Emma in Buttonland

Emma in Buttonland
by Ulrike Rylance
translated by Connie Stradling Morby
illustrated by Silke Leffler
Sky Pony Press, October 1, 2013review copy provided by the author

I have already proclaimed my love for fantasies "with small worlds, or toys that come to life, or characters that shrink."

Emma in Buttonland is my newest favorite in this sub-genre of fantasy. I wrote in my Goodreads review that this book is "part Borrowers, part Wizard of Oz." When I checked out the only other review (so far) for the book, that person said the same thing!

Emma is stuck at her aunt and uncle's house while her mom is on a trip to Africa. Her aunt and uncle are preoccupied with their jigsaw puzzles, leaving Emma free to wander through their rambling, many-roomed house. She discovers a locked room, and the lure of adventure is too much. She swipes the keys from the sleeping cook, opens the door, and discovers a room full of buttons. Boxes and boxes full of buttons. When one of the buttons speaks to her, and then when her fingers touch it as she reaches under a cabinet to grab it after it runs away, the magic begins -- Emma shrinks to button-size and enters Buttonland!

The first character she meets, Louise, a small silver button with a large red hat, introduces one of the main themes throughout the book: What does it mean to be VALUABLE? Louise is on a quest to discover her value.

Next, she meets Gustav, a button from a pair of lederhosen. His quest is to find his true love, his matching button, Constance.

Both accompany Emma on her quest to find the gold button that made her shrink so that she can touch it again and perhaps be restored to girl-size.

The book is illustrated with full-color illustrations, mostly along the bottom edges of the pages. The illustrator, Silke Leffler (according to the back flap) was "trained as a tailor and then studied textile design." There couldn't have been a more perfect pick for an illustrator! Her collages bring all of the fabrics, sewing notions, and different buttons (and other small lost items) to life.

I can't wait to book-talk this in my 5th grade classroom. I've got several readers who I think will love it as much as I do!

My Favorite Kind of Fantasy

Yesterday, I wrote about my favorite kind of science fiction.

Hands down, my favorite FANTASIES are those with small worlds, or toys that come to life, or characters that shrink.

I'm not sure how many times I re-read The Borrowers when I was a kid.

In high school, I met Archy and Mehitabel, the poetry-writing cockroach and his sidekick alley cat.

In the 80's I loved The Indian in the Cupboard series, though I probably wouldn't recommend it to kids these days. Too many negative stereotypes.

More recently, I have loved The Night Fairy and Masterpiece.

At a loss for other titles that fit this "genre," I turned to the collective brain of Twitter, and my Tweeps did not let me down! Check out this list we/they came up with:

The Littles
Stuart Little
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Cricket in Times Square
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Hitty Her First Hundred Years
Toys Go Out
The Friendship Doll
The Castle in the Attic [Paperback]
Mistress Masham's Repose
Traction Man Is Here!
The Doll People
The Eraserheads

My mom and her coffee klatch came up with these classics:

Pinocchio (Little Golden Book)
Gulliver's Travels
Tom Thumb
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Nutcracker
Toy Story (yeah, it's a movie, but it's a perfect fit!)
Thomas the Tank Engine Story Collection (Thomas & Friends) (The Railway Series)
The Little Engine That Could (Little Letters)

And, then, of course, there's The Sixty-Eight Rooms Series. My current favoritest fantasy.

The Pirate's Coin: A Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure
by Marianne Malone
illustrated by Greg Call
Random House Books for Young Readers (May 28, 2013)

review copy purchased for my classroom library

This is the third book in the Sixty-Eight Rooms series. One of the main settings of these books is the Thorne Rooms in the Art Institute of Chicago. The characters have a magic key that shrinks them so that they can go into the rooms and even out into the different historical periods of some of the rooms.

In this book, Ruthie and Jack have to deal with that conundrum of time travel whereby if you change the past, you might erase yourself from the future/present. They also help a classmate's family clear the family name.

I'm thrilled that Marianne Malone left the door wide open at the end of the book for another volume in this series!