Riverbank Review of Books for Young Readers – Winter 2000
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TlllY'RI Mag1tAl! BEAR NOEL Olivier Dunrea * "Satisfying to the last wordless page ... On Christmas Eve, the one night of the year that all the animals can gather together without fear, the creatures of the north woods await the arrival of Bear Noel." -Starred, Kirkus Reviews $16.00 I 0-374-39990-5 I Ages 4-8 ALBERT AND THE ANGELS Leslie Norris Pictures by Mordicai Gerstein "Norris's brightly polished tale of a boy who yearns to buy his mother a special present sparkles with Christmas magic." - Publishers Weekly $16.00 I 0-374-30192-1I Ages 5 up WHAT IS A WISE BIRD LIKE YOU DOING IN A Peter SILLY TALE LIKE THIS? Uri Shulevitz * "Absolutely inspired and brilliantly executed ... Actually there are three stories here that nonsensically merge into one - and it all works!" - Starred, Booklist $16.00 I 0-374-38300-6 I Ages 4 up MADLENKA Peter Sis * "An intriguing adventu re, wondrously playful and resonant with _,,,;- meaning ... Luscious with visual im agery." - Starred, The Horn Book $17.00 I 0 -374-39969-7 I Ages 4-8 Frances Foster Books FARRAR· STRAUS· GIROUX Illustrations by Un Shulevitz from WHAT'S A WISE BIRD LIKE YOU DOING IN A SILLY TALE LIKE THIS?. Peter Sis from MADLENKA . Olivier Dunrea from BEAR NOEL. and Mord1ca1 Gerstein from ALBERT AND THE ANGELS Winter 2000-2001 contents About the Cover Art Essays Winter Fishing ~ Philip Pullman's Q!iest ........... .. 4 Somewhere around eighty degrees, with By jack Zipes 90 percent humidity. That was the winter I knew as a boy: Florida in the 1960s Beyond Barbie . 14 buil ding boom, where rows ofbleach By Kry sty na Paray Goddu white and pale pastel homes extended to the edge of the still wild palmetto fields. Bridging the Age Divide . .. .. .. 26 The season wasn't marked by the first By Christine Heppermann snow; rather, by the migration of snow birds. Tourists. Escapees from the cold weather to the north. Thawing their numb fingertips, strolling the beaches in gaudy Bermuda shorts, their pale skin Reviews turning bright pink. Noses slathered with ~ New Books for Winter ........... .. .... 30 white zinc oxide. I imagined that they were attempting to absorb enough heat to last through the rest of the winter. In this migration, I watched for the arrival of my cousins. As soon as the Features adults had finished their hugs and hellos, ~ A Conversation with Philip Pullman .. ... 7 we'd go cane-pole fishing, stuffing our pockets with hooks, sinkers, red-and By Martha Da v is Be ck white bobbers, and Wonder bread that we'd ball up and use as bait. We'd ride PROFILE Tomie dePaola 10 our bikes-metal-flake blue and candy By Barbara Elleman apple red Schwinn Stingrays with high rise handle bars and banana seats with BOOKMARK Ten Great Songbooks 13 sissy bars, the ace of spades clothes Story Collections from Near and Far . ... 1 7 pinned to the front fork, sputtering like a motor. We'd ride through the palmetto Compiled by jenny Sa wy er fields to a lake, or to one of the canals that wove through the landscape. Find I N TERV I EW Leonard S. Marcus ........ ... ....... 20 ing the right spot, we'd unwind our lines, By Nathali e op de Be ec k bait our hooks, cast out into the coffee colored water, and wait for the bluegills, A POEM FO R WI NTE R "The Winter Tree" ... .. .. ....... ... 24 perch, and catfish to start biting, while By Douglas Florian we cracked jokes about those poor saps in the north trying to fish through a hole ONE FO R THE SHELF Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses ..... 56 in the ice. By Mary Lou Burket -David Diaz 1 Riverbank Review A new Young Spirit book by Editor Fu-Ding Martha Davis Beck Art Director Kristi Anderson Two Spruce Design Cheng Marketing Director Christine Alfano Circulation Manager C hristine Heppermann Dream-House Editorial Committee Christine Alfano Martha Davis Beck Once there was a house that loved and lost, Mary Lou Burket Christine Heppermann and loved again; a house made out ofdreams .... Susan Marie Swanson Copy Editor Lynn Marasco House Artist Julie Delton Computer Consultant Eric Hinsdale Cattails Andy Nelson Administrative Assistant Jodi Grandy Advisory Board Rudine Sims Bishop, Susan Bloom, Barbara Elleman, Carol Erdahl, Karen Nelson Hoyle, Susan Huber, Ginny Moore Kruse, Margaret O'Neill Ligon, Bob Nistler, Mary Wagner Winter 2000-2001 Picture book • Ages 3-8 • ISBN 1-57174-186-0 • $16.95 Volume III, Number 4 Copyright © 2000 by the Riverbank Review. "Superb! Recapture the spirit of family and the All rights reserved. Please direct correspondence to: true meaning of home in your heart forever." Riverbank Review University of St. TI10mas -don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements 1000 LaSalle Avenue, MOH-217 Minneapolis, MN 55403-2009 Phone: (651) 962-4372 "Dream-House wanders the universe providing Fax: (651) 962-4169 shelter for our trials and triumphs. It is E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.riverbankreview.com rich with images for the poignant unfolding of our psyche." The Riverbank Review (ISSN 1099-6389) is pub Hampton Roads -Coleman Barks, author of lished quarterly, in March, June, September, and Publishing Company, Inc. The Essential Rumi December. Subscriptions are $20 for one year www.hrpub.com (four issues), $35 for two years. The Riverbank 800. 766.8009 Review is published in affiliation with the School • A' .1d .1hle llll\\' .11 \ "Olli loc.il hoobdk1 01 01de1 d11cll • ofEduc,nion at the University of St. Thomas. 2 Winter 2000-2001 editors note My older son began urging me to read The Golden Compass standing the piece of equipment that I do all my work on. two years ago. I resisted, offering a reason that felt simple While there are some occasions in life where "two roads and solid, a brick in the foundation of the house I dwell diverge in a yellow wood" and we have to choose, it seems in: I don't like fantasy. to me there are more situations where both the road and The things we like and don't like are an important part the woods are of our own making. Who says that boys of who we are. How dull the world would be if everyone shouldn't play the flute, or that girls shouldn't play the enjoyed the same books, food, and music. But taste can trumpet? No one I know-but check out the woodwind also trace the narrow shape of a rut, keeping us from new and brass sections at the next school band concert you discoveries about the world and ourselves. attend. Reading is different, of course, because children can My son is not pushy, but he is persistent. "You'd love read all kinds of books, which is part of what makes it such it," he told me. And I saw in his eyes that he meant me. He an important part of a young person's experience. Yet, I wasn't just telling me he liked the book, but that, based on think as adults we narrow children's reading experiences in what he knew of me, I would like it, too. Which gave me a variety of ways, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. pause. Did he see something in me that I was ignoring? Who thinks that boys won't be interested in books with girl Was it possible he was right? protagonists? Few of us want to send that message, but it is The answers to those questions turned out to be yes and an assumption that still seems to prevail. (Parents of boys, yes. I came out the other end of Philip Pullman's trilogy take note: Pullman's trilogy is a wonderful example of a (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber work that has strong appeal to boy readers, and that has a Spyglass) so stimulated by the ideas and the language in the complex and intriguing girl in a central role.) books that I could think about little else for days. In this issue of the Riverbank Review, Christine Hepper Then, I started to think about my resistance to reading mann writes about picture books that "bridge the age the work in the first place. Though I'm guessing I wouldn't divide," portraying relationships between the young and like a lot of what gets published in the fantasy genre, my the old in a manner that is engaging-and realistic. One of categorical rejection now seems narrow and foolish. And it the many things books invite us to do is to cross divides of makes me wonder: What else might I like, if I gave it a all kinds-age, gender, race, temperament-to imagine how chance? Mustard? Musicals? Mimes in the park? My self life is or has been for others. Children need opportunities imposed boundaries of taste were due, it seems, for a to stretch, to sample unfamiliar fare, to discover-just like shakeup. I suspect many of us get to this point from time adults-that they like things they thought they wouldn't, to time. It's easy to slide into a suit of habit and stay in it and that their interests can lead them, literally, anywhere. until, if we're lucky, someone nudges us out. In my own As adults we can encourage this stretching, while still hon experience, that someone is often a child. oring children's natural tastes and preferences. Perhaps the But the narrowing of likes and dislikes begins when we most powerful way to do this is to engage in some stretch are kids, and children themselves may need a shakeup now ing ourselves; to let our children see us going against the and then, as well.