USBBY

The United States Board on Books for young People serves as the national section of the International Board on Books for Young People which is a non-profit organization that promotes children's books created around the world. Their mission is to foster "international understanding and goodwill through books for young people." I thought you might like to see their 2008 list of recommended books for young children.

Amado, Elisa Tricycle Ill. by Alfonso Ruano
Groundwood (Canada) REVIEW





Bae,Hyun-Joo New Clothes for New Year’s Day
Kane/Miller (Korea) REVIEW

Beake, Lesley Home Now Ill. by Karin Littlewood
Charlesbridge (UK) REVIEW







Cali, Davide Piano Piano Ill by Éric HeliotTr. by
Randi Rivers Charlesbridge (France) REVIEW

Daly, Niki Pretty Salma: A Little Red Riding Hood
Story from Africa Clarion (UK) REVIEW








Gravett, Emily Meerkat Mail Simon & Schuster (UK)
REVIEW

Kwon,Yoon-duck My Cat Copies Me Kane/Miller (Korea) REVIEW







Lacombe, Benjamin Cherry and Olive Walker (France) REVIEW

Steffensmeier,Alexander Millie Waits for the Mail REVIEW
Walker (Germany)








Van der Heide, Iris A Strange Day Ill. by Marijke
tenCate Lemniscaat/Boyds Mills. (The Netherlands)REVIEW

Buzz

Buzzz.... Mommy and Daddy are snoring.
Buzzzzzzzzz- there goes the alarm clock. It's time to start a busy, buzzy day.
Buzzz "Daddy's silver razor smoothes his rough face."
Buzzz.... Mommy grinds coffee- ok, the best coffee in the world comes from this little place in the East Village on 2nd Ave. and St. Marks called Porto Rico Importing Co. This coffee is a Must Have in our house!

Buzz is a book by Janet S. Wong that perfectly depicts my life in the morning:
"And Mommy runs to catch my cup and the apple juice spills and her toast pops up and the clothes go tumbling round and round until-
Buzzzzz She runs to the dryer and drops clothes on the floor and hops on one leg to put her right sock on and hops on her other leg to put her left sock on and blows her hair dry
Buzzzz
until it stands straight up."

Being a printmaker, my eyes connected with this book immediately and Margaret Chodos-Irvine is a Master of linocut printing. You must check out her site and see her other book illustrations. Absolutely Gorgeous!

Two eggs, please.

Two eggs, please. by Sarah Weeks and illustrated by Betsy Lewin is great fun because it can be read on multiple levels and displays a fine amount of wry humor. The characters include animals of different habitats. You have your woodland creatures alongside jungle animals, seated next to your common dog and barnyard ram. And what's more, they are wearing clothes that define their varied occupations: the dogs are policemen, the stork a doctor, the mouse a musician, the rhino a cab driver among others.

The animals arrive early morning at the neighborhood diner for breakfast. What do they order? Eggs! sunny-side up, over-easy, scrambled, soft-boiled, hard-boiled, fried, poached, raw. As the bear cook prepares the eggs (note: he cracks open white eggs and brown eggs) he thinks, "Different. The Same." Then we see the animals eating their eggs at the counter and read the words again. "Different... but the same." It's such a wonderful picture book because we can count the animals as the enter one by one, describe what they are, what we think they do for work and why they are different. We can also acknowledge that they are all enjoying the same eggs for breakfast, yet they have different preferences for how they like them prepared. And aren't the white eggs and the brown eggs the same inside?

There are two full pages where the animals think the same thought, which is indicated by a speech bubble and one word, Different. Yes they are different from one another and that is the beauty of diversity. "Different... but the same." Very young children may not grasp this concept, but that's OK because there are many teaching opportunities with this book.

Different... but the same, reminds me of an email I received from my friend Maria Calais Pedro asking for one minute to sign an online petition. "I'm taking action with ONE to let you know that Congress is on track to cut poverty-fighting funding in the 2009 budget, putting the lives of millions of people who depend on our help at risk." You can sign the petition to restore 4.1 billion in funding for those living in extreme poverty here.
Thank you Maria- this is truly an important issue. Have you seen Girl in the Cafe yet?

My Little Car

Gary Soto is coming to Cunha Middle School here in Half Moon Bay for author's night. We live in a coast side town of about 12,000. I wonder if those middle schoolers know what a gift it is to hear Gary Soto speak about poetry, writing and Latino culture. If you're not familiar with his work read his poem Oranges . Sometimes he writes in the slang of a Mexican American Lowrider, like in Chato and the Party Animals. And one of my most favorite Christmastime books is Too Many Tamales. His middle grade fiction novels include Baseball in April, Living Up The Street, Petty Crimes and Buried Onions.

My Little Car, Mi Carrito, illustrated by Pam Paparone is a fun ride, I mean read. This book shows children the importance of taking care of what they have and who they love. Teresa's Abuelito Benito sends her a carrito for her birthday. "Look at the Flames!" She says about her lowrider pedal car. Everyone in the neighborhood admires her car and she wins first place in the school car show. She polishes the chrome with her dad and won't let her little sister touch it. Then one night she leaves her car out in the rain, birds poop on it, the flames start to peel off, and her dad backs over it in the driveway. When grandpa Benny comes to visit he hardly recognizes the carrito. "Pues, it looks older than me. ... Ready for the scrapheap." But, he tells her, "I still look prety sharp when I'm fixed up." So they work together on the car until it looks sharp again and Teresa tells her grandpa, "Mi Carrito is better than ever, just like you." (I didn't give away the exciting part about the dog.)

Pam Paparone captures cultural details of this story such as the Lady of Guadalupe hanging from the rear view mirror of her neighbor's sparkling lowrider, the iron scroll work gates, or the painted windows of the neighborhood's Carniceria Gonzales. Her depiction of Teresa driving her carrito is reminiscent of a home movie- well, maybe an animated home movie.

The multi-purpose room at the local middle school should be full tomorrow evening. I wonder what Gary Soto will read? What will he tell our youth?

Thank You Bear

The next time I have to choose interior paint colors I'm taking Thank You Bear by Greg Foley with me to the paint shop. The colors behind the spare yet expressive illustrations and text are gorgeous- soft and earthy, peach, sage, lavender, lemon, chocolate, gray-blue. And this is likely because designer/author Greg Foley is the creative director of Visionaire and V Magazine.

The story itself is rather deep for few words. Bear is delighted to find a perfect gift for mouse. When he shows the other animals the little box, they don't think it's so great and bear doubts himself. Then mouse comes along to show bear that yes! it is perfect.

“Who knew that philosophy starts at such an early age?-I guess it does. A lovely lesson in tolerance and creativity-one man's garbage is another's treasure.”
—David Byrne

“I have an army of god-daughters and each one is going to get Thank You Bear this year. Because it's a story about why you love what you do and I want all of them to have it.”
—Michael Stipe

Thank You Bear won the 2008 Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture book published in the United States in the preceding year. One-Minute Book Reviews has a review of of an earlier large size edition of Thank You Bear. And 7-imps has a short list of some of the best picture books of 2007 with Thank You Bear reviewed here. Take note: Greg Foley's Don't Worry Bear is scheduled for release in April and I can't wait to read it in the car on the way to the paint department. Only kidding! Not really.

Shoe Baby

My baby will not wear shoes. It can be 20 degrees outside and she will pull them off along with her socks and winter hat. She owns six pairs of shoes which is still not enough. I am constantly searching for that lost mate .... under the sofa, in the car and backtracking through the grocery aisles. I love shoes and am always shopping. I found this cute handmade pair of Poppy MaryJanes on etsy. Wonder how long they will stay on?!
Shoe Baby is a picture book by Joyce Dunbar (the author of more than 70 books!), illustrated by her daughter Polly Dunbar. On the back dust cover Joyce tells how it took 6 years for her to finish this story written especially for her daughter. She was stuck halfway through and then "One gray day in November, the rest of it just plopped onto the page. It had been there all this time." A great book "cannot be forced."
I picked up this one (the title struck close to home!) and immediately fell for it. It's a sweet rhyming, rhythmic story about a baby who hid in a shoe. A super fun read especially for those sleepyheads aged 4 and under and the illustration/collage is amazing, colorful and modern.
In the story the baby falls asleep in the shoe "so dozy, cozy, so tickety-boo!" ......tickety-boo?!!! This is so non-sensical, silly, imaginative and wonderful. It definately gets 5 stars!

Mother, what was war?

“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"”
- Eve Merriam




The war in Iraq feels removed as I suppose it might for many American families. Yet certainly war hits home for many families both here and overseas. What prompted this post was a movie I watched last night. The Secret Life of Words with Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley. It's an indie drama love story that's somewhat uncomfortably quiet and slow but in the end political and worth watching.

Because I have young children and often work with children, I think about the refugees and the high infant mortality rate in Iraq. I think about how to talk about war with children, or perhaps they don't need the responsibility of knowing. But the kids in Iraq? They know. The kids in the States who miss their moms, dads, sisters and brothers? They know. And given the history of human civilization, is it completely naive to wish my children will only know war as a historical reference?