Junonia by Kevin Henkes

Junonia
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow Books, on shelves May 24, 2011
ARC received at NCTE

I have just the reader to hand this book to -- she's a 10 year-old girl, a strong reader who recently came to me asking for help finding her next book. She's been devouring series books, and now she's ready to tackle a stand-alone novel.

Every year, Alice Rice and her family go to Sanibel Island in Florida for their week-long vacation from the Wisconsin winters, and every year, Alice's birthday is during their vacation. This year, she'll turn 10. Double digits. A really important birthday. But instead of everything being the way it's always been so that her birthday can be perfect, Alice has to deal with changes. A favorite cabin neighbor can't come, her mother's best college friend comes with a boyfriend and his 6 year-old daughter.

Henkes perfectly captures the in-between-ness of being 10. Alice is sometimes quite mature and other times pouty. She is starting to understand the grownups, and the little girl who is without her mother, and her own self. She is more aware of the world around her (which Henkes describes with aching beauty).

Alice is hoping to find a rare junonia shell for her collection on this trip, but even though she doesn't, she carries home a box full and a heart full of memories.

Suddenly she felt as if she were the center of everything, like the sun. She was thinking: Here I am. I have my parents. We're alone together. I will never be old. I will never die. It's right now. I'm ten.

The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

The Absolute Value of Mike 

by Kathryn Erskine
Philomel Books, on shelves June, 2011
ARC provided by the publisher


Remember how much I loved As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth (Lynne Rae Perkins) last year at about this time? The Absolute Value of Mike sits right beside As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth on my brain-shelf of favorites!

The two books are kind of similar, now that I think about it. They both have a main character who sets off in a pretty straight forward direction at the beginning of the book, only to have a series of completely unlikely (and yet completely believable) events explode that journey into epic proportions.

Mike's math genius father is sending him to live with an aunt and uncle he's never met...for the summer...in rural Pennsylvania...because the uncle is working on a project that involves lots of math (building an artesian screw) and maybe being involved in all of this math will help Mike get into the math magnet school...in spite of the fact that Mike has discalculia, a math disability.

When Mike gets there, he learns that there is no artesian screw, but there are a plethora of problems for him to solve, orchestrate, manage, and...ENGINEER in a way that is uniquely his own. Mike learns to make his own rules and follow his own heart, and in the process he learns to accept that his talents are just as amazing as a genius for math.

Each chapter of The Absolute Value of Mike is titled with a math term and its definition. As you read the chapter, you find the narrative metaphor for each term. At the beginning of the book, there are Parallel Lines, a Transversal Line, and Skew Lines. As the story progresses, there are Outliers, Chaos Theory, Functions, Attributes and Variables. In the end, Mike, his dad, and the community of Do Over, PA are all convinced of the Absolute Value of Mike.

Watch for this gem of a book in June and put it at the top of your TBR pile!

(I'd recommend it most strongly for readers in grades 5-8, but you might know someone a bit younger or a bit older who might need to go on a journey of self-discovery with Mike.)

BABYMOUSE: Mad Scientist and SQUISH: Super Amoeba

Babymouse: Mad Scientist
by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
Random House, May 10, 2011
review copy purchased for my classroom library



Squish: Super Amoeba

by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

Random House, May 10, 2011

review copy purchased for my classroom library

The Holm siblings have done it again! Babymouse is back, challenged by her dad to enter the science fair and maybe even become the first scientist in the family. There are nods to all the greater and lesser scientists in history (and even to Mr. Spock, the Star Trek scientist), and Babymouse dreams of the great discoveries she might make (Babymousaurus, Babymousillin, the Babymouse Whisker Theorem, and the Pink Planet). Babymouse and her class are introduced to the greatest tool of science -- The Scientific Method, and Babymouse's dad gets her a microscope just like the one he had when he was a kid and he takes her to a pond to collect amoeba to study under the microscope.

Babymouse discovers Squish in a drop of pond water, and a friendship is born. A friendship that is sealed when Babymouse shares her cupcakes with him! Cupcakes and Squish become the second-place stars of the science fair, but you'll have to read the book to find out how they manage that!

In Squish No. 1, we learn more about Squish -- he's a blobby amoeba who loves comics (favorite character: Super Amoeba) and Twinkies. He has a genius friend Pod and  an unfailingly cheerful friend Peggy. His principal is a planarian, his teacher is a rotifer, and the bully of the school is an amoeba named Lynwood.

So you've got a pretty basic storyline of the unlikely hero who has to do battle against the bully to save his friend, and you've got the Babymouse convention of the dream sequence in a contrasting color (this time the book is in green and the dream/fantasy is in black and white...which probably has deep meaning, but I'm not going there). But what else you've got with Squish is an incredible amount of science packed into a 90 page graphic novel. I'm smiling to myself as I imagine a whole generation of students who will hit middle school and high school biology classes with a decent bank of background knowledge about pond life...courtesy of the Squish series!

Favorite Series: Dragonbreath

Dragonbreath: Lair of the Bat Monster
by Ursula Vernon
Dial Books, 2011
review copy purchased for my classroom library

I love this series.

Maybe we should start with the three reasons I love this series:
1. The humor. (This reason encompasses characters, setting, plot, plot twists, a magic bus that isn't driven by Ms. Frizzle, and recurring themes -- "Can it skeletonize a cow in under two weeks?" They are all FUNNY!!)
2. The way every book is better than the one before it.
3. The design of the book. (This reason encompasses size, shape, illustrations, colors, and its hybrid graphic novel-ness.)

So. That pretty much covers it. I love everything about this series.

In this installment, Vernon blends graphic novel, fantasy novel, humor, and NONFICTION ABOUT ENDANGERED RAIN FORESTS AND RAIN FOREST ANIMALS AND MAYAN MYTHOLOGY all in one book. Brilliant, no?

Danny Dragonbreath and his sidekick Wendell rescue a bat from the swimming pool. They ride the magic bus to the rainforests of Mexico, where Danny's cousin Steve is trying to discover a new species of bat in order to save bat habitat in the rainforest. Steve teaches them about the bat they saved, and then invites them to see the bat cave he's discovered. They see the bat cave, with bats pouring out of it at dusk, but something odd happens -- all the bats fly back into the cave.

"Something burst out of the trees.

...it was huge. It wasn't an animal sort of huge, it was the huge he associated with cranes and bulldozers and building equipment.  The elephants at the zoo were big, but this was the size of a house, and it wasn't moving like anything he'd ever seen.

Then it stepped forward, and he thought of a gorilla the size of a building, like King Kong, because that was how it moved, big shoulders and arms crashing down, and smaller hindquarters swinging forward.

Except that it wasn't a gorilla.

'Holy crud,' breathed Danny. 'it's a bat.' "

Turns out, it's Camazotz (Mrs. Camazotz, to be exact) of Mayan Mythology fame. And she grabs Danny to keep as her pet. And Steve and Wendell have to save Danny. And Wendell is a self-proclaimed scaredy cat. ("They had a system. Danny was fearless and Wendell was terrified, and it worked out between them.")

And now I'm going to stop writing so you can go get the book and read it for yourself.

My Top 10 Picture Books

Something there is that loves a deadline.

We're down to the wire on picking our top 10 picture books for Fuse #8's Top 100 Picture Books of All Times Poll -- the deadline is midnight tonight.

I gave myself 15 minutes in front of the picture book shelf in my classroom to make my picks. Instead of agonizing over my list, I was quick and impulsive. Even now, I am refusing to allow myself the right to second guess.

10. A River of Words by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet. This is my newest favorite. I can't wait to see how Melissa Sweet's style evolves.

9. The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Stephen Gammell. This is one of my oldest favorites. It has been fun to see how Cynthia Rylant's career has evolved.

8. Traction Man is Here by Mini Gray. Toys that come to life in our imagination. Nothing better. Takes me right back to my childhood.

7. And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon by Janet Stephens, illustrated by Susan Stevens Crummel. Love all the literary (kid-sized) humor they embed in the story and the illustrations. A fork in the road -- brilliant!

6. Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt. (Or should I choose Chester for this spot? No, Scaredy. No, Chester...)

5. Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears by Emily Gravett. Well, everything by Emily Gravett, actually. Did I mention (once or twice or twelve times already) that I got to see her sketchbook for Little Mouse at the Notables session at NCTE last November? It was WAY cool!!!

4. The Three Pigs by David Wiesner. I love how he got everyone thinking about breaking the boundaries in picture books.

3. The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang. Still my favorite wordless picture book (and I have A LOT of favorites).

2. Black and White by David McCauley. He, like Wiesner, really shook things up in the children's book world with this book. STILL a great book for conversation with kids. (And adults, for that matter...)

1.



I refuse.

I can't do it.

There is no such thing as my single, all-time, one-and-only favorite picture book.

I can't.

Sorry if you're disappointed, but it was all I could do to number the rest of them in some semblance of favoritism.

That's as good as it gets. Deal with it.

Poetry Friday -- Picking Favorites

I kept snagging this poem as I ran my fingers through the teeming waters of the Poetry Foundation archive. The more I read it, the more perfect it seemed for this week. This week of Newbery Hopefuls and Newbery Potentials. (Did you notice that the first four letters of potential spell poet?)

Here is the first verse:

Reading to the Children
by Herbert Morris

The first child asks me: Are these poems yours?
The second asks: Where do you get ideas?
The third child says: I have always loved poems.
The fourth child wonders: What makes poems poems?
The fifth one asks: Which of them is your favorite?
The sixth one asks me: Is there ice cream later?
The seventh child asks: Is a poem dreaming?

The verses that follow answer the children's questions, one by one. You might expect me to share with you the answer to the fifth child, in keeping with the theme of "picking favorites." Here, however, is a part of the sixth answer, and it is just as apt:

Ice cream? Of course there will be ice cream later,
more flavors than you knew existed, cookies
shaped like cottages (plumes of chocolate coiling
from crumb-top chimneys), candied apples, plum tarts.
By the time the desserts are brought and passed
(I suggest this for your consideration,
no more than that, one possibility
among the many which may offer themselves),
what you have heard (and, hearing, felt) may well seem
more astonishing than the crisps, the pastries,
the butterscotch napoleons, the rum balls,
mocha parfaits, coconut wafers, jam cakes,
the goblets of vanilla-laced-with-mangoes,
brought on trays from the pantry. One can know that
only at the conclusion, having sampled,
one by one, what was deftly laid before you,
poems read, plates passed, music heard, half-heard,
a judgment reached, or not reached, a choice made.


The whole poem is here.

The Roundup today is at The Miss Rumphius Effect.