from cultures outside their own. mountain men, and the Arapaho. poverty. As C. S. Lewis observed, "By But what if such a character calls on I responded to Adaline with a deep putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or an author? What if the passion at the and inexplicable love. In writing her the very roads into a myth, we do not heart of that character slowly begins to story, I began to recover feelings long retreat from reality: we discover it." overtake the author's heart? buried in myself-a fear of being labeled By the time the workshop ended, I Adaline Falling Star first called on as "different" and treated as an outcast; had put aside the cheerless work-in- me a number of years ago when I was a fear of being totally abandoned; a 11 Riverbank Review fear of being forced to betray a loved one. Through Adaline I also found the Three Stars beginnings of answers to questions that had long bewildered me: how to from. find unity between vastly disparate cultures, and how to find hope for an LEE&LOW! alienated runaway. After several years of traveling with Adaline through dis MAMA ELIZABETI tant, imagined landscapes, I found the By Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen, truth and meaning I'd searched for fif Illustrated by Christy Hale teen years earlier when trying to write a Hardcover $15.95 • ISBN 1-58430-002-7 • Ages 4 and up "real life" story of a runaway adoles * "Stuve-Bodeen builds on the poignant themes of Elizabeti's cent in New York. Empathy and imag Doll (Lee & Low, 1998), while giving readers an expanded view of life in this African village .... The illustrations bring ination, fueled by research, helped me this world alive. Hale perfectly captures the spontaneity find my way into a reality that elicited and totality of a toddler's love, and the intimacy among family members is heartwarming and palpable. This is a what felt like an authentic voice. loving, sensitive book to be shared and cherished." I don't believe that children's book -School Library Journal, starred review writers-or any writer-should be lim ited to writing about their own cul tures, their own life experience. Even CRAZY HORSE'S VISION more important, the imaginations of u JOSEPH llUCHAC · 1m•uutr• n S.0. NELSON By Joseph Bruchac, children should not be limited to iden Illustrated by S.D. Nelson tifying only with their own culture. Hardcover $16.95 • ISBN 1-880000-94-6 • Ages 6 and up Children need to have knowledge of *"Bruchac team[s] up with a Lakota (Sioux) artist for an atmospheric view of the feared and revered Crazy Horse's their roots and find joy and meaning in youth . .. . Inspired by the ledger-book art of the Plains the stories of their ancestors. But if we Indians, Nelson paints his figures with stylized forms, chiseled features, and indistinct expressions .... [Crazy give them the message that they can Horse's Vision] makes inspirational reading and affords a only be the thing they are and nothing glimpse into the heart of a renowned American leader." else, we risk severing the slender thread -KifkusReviews, starredreview that ties the act of writing and reading to the miraculous- that state of being in which we can become all things; THE PIANO where "Thou art woman. Thou art By William Miller, man. Thou art the dark-blue bee and Illustrated by Susan Keeter Hardcover $15.95 • ISBN 1-880000-98-9 • Ages 4 and up the green parrot with red eyes," in the *"In this gentle story set in the early 1900s, music brings a words of the Upanishads. Paradoxically, young African American girl and an elderly white woman we can sometimes get more in touch together. Miller lightly touches on segregation ... but the story emphasizes a relationship that transcends age and with our true selves by stepping fa r out class. Keeter's oil paintings enhance the gentle mood ... . side ourselves. And by reaching to con A lovely book with an understated message." nect with a culture different from our -Kirkus Reviews, starred review own, we may come to understand all of humanity better. The runaway child For the most comprehensive. up-to-date information about our books who is most unlike us might be the one visit us at www.leeandlow.com who leads us back home.-= Mary Pope Osborne is the author ef more than • li lt™ fifty books for young people, including One LEE & LOW BOOKS World, Many Religions, an Orbis Pictus 9 5 Madison Avenue. New York . NY 10016 Honor book, and the best-selling Magic Tree distribu ted by l'ublisliers Group West House series. 12 Fall 2000 Ten Great Easy Readers The Duck and the Owl By Hanna Johansen Illustrated by Kathi Bhend Translated by Christopher M. Franceschelli 0UTION, 1991 Out ofprint-check your local library Exquisite nature sketches illustrate this humorous conversation between two very different birds who can't quite comprehend each other's ways. Henry and Mudge Under Owl at Home Emma's Magic Winter the Yellow Moon By Arnold Lobel By Jean Little And others in the series HARPERCOLUNS, 1975 Illustrated by Jennifer Plecas by Cynthia Rylant hardcover: $15.89, paperback: $3.95 Illustrated by Sw;:ie Stevenson HARPERCOWNS, 1998 Befi-iending the moon and brewing "tear-water hardcover: $14.89, paperback: $3.95 BRADBURY, 1987 I hardcover: $12. 95 tea" are just two of the enchanting adventures paperback (Aladdin): $3.99 of this delightful homebody owl. Jn the games she and her new friend play together, A ll the things Henry loves about/all, and all the Emma's red boots give her the power to become things he doesn't-such as the scary stories his invisible and lo climb giant snow mountains, but mom tells on Halloween-are made belier by Wiley and the Hairy Man can they help her conquer her shyness? having his big affectionate dog al his side. Adapted by Molly Garrett Bang SIMON & SCHUSTER, 1976 hardcover: $14.00, paperback (Aladdin): $3.99 Forest Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea By Laura Godwin Jn this suspenseful African American folktale, a And others in the series Illustrated by Stacey Schuett boy must fool the Hairy Man of the swamp three by Cynthia Rylant times in order to be safe from him for good. HARPERCOWNS, 1998 Illustrated by Arthur Howard hardcover: $14.89, paperback: $3.95 HARCOURT, 1994 I hardcover: $13.00, paperback: $5 .95 Wizard and Wart at Sea Jeannie has a memorable encounter with nature A lonefy old man has much lo share-tea and And others in the series when she and her parents bring an abandoned scones, a garden full oftulips, wondeiful stories fawn into their house for the night. by Janice Lee Smith but no one lo share with, until he adopts an Illustrated by Paul Meisel elderfy cal from the animal shelter. HARPERCOWNS, 1995 I hardcover: $15.89 Fox in Love Goats on the beach and monkeys in the pool can And others in the series My Brother, Ant by Edward Marshall onfy mean one thing: it's vacation timefor a wiz By Betsy Byars ard and his dog apprentice, and their spells, as Illustrated by James Marshall Illustrated by Marc Simont usual, are going comically awry. VIKJNG, 1982 VIKJNG, 1996 I hardcover: $13.99 hardcover (Eco no-clad}: $11.10, paperback (Puffin): $3. 99 paperback (Puffin): $3. 99 Even with his pesky little sister, Louise, When there's a monster to chase out.from under tagging along after him, Fox is quite the the bed or an off-season San/a lei/er to write, ladies' man-or so he thinks. Anthony's big brother is there to help, and '54nt" rewards him by beingfull of surprises. 13 Riverbank Review Lucille Clifton For thirty years, this poet and children's book author has evoked the experience ofblack children in picture books that readers of all backgrounds have embraced. By Patricia Kirkpatrick ucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, and grew up in that I write stories that, by and large, a household where books, poetry, and storytelling were hon have a major character who is a child of color. Certainly when my kids were Lored. Although her father could not write, he told stories little (in the 1960s and '70s) there weren't about Clifton's African ancestors, including those who were cap any books like that, and that may have influenced how I go about writing chil tured and brought to America as slaves. Her mother wrote poetry dren's books and what I write about. and encouraged her to read and write. Anderson's Good!rye. All of her children's I have a ten-year-old boy-he's white, Langston Hughes saw some of Clifton's books are distinguished by characters who I'm white, his father's white-and he sat poetry while she was in college and pub address profound issues with courage, out in our yard one afternoon this summer lished it in an anthology. humor, and tenderness. reading All Us Come Cross the Water "I am a Black woman out loud. It was a pleasure to hear him take poet and I sound like one,'' PK: How did you find your on those black characters' voices, and a Lucille Clifton has said of way to writing for young black vernacular, with such confidence. herself Her poetry is char readers? Teachers have a hard time with that acterized by brevity, wit, LC: Having children but the kids don't. I write books that lyricism, vernacular lan and telling them stories. I all children can read. Kids know these guage, and spiritual explo found it was something I are human things going on in the books, ration as well as a sense of could do, so I did. It's real they're children things. I was in a class history and myth. She has ly been two separate careers room once and a white child was say published many books of poetry, in going on at the same time; quite often ing, "Everett Anderson, he's just like cluding 77Je Terrible Stories, and, most people who know me as a children's me." In another classroom a young kid recently, Blessing the Boats. She has been book author don't know me as a poet. was saying, "Why are all the people awarded fellowships from the National Would you like that to change or are brown in your books?" and I said, Endowment for the Arts, been nomi you satisfied with two distinct audiences? "Well, look at me, I'm brown. Wouldn't nated twice for a Pulitzer Prize, and served I don't think about it, particularly. it be odd if I didn't have any people as the Poet Laureate of Maryland. A lot of poets know I write children's like me?" And he looked at me and The mother of six children, Clifton books. It would be nice if the children's said, "That would be weird." also has had a prolific career as a chil book people knew more about the poet I want to talk about naming, which is dren's book writer. Her first book, Some ry, because it would mean that they a theme in your writing. In an interview of the Days of Everett Anderson (1970), had broadened their reading. you told Bill Moyers, "wt have the right, was followed by five more Everett Ander Have there been any particular influ as living creatures, to name ourselves." You son books, which portray, in prose and ences on your work as a children's book spoke in that interview about the change of verse, the life of a six-year-old child who writer? name movement among black people in the lives in the city. Clifton won the 1984 If there has been any kind of influ 1960s. In your poem, "the making of Coretta Scott King Award for Everell ence, it might have to do with the fact poems," you say that the giving of true 14 Fall 2000 names is what you do when you make poems. And in your picture book All Us From Some of the Days of Everett Anderson Come Cross the Water, a young boy wants his teacher to call him Ujamaa, the Monday Saturday name his parents gave him. Night Morning Late Ujamaa is one of the seven princi Good Morning ples that's talked about in the celebra The siren seems so far away tion of Kwanza. Naming oneself is Being six when people live in 14 A, elementary. I mean, one has the right is full of tricks they can pretend that all the noise to call oneself what one wishes. I tell and Everett Anderson knows it. is just some other girls and boys my students that naming is always inter running and esting. Of course they don't remember Being a boy laughing and when Cassius Clay changed his name is full of joy having fun to Muhammad Ali, and the great uproar and Everett Anderson shows it. instead of whatever it is there was, how people were highly in whispers dignant. But what right has someone Everett Anderson to feel negative because a man decides Wednesday to call himself something else? Nobody Noon said anything when Marion Morrison Adventure Sunday Morning decided to call himself John Wayne. Who's black Lonely What about poets? Why are poets and runs always naming things? Is naming a spiri Daddy's back and loves to hop? tual as well as a political act? is broad and black Everett Anderson does. I think poets are always trying to get and Everett Anderson loves to ride it. as close as they can to the true nature Who's black Daddy's side of things-it's probably part of the and was lost is black and wide poetic imagination. Trying to get as in the candy shop? and Everett Anderson sits beside it. close as they can to the truth of some Everett Anderson was. thing, to what it really is, not what Daddy's cheek someone happens to call it. Naming Who's black is black and sleek and labeling are two different things. and noticed the and Everett Anderson kisses it. What do you hope comes across about peppermint flowers? race in your books? Everett Anderson did. Daddy's space I'm not a person who says that is a black empty place people shouldn't see race. Teachers tell Who's black and Everett Anderson misses it. me that quite a lot, that they don't see and was lost for race. Well, that's silly. Of course they hours and hours? see race. Not seeing race, I always say Everett Anderson Sunday (because I try to be kind), is a first step. Hid! Night The next step is to see race and to real Goodnight ize that it doesn't matter. It doesn't The stars are so near matter that I'm black and someone to 14 A else is white or Asian or whatever. that after playing outside Differences in history and culture and all day things like that-we need to recog Everett Anderson likes to pretend nize them and see that they make us that stars are where who we are, and then realize that we apartments end. are much more alike than different Have you seen or experienced any resis tance to your books when they 're written in Text by Lucille Clifton, illustration by Evaline Ness (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) 15 Riverbank Review a black idiom or vernacular? illustrations by E. B. Lewis. Oh, sure. Many people, When I wrote it I didn't real black people as well as white, ly think about the fact that have resented the way I por menstruation isn't something tray black people talking. But you talk about. if I have people speaking You address it subt[y. Infact, two intimates-they speak in when I've read the book with girls, their casual, at-home language. some pick it up and some don't. Nobody speaks in iambic Sure. And the fact that they pentameter. A casual language don't get it today doesn't mean is common to everyone, in that it's not in there some America and in other parts of where for them. the world, too. The value judg You've said, "You cannot play ments that we make about far safety and make art." Is that language are something else. also true for children's books? Those are based on our own Are children's books art for you, histories and cultures and or are they something else? learned stereotypes. But that I hope they are art. And I doesn't mean they're true. try not to play for safety. I try It's what you mean by label to be understanding of what ing versus naming? is appropriate, but that may Absolutely. But Everett not coincide with what some Anderson gets praised all the one else thinks is appropriate. time, nobody ever complains The only time when there about how he talks. was a problem was in one of The thing I love about Everett the Everett Anderson books, Anderson is how much of a Illustration by E. B. Lewis,from The Times They Used to Be which has a line about slip- child's inner life he reveals. How ping one finger in the foam did this character come into being? a new Everett Anderson book coming of Mama's glass. That foam was at first I often say, "I never knew a child out in 2001. For a while I thought, described as beer foam, but the pub named Everett." But I have two sons "Oh, I'm finished with this child." But lisher said, "Beer? You're going to turn and four daughters, and one of my sons apparently he wasn't finished with me. everybody into alcoholics." was Everett's age when the first book You've said that writing poetry in I was in a classroom reading that was written. I watched kids all the time volves being still and waiting/or words and book aloud and one of the kids wanted and saw them around. You know, when poems to come. Is that kind ofwaiting and to know, "What is that foam?" Well, I ever there are a lot of kids in the house listening a part ofyour process when you 're don't lie so I said, "That's beer. How they draw in a whole drove of other kids. writingfor young readers? many people in here have ever tasted I wanted to make a book where there Well, for young readers I think that beer?" Now my experience with my were children who looked like my chil it's more mindful. I want to tell some own children, all six of them, was that dren. I had not had that as a child. I thing. I wrote The Times They Used to Be they liked to taste beer. This doesn't was impressed by something [children's because I wanted to tell the story of mean that they swigged down a can, literature scholar] Rudine Sims Bishop what it was like living in a poor black but they did like to taste it. And I once said: children need windows and neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, asked how many people had ever tast mirrors. They need mirrors in which they as I did. ed it. Everyone in the room raised their see themselves and windows through That book is wonderful far the things it hand but the teacher. So we all sort of which they see the world. Some chil takes on: seeing ghosts, being saved through looked at her. She was a friend of mine dren in our society have had only win Jesus, a girl's first menstruation. I'm thrilled so she was just smiling and she sort of dows, and some have had only mirrors, that it's being reissued [by Delacorte, in inched her hand up-she had tasted and they're both disadvantaged. So I December}. it! So, I said, "I'm sure nobody around want to balance that some way. There's I'm really glad, too. I love the new here is going to go around drinking beer, 16 NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 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 .... I11I11I1 II NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 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 Magic lurks in e\1ble unexpected places ... Find it in the best Sylvester's ~ 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 0 one-year subscription (4 issues): $20 0 two-year subscription: $35 D Check enclosed. 0 Bill me later. Name (please print) ------Address------Apt. ____ City ______State _____ Zip ______ For more information, call (651) 962-4372. Subscribe online at www.riverbankreview.com. Riverbank Review barold's era Magic lurks in unexpected places... Yo n Find it 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 0 one-year subscription (4 issues): $20 0 two-year subscription: $35 0 Check enclosed. 0 Bill me later. Name (please print) ------Address------Apt. ____ City ______State _____ Zip ______ For more information, call (651) 962-4372. Subscribe online at www.riverbankreview.com. Riverbank Review Fall 2000 you're not old enough." But I don't Yes, it's natural. Whether we recog Poems by underestimate kids' intelligence. I have nize it or not is something else. Lucille Clifton a poem, "the lost baby poem," and it's Another thing I've noticed is how often often taught in high school as ifit's about the characters in your children's books con new bones a miscarriage instead of an abortion. front, directly or indirectly, an authority I've heard you say that before and I figure. Certainly you show that in The we will wear was surprised. I cannot see that poem being Black BC's, which I think is one of the new bones again. about a miscam·age, it seems so clear that most sophisticated picture books on black we will leave the speaker has made a choice. history, and I've read a lot ofthem. Well, the teacher has made a Thank you. That's also going to be these rainy days, choice too: She's decided that I'm reissued. break out through nice, therefore I couldn't be writing I'm glad to hear that. I was impressed another mouth about an abortion. But Gwendolyn with how recently Malcolm X had been on into sun and honey time. Brooks is nice, too, and she wrote a the scene when the book was originally pub worlds buzz over us like bees, poem about an abortion. lished in 1970, and yet how complex your we be splendid in new bones. I usually teach "the lost baby poem," portrait him was. In The Black ef BC's other people think they know and Gwendolyn Brooks's "the mother" you show Malcolm X breaking with the how long life is side by side and it's amazing how thought Black Muslims, and Frederick Douglass fully college students will talk about abor defying the slavebreaker; in other ofyour how strong life is. tion when the medium is a poem rather books there are characters like King we know. than a political editorial. Those are very Shabazz in The Boy Who Didn't moving poems. Believe in Spring challenging his teacher miss rosie Well, I could only write my poem and Tassie in The Times They Used to because Gwen Brooks wrote hers. Be struggling with her grandmother's when i watch you Some ofyour children's books seem as demand that she be saved. Has this been a wrapped up like garpage radical as your poetry with regard to talk conscious choice, to portray such power sitting, surrounded by the smell ing about the body, loss, class, mental ill struggles? of too old potato peels ness, abuse, and just plain joy. I think it just came naturally to or I guess telling the truth about chil who these people were. I have a really when i watch you dren's lives is radical. clear idea, once a character enters my You've said poetry doesn't just come life, of what they're like and what they in your old man's shoes from the mind and intellect but is a thing ef might or might not do. The Black BC's with the little toe cut out the spin·t. I've been struck by how natural was written because I was talking to a sitting, waiting for your mind ly your ston.es are inhabited by characters high school class in Baltimore in a like next week's grocery who see spirits and other things ofwonder. predominantly minority school and I 1 say I'm thinking of Uncle Sunny in The pulled out a map of Africa and asked, when i watch you Times They Used to Be and especially "What is this?" They said, "That's the you wet brown bag of a woman Big Mama in All Us Come Cross the country of Africa." And I thought, who used to be the best looking gal Water, who sees things "cause she born "Country?" And then somebody said, . . with a veil over her face." What does it "No. That's the Dark Continent." I m georg1a mean to be born with a veil over your face? saw then that it would be interesting used to be called the Georgia Rose That was a sign of somebody who to say something about what Africa i stand up could see spirits. The caul is a mem was really like, as opposed to what the through your destruction brane that sometimes still covers the movies show. i stand up face when someone's born and it has Where did the combination ef forms to be removed. What old people used used in that book come from: the four-line to say was that the veil gave you the poem followed by prose? From Good Woman: Poems and a power to see beyond the obvious. The verse was natural to me, and I Memoir 1969-1980 (BOA Editions, So, the veil is a natural thing, present also wanted to give some facts in a 1987). Repn.nted with pennission of at some births ... pleasurable way. I wanted it to be infor- the publisher. 17 Riverbank Review mative and entertaining. Probably if I chapter books, it seems to me your books are to sound, attention to feelings ... Sound think too much I wouldn't do half the still really poet's stories. There's a narrative matters to me in poetry and in prose. stuff I do. I'm very proud of my "X" in but it makes huge leaps without the kind of But I don't think about it, particular that book, because "X" in an alphabet transitions we're used to. ly, I just do what I do. My inclination book is always xylophone or X ray. There is a narrative but with atten in both poetry and picture books is to Mine was Malcolm. tion to language and I hope to the pare it down. Even in what some people would call music in the language, and attention What about the character in Sonora Beautiful, the wonderfully sardonic teen Betsy Byars age girl who is chagrined because, among From Newbery Medalist other things, her father is a poet. Did she need to be white? Yes, because that's who I heard. With children's books, if I can get a feel for what the landscape is like and I can hear the language the characters are speaking there, I tend to be able to know something about their lives. And I knew these were white people, white kids. I called a couple of people to ask, "I'm writing this book and the people are white. What do you think?" And most of them said, "Well, Lucille, who better to do it? If Ezra Jack Keats can do it, so can you." Ezra Jack Keats, of course, was white and wrote about black children often. Sonora Beautiful is a brief book, but it's in chapters. Who came up with the idea for the form ef a "skinny book"for teens? Dutton at one time had a program of books that were low reading level and high content for older readers who did not read well. I don't think the line sold very well. I'd love that book to be ~ "After Dorothy beats out rival Dwayne for the role of Tarzan in redone because I like to read it aloud the class play, she discovers that her already-stunning yell gets to audiences. I like the girl's voice. It was louder every time she rehearses it. It's a genuinely primal not a black voice, but it was a voice that scream too [and] at the performance brings the animals from a I generally knew. nearby circus bursting into the school auditorium . . . Byars will So that means you're listening. You have young readers enthusiastically pounding their own chests will pick up anything that comes in on the with this hilarious tale. . . . Great fun, a champion candidate for airwaves? reading aloud.'-Starred review I Kirkus Reviews I'm listening. I'm paying attention. "Byars does a great parody in this chapter book that combines That's what I do. -=- wild farce with deadpan realism: -ALA Booklist Patricia Kirkpatrick is a poet and the author of Ages 7-10. $14.95 Tr (0-06-028706-3); $14.89 Lb (0-06-028707-1) Plowie: A Story from the Prairie (Harcourt Brace). She teaches writing and children's liter HarpcrCollinsChi/dren :,Books =: ature at Hamline University in Saint Paul, 1350 Avenue of t11e Americas. New York. NY 10019 Minnesota, and writes regularly for the www l1arpercl1ildrens com Ruminator Review. 18 Fall 2000 Bringing Them Back Alive Writing History and Biography for Young Audiences Keynote address by Russell Freedman sometimes hear that children today are not really interested in history, that it's one of their least favorite subjects. They look I upon history as if it were a strong-tasting medicine-good for you, maybe, but repulsive nonetheless. If that attitude exists, it can only result from the way history is sometimes taught. I believe that a book of history or a remember. Whether I'm writing a biog biography can carry within its pages a raphy ofAbraham Lincoln or an account magical power. It can convey all the of child labor, I think of myself first as vividness and immediacy of great fic a storyteller and I do my best to give tion while retaining the authenticity, dramatic shape to my subject, whatev the additional power, of lived experi er it may be. ence. History should wake us up, Several storytelling techniques com because it is the story of ourselves, the monly associated with fiction can also story of our parents, our grandparents, be used to add drama and a sense of our ancestors. A knowledge reality to nonfiction. One of EIGHTH ANNUAL of the past is part of each the most effective of these is HUBBS CHILDREN'S LITERATURE child's birthright. the creation of vivid, detailed CONFERENCE Writing history for young scenes that the reader can University of St. Thomas, February 2000 readers imposes a special re visualize. Another familiar sponsibility. Your book may storytelling device is the devel inventory of the President's pockets after be the first they have ever opment of character. One he was assassinated: spectacles, folded read on that particular sub way to do this is to point out in a silver case; a small velvet eyeglass ject. It may linger in their the telling details that Russell Freedman help cleaner; a large linen handkerchief with minds and imaginations for to define a person. There are "A. Lincoln" stitched in red; an ivory ever after, coloring their view of the plenty of small, personal details, for pocketknife trimmed with silver; a past, influencing their understanding example, that provide glimpses of brown leather wallet lined with purple of the present. That's why a deceptive Abraham Lincoln's life in the White silk, and inside that wallet a Confeder ly simple book for children can have an House. Lincoln said "Howdy" to visi ate five-dollar bill; and eight newspa impact on the future that few adult tors, and invited them to "stay a spell." per clippings praising the President best-sellers can. He greeted diplomats while wearing clippings that Lincoln himself had cut Historians traditionally have been carpet slippers. He called his wife out and saved. storytellers. Going way back to Homer "Mother" at receptions. He told bawdy It's important for the reader topic and beyond, historians were men and jokes at cabinet meetings. He mended ture people and events, but it's also women telling, singing, or reciting epic his gold-rimmed spectacles with a string. important to hear those people talking. poems about the past. When I begin a One passage in my Lincoln biography In real life, the way we get to know peo new book, that is the tradition I like to that people comment on is the simple ple is by observing them, and also by 19 Riverbank Review listening to what they say. In a nonfic the way back, she saw some kids Wright brothers' great discovery, their tion book, quotations from diaries, playing baseball in the school yard. breakthrough insight, was the realiza journals, letters, and memoirs can take "I stopped to watch for a minute, tion that they could control an aircraft the place of dialogue in a fictional story. and the next thing I knew I was in in flight by changing the air pressure One of my favorite quotes about there playing myself," she wrote. "I above each wing. They accomplished laid the package of meat down on Lincoln, and one of the most revealing, this by twisting the wingtips in one the ground. I was only going to comes from his law partner, William play for a couple of minutes, but direction or another. When I started Herndon. Now, Lincoln adored his sons. they stretched into an hour." work on the Wright brothers book, my He denied them nothing, and he seemed Finally she spotted her mother knowledge of aeronautics was limited incapable of disciplining them. He liked marching down the street, searching to my imperfect ability to fasten a seat to take Willie and Tad to the law office for her. "I got the meat, Momma," belt, and I had difficulty visualizing when he worked on Sundays and their she yelled, moving out of the play just how the wing twisting worked. I wild behavior just about drove his law ground fast. "It's right here." She mentioned this to Mary Matthews, the partner mad. "The boys were absolute pointed to the spot where she had director of Carillon Historical Park, as left the package. A big dog was ly unrestrained in their amusement," we were standing beside the 1905 Flyer standing there, lapping up the last and she said, "Why don't you try it Herndon complained. "If they pulled of that hamburger. down all the books from the shelves, "Poor Momma! She couldn't yourself?" She called over the mechan bent the points of all the pens, over quite catch me," Babe recalled ... ic who was the custodian of that his turned the spittoon, it never disturbed toric airplane and the next thing I knew the serenity of their father's good nature. In addition to these narrative tech I was lying faced own on the lower wing I have felt many and many a time that niques, nonfiction benefits from anoth in the pilot's position, my hands on I wanted to wring the necks of those lit er powerful ingredient: firsthand, eye the controls, working the wing-twisting tle brats, and pitch them out the win witness research. Whenever possible, I mechanism myself. That hands-on dows." But as far as Lincoln was con include such research in my work. When experience was quite a thrill, of course, cerned, his boys could do no wrong. and it helped me His wife Mary remarked, "Mr. Lincoln to convey to my was very exceedingly indulgent to his readers just how children. He always said, 'It is my plea the pilot navigat sure that my children are free, happy, ed that early air and unrestrained by parental tyranny. plane. Love is the chain whereby to bind a While I was child to its parents."' in Dayton I was Another essential storytelling device invited to stay at is the use of anecdote. The best anec Orville Wright's dotes conjure up a compelling picture mansion, Hawthorn that illuminates their subject. An exam Hill. Orville and ple follows, from my recent biography Wilbur planned of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, generally the house togeth considered to be the greatest woman From The Wright Brothers er after they had athlete of the twentieth century. As a become wealthy youngster growing up in Beaumont, I was working on my Wright brothers men, thanks to their invention. Wilbur Texas, Babe lived only for sports, and biography I visited Carillon Historical died before the place was finished, but she excelled in them all. She could Park in Dayton, Ohio, where one of Orville lived there for about thirty-five never resist an opportunity to play; for their earliest airplanes, the 1905 Wright years, until his death in 1948. As visit example, a ball game: Flyer, is on display. ing biographer, I was invited to stay in Now, there were no cockpits, no Orville Wright's spacious corner bed One day her mother sent her to the grocery store to buy some ham enclosures of any kind on these early room on the second floor. I found a burger for supper and told her to experimental aircraft. The pilot would photograph of the bedroom taken dur hurry. She ran all the way, bought simply lie facedown on the lower wing, ing the 1930s, and I saw that all the the meat, and headed home. On hang on to the controls, and fly. The original furnishings were in place. There 20 Fall 2000 was still a wall buzzer above one of the French Government Tourist Office in twin beds, a buzzer that had been used Manhattan and I told them that I want at one time to summon the mansion's ed to visit Louis Braille's house in the servants. I figured that that must have village of Coupvray. "Coupvray?" they been Orville's bed, so that's where I asked. Was I sure I had the correct slept, for inspiration. name? Was I spelling it right? How did Being the handy fellow that he was, I know there was a museum there? No Orville was always tinkering with the one in the office had ever heard of the unique and temperamental plumbing, place. At last the director came out to heating, and wiring system that he see what all the commotion was about, installed in that house. He outfitted then disappeared for a moment and the place with all sorts of strange, returned with a massive atlas of France, labor-saving contrivances: a vacuum each page a detailed map of a very cleaner system built into the walls with small area, and sure enough, there it a hose outlet in every room; a heating was, Coupvray, a village about twenty system that could be controlled only five miles east of Paris, and about a from his bedroom; and his famous cir half-mile north of Eurodisney. On cular shower-bath, which he designed standard road maps, Coupvray is so just for the house. Orville's shower overshadowed by Eurodisney that it bath turned out to be an unforgettable isn't even shown. adventure. Illustration by Kate Kies/er, I went to France, rented a car in Paris, It's a very large stall shower, with from Out of Darkness and set off with a friend for Coupvray. white tile walls circled by pipes that The highway leading east out of Paris spray out jets of water. Walking into it life. They were considered ineducable was jammed with cars. Where were is like stepping into the middle of a and often were treated as if they were they going? To Eurodisney, obviously. ribcage. You're surrounded by pipes, mentally retarded. So, Louis grew up in Finally we came to the exit that we had and there are several faucets to adjust a world of darkness. More than anything been watching for, a narrow two-lane the temperature of the water that comes else, he wanted to be able to read. He country road, and we alone turned off shooting out at you from all sides, was a bright, ambitious boy, and he was the highway. We drove through ripen from below, and from the big shower lucky enough to be sent to the Royal ing fields of wheat until we came to a head above. I took several showers but Institute for Blind Youth. At that time fork in the road. There was no sign, and never managed to master the controls. it was the only school of its kind in the there was nothing whatsoever to indi There would be hot water coming from entire world, and it was in Paris. By the cate that the village where Braille had one direction, cold water from another, time Louis was fifteen years old he had lived might be near. and as I danced about, trying to adjust worked out the braille system of reading Across the way we saw a house and the array of faucets, I felt like an engi and writing for the blind, essentially as a man working in his garden, so we neer in a Rube Goldberg boiler room. I it is used today in virtually every lan drove over and asked if he could point began to think, "IfOrville Wright invent guage in the world. the way to Louis Braille's house. "Ah, ed this shower, I'm going back to New When I was working on the book I Louis Braille," he said. He called over York on the bus." wanted to visit Braille's home village, a a boy about ten or eleven years old, Another of my recent books that place called Coupvray, about twenty apparently his son. The boy jumped involved some memorable on-site re five miles east of Paris. I knew that the on his bicycle, motioned for us to fol search was Out ofDarkness: The Story of stone cottage where Braille was born in low in the car, and started pedaling up Louis Braille. Braille was born in France 1809 had been turned into a small the road. We followed that boy up the nearly 200 years ago, and lost his sight municipal museum, and I wanted to hill, around a curve, down a hill and in an accident when he was three years see that house for myself However, around a comer, and finally he pulled old. At that time it was not possible for when I looked at my map of France I up in front of the little stone cottage a sightless person to read or write in could not find the village. I went out that we had been searching for. Then any meaningful way. As a result, blind and I bought a big road map of France, he waved to us with a Gallic smile and people could not hope to share fully in but still no luck. Finally I went to the pedaled off. 21 Riverbank Review We had found the house, but this most often they practice their trade at being France, the custodian of the settled locations in towns and cities. house was at his own home enjoying a One day in Lijiang we noticed a small leisurely lunch, which meant that we hand-painted sign hanging outside an had to wait for a couple of hours. When old house in the center of town he finally returned, Monsieur Pierre announcing the services of a masseur. Cassagne gave us a wonderful tour of We knocked on the door, and that is the Braille house, which remains very how we met Hung Song Weng, a young much the same today as it was when man in his twenties. After we got to Louis was growing up there. We saw know him, he told us that he had lost the bed that he was born in, and the his sight as the result of meningitis garret room that he shared with his when he was fourteen years old, and he brother and two sisters, and we spent had been trained as a professional some time in his father's workshop out masseur at a special school in Beijing in the courtyard, where Louis blinded that accepts only sight-impaired stu himself with a sharp awl at the age of dents, so that they can go out in the three-you can still see that awl. world and make their living in the We spent two days in the village, time-honored and traditional way. He Words exploring the house and the surround lived with his parents in this two-hun ing countryside, and when we were ready dred-year-old stone house, which re words. In woods are to leave, Pierre Cassagne asked us to minded me so much of Louis Braille's You hear them all, sign his guest book, which he had been home, and he conducted his practice Winsome, witless or wise, keeping for many years. We discovered in the front room facing the street. We When the birds call. we were the first visitors to that house in became friendly with Weng and visited some time. The last visitors were a group him several times. Out ofDarkness had In woods are words. of blind students from Australia. They recently been published, so naturally I If your ears wake had been there three months before, asked him if he had ever heard of Louis Braille and if he knew about the braille You hear them, quiet and clear, and they had come in pilgrimage to the house, as to a shrine. system for reading. He smiled and mo When the leaves shake. As we drove back along the country tioned for us to wait. He disappeared road, through the wheat fields, we could into a back room, and when he re In woods are words. see the gilded spires of Eurodisney half turned he was holding a very thick You hear them all a mile to the south. And as we turned book, in braille-a collection of stories Blown by the wet wind back on the main highway, jammed by a famous Chinese author-tran When raindrops fall. with traffic traveling to and from the scribed into the Chinese ideogram. amusement park, I had to wonder, Am Weng told us that he spent several In woods are words I writing the right book? We had visit hours a day reading, thanks to Braille. Kind or unkind; ed the real thing, the almost-forgotten Meeting him, in what seemed like the Birds, leaves and hushing rain home of a boy who changed millions ends of the earth, reaffirmed my faith in the written word and in the transform Bring them to mind. upon millions of lives, but apparently -James Reeves he is no match for Mickey Mouse. ing power of reading. -=- A year or so later I was traveling in Western China with a Mandarin-speak Russell Freedman is the author of the Newbery Copyright by James Reeves,from ing friend, and we were in the ancient Award-winning Lincoln: A Photobiography The Complete Poems for Children (Clarion). His many other books include The walled city ofLijiang in the foothills of (Heinemann). Reprinted by permission Wright Brothers: How They Invented the the mythi ofth eJames Reeves Estate. the Himalayas, considered Airplane (Holiday House) and Eleanor ca l site of James Hilton's Shangri-La. Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery (Clarion), Now, there's an old tradition in China both Newbery Honor books, and, most recently, of blind masseurs. They used to travel Give Me Liberty! The Story of the Declara on foot from village to village, but now tion of Independence (Holiday Hou se). 22 Fall 2000 the teicher's art A River of Words Writing Poetry with Children By Susan Marie Swanson like to write poetry with seven-year-olds. "How do you do it?" Calling the Doves and The Upside Down people ask me. Lines from the children's poems begin to answer Boy, which tell the story of how he came to love poetry as a child. I asked, that question. "I was born with shimmering stars deep inside I "Why does he say 'I carry the sun in my me," wrote one seven-year-old. "I carry the roar ofZeus in my brain," pocket' instead of just writing some proclaimed another, in the laboriously formed ball-and-stick thing like 'I am happy'?" "Because it's poetry," answered a printing that children struggle to per calls for alertness and empathy. I stoop, seven-year-old. She continued, "It fect in the first grade. Usually the first encourage, listen, and exclaim for a liv makes you feel warm inside." "It really graders write on brittle newsprint ruled ing. Reflecting on my teaching, I like to gets your mind moving," remarked with widely spaced blue lines. One read these lines from a poem by Naomi another. When one child said he liked child began her poem like this: Shihab Nye: that the family of migrant farmworkers had an old army truck, another inter My pencil is a river I want to be famous to shuffling rupted to say, "I liked the part where of words. One by one they go men they camped in the tent and the writer down the waterfall. who smile while crossing streets, said 'The sky was my blue sticky children in grocery lines, spoon.'" During more than fifteen years of famous as the one who smiled The third thing I know about writ teaching as a writer-in-residence with back. ing poems with children is that once COMPAS Writers and Artists in the they've started writing, you need to Schools, I've visited hundreds of Min I want to be famous in the way a make it your business to support the pulley is famous, nesota classrooms in order to write initiative in each child. Children need or a buttonhole, not because it did poetry with elementary school children help to see that they can begin to write anything spectacular, and their teachers. When the school with the ideas that they're bantering but because it never forgot what it year ends and I teach literary arts in St. could do. about while they horse around with Paul Academy's summer arts program their friends. Once they are sitting for four- to eight-year-olds, I tie a lot of Nye is talking about an equanimity down, pencil in hand, it can be a strug shoes and unwrap Band-Aids while I that we can pursue deliberately, a defi gle to discern what young writers are help children with their poems. For nition of success that invites us to be trying to do or to really understand years I've been saying that writing with reflective and centered. their questions. Maybe their handwrit kids has changed my life. At the very Second, it is good to share and dis ing is difficult to read, or the spelling least, I've learned a few things about cuss literature with young writers, to confounds, or the paper is blank and helping children with their writing. fill the air with imaginative language the child, agitated. First, you need a good night's sleep. instead of tedious instructions. I recent At such moments, it doesn't matter You can't stay up late cramming for the ly shared some poetry by Juan Felipe how engaging my lesson was. Say we're tests children bring to class with them: Herrera with a group of first-graders, writing letter poems-to the stars, the responding to their joys and sorrows along with his picture-book memoirs, river, the tree in the backyard. That 23 Riverbank Review promising idea doesn't count for much poetry with children is, above all, about nize that there are many ways to ex if I'm not watching for the girl who is reading poetry children write. press truth. I hope they will value hard sure that her lawn sprinkler is not im Reading the work of young people, questions and believe them worth ask portant enough to write about, or for I watch for the same things that I hope ing. I hope they will be absorbed with the boy whose poem to a flower garden they will value in the best literature, the central themes in literature-such is really about how a child, like a garden, and I try to show them what those as love, loyalty, conflict, our relation needs tender care to thrive. Writing things are. I hope children will recog- ship to the planet Earth and to the passing of time. I hope that they will value honesty, clarity, spirit, and good humor in writing. I am teaching best Go when my response to children's work Bock to reflects those hopes. Writing poetry with children brought Across the curriculum. we've gotyou covered .. .. me to poetry written for children. When I began working as a poet-in-the Language ------schools, my thinking ran along the Miss Alaineus r::-;=::~i:-] T here's a Zoo The Pig in same lines as Liz Rosenberg's in the A Voca bulary in Room22 the Spigot introduction to her fine anthology of Disaster Judy Sierra Richard \\'ilbur contemporary poetry, The Invisible Lad Dehm Fr.sier 11/wlral~d b. 1/111slral•d by !1!'.l~~ru Ran"'y Saluberg J.ouo Seibold der. "Bouncy," she calls poetry for chil All ages • 0- 15-202 163-9 • $1 6.00 Ages 3- 7 • 0·15·202033-0 • $1 6.00 .4JJ ages • 0- 15-2020 19-5 • $16.00 dren, bemoaning the fact that "in too August August October many collections of poems for young Science readers, you never encounter a poem by a living poet who does not write in a ll!!l~" I Want to Be an Cloud Dance T he Sun Is My children's poetry ghetto." But where, Environmentalist Favorite Star Thomas apart from the "children's poetry ghet Stephilnie Mau Locker Frank Asch to," are young children supposed to Agca 8- 12 • 0- 15-201862-X • $18.00 AU agca • 0·15·202231·7 • $16.00 Ages 5- 7 • 0- 15-202127-2 • $1 5.00 find poems that they can read and 0·15·201939-1 pb . $9.00 September October August make sense of? That "ghetto" turns out to be a welcoming neighborhood where Social Studies poets speak in a variety of cadences and Hannah's mil!!IJlll!ll!ll!I• The Trip Let It Shine from many points of view. Here chil Journal Back Home Stories of dren can wander freely without anyone Bla 24 Fall 2000 dren have much to learn from trying to write it. At least they may discover that good poetry is hard to write, and so may relish all the more what the best poets have accomplished." Would the anthologists also suggest that children learn from "trying to" draw their own pictures or "trying to" sing songs? Is it important that the child who has writ ten "the dandelions in my yard look just like suns" be told that an adult poet has said it better? I used to think that there were walls between poetry for adults and poetry for children, and between poetry writ ten by adults and poetry written by children. But I just can't see the barriers anymore. Instead I sense all kinds of vibrant connections, intriguing over laps, splendid diversity. The house of poetry has many rooms. Dr. Seuss, the psalmists, Mother Goose, John Lennon, and Phillis Wheatley all live there. So do Emily Dickinson, Matsuo Basho, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Juan Felipe Herrera. Moreover, the sources of poet Susan Marie Swanson working with a student at Seward Montessori School in Minneapolis. ry-wishes, observations, metaphor, memories, the music oflanguage-are A third-grade girl wrote about a ing them a piece of fruit-an imper available to everyone, including seven frustrated younger sister who, being fect, organically grown orange-when year-olds. the last one outside the house, bangs others have been convincing them that There are many things that I value on the door with her fists begging to be what they want is a brightly wrapped in children's poems, but nothing more let back in "because she is too little I to and heavily advertised candy bar. than the telling detail that evokes a reach the handle." A first-grader wrote I know that it shouldn't amaze me larger, deeper feeling or idea. Writing about his own serenity: when they accept the fruit, but it does. about his love for a grandfather who Sometimes students send me thank Here I am sitting on died, a fourth-grader wrote "My grand you notes. Though they are thanking the steps thinking I the wind blew I me, it is poetry they are celebrating: pa got mad when about the sun. * away his hay." Describing his confi "I like what you did for us, that you dence in his mother, a sixth-grade boy Once I met a third-grader who said, came just for us." pictured her baking bread: "Poems are words that could fascinate "My mind is like a city of thoughts people." That is as good a definition of when I see you."-=- When the dough has to sit poetry as I ever hope to find. It describes under the dishtowel the difference between "I am happy" on the stove, Susan Marie Swanson is a member ef the edi and "I carry the sun in my pocket." Poet it looks like a hill torial committee ofthe Riverbank Review. ry invites us to take time to grow into rising to the stars. My mom moves like a river awareness, to discern what is essential. * These examples come .from poems that have flowing from place In our media-saturated, consumerist appeared in the anthologies of student writing to place society, that is not an inconsequential published annually by the COMPAS Writers knowing where to go thing. When I approach children with a and Artists in the Schools program, based in St. and what to do. poem, I sometimes feel as ifl'm offer- Paul Minnesota. 25 Riverbank Review revie. ~s Picture Books zons in almost every spread, suggesting an illustration shows impossibly tall rootedness and the space for flight. cornstalks standing over a profusion of ~ This quasi-legend opens with a cotton plants and baby chickens. "Jabe biblical allusion: One day, while fish BigJabe was growing too ... By June he was a ing to fill the boss's table, Addy notices full-grown man and had the strength of By Jerdine Nolen a basket floating in the river. Inside, a fifty. He could weed a whole field of Illustrated by Kadir Nelson LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD "little boy 'bout five or six years old soybeans before sunup, hoe the back 32 pages, Age 6 and up, $15.95 just sat there, smilin' up at her." His forty by midday ... Life in the Q!larters ISBN 0-688-13662-1 name is Jabe, and he completes Addy's just didn't feel so burdensome with chore by chanting a rhyme: "Fish, fish, Jabe around." When the overseer begins In this story of the antebellum South, where is you, fish? I Jump to the wagon punishing slaves out of resentment tall-tale spinner Jerdine Nolen (Haroey like Miss Addy wish!" Fish leap out of toward Jabe, unusual storms arise and Potter's Balloon Farm) and illustrator the water, enough for boss and slaves enslaved families miraculously vanish. Kadir Nelson (Brothers efthe Knight) bal alike. Jabe also offers Addy a golden "Jabe took them to that pear tree," is ance uncanny events and a plain rural pear, then plants its seeds. In a matter of the whispered explanation. setting. Nolen's narrator describes extra days, the pear tree grows to maturity, While Nolen's homespun narra ordinary happenings "A long, long time forecasting strange things to come. tion posits Jabe as a combination of ago, when young Addy was a house (Curiously, the tree provides an excel Moses and John Henry, Nelson keeps slave on Simon Plenty's plantation." lent view of the North Star, which guid the magic on a practical level. In the Nelson composes naturalistic images ed slaves to freedom.) earth-tone gouaches,Jabe hefts bushels that contrast humble earth and free air. That spring, the Plenty Plantation's of cotton, nails a roof with superhu Vast skies soar above low-slung hori- plants and young animals get big fast; man speed, and ultimately strides across the forest as a giant. He appears in just a few images, always with his head turned, his face half-visible. Nel son devotes greater attention to the changing seasons and to the barrenness of the slaves' wooden shacks. In one subtle spread, he gives a bird's-eye view of the plantation, as if imagining the gaze of a spirit or an escapee. The com plex pictures and conversational words encourage a lingering on each moment. In the end, Jabe remains a mysteri ous and elusive hero. His powers are never explained, and not every reader Illustration by Kadir Nelson,Jrom Big Jabe will look favorably on his selective mir- 26 Fall 2000 acle-working. For instance,Jabe's magic Like any hero, or seeker of housing, to cheer as Blue Rabbit pedals his red only works after a slave suffers physical he asks for tips. His polite inquiry, "Do bicycle toward fresh adventure. harm, and he places himself in bondage you know of a good place to live?" -Jessica Roeder rather than delivering all slaves. Yet snaps each new animal out of a passive Buzz Nolen and Nelson provide a gripping, stupor. He befriends first Bear, unhap By Janet S. Wong well-told story, with ambiguities intact. py in his Frisbee bath; then Goose, Illustrated by -Nathalie op de Beeck who dislikes her house's stale-bone funk; Margaret Chodos-Irvine and finally Dog, a no-nonsense beast HARCOURT troubled by his cave's pretty pattern of Blue Rabbit and Friends 32 pages, Ages 3-7, $15.00 daisies. These animal friends, in turn, By Christopher Wormell ISBN 0-15-201923-5 offer Blue Rabbit their dwellings, but PHYUJS FOGELMAN B OOKS 32 pages, Ages 3-7, $14.99 Blue Rabbit demurs. (Who would blame A bee buzzes past a boy's window, while him? These unsavvy creatures advertise inside a buzzing alarm starts the day. ISBN 0-803 7-2499-3 their houses with complaints.) The buzz of snoring stops. The buzz of Christopher Robin's animals spent chap Solid black lines define the prints' Daddy's shaver starts-then the blend ters working out their housing arrange shapes, but within the foreground er, the coffee grinder, the hair dryer, the ments, but-with the exception of color-layering and shadow add charac- doorbell, the little boy's toy at the Eeyore-they never had the mis breakfast table. Buzz hums with fortune ofstarting a story milplaced. words and pictures as comforting Piglet did not wake up beneath as the routine of this city family. the nursery curtains; Rabbit's Janet S. Wong's happy, unaf burrow was never behind the toy fected text has a music that match chest. But to most children, the es the rhythm of the morning, a dilemma that faces Blue Rabbit, rhythm that wakes up relaxed, Bear, Goose, and Dog will be all evenly paced, then begins to "buzz" too familiar. Many a child might more steadily until finally the have settled Bear (a svelte Pooh world is awake. descendant) in a water-filled Fris Margaret Chodos-Irvine's illus bee. If Goose caught the child's trations, achieved (we are told) eye, he could easily forget Bear as through a variety of printmaking he lodged his feathered friend in techniques, reveal a clear, percep the doghouse. tive design sense. Forms are sweet This simple story, told in alter ly distilled: flat expanses of color nating pages of text and linoleum are defined by eloquent outlines block prints, is the logical next Illustration by Christopher Wormell, and complemented by rare, telling step for an artist whose previous from Blue Rabbit and Friends detail. On an evenly toned head, works include An Alphabet ofAni- seven dollops create an expressive mals, A Number of Animals, What I Eat, ter and emotion. Blue Rabbit has a face: two eyes, two eyebrows, two lips, and Where I Live. Those books paired glint in his eyes, which grow large with and one nose. block-printed animals neatly with let thought as the pages progress. Repeti When the colors of flower petals ters, numbers, foods, and homes or tion and variation in text and illustra overlap, the look is that of tissue-paper habitats. Here, Blue Rabbit meets three tions, as well as mild suspense, draw collage. Sometimes, lacy one-tone tex animals sorely in need of sorting. the reader along. When will Blue Rab tures overlay another color. Always, Blue Rabbit is likewise anxious when bit say, "Aha!"? the colors are expressive and bold we meet him. The doorway of his block The ending balances comfort with gold sun rushes past the boy's gray sil cave, set within a weird artificial forest, fresh possibility: Blue Rabbit doesn't houette when he enters his sleeping dwarfs him. But the next illustration quite sort everyone. Instead, having parents' room; a delicious yellow seeps proves this rabbit has the makings of a arranged his friends to their content in the blue garage as the big door buzzes hero. No layabout, he strides off to find ment, he settles upon a less settled life. open. Color temperatures speak ofearly something better. Even homebody animals might want morning lawns and electric kitchen 27 Riverbank Review lights. Chodos-Irvine's pictures offer a "You can push my truck. Want to float range of perspectives that is almost cin my duck? Come sit on my chair! You ematic: high and low angles of view, can taste my pear." Suddenly there are long shots and close-ups, montages of no longer two lone children per page, smaller pictures that pick up the pace but two sets of new friends, contented and build tension. ly playing together. While First Friends What matters most in this book is could be viewed as a lesson in sharing, the lovingly realistic family. The boy it never feels didactic, nor does it resort "shaves" with his little car next to to flashy gimmicks a la the glittery Daddy at the sink; they share the same Rainbow Fish to get its points across. It blue eyes. Later, Mommy blow-dries is simply warm and welcoming from her black hair while her son styles his the first page, where a little boy asks us black locks behind her. to "open the door and come with me," Likewise, the words and illustrations to the last, where the children are in this book are unmistakably kin; they putting away the toys, gathering their have a brightness and a brevity that make coats to go home, and smiling because readers feel happily at home. At book's "each of them has made a friend." Is end, the sky and grass seem warmed by there any better way to end the day? Mommy's bee-striped stockings as she -Renie Victor "flies" off to work. Her son, still pajama clad, waves from the door with Grand Follow the Leader ma. The buzzing bee from the book's Illustration ry En'c Blegvad, By Erica Silverman beginning flies by in farewell. from First Friends Illustrated by G. Brian Karas -Diana Star Helmer FARRAR, STRAUS & G IROUX vad arranges his charming ink-and 32 pages, Ages 3- 6, $15. 00 watercolor figures two to a page with First Friends ISBN 0-374-32423-9 nothing but white space between them. By Lenore Blegvad This gives the impression that the busy Two young snowbound brothers enter Illustrated by Erik Blegvad classroom really H ARPER has faded away, which tain themselves indoors in this cheer 24 pages, Ages 2-6, $9.95 is how it must seem for the preschooler ful rhyming book. Erica Silverman has enthralled by the block or clock or toy a keen eye for the simple actions that ISBN 0-694-01273-4 plane in hand. Adult readers might be delight small children: Looking at a large group of young chil happy to note that the Blegvads have Follow me walking dren can be like walking past a pet resisted gender stereotypes in their Hop when I hop. store cage filled with parakeets. In the depictions. Lenore Blegvad's lilting Skip when I'm skipping. blur of chatter and bright color, it's singsong text introduces girls playing Stop when I stop. hard to distinguish one from another with trucks and trains, while Erik Bleg unless you stop and pay attention. This vad shows us a little boy sweetly kissing She also knows about siblinghood: gentle picture book (part of the Harper his rubber duck on the beak. as the rhyme progresses, the leader inter Growing Tree line for babies and tod Once First Friends finishes present rupts his instructions with attempts to dlers) clears a space for each child with ing every child in the room, it embarks maintain order: in a busy nursery school setting, invit on the happy task of watching them get Crawl to that tunnel, and follow ing us to meet them one by one before to know one another. The different me through. it brings them together in gracefully objects play a vital role here as well. Hey! choreographed pairs. Although the "Want to see my thumb?" says one lit Don't go off that way! children go unnamed, they are befit tle girl as she approaches the boy with Just do what I do! tingly identified by the objects absorb the toy town; and he reciprocates a few ing their attention. For instance, "We pages later with "Want to see my Beautifully amplifying the text, G. Brian see a little boy who has a drum. And a town?" This final section of the book is Karas's pictures start out in medium little girl who has a thumb." Erik Bleg- a spirited chorus of such invitations: sized boxes, echoing the little broth- 28 Fall 2000 er's attempt to mentally organize the shifts, stanza to stanza. For example, Just Enough changing rules of this new game. As Pretend you're an eagle : flap, By Teri Daniels both boys become absorbed in their swoop, and land. Illustrated by Harley Jessup play, the boxes vanish, colors spread Turn upside down, and stand on VIKI NG 32 pages, Ages 2-5, $15.99 out, and the boys' figures fill the pages. your hands. When little brother's attention wan ISBN 0-670-88873-7 ders, the background becomes white is followed by again, reflecting his shift in concentra The true charm of Teri Daniels and Yes, I'm still the leader. tion. When big brother regains control, Harley Jessup's just Enough emerges Run around in a loop. the pages are boxed again, and the pat when the text is read aloud. Daniels Somersault backwards. tern repeats. follows an activity-filled day of one Now hula a hoop. Karas's colors are welcoming here, red-haired little boy, and the infectious unlike the stark desert tones of his As snow falls outside the windows, rhythm in her descriptions makes the famous Saving Sweetness, but he keeps the round rug inside becomes a three boy's delight irresistible. The boy is his trademark, childlike style of draw ring circus. The younger boy amiably SMALL ing what is there instead of what is apes the older as blue pillows are enough to see [his] shoes seen: a rug on the floor appears as a imagined into a cool pond (big broth below the bed circle; hands and feet show all five dig er exhales the water like a whale). very red its, no matter what position the body Finally, a blue-spotted bedspread shoes is in. It's an exuberant style well-suited becomes snow inside the house, as lit to the subject. tle brother's wordless mutiny con and Adults sharing Follow the Leader vinces his sibling to let someone else BOLD may want to read the brief text once have a chance to lead. enough to hold a worm or twice beforehand, as the rhythm -Diana Star Helmer a slimy wet, garden pet worm. Whether GLAD enough to sing a song, or WILD enough to splash the bath, this child takes pleasure in the simple events of his day, and in his diverse capabilities. Jessup's palette isn't extensive, but he employs his colors well. His variety of perspectives (straight on, under the bed, up close, from above) lends inter est to mundane activities. The style reflects Jessup's experience designing animated segments for Sesame Street; his bold and colorful shapes support the liveliness of the rhymes. In one spread, an enormous, pink-and-brown garden worm exuberantly wriggles across the page, sporting an innocent grin. As the day winds down, we're treated to a gor geous purple-and-blue view of the boy's backyard, the night sky dotted with stars and fireflies. Like all good books for the very mustration by G. Brian Karas,from Follow the Leader young, just Enough provides romping 29 Riverbank Review excitement at the climax but winds of bedtimes. (The four knock-knock the course of a story about a little girl down toward the end, allowing listeners jokes in the book will be very popular with a loose tooth, his spectacular illus to wind down, too. Even the rhyme with children of a certain age.) While it trations explore what we carry inside us lengthens, spreading out from five lines may prove too sweet for some palates, when we travel from one land to another. to seven, creating a quiet tone that is Lucky Pennies and Hot Chocolate offers a At the start, Sis telescopes in, from very satisfying. Toward the end, the lit winning portrait of a relationship be a hazy picture of a small blue planet in tle boy shares his mom's lap (and a tween grandfather and grandson. an immense dark sky (note the small bedtime story) with a sleepy cat. That is -Kathryne Beebe red dot) to a recognizable Earth, to an just how this book should be enjoyed. overhead layout ofa city block, and then -Kathryne Beebe -whoosh, the perspective shifts and Madlenka we are looking up at an entire block of By Peter Sis brownstone buildings. Within this block, Lucky Pennies and Hot Chocolate FARRAR, STRAUS & G IROUX Madlenka looks out the window of the By Carol Diggory Shields 44 pages, Age 5 and up, $17.00 building she lives in. She has discov Illustrated by Hiroe Nakata ISBN 0·374-3 9969·7 ered that her tooth wiggles 0 lJITON (what a 32 pages, Ages 3-7, $13.99 Take a simple walk around the block momentous time in a child's life-that with Peter Sis and you wind up having first time for casting away a bit of child ISBN 0-525-46450-6 traveled round the world. His newest hood!) and "has to tell everyone." What could be better than a crisp Nov book, Madlenka, celebrates the span of Sis invites us to focus on the small, ember day shared with your favorite cultures that can exist on one city block the particular, the everyday: we walk person in the world, hot chocolate, and in immigrant-rich New York City. As around the block with Madlenka and brand-new knock-knock jokes? In friend usual, Sis artfully blurs the boundary our eyes too must traverse the block, as ly, matter-of-fact prose, Carol Diggory between the real and the imagined: in text and smaller illustrations wind their Shields's Lucky Pennies and Hot Choco late follows a boy and his grandfather as they indulge in a weekend of finding lucky pennies, making peanut-butter sandwiches, and other happy activities. The only things missing are bright cop per kettles and warm woolen mittens. However, Shields delivers the survey of her characters' favorite (and un-favorite) things with a twist at the end that makes the story fresh and charming. Hiroe Nakata's loose watercolor washes are whimsical, with a playful energy that goes beyond their curvy lines and multicolored pastels. Subtle music notes drift among soap bubbles when the two best buddies do the dish es; banana slices, raisins, and marsh mallows from their super-scrumptious banana-raisin-marshmallow-surprise pancakes fly into the air (along with the pancakes). Two bouncing pooches fol low the duo wherever they go, licking up any scraps they find. This picture book has the sort of readability and kid-appeal that might require parents to read it at hundreds Illustration hy Hiroe Nakata,from Lucky Pennies and Hot Chocolate 30 Fall 2000 way around the perfect square of the security, and joy. At the edge of things, page. Madlenka shares her joyous news a thoughtful mother notices her daugh with each of seven neighbors from dif ter's changing needs and lends an all ferent countries. At every stop we peek important hand. through the book's die-cut windows and -Mary Lou Burket glimpse much more than the interiors of their shops and homes-Sis offers Some Babies the reader views of the larger, more intri By Amy Schwartz cate landscapes of the imagination. O RCHARD Mr. Singh's newsstand opens up to 32 pages, Ages 2- 5, $15.95 a sumptuous dream oflndia. A radiant ISBN 0-53 1-30287-3 wash of warm red and purple provides the backdrop to fine pen-and-ink draw Amy Schwartz captured her early ings of a jewel-laden, flying elephant, a adventures in motherhood in 1994's Hindu god, a woman in a sari, and endearing A Teeny Tiny Baby. That more. Step into Mrs. Grimm's and visit baby, along with Schwartz's alter-ego the two-page spread of a vast scratch Mommy, are back in Some Babies. Back, board stage, toned in deep green, peo too, are Schwartz's bright, gentle pled with characters from Grimm's Illustration by Maya Christina Gonzalez, gouache montages. from My Very Own Room fairy tales and German opera. The action of Some Babies begins When Madlenka tells her friend with Mommy tucking Baby into bed. Mrs. Kham that her tooth is loose, she ers wants one, too. What is it? A place Baby rejects the blanket, bottle, and replies, "Tashi delek, Mandala." (Every to be alone. bear that are offered, demanding instead neighbor gives her a different nick "A little space was all I wanted, but that "Mommy talk." Mommy obliges name.) "That's a lucky sign." Inside her there wasn't much of it. Our tiny house with descriptions of "some babies in shop is a swirl of red ferocious dragon, was shared by eight of us, and some the park." The book's opening pages a fantastic terrain of land and sea and times more when our friends and rela contain small interior scenes against a mountain. A boy on a white yak flies a tives came from Mexico and stayed white background, the park peeking whimsical kite. · with us until they found jobs and through Baby's window all the while. The imagery in Madlenka, the scope places to live." When the word "park" is spoken, the of the project, and the opulent beauty For someone "almost nine," a cor window view enlarges, occupying the of Sis's illustrations set this book apart. ner behind a curtain would be the per center of a deep blue swirl surrounding Sis promises the story of a little girl fect place to read, write, and dream. A Baby in his crib. As Mommy talks, whose tooth is loose. What he gives us place for solitude. But lots of things are scenes of the park's activity share the is the world. stored there-a sewing machine and page with Baby's bedroom. Turn the -Christine Alfano garden tools and furniture and clothes! page, and the park takes over. Scenes of However, "like a mighty team of pow bedroom and park alternate and over erful ants," the family pitches in to lap in a pleasant, energetic rhythm My Very Own Room clear the space. Paint goes up, a bed is until a tired Mommy closes the bed (Mi propio cuartito) found, a crate becomes a table. room curtain. The park itself no longer By Amada Irma Perez That night, two little brothers appears, but its inhabitants continue to Illustrated by former bedmates-hesitate outside. race through Baby's thoughts. Maya Christina Gonzalez Their sister asks them in and reads them Schwartz's "babies CHILDREN'S BOOK PRESS in the park" play 32pages, Ages 6-10, $15.95 a story before they say good-night and with trucks and mud (girls and boys leave. No one feels alike), ISBN 0-89239-164-2 put out by the are held or chased by caregivers change of arrangements. (both women and men), and are drawn Virginia Woolf had one. A small pig It's a simple tale-no miracles, no with lively lines that perfectly capture named Poinsettia in Felicia Bond's twists-told bilingually, with glowing the joy of chubby, energetic toddlers. Poinsettia and Her Fami{y wanted one. illustrations of a family "making do" The scenario in Some Babies reflects And now a girl with five young broth- and filling every inch of life with love, the passage of time since A Teeny Tiny 31 Riverbank Review Baby. The earlier book also starred a The novel opens with a queasy vari the farm, the novel loses some of its demanding baby and an illustrated ation on the author's autobiographical focus, though not its driving force. By litany of sweet, familiar activities-but writings (e.g., My Life in Dog Years), the conclusion, even that energy-the in that book, Schwartz's Baby could which so often condemn his parents' boy's pent-up lust-is expended; with not speak. This made his ability to con drinking. The sixteen-year-old protago survival comes the disillusionment of trol adults humorous and somehow nist, known only as "the boy," awakens adulthood. Once again, Paulsen weaves equalizing. In Some Babies the scales are to his inebriated mother: "She had a gripping tale of a loner. Readers will further tipped in Baby's favor. Baby come to his bed many times drunk, to stay up late to finish it. voices bedtime demands; Mommy sleep ... But tonight, even half dream -Nathalie op de Beeck patiently complies, even after protest ing, he knew something was different, ing that her "mouth is fuzzy." When wrong, about her need for him." Being with Henry Mommy finally falls asleep herself, Confronted with his mother's inces By Martha Brooks Baby is old enough to know that her tuous desire, the boy runs away from DK INK story is over. Cheerful and adaptable, home. He finds work thinning beet 216 pages, Age 12 and up, $1Z95 he lets Mommy be-calling out for crops under a hot North Dakota sun: ISBN 0-7894-2588-2 Daddy instead. "It was like standing in the center of an -Diana Star Helmer enormous bowl that went green to the What do you see when your eyes glance sky and then yellow blue into the gold away from the young man standing on hot sun, the color mixing with the heat the street comer begging for change? Is in some way to press down on him, he someone who must have done pressing, pushing, bending, driving something wrong to deserve his plight, him back to the hoe." Paulsen expertly or is he an unfortunate in need of kind describes the boy's blisters, empty stom ness? Martha Brooks has taken part of The Beet Fields: ach, and deep satisfaction after an unex her story "The Kindness of Strangers," Memories of a Sixteenth Summer pected hot meal; the author further from Traveling on into the Light and Other By Gary Paulsen shows how the boy earns the friendship D ELACORTE Stories, and expanded it into a novel 176 pages, Age 12 and up, $15. 95 of his fellow laborers, generous Mexi that explores how a sixteen-year-old can migrant workers, who share their boy, adrift and unloved, and an eighty ISBN 0-385-3264 7-5 food in return for pigeons the boy kills. three-year-old man come together to Like a hybrid of Ernest Hemingway The boy follows the migrants to help each other. and Stephen King, Gary Paulsen writes another beet field, where he earns a few Though he has a hot temper, Laker about the unpredictable danger of the dollars a day. Paulsen conveys the boy's is basically a good kid-responsible, a wilderness and the violence of male sense of accomplishment as the money good student, and an avid reader (he coming-of-age. He pounds his readers slowly adds up, then destroys that hard works in the library). He has taken care with spiky gut-punch sentences about won optimism in a heartbeat. After a of his helpless, immature mother for blood, physical exhaustion, and hunger wrenching disappointment, the boy years. Following a fight with his stepfa pangs. Hatchet memorably depicts such goes on the lam again and hooks up ther, Laker is kicked out of the house. wilderness trials as gnat bites on a sun with a carnival. In the "carny" chapters, Because the first available bus takes burned face; Soldier's Heart graphically he learns crude slang from a sideshow him to Bemidji, Minnesota, he ends up imagines the horrors of a Civil War bat geek and falls for a Hootchy-Kootchy standing under the canopy of Thrift tlefield. Yet The Beet Fields, set in 1955, dancer. The story rushes headlong toward way Drugs when Henry arrives to do promises a greater-than-usual dose of a tense first-sex scene, which holds out his shopping. verisimilitude and shock-much of it one sort of manhood, then skips abrupt Henry, whose beloved wife died supplied by coarse, sharp sexual con ly to its ironic denouement, which finds two years ago, is struggling to maintain tent. "[SJ mall portions of this book the still-boyish protagonist enlisting in his independence and dignity despite appeared in softer forms, shadowed the Army (unwary of the "pimp smile" the efforts of a devoted but overbear and changed and sketched into gentler of a recruiter). ing daughter. The two decide to take a fiction, over twenty years ago," Paulsen Paulsen has titled his book The Beet chance on each other and Laker moves writes in an introduction. "But here it is Fields because those fields are the center in with Henry. They make a good pair. now as real as I can write it." of the narrative. When the boy leaves Henry is patient and wise; Laker is kind 32 The Duck and the Owl By Hanna Johansen Illustrated by Kathi Bhend Translated by Christopher M. Franceschelli DUTTON, 1991 0111 ofpnnt-chtdc your local bbrary Exquisite nature sketches illustrate this humor ous conversation between two very different birds who can't comprehend each other's ways. Emma's Magic Winter By Jean Little, illustrated by Jennifer Plecas HARPERCOU.IN\, 1998 hardamrr: 14.89, pt1ptrbt1ck: S.l .95 In the games Emma plays, her red boots give her the power to become invisible and lo climb giant snow mountains. Can they help her conquer her shyness? Forest By Laura Godwin Illustrated by Stacey Schuett HARPERCOUIN5, 1998 hardcm"n $14.89, paptrback.· $3.95 Jeannie has a memorable encounter with nature when she and her parents bring an abandoned fawn into their house for the night. Fox in Love And others in the series by Edward Marshall, illustrated by James Marshall VIKING, 1982 hardcover (Econ1rdad): S11.10, paprrback (Puffin): SJ. 99 Even with his pesky lillle sister, Louise, tagging along qfier him, Fox is quite the ladies' man-or so he thinks. Henry and Mudge Under the Yellow Moon And others in the series by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Sw;:ie Stevenson BRADBURY, 1987 I hardccnxr: S12.95 paf'"bad (A/addm): $3.99 All the things Henry loves about fall, and all the things he doesn't-such as the scary stories his mom tells on Halloween-art made belier by having his big alfectiomlle dog at his side. ~ Detach ~ , Riverbank Review bookmark - --~- -~------=- - - - here. ___.,.. of \,ook s for )'o., ng r e ader~ Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea And others in the series by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Arthur Howard HARCOl'RI, 1994 hardan'rr: Sl3.00,pt1per/1111k· SS.95 A lonr!J• old man hm much to share-tea and scones, a gardm.fiill oftulips, wondeif11/ sto ries-but no one to share with, until he adopts an elder!)' cat from the animal shelter. My Brother, Ant By Betsy Byars Illustrated by Mdrc Simont \'IKl~C.. J99b h11rtkot:er: $13.99 pt1pab1uk (Puffin): $3.99 When there's a mom/er to chase 0111 from under the bed or an ojfsrmon Santa lei/er to write, Anthony's big brother is there lo help, and '/1111" rewards him lry bei11gf11/I ofsurprises. Owl at Home By Arnold Lobel HARrl RCou.1:-.;~. 1975 hard11n1rr· S 15.89. paperbark: $3.95 Befriending the moon and brro1ing "tear•water lea " are just two ofthe enchanting ad11m/11res ofthi.< de/1;~h!frd homebod)• owl. Wiley and the Hairy Man Addpted by Molly Garrett Bang SIMO:\ & S< lll'\HR. 1976 hmdrm•rr S 14.00. pr1p1-rl1t1dt (14111ddm): $3.99 In this .<11Sf11'11.1r(11/ African Amrrimn(olktale, ab~)' m11.1tfool thr H111ri• Man ofthe swamp three timt.< m order to he "'!fe from him.for good. Wizard and Wart at Sea And others in the series by Ja111ce Lee Smith lllustrJted by PJul Meisel I IARl'!-RC< ll 11~'. I 995 lwrdann: $ 15.89 Goats m1 tht be11rh 11nd monkev.< 111 the pool ran 011(>1 ml'ttn onr llnng· it:\ 1wr11/1011 tum· for a wizard 11nd Im do,~ apprmtirr. rmd their spells. 11s 11.wal, 11re gom,~ co1111mllr t11l'TI" Fall 2000 and hardworking. Together they form a she says), and the event sent Hannah's pares every meal, and, to calm her easi new family, one that has highs and mother into a debilitating depression, ly agitated mother, makes sure that the lows but always a core of respect and forcing the fifteen-year-old to shoulder place-mats are well-ironed. What could genuine caring. After a year they jour all family responsibility. Hannah not add to her burden? At the novel's begin ney to Henry's lake house in Manito only goes to school and cleans the ning we learn that Hannah is pregnant. ba, where Laker unexpectedly recon house: she works at the Burger Shack, In A Dance for Three, Louise Plum nects with the old woman who cared shops (and pays) for all groceries, pre- mer sensitively explores the reasons a for him when he was very young. What she reveals about his past enables him to understand why his mother told him to move out, and this knowledge allows him to choose his future. Brooks develops her characters fully; even the novel's minor players are intrigu ing. Her use of journal entries, scattered sporadically throughout the first two illustrations by the author parts of the book, sets up the ending " ... will certainly win over youngsters." quite nicely, as they all concern Laker's -Publishers Weekly fragmented memories of his infancy. His reunion with his early childhood "The collage-style art uses vibrant, overlaying shapes caregiver at the novel's end might seem and vivid jungle colors to make the pictures come an unlikely coincidence, but in the alive-and easy to see during story hours." -Booklist context of the story it expresses two of "Stripe is a frisky fellow ... He'll be fun to have Brooks's central themes: the interde around." -Kirkus Reviews pendence of human beings and the role that chance encounters play in life. The person who becomes a catalyst for change in your life is often someone you'd never expect to play that part. -Lee Galda A Dance for Three By Louise Plummer D ELACORTE 230 pages, Age 14 and up, $15.95 ISBN 0-385-325 J J-8 Fifteen-year-old Hannah Ziebarth steals roses and hangs them in bunches from her bedroom ceiling to dry. Dried roses Hardcover: 1-57505-450-7 List Price: $15" are her passion, but she has no desire Full-Color Illustrations 1 for them unless they are taken illicitly, 8 /2 x 11 • 32 Pages usually from reviled neighbors who Grades: PreK-3 almost catch her. All those gorgeous flow ers, clipped and stolen before their full blossoming, tell us much about Hannah. Here is a smart and funny and rebel ~(Carolrhoda Books lious girl, cut down by circumstance. A division of Lerner Publishing Group Two years earlier, Hannah's father 800-32 8-4929 • FAX 800-3 32-1 132 • www.lernerbooks.com died of respiratory failure ("of a burp," 33 Riverbank Review good kid is nudged into making bad Newbery-winning The Giver, an alter social obligations of artists that it raises, choices. In a world that readily lays blame nate view of what the future might turn always believable and entertaining. on a single doorstep, Plummer would out to be. As she says," ... it seems pos Lowry makes use of basic conventions show us that Hannah's pregnancy and sible to me that other kinds of worlds in children's fiction-the orphan pro ultimate breakdown are pressed along might evolve. How about a society tagonist, the family constructed of by much more than her own actions. with no technology at all? How about a friends, the theme of innocence con Though the plot of A Dance for community of disorder, savagery, and fronting wider knowledge, the focus on Three feels somewhat worn (teen preg self-interest?" questions of where and what a home is nancy, a girl coping with a parent's Such a community sounds like the -weaving the elements together with mental illness), Plummer moves out exact opposite of the one depicted in such artistry that it all seems fresh and side the claustrophobic range of Han The Giver, which was organized around new. Despite, or even perhaps because nah and her ill mother, vitalizing the security, comfort, and equality. And at of its familiarity, Gathering Blue should novel with the strong, intriguing pres first glance, Gathering Blue is the oppo be a compelling experience for readers ence of a number of characters. Milo is site of The Giver. The central character is of all ages who enjoy the special plea drawn with more texture than the usual a girl rather than a boy, an orphan sures of children's fiction. "bad boyfriend" stereotype-readers rather than the member of a happy -Perry Nodelman respond to his charm and his forceful family. Kira's world is primitive rather personality before they encounter his than technologically advanced, agri Good-bye for Today: sadism and narcissism. Milo's quiet cultural rather than urban, and her life The Diary of a Young Girl at Sea younger brother, Roman, emerges as is physically and emotionally harsh By Peter and Connie Roop one of the most interesting characters rather than comfortable. Illustrated by Thomas B. Allen in the book: it's a pleasure to see him But a second glance reveals as many ATHENEUM wrest himself from the shadow of his similarities as differences. Like Jonas in 48 pages, Ages 7-10, $16.00 older, adored brother and grow beyond The Giver, Kira is singled out for being ISBN 0-689-82222-7 his family's blindered success ethic. different from everyone else, and as a The interval that Hannah spends in result, she discovers a startling secret Their excellent work as editors of jour a psychiatric ward after an all but in about her community that is hidden to nals by explorers (Columbus, Audubon, evitable breakdown is realistically por most of its members. The secret involves Lewis and Clark) has prepared the team trayed-Plummer never romanticizes her as a preserver and transmitter of of Peter and Connie Roop for their lat the young patients or their illnesses. communal memories, a role she feels est project, an absorbing and convinc By novel's end, Hannah is still mak increasing discomfort with. Also like ing fictional journal based on the voy ing her own difficult choices-but they Jonas, Kira learns there is another place ages of nineteenth-century New England are better choices. She also accepts beyond the only community she has whaling families. help from friends, something she has known thus far, and ultimately she As the Roops have shown, the jour needed to do for a long time. No longer aspires to move beyond her home, nal can be an obliging form for teaching stealing flowers, Hannah and her neigh toward this other place. Whether or about the past and telling a story. It has bor plant a living rosebush in memory not she succeeds is unclear, although inherent credibility and structure, with of the baby that she finally chooses to the ending of Gathering Blue has a more each day inevitably dawning on the one give away. hopeful feeling than did The Giver. In that came before. Yet the fictional jour -Christine Alfano her author's note, Lowry says, "I like nal must, above all, be interesting to read. endings that contain such hope." This Good-bye for Today is a fine example might be a way of telling readers of the form. The year Gathering Blue that is 1871 and Laura, the much-discussed ending By Lois Lowry of The nine, is sailing aboard the Monticello H OUGHTON MIFF! IN Giver contains hope, too. with her father (the captain), her moth 215 pages, Age JO and up, $15.00 There is another significant similar er, her younger brother William, and l\B~ 0-618--05581-9 ity between the two books. Like The the crew. She isn't fond of writing, but Giver, Gathering Blue is an excellent her sketches in trembly ink- provided In a note from the author at the front of novel, carefully plotted, clearly writ by Thomas B. Allen-of birds and Gathering Blue, Lois Lowry suggests that ten, and, for all the deep questions whales, a treasured doll, a chamber pot, this new novel is a companion to her about the ethics of power and the and other things observed aboard the 34 Fall 2000 ship, adorn the pages. They give the and orange; his planet is lavender lenge splendidly. While his version book the air of something tenderly re rather than gray), the need for a new is more natural and graceful than corded, something a child might actu translation is more difficult to assess. Woods's, he never turns Antoine de ally have made. Fortunately, the new Saint-Exupery's extraordinary tale into Though Laura feels at translator is Richard an ordinary one. home at sea and chafes at Howard, a formidable Howard's poetic sensibility brings all restrictions ("Absolute literary translator as well new life to the story's language. For ly not" is one of her moth- as a celebrated poet. His example, he replaces "accident" with er's recurrent commands), translations are note- the more immediately visual "crash ...,-.=,....,,-_..,11 -=r a storm in which a sailor ~ 1 1 ,_ .__..-, worthy for moving be- landing." Where Woods wrote, "There drowns is frightening. - 1 yond his mastery of before me, facing the little prince, was "Papa called the storm a French to an intimacy one of those yellow snakes that take Illustration by Thomas B. Allen, typhoon," Laura writes. from Good-bye for Today with the nuances oflan- just thirty seconds to bring your life to "I call it a horrible, terri- guage and style. How- an end," Howard offers: "There, coiled ble monster that I never want to see ard's approach to The little Prince is sen in front of the little prince, was one of again. Papa says we might have more. I sitive and measured, adding fluidity those yellow snakes that can kill you in pray we do not. For the first time I look and vividness to the tale while main thirty seconds." Richard Howard gives forward to being on dry land, at school taining the inherently peculiar nature the lie to the famous epigram, "Trans with the proper young ladies." of its characters and scenes. lation is like a woman. If she's faithful There's more to come, however. The Little Prince is a twentieth-cen- she's not beautiful. If she's beautiful, Weevils in the hardtack, the killing and tury fable told by an adult, a pilot who she's not faithful." Howard's faithful "cutting in" of whales, dangerous cold has crash-landed in the desert where he and beautiful translation enhances and and drifting ice. Laura's story never loses meets an unusual man-child, a prince deepens our appreciation of this mod its alacrity or force. And the Roops from a faraway asteroid. During their ern-day classic. have kept it short-just right for rest- brief sojourn, the Little Prince teaches -Krystyna Paray Goddu less readers in early grades. the narrator some essential lessons of Burket love and life. Woods gave the Little -Mary Lou Memories of Summer Prince the voice of an adult speaking a By Ruth White foreign language, and it would be tempt The Little Prince FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX ing for a contemporary translator to By Antoine de Saint-Exupery 135 pages, Age 12 and up, $16. 00 turn his voice into that of a contempo Translated by Richard Howard ISBN 0-374-34945-2 rary child. But Howard recognizes that HARCOURT White brings the Virginia hills to 96 pages, All ages, $18. 00 the Little Prince must speak with serious Ruth yet childlike wisdom, laced with a note life at the opening of Memories ofSum ISBN 0-15-202398-4 of self-importance. This requires great mer, creating a world of creeks, coal Since its publication in 1943, the subtlety, and Howard meets his cha!- miners, wildflowers, and two mother- beloved French story of le Petit Prince has been known to American readers through the able translation of Kather ine Woods. The occasion of the cen tennial of the author's birth CTune 29, 2000) prompted the publisher to com mission a new translation, and to restore the subtlety of the original watercolor illustrations by the author. While it is immediately clear that the restored art is true to the original (in a 1982 printing ... .·. ~- ... the colors have gone garish, with the I prince's cloak rendered turquoise and fuchsia rather than the original green Illustration by Antoine de Saint-Exupiry,from The Little Prince 35 Riverbank Review less sisters so close that once they even chapter when Papa and Lyric drive sense of Summer's suffering. Her life, dreamed the same dream. But the Summer to Pontiac State Hospital. A shadowed by her sister's pain, goes on. "memories of summer" of the title are doctor says to Lyric, "You won't ever -Susan Marie Swanson not memories of fireflies and Kool-Aid again see that pretty, vivacious teenag served in jelly jars. They are memories er who was your sister. She is gone." A Perfect Friend about a girl named Summer. The novel White's deceptively simple prose is By Reynolds Price is the chronicle of sixteen-year-old carefully crafted, rich in patterns of ATHENEUM Summer's year-long descent into schizo repeating images. Every detail is woven 168pages, Ages 9-12, $17.00 phrenia, as seen through the eyes of her into the whole. Papa, who has brought ISBN 0-689-83029-7 thirteen-year-old sister, Lyric. his daughters into a new world of fac Lyric tells the story of how their tories and television sets, bolts rearview The highly respected Southern novel father announced at Summer's six mirrors onto cars for his paycheck. Just ist Reynolds Price, known for such rich teenth birthday party that he was ready before a crisis when Summer enters and moving adult novels as The Source ef to move from the Virginia hollow they the room with bloody scratches across Light and Kate Vaiden, has written his called home to the booming city of her face-and bloody fingernails first book for young readers. A Peifect Flint, Michigan. It is August 1955. The Lyric is at the kitchen table studying Friend is an unusual, introspective tale sisters, especially Summer, are thrilled, her music theory homework: the of faith, intuition, and bonds that ex though in retrospect Lyric wonders, minor keys. The most vivid images are tend beyond normal understanding. "Why did we dream about going some of Summer. She curls up tightly on the Eleven-year-old Ben Laughinghouse wheres else and making more money bed; she crouches over a candle and Barks loves elephants more than any and having more stuff? It's a mystery." revels at the sight of her shadow; she thing. This love was passed on to him The two go to bed "dreaming of things speaks gibberish; she smears lipstick by his mother, who died when he was we would buy in Michigan-like lav over her ruined face. ten years old, and whom Ben misses ender dresses and lace curtains." When Lyric puts on nail polish in profoundly. Price effectively depicts When the family moves north, into the novel's closing vignette, it's from the nurturing of the young boy's pas squalid rooms in a crowded house, two the bottle she gave Summer for her birth sion for elephants, and its growth after things disappear: the Virginia hills, day, back in Virginia. She goes down his mother's death. From the time Ben which gradually recede in Lyric's mem town to a street dance, on a street the sis was three, his mother taught him to ory, and the dreamy, loving girl that ters visited when they first arrived in Flint. draw elephants and led him to books Summer once was, lost to mental ill When a boy flirts, Lyric proudly tosses and magazines that taught him about ness. The narrative moves relentlessly off a "feisty" remark she once heard the animals' strength, intelligence, and toward the moment in the penultimate Summer make. Lyric isn't able to make gentle dignity. After suffering through his mother's painful illness and death, Ben finds that he can ease his sorrow only by thinking about elephants. In the midst of Ben's attempts to deal with his mother's absence a travel KAT H ER I N E J. WE RN E R ing circus, featuring one elephant, comes LITERARY AGENT to town. Ben, who has an extraordinary talent for communicating silently with SPECIALIZING IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE animals, is ultimately able to befriend the elephant, Sala (whose name means "Sacred Tree"), and, through doing so, to come to terms with his mother's 2177 FAIRMOUNT AVENUE, SA INT PAUL, MN 55105 death and to recognize his own wishes and dreams for his future. PHONE: 651.690.2419 FAX 651.690.1427 The story's strength lies in Ben's EMAi L: KJWERNER2177@GATEWAYNET emotional complexity and his bond both with his mother and with Sala. Price's rendering of the depth of Ben's 36 Fall 2000 pain, and of his understanding that it will always be with him, is strong and true. Early passages in the book poignantly express the reach of Ben's grief. "Ben knew his prayers were prob ably useless. They gave him hope, though-the kind of hope that lucky people have and everybody strongly needs. It helped Ben believe he would grow up someday and find the neces sary time and money to bring the things he loved closer to him where he could guard them, day and night, from enemies, sickness, and unfair punish ment." Ben's is an adult prayer; A Per fect Friend is the story of an unusually gifted eleven-year-old boy learning to "Ellie is adjusting cope with an adult-sized grief. ~'safter What could be a deeply affecting tragedies ...the b novel, however, is weighed down by subject will co seemingly arbitrary details and hints of readers as well as significance that are never pursued. the satisfying tri ph of a girl who's had it rough."-The Bulletin The other major characters-Ben's father, his cousin and best friend Robin, and his friend Duncan promise to be multifaceted but are never fully developed. Price's layered style, effective in adult novels covering more time and territory, dilutes, rather Blue stem than enhances, this intriguing chil by Francis Arrington 0-399-23564-7 I $16.99 I grades 4-6 dren's story. Philomel Books -Krystyna Paray Goddu Playing without the Ball By Rich Wallace KNOPF 224 pages, Age 14 and up, $15.95 ISBN 0-679-88672-9 As Oprah and every aspiring beauty contestant constantly remind us-and as sports novel after sports novel reiter ates-in America you can be anything you want to be. You just have to believe in yourself and try. Unfortu nately, it isn't true. In order for there to be winners, in beauty contests, in sports, and elsewhere in life, there have to be others who wanted just as desperately to win but don't. Rich Wallace's novels 37 Riverbank Review by KEVIN HEN ES ~\II~ ~~ "Wemberly, a quiet and introverted mouse, spends all of her time worrying about big things (will her parents disappear in the middle of the night?), little things (spilling juice at the table), and things in between (will she shrink in the bath?). As if she doesn't have enough to stew about, the anticipated beginning of nursery school opens a whole new world of woe. Happily, the first-day jitters are soon diminished with the help of an understanding teacher and a new friend. Henkes once again puts his finger on the pulse of young children, combining good storytelling, careful characterization, and wonderfully expressive artwork to create an entertaining and reassuring picture book." -Starred review I School Library Journal ~\II~ :::*~ "This young heroine speaks to the worrywart in everyone." -Starred review I Publishers Weekly "In many ways, Wemberly is the flip side of Henkes' sassy Lilly. As much as little ones love Lilly, the 'fraidy cats of the world will see themselves in this winsome worrywart."-ALA Booklist ----- Also by Kevin Henkes ----... Ages 4 up. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse $15.95 Tr 0-688- 17027-7 Ages 4 up. $15.95 Tr 0-688- 12897-1: $14.89 Lb 0-688- 12898-X $15.89 Lb 0-688-17028-5 lkJ Greenwillow Books An Imprint ofHarperCollinsPublishers ~~ 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 • www.harperchildrens.com 38 Fall 2000 stand out from most other sports nov just have to learn to want to be what through Jess's reminiscences. The novel els for young people by focusing on you are already. opens with his heart attack, witnessed some of those others. The boys he writes Playing without the Ball isn't as pre by Jess, a long-distance swimmer, as about are would-be winners facing up cise as the elegant Wrestling Sturbridge, she works out at the local pool. Follow to the fact that, no matter how hard nor as spare as the efficient Shots on ing this crisis, the whole family jour they try, they haven't quite got what it Goal. In addition to his basketball neys from the city to the remote part of takes to be what they so desperately woes, Jay contends with the trauma of coastal England where Grandpa grew want to be. his parents' willingness to detach them up. A man who expressed disdain for In Wallace's fine first novel, Wrestling selves from him, with confusion about memories throughout his life, refusing Sturbridge, Ben is an excellent wrestler a female friend with whom he has his to recall either his own or his son's -but, despite every effort, not quite as first sexual experience (at the same childhood, Grandpa has now asked to good as his friends on the team. In time that he develops romantic feel return to the river on which he spent Wallace's second novel, Shots on Goal, ings for another girl), and with his his first fifteen years. Bones is equally committed to soccer, growing awareness of issues of race, As the pieces of the narrative fall but not so good as his best friend Joey. class, and the intricate power structures into place, we begin to see the shape of For Jay in Playing without the Ball, things of his high school and his town. It's a Grandpa's life: a long journey, filled are even worse. No matter how much he messy novel filled with many plots and more with art than with other people. loves basketball and devotes his time subplots and an unwieldly cast of char Living out his last days, he is frantic to and energy to it, he doesn't even make acters. The strength of Playing without finish a painting that he has named his school team. the Ball emerges from the messiness: a River Boy, although no one can see a In all three books Wallace parallels sense of the complexity of being alive. boy in its landscape. his characters' sports problems with Like its main character, it's a novel that As Grandpa tries to paint, the river difficulties in other parts of their lives. wins by seeming to lose-by doing all beckons to Jess. Something impels her Ben has to learn that a girl who likes the supposedly wrong things that turn to find its source, to plumb its depths. him matters more than a woman he out to be right, after all. She feels watched, and catches glimpses admires from afar, and the girl Bones -Perry Nodelman of someone she calls the "river boy," a admires prefers the inescapable Joey. young man clad in black shorts who's When Playing without the Ball begins, an even better swimmer than she is. River Boy Jay is not only off the basketball team, Ultimately, Jess enters the river to swim By Tim Bowler she he is parentless and without friends, M CELD ERRY to its source with the boy who, living a solitary existence in his first 155 pages, Age 12 and up, $16. 00 comes to understand, embodies the spirit of her grandfather as a fifteen apartment. ISBN 0-689-82908-6 All three boys find ways of turning year-old. He, too, had been a long-dis losing into winning. Ben does it by see First published in England, where it tance swimmer, and once wanted to ing beyond the competitive striving of won the 1998 Carnegie Medal, River swim to the sea. Now Jess does it for his teammates, understanding his own Boy explores a classic theme: the beau him. It is a powerful metaphor for a life value as someone who gives his best ty and impermanence of life. Tim lived to completion and continuing on even as he loses, and discovering the Bowler crafts a compelling story, mak in the experience of another. joy of the relationship he already has. ing use of graceful description, ele -Lee Galda Bones does it by seeing beyond Joey's ments of mysticism, and sensitive char self-involved wish to excel, instead be acterization. The Wanderer coming a team player, onfield and off. Fifteen-year-old Jess loves her grand By Sharon Creech gifted and successful artist, Jay joins a church league in which he father, a HARPERCOW NS can use his basketball skills to the best and it pains her to adjust to the fact 305 pages, Age JO and up, $15.95 This adjustment is advantage, and he exchanges an impos that he is dying. ISBN 0-06-027730-Q sible dream of success on the court for made more difficult by her grandfa a new team of unlikely friends. All ther's irascible personality; often Jess is Those who enjoyed Sharon Creech's three books suggest that not being the only person he is civil to, especially Wtzlk Two Moons or Chasing Redbird will what you thought you wanted to be is when he's painting. We learn this and not be disappointed by The Wtznderer. not necessarily a reason for despair. You other information about Grandpa The story opens with a lyrical des- 39 Riverbank Review cription of the lure of the sea. over again before deciding which Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn't bits of conversation to keep," quite sure why, but she is in then gave them to the authors tensely drawn to the ocean. to rework, if they chose, "just as Sophie badgers her three uncles if they were writing-and rewrit into taking her along as they set ing-a manuscript." out, with her two cousins, The majority of Marcus's across the Atlantic in the wan subjects are authors of fiction derer, bound for England and (including Karen Cushman, Lois her grandfather Bompie. Yet Lowry, and Laurence Yep), but she has recurring nightmares in he also talks with writers of which she is overwhelmed by a nonfiction (Russell Freedman Illustration by David Diaz,from The Wanderer huge black wave. and Seymour Simon) and poet Where does this primal long- ry (Lee Bennett Hopkins). The ing come from? And just who, exactly, piness. As the wanderer sails into a ter interviews are illustrated with photos is Sophie? Her cousin Brian calls her rible storm, these individual journeys of the authors as children and as adults. "the orphan," and her uncles won't talk merge to become a mighty struggle for Many segments include pictures of about her "real" parents, yet Sophie survival. authors' work spaces and reproduc steadfastly maintains that her grandfa Creech combines high adventure, tions of manuscript pages with com ther (whom she has never met) told her forceful characters, and fervent intro ments scrawled across them. There are stories, which she relates to her com spection in a story that asks many ques also lists of books by each author. panions as they sail. She deftly avoids tions but answers only a few. Striking Author Talk differs from Pat Cum Brian's cruel comments to the effect geometric drawings by David Diaz mings's Talking with Artists series, in that her parents aren't her "real" par begin the chapters. Beautifully written, which picture-book illustrators answer ents, yet she has flashes of memory The wanderer is likely to keep readers an identical sequence of questions. that she can't account for. What is her spellbound to its finish. The writers treated in Author Talk create story? Along with Sophie and her -Lee Galda books for older children-for children cousins, we gradually discover it as The old enough to read and enjoy the inter wanderer unfolds. views-in contrast to the illustrators in Creech tells Sophie's story, and the Nonfiction Talking with Artists, whose books gener story of the voyage to England, in ally appeal to younger children. As ~ entries from journals kept by Sophie such, Author Talk already seems indis and her cousin Cody. The two voices Author Talk pensable. How have children and adults are very different. Sophie's is dreamy, Compiled and edited by gotten along without it? chatty, and revealing of her deep feel Leonard S. Marcus Some of Marcus's questions are ings for the people around her and her SIMON & SCHUSTER general; for example, "Do you have a private struggle with her past. Cody's 103 pages, Ages 8-14, $19.95 daily work routine?" or "What do you entries are brief, almost cryptic, but it !SR"I 0-689-81383-X tell children who want to write?" Oth is through him that we learn how ers are particular to their subject. When Sophie appears to others. These two In his introduction to this first-rate col Gary Paulsen describes his difficult voices also illuminate the journeys, lection of interviews with fifteen authors childhood, Marcus asks, "How did you private and communal, of all on of acclaimed and popular books for survive?" He invites Seymour Simon board. Sophie is searching for her lost young people, Leonard Marcus offers a to talk about a photograph from one of memories. Brian and Cody, each a helpful description of his interviewing his books showing the Moon's view of young adolescent awkward in his own process. He stresses the importance of Earth. He asks E. L. Konigsburg why way, are trying to discover where they listening: "by listening well, the inter she didn't become a scientist and Ann belong. The uncles, seemingly success viewer will know when to ask the next M. Martin what she has learned from ful and settled, turn out to be searching question, and what to ask." He describes the thousands of letters she has re as well-for lost love, meaningful how an interview is revised, explaining ceived from children about her Baby work, and that elusive state called hap- that he "listened to the tapes over and sitters Club books. 40 Fall 2000 The interviews reveal the writers' projects that delineate Gehry's path as in his commissioned work. No more distinct personalities as well as differ an architect. When he transformed an shopping centers! ent ways of thinking about writing. ordinary pink bungalow into an unortho The chapter "Every Building Has a Asked, "What is the best thing about dox, sculptural dwelling for his young Story" is devoted to descriptions of being a writer?" Russell Freedman family, the public stir caused by this four key projects, including Loyola observes, "Being a writer means that I break from architectural norms led University Law School (influenced by can explore myself: It's impossible to Gehry to stop compromising himself Roman architecture), a luxury resi- write well about any subject without examining your own deepest feelings about it." Johanna Hurwitz reflects on connections with readers: "my stories can touch children I'll never meet in places I'll never go." Jon Scieszka explains that "being a writer is fun, but it's also torture," while Judy Blume looking at the flip side of the coin says, "I get to play pretend all the time." -Susan Marie Swanson Frank 0. Gehry: Outside In By Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan OKINK 48 pages, Ages 8-14, $19.95 ISBN 0-7894-2677-3 The large, slick pages of this book, splashed with bold typography and dynamic photographs, might suggest the design of a chic magazine; but the presentation provides plenty of clearly * "This compilation of rhymes, games, and presented background information for learning will keep young readers busy from young readers who don't know their sunup to sundown. Fleming makes learning a way around the art and business of fun, colorful experience. This eclectic collection architecture. The result is sophisticated encompasses virtually everything from preschool yet welcoming-like the architecture essentials, such as colors, shapes, and numbers, of its subject, Frank 0 . Gehry. to fanciful nursery rhymes .... Surprises await Frank 0 . Gehry: Outside In opens with a brief overview of Gehry's cur the turn of every page .... This unique com- rent fame and success but turns quick bination of playfulness and learning will keep ly to his beginnings. The child playing young readers enthralled. Entertaining and blocks with his beloved grandmother educational, this is sure to please old fans and watching carp in the bathtub be and new. It truly has everything." came a teen who read Popular Mechan ics and worked to help support his fam -Kirkus, starred review ily when they fell on hard times and September ISBN 0-8050-6292-0 relocated from Toronto to Los Angeles. Ages 1-6 $18.95 64 Full-Color Pages Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, authors of several books about art for Henry Holt young people-most recently Chuck Books for Young Readers Close: Up Close-focus on key building 41 Riverbank Review John Blair and the ful narrative, Nobisso smartly puts us Great Hinckley Fire on board The Limited, Train No. 4, By Josephine Nobisso among the unlucky passengers travel Illustrated by Ted Rose ing from Duluth to St. Paul, via Hinck H OUGHTON MIFFLIN ley. We learn that timber fires were 32pages, Ages 6-10, $16.00 common in early autumn, and yet Ted ISBN 0-618-01560-4 Rose's watercolor illustrations cast an eerie, foreboding glow. The effect is un You have to drive right past Toby's, the settling: pages that at first seem merely huge freeway-side restaurant with its smudged by cinders grow red-hot as Photograph by Erika Barahona Ede, loud billboard lure of STICKY BUNS Rose recreates the terrible scenarios from Frank 0. Gehry: Outside In and PETTING ZOO, and tool around within the train (passengers' clothing the periphery of this small town before bursting into flames, licks of fire com dence (with a fanciful dome, echoing you'll find the Hinckley Fire Museum. ing in through the train's sides) and the the observatory the client remembered Inside the two-story, nondescript build hellish vistas outside its windows ("a from her childhood), an office build ing, a series of humble dioramas and wall of fire, sky-high, and as dense as a ing in Venice, California ("the Binocu salvaged mementos (pots melted together, sea, barreled toward them"). lars Building"), and another in Prague. charred logging camp dishware) remind Nobisso's prose is precise and strong: The last is the famous "Fred and Gin visitors of one of the worst catastro the day she describes is horrific, but ger" building, here presented with a phes in Minnesota history: the 1894 she alternates descriptions of calamity vintage photo of Astaire and Rogers to firestorm that laid waste to six towns, with John Blair's controlled and calm explain the building's nickname. consumed 350,000 acres of forest, and ing point of view_ As readers, we expe A fifth project is the focus of an claimed 413 lives. Josephine Nobisso rience the influence of his levelheaded entire chapter: the Guggenheim Build has rescued this near-forgotten event, command. The story enthralls-from ing in Bilbao, Spain. Greenberg and powerfully framing the awful day with the first intimations of true danger to Jordan infuse their discussion of the the actions of one man-a black porter the maelstrom of fire and the last-ditch planning and design process with real named John Blair. attempt of the train's crew to save pas excitement. They've given us enough At the start of a taut and suspense- sengers by racing backward, away from information about an architect's job that descriptions of clients, sites, and building materials are actually fun to read. The explanation of computer modeling and how it makes buildings like the Bilbao Guggenheim possible is fascinating. At the back of the book are a glossary, bibliography, and a list of Gehry buildings. Though it has a bold and flashy appearance, this book is essentially about the creative process and about ways to look at new buildings with an open and educated mind. Architecture is about ideas, insist the authors as well as the architect who is their subject. "The difficulty is facing the unknown of the next project," says Gehry. "Searching for the unknown is scary. And the fear fuels creativity, fuels going forward ." -Susan Marie Swanson Illustration by Ted Rose, from John Blair and the Great Hinkley Fire 42 Fall 2000 Hinckley to the muddy, foul Skunk tough to convict to religious-political The Nazi Olympics: Lake on the outskirts of town. The dazed, leader, Myers sends multiple messages Berlin 1936 wounded aftershock felt by those who about life choices. He allows readers to By Susan D. Bachrach survived the fire resonates in the book's make their own analyses of Malcolm's LIITLE, BROWN final pages. shifting personae, yet the illustrated, 136 pages, Age JO and up, $14.95 From the cold ashes of a faded disas large-print format limits his delving ISBN 0-316-07087-4 ter comes the story of a man who into Malcolm's complexity. responded to catastrophe with great Although the dust jacket calls for Based on an exhibit at the United States courage. John Blair emerges as a quiet "ages 5-8," the ideal audience for this Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazi hero-not the kind of a man who book is much older, due to the racially Olympics describes the 1936 Olympics sought recognition through risk but, charged content and the difficult ter in Berlin in the context of the previous rather, a man who simply behaved the minology. For example, when Mal history of the games and of the politi way we all hope we might, were we to colm contends "that blacks should cal situation at the time in Germany, face such awful danger. demand justice 'using arms if neces the rest ofEurope, and America. Through -Christine Alfano sary' ... [Nation oflslam leader] Elijah words and photographs, it outlines the Muhammad told him that he needed ways in which Nazi politics influenced permission before he could issue any the nature of the Olympic Games and Malcolm X: more public statements... Malcolm the attitudes of governments, athletes, A Fire Burning Brightly was frustrated, because he felt that the and the public toward this internation By Walter Dean Myers Nation of Islam's policy of nonin al event. Illustrated by Leonard Jenkins volvement wasn't in keeping with the Indeed, the book gives so much HARPERCOUI NS 36 pages, Age 8 and up, $15.95 times." Neither the "policy of nonin attention to these matters that surpris volvement" nor "the times" are ade ingly little space is left for the athletic ISBN 0-06-027707-6 quately explained. The text preaches to events themselves. After fifteen sec Incendiary quotations from The Auto the converted, assuming mature atti tions on what led up to the games, only biography ef Malcolm X, printed like tudes about race and justice and a basic three sections-about fifteen of the placards in uppercase type, dot this knowledge of the events of the 1950s 136 pages in the book-address what brief, polemical biography. Twice, read and '60s on the part of its readers. actually happened during them. One ers confront the slogan, "You don't Leonard Jenkins provides somber of these sections is about the opening have a peaceful revolution." Elsewhere, portraits of Malcolm from childhood ceremonies, and the other two are Malcolm X states, "The white man to adulthood. Other strained faces-of about the experiences ofblack and Jew wants black men to stay immoral, unclean Malcolm's widowed mother, of a mus ish athletes. About the efforts and and ignorant ... We never can win free tached white English teacher who tells experiences of other athletes there is dom and justice and equality until we young Malcolm to "be realistic about nothing. And while there are detailed are doing something for ourselves!" being a Negro," and of Elijah Muham discussions of those black and Jewish Following a shorthand account of his mad at a podium-stand out against athletes who boycotted the games or 1965 death at age thirty-nine (which loosely rendered bodies and shadowy, were not allowed to compete, there is flatly states, "Three members of the abstract backgrounds. Like the text, the only a quick overview of what partici Nation oflslam were later convicted of grim paintings are not self-explanatory, pating athletes like the great track-and his murder"), Malcolm presciently lists but they might be fruitfully discussed field star Jesse Owens actually did the reasons "which make it just about among those who already admire Mal accomplish in their events. The Nazi impossible for me to die of old age." colm X. Olympics is a book about a sporting Walter Dean Myers, who wrote Thirty-five years after Malcolm's event that is only minimally interested Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary for death, bigotry is still a fact in American in sports. That's a pity. Sports fans adolescents, addresses a broader, pre life. Activist accounts like this one belong especially need to know about the ways sumably younger audience in this pic on bookshelves. Yet such condensed works in which Olympic (and other) sports ture book. The author is making a demand supplementary information, become intertwined with and affected bold-and questionable-move. By spoken and written, about civil rights by politics. It's something they won't briskly tracing Malcolm's transforma history and contemporary events. find out if the lack of focus on the tions from educated teenager to street -Nathalie op de Beeck sports themselves causes them to lose 43 Riverbank Review interest in the book altogether. tious wish: that musical training would adult Benny Goodman plays snakelike Moreover, The Nazi Olympics doesn't help his children escape Chicago's rough waves ofcolorful music from the clarinet do justice to the complexity of the pol Maxwell Street (a cozy, vibrant place in "until everyone in the world" dances itics it focuses on. A highly committed Winter's paintings). For Benny, howev along. Music bridges the gap between book, it expresses horror at the racism er, the clarinet was more than a tool of mourning and living, between the dili of the Nazi government and of many upward mobility. It became the shy gent child and the celebrated adult. Americans in the 1930s. That's as it boy's voice. -Jessica Roeder should be. But the book offers readers Once introduced, the clarinet appears little sense of how Nazis could justify in nearly every illustration. Together Sir Walter Ralegh and their views or gain such credence and the Winters (son and mother) demon the Quest for El Dorado such power. They appear here as card strate the boy's devotion without hyper By Marc Aronson board villains. It's hard to understand bole. He simply plays as often as he C LARION how so many people could have been can. (To placate his eleven music-weary 222 pages, Age 11 and up, $20.00 attracted to the Nazi movement or so siblings, he sometimes practices on the ISBN 0-395-84827-X willing to accommodate its subversion fire escape.) The clarinet's appeal is of Olympic ideals. These Nazis are too obvious: it is beautiful, it belongs to Near the end of Sir Walter Ralegh and the thoroughly monstrous to be believ him, and it allows him to carve a space Quest for El Dorado, Marc Aronson able, too dehumanized for the horrify for himself. When need and talent writes: "If [Ralegh] never found his El ingly human dimension of their flaws dovetail, every opportunity seems to Dorado, his writings described the to emerge. As a result, The Nazi Olym reveal Fate. Benny knows he wants to force of his yearning for that conquest pics is less compelling, less unsettling, play clarinet, and as he becomes more and the counterforce of the beauty of and less thought-provoking than it adept he discovers how he wants to the new land. Perhaps it is fitting that he should be. play-in the jazz tradition, of course. never succeeded in creating a settle -Peny Node/man In this biography, with its overtones of ment here, for he was poised precisely legend, readers will learn about a boy between one world and the other." It is who works hard because he loves to fitting, too, that this excellent account Once Upon a Time in Chicago: play the clarinet and finds the direc of Ralegh's life (his name spelled as he The Story of Benny Goodman tion of his own talent by listening. wrote it-without the i) is also poised By Jonah Winter Yet what will young readers make between two worlds-the uncertain Illustrated by Jeanette Winter of the following sequence? The boy questioning of 1990s historical inquiry H YPERION 32 pages, Ages 3- 7, $14.99 earns money playing in bands and per and the theatrical narrative of tradi suades his father to take an easier job tional biography. ISBN 078680462-9 downtown-where the father is prompt Arranged like a play, complete with If Benny Goodman had been the eldest ly struck and killed by a car. Though a cast of characters, several acts, and child, he might never have played the the change of jobs did not kill David even a play-within-a-play, Aronson's clarinet. At a pivotal moment in this Goodman, a young child might think it biography of Ralegh crackles with dra picture-book biography, David Good did. Wisely, the Winters do not attempt matic tension. In the rising action, we man sends Benny and his two older to explain this troubling chain of watch our hero of humble beginnings brothers for music instruction with the events. Instead, they show Benny using make a name for himself, then take to synagogue's youth band. The leader assigns music both to express his grief and to the sea to make his fortune. We see his an instrument to suit each boy's size. survive it. In the book's most touching triumph as one of Elizabeth's courtiers, Jeanette Winter arranges the brothers illustration, we look out the window to and we watch Ralegh fall-ensnared in across the page from tallest to shortest. the fire escape, where Benny plays his the intrigues of James I's politics. The Each holds his assigned wind instrument. clarinet in the moonlight, a single tear elusive El Dorado provides Aronson's The choice has been made. Eyes closed, glowing on his cheek. The book's famil theme and countertheme: the exciting Benny smiles, ecstatic with his clarinet. iar visual rhythms-brick-wall grids and Age of Exploration balanced against An artist's development is part tal the soft repeated curves of clothing the systematic destruction of the peo ent, part work, part luck. What if the and wavy hair- contrast with Benny's ples of an entire continent. King of Swing started with a ponder smooth skin and the starless night sky. Aronson excels when he presents ous tuba? Benny's father had an ambi- In the next three illustrations, the the complications and contradictions 44 Fall 2000 found in his characters. Quoting presents an engaging portrait of a com Ralegh's own writings as well as other plicated man formed in a complicated contemporary sonnets, personal let age. In this biography, we see "America ters, and public prose, he delves into [emerging] out of legend into fact. the motives of men who write about Ralegh leads the way. He pushes for the New World as a virginal Eden, a ward into the blank spaces, bringing lover to be ravished. Aronson also his own lore and legends with him." compellingly connects the literature Aronson's writing is such that you will and politics of the time. He points out want to follow him into the life and that the first royal performance of legend of Sir Walter Ralegh. Hamlet was for King James VI and his -Kathryne Beebe consort, Q.ieen Anne ... of Denmark. Beginning scholars will benefit from Sitting Bull and His World the bibliography and footnotes, where By Albert Marrin each source cited is described in terms 0 U"ITON From Sitting Bull and His World of reading level and potential useful 246 pages, Age 12 and up, $27.50 ness. Scholarly authorities such as Stephen ISBN 0-525-45944·8 Greenblatt and concepts such as New All the more remarkable, then, that Sit Historicism (a school of criticism that This is a big book about a major figure: ting Bull convened an army of thou examines works of art to uncover larger Sitting Bull, perhaps the most recog sands at the Greasy Grass River. societal themes) appear in this section nized Native American leader in histo Marrin has an occasional tendency as well. This information may remain a ry. Sitting Bull was the Lakota who to inject himself into the narrative; for bit beyond the book's younger readers, defeated George Custer at the Battle of tunately, more often he lets the wit but it will prepare precocious high the Greasy Grass-known to whites as nesses-and facts-reveal a complicat schoolers for ideas often not encoun the Little Bighorn River-in 1876. ed story. Several sections are notable tered until college. "These soldiers have come shooting," for their straightforwardness, including My only objection to Aronson's Sitting Bull declared that year. "They one that acknowledges the wide range work, however, has to do with his want war. All right, we'll give it to them!" of traits which made Plains Indians and approach to history. In writing a biog Anyone writing the life and times whites so very different-from bodily raphy that arranges a person's life in of Sitting Bull must contend, as Albert odors to attitudes toward children, the form of a play, you must necessari Marrin does, with the quality of records. God, and the Earth. ly have a hero and a villain. The struc Lakotas didn't write their history down, Abundantly researched (favored ture demands it. Therefore, toward the and whites who interviewed them spoke sources are historians Stanley Vestal end, James VI becomes little more than a different language. Marrin makes up and Robert Utley), Marrin's book is a scheming Claudius, and Ralegh, a for the sketchiness of primary records also beautifully designed and replete complicated Hamlet who Aronson by drawing on reams ofbackground infor with photographs, maps, and draw claims had more influence on later mation concerning Lakota life, the Great ings. While one might wish for more events than he likely did have. Aron Plains, and the history of the conti concision, Sitting Bull and His World is a son declares that Ralegh's eloquent nent. Young Sitting Bull himself is all work of impressive scope. defense at his trial for treason "so chal but incidental to the early chapters. At the time of his death in 1890, lenged the treason laws of his time that Sitting Bull grew up to be a famous though stripped of his freedom and his our rights are protected to this day." ly daring warrior who, on one occa gun, Sitting Bull was still officially per Sweeping statements like this are far sion, donned a bright red shirt so that ceived to be a threat. James Morrow fetched, and Aronson presents no direct the enemy could see him in a crowd. Walsh, who had known Sitting Bull correlation between Ralegh and the Like all good chiefs, he led by brave during his four years of Canadian exile, Bill of Rights. example, as when he sat down in the felt otherwise: "This man, that so many That reservation aside, Sir Walter midst of a battle and smoked a pipe to look upon as a bloodthirsty villain ... Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado makes end the fight. "A chief did not rule his was kind of heart. He was not dishonest. for informative, fascinating reading. It people," Marrin explains. "At most, he He was truthful. He loved his people." teaches as it entertains and ultimately gave advice, which anyone could ignore." -Mary Lou Burket 45 Riverbank Review Illustration by Virgi.nia Lee Burton, from The Song of Robin Hood The Song of Robin Hood tion, resulting in a scene-by-scene ren decapitations and hangings. As in Selected and edited by dering of the action, enhanced by fre Shakespeare's comedies there is much Anne Malcolmson quent full-page images. Burton writes assuming of false identities, culminat Designed and illustrated by in her preface that she referred to a ing in revelation and reunion. Virginia Lee Burton book on English wildflowers for select The book as a whole, in fact, is Music arranged by Grace Castagnetta ing the different plants that make up attuned to an adult sensibility. It is the HOUGHTON MIFFLIN the stylized decoration accompanying rare child who will have the inclina 128 pages, Age 8 and up, $20.00 each ballad. She explains her particular tion, interest, and patience to pursue ISBN 0-6 18-07 186-5 floral choices; for instance, the last bal its subtle delights. Its presentation is lad, "Robin Hood's Death," begins that of an elegant reference work, and A reissue from 1947, this Caldecott somberly, with no illustrations, just a this impression is reinforced by the Honor book collects eighteen ballads spread of sheet music, bordered by yew thoughtful prefaces by Malcolmson that tell the story of Robin Hood's trees and branches. Burton explains and Burton and by the inclusion of adventures. It was an important collab that the yew "was a consecrated tree, a seven-page illustrated glossary (for orative undertaking between Anne planted in every churchyard and used which I found myself grateful). The Malcolmson, who uncovered, select in funeral processions. Being an ever republication of this beautiful book is ed, and edited the ballads, Grace green it was symbolic of the immortal laudatory, even if those most excited Castagnetta, who adapted the music to ity of man." by its reappearance will be scholars and modern arrangements, and-the name Like a good short-story collection, collectors of fine-art children's books. most familiar to today's readers- Vir the ballads can be read individually, or -Krystyna Paray Goddu ginia Lee Burton, who illustrated every one after the other as an ongoing nar ballad and designed the book. Each of rative. The rhyme scheme makes read these contributors played her part with ing aloud fun; the musically inclined great thoroughness and creativity, but it will be tempted to play the ballads and is the design and illustration that truly sing along. Familiar characters recur: stand out. Robin Hood's sidekicks Little John and Come with Me: Lovers of Burton's well-known Will Scarlet and his archenemy, the Poems for a Journey Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shove/will Sheriff of Nottingham. By Naomi Shihab Nye be surprised at this artist's versatility. Adults who plan to read these bal Illustrated by Dan Yaccarino Working in pen and ink and scratch lads to a child should be reminded that G REENWILLOW board, Burton achieves a beautifully although Robin Hood was good-heart 32 pages, Age 5 and up, $15.95 appropriate appearance of a much ear ed and well-principled, The Song of ISBN 0 ~88- 1 59 4 6-X lier era. Her tiny, meticulous illustra Robin Hood is not for the fainthearted tions evoke the woodcuts used to illus child or the pacifist parent. These are Devotees of This Same Sky, Naomi Shi trate books in pre-photography days. violent tales, filled with danger and hab Nye's anthology of worldwide Each verse is partnered by an illustra- death, from the shooting of dogs to poetry, will recall an unassuming sense 46 Fall 2000 of adventure through which the seem with her familiar, grounded feet, can to become part ofthe illustrations. Words ingly exotic becomes familiar and the come to know the new place. about Tio Pete shift left to make room familiar contains a measure of ineffa Older readers, to whom Nye's for his portliness; in crescent-moon bility. Even that book's endpapers poetry offers much, might ignore this shaped "Mad" an angry child watches decorated with a collage of envelope volume because of its picture-book for from the moon as her mother searches corners, canceled international stamps, mat; and the stick-figure images of chil for her and eventually wins her back. and poets' signatures-provided evi dren with large round heads and danc Both journeying and growing up dence of the poems' travels. In the new ing postures suggest the very young. require cycles of separation and con collection, which despite its picture Because Dan Yaccarino's accomplished nection; older children can understand book format deserves space on This mixed-media illustrations highlight the the pain and the joy of all this. The Same Sky's shelf, Nye's own poems take poems' playfulness, a casual reader book's final poem, "Torn Map" plays up the timeless literary theme of the might fail to discern the intelligence with the possibility that a map torn and Journey. and emotion here. Yet, given more repaired could alter the lay of the land. The travelers progress via observa than a glance, the illustrations' deep Then the longing behind the conceit tion, anger, growth, familial connec colors, varied textures, and careful con makes itself known: "Wouldn't that be tion, a silver string, and the change of struction could also appeal to a slightly nice I if it were true? I I'd tear a map I seasons-but they're also versed in older crowd. and be right next I to you." conventional tools such as maps and The poems themselves are typeset -Jessica Roeder airplanes. One poem anticipates a trip to the city; the next poem traces the journey from infancy to second grade; Reviewers in This Issue another praises the spoken word, ~ which must "travel through I a tongue and teeth I and wide air I to get there." Christine Alfano lives in Minneapolis with ofhistorical fiction chapter books includes A poem's point of view might be child her family. A former bookseller, she has writ The Secret Soldier and Give Me like or adult. Yet essential qualities ten about children's books for the Hungry Liberty (Perfection Learning). remain: the musical, unshowy verse Mind Review and other publications. and the intimate, respectful tone. Perry Nodelman 's most recent novel The empathy and musicality will Kathryne Beebe graduated from Carleton for young adults is A Meeting of Minds, entrance even those readers (or listen College with a B.A. in English literature. fourth in a series offantasies written in ers) who do not comprehend precisely. She works as a publicity assistant far W W collaboration with Carol Matas. Some readers thrill first to the sound Norton & Company in New York City. and emotional tenor of a poem and Nathalie op de Beeck writes about Mary Lou Burket is a longtime reader children's books for Publishers Weekly learn more about it later. With repeated ofchildren's literature whose reviews have and other publications. acquaintance, the poem teaches itself appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Five to the reader. Comprehension surfaces. Owls, and other publications. Jessica Roeder 's writing has appeared Nye's poems are rhythmic, tuneful, in the The Threepenny Review and inventive, and intelligent. Rhyme is Lee Galda, coauthor efLiterature and The Pushcart Prize. She lives with her sparing and well-placed. This book the Child, is professor ofchildren's literature husband and two rabbits in an apartment rewards multiple rereadings as well as at the University ofMinnesota. She lives in with ivy-covered windows. multiple reading levels. Minneapolis with her husband and children. Nye acknowledges tricky emotions Susan Marie Swanson is the author oftwo with sincerity and wit. "When You Krystyna Poray Goddu is the books for children, Letter to the Lake and Come to a Comer" is composed almost author efA Celebration of Steiff: Getting Used to the Dark (both DK Ink). entirely of questions; the overriding Timeless Toys for Today (Porifolio Press) She reads and writes poems with children in and coauthor efThe Doll by her work as a visiting poet in schools. question is ''What ifyou have to move?" Contemporary Artists (Abbeville Press). The speaker consoles, "You still know She lives in New York City. Renee Victor is a freelance writer your feet." This plain statement light based in Minnesota. A farmer teacher, ens the mood and might provoke a gig Diana Star Helmer is the author of she wn'tes about children's literature far gle of recognition. The child, starting forty books for children. Her recent series a van'ety efpublications. 47 Riverbank Review I 1 one for the she\f Oh, for the halcyon days of arm's-length The Shrinking of Treehom At dinner, Treehorn's irritated father parenting. Remember when children and By Florence Parry Heide snaps: "Nobody shrinks," while Treehom adults lived on separate planes, and their Illustrated by Edward Gorey peers at him over the table's edge. lives intersected only at mealtime? There Throughout the strange ordeal, Tree 64 pages, Ages 6-10 were no organized soccer leagues with side hom remains undaunted, despite the obtuse line coaches (and parents) barking out HOLIDAY HOUSE I paperback: $6.95 ness of those around him. The school bus ISBN 0-8234-0975-9 commands. The scheduled afternoon activ driver insists that this smaller Treehorn ities at latchkey programs had yet to be must actually be Treehorn's little brother. drawn up. Mother-daughter book clubs? Hah. Back then, A stern teacher sends him to the principal's office for jump when school let out for the day, the world was reclaimed. All ing up to reach the drinking fountain. "What if all the chil those hours of unsupervised activity. All that time for chil dren in the school started jumping up and down in the dren to devise their own amusements, their own interests, halls?" After providing no help at all, the principal lamely their own lives. offers: "Well, I want you to know I'm right here when you The Shrinking ofTreehorn harkens back to that time. Writ need me, Treehom ... and I'm glad I was here to help you." ten in the early seventies, the book reconstructs the wall Even peers are unreliable. Treehorn explains to his friend between adults and children, and slyly pokes fun at the Moshie that he's shrinking, but Moshie fails to sympathize: inability of adults to comprehend a child's point of view. "You're always doing stupid things, but that's the stupidest." Something weird and magical is happening in this story, but Edward Gorey, who passed away earlier this year, is well the grown-ups are too dense to get it. Young Treehorn is known for his grim, slightly creepy pen-and-ink drawings, shrinking. He knows it, readers know it. But every adult that often accompanying darkly comic mysteries. Here he proves he turns to for help either ignores his plight or is too self to be a witty interpreter of the early seventies, a time when involved to notice: garishness was widely mistaken for individuality. Fabrics and floor-coverings are bold-too bold. Busy patterns on "My trousers are all stretching or something," said Treehom clothing obscure the wearer. Anything human or natural is to his mother. "I'm tripping on them all the time." rendered with a lighter touch. Droll visual commentary sur "That's too bad dear," said his mother, looking into faces on every page: when Treehorn is sent to the principal, the oven. "I do hope this cake isn't going to fall." he signs in with the secretary, who has a small abstract paint ing on her wall. The principal's office has one too, almost the same, only much, much bigger. Despite his odd name, Treehorn is just an ordinary boy to whom extraordinary things happen. He emerges as a stoic hero, the kind of character who might fade into the back ground if we didn't look carefully. He maintains an unas suming confidence while watching one of his favorite TV programs (he has fifty-six favorites) or dreaming of the next marvelous item he might send in for from a cereal box. Tree horn has almost resigned himself to his diminishing stature when he finally happens upon the antidote. By then, even we dim adults know that Treehorn had to get out of this jam by himself. The magic of shrinking could never have occurred in the realm of the grown-up. Our world is too rational and orderly; there is no room for such odd, fabulous occur rences. "Nobody shrinks ... " - Christine Alfano 48 VIRGINIA HAMILTON • LEO & DIANE DILLON + "A top writer in top form." * GATHERING BLUE by LOIS LOWRY + "Lowry returns to the metaphorical future world of her Newbery-winning The Giver. ... Plenty of material for thought and discussion here, plus a touch of magic and a tantalizing hint about the previous book's famously ambiguous ending." -Kirkus Reivews, pointer* * "Lowry is a master at creating worlds, both real and imagined, and this incarnation of our civilization some time in the future is one of her strongest creations." -Booklist, starred review Age 10 and up 0-618-05581-9 $15.00. A Walter Lorraine ®nook • Houghton Mifflin Company • www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com Bulk Rate stf86MAs U.S. Postage c:;::,);. PAJD •• RIVERBANK REVIEW University of ,, MOH-2 17 St. Thomas 1000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009