The Stone Thrower

Another great book that covers a lesser known story, but a powerful one of fighting oppression and perseverance. This true story written by Jael Ealey Richardson is a tribute to her father, Chuck Ealey. Ealey was an African American born in 1950 growing up in racial segregated Portsmouth, Ohio. He developed a talent for playing football, specifically as a quarterback, starting out throwing rocks at train cars for practice. Despite the discrimination he often received, Ealey worked hard to get a scholarship to continue playing football in college. By 1971, he was the quarterback with the most college victories. Yet, the NFL would not draft him and Ealey came to Canada to play in the CFL, where he was honored with the league’s Rookie of the Year honor.

AUTHOR: Jael Ealey Richardson is an accomplished speaker and author. Even though her father was from the United States, she grew up in Canada, as he stayed on there after his career. In relation to her own racial identity, which often plays a role in her books, she says:

“For most of my life I felt watery like an ocean, my sense of self disoriented and bottomless, my blackness lost and out of place in a country known for cold winters, covered in whiteness.”

ILLUSTRATOR: Painter, illustrator, and musician, Matt James uses vibrant and colorful imagery in this book. It has been described as naive and childlike, but in the best and most complimentary way.  Don’t worry, the reviews also throw in words like irresistible, infectious, and poetic in their descriptions. He was the illustrator to the book version of Stan Roger’s Northwest Passage, which I love so much . He is also a Toronto resident.

AGES: I think you could do this story with all ages, as long as you are willing to take on the discussion of segregation and racism. For my classes, I do grade three and up.

BEST READ ALOUD: “Chuck threw the ball, and it soared through the air. It spiraled down the field, floating, spinning. Everyone waited. Everyone watched as the ball dropped right into the hands of Chuck’s teammate as he stepped into the end zone. Chuck smiled and raised his arms. Touchdown. Victory”.

EXTRAS: Ealey Richardson also has another book out by the same name for adults that goes more in depth with the story. She also has some great personal recommendations for readers and you can here her on CBC’s ‘q’ with those occasionally.

The Case for Loving: the Fight for Interracial Marriage

This  beautifully illustrated picture book focuses the true story of Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter. In the 1950’s, interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia, so the couple married in D.C. and returned to their home with their legal certificate. Unfortunately, their marriage was not considered valid in their home state and they were both charged and put in prison. After release, they moved from Virginia to have their children and carry on with their lives as a family. Over time, they wanted to return to their hometown, but to do so they would have to fight for their right to their marriage. They did so and eventually won in the Supreme Court case of Loving vs. Virginia in 1967. This court case allowed for all future interracial marriages to be legal as well.

AUTHOR: Illustrators Selina Alko and Sean Qualls collaborated on this book in 2015 . This particular story means a lot to them, as they too are a married interracial couple with children.  Since its publication, they have written and illustrated two other books together. They have both had independent success, with Alko having written and illustrated more than 12 books and Qualls having received high honours for his illustrated books like Before John was a Jazz Giant by Carole Boston Weatherford. I own that beautiful book as well.

ILLUSTRATORS: Already covered that!

AGES: Grade three and up would be my personal view, as there is a lot to talk about. The specifics of the era, the court case, the police violence etc might be hard to do with younger students.

BEST READ ALOUD: Okay, so this is not meant to be critical, but it does not have any overly special lines in it. The story is good and it is well written, but it is not poetic or funny, so it is harder to choice a line. But I have to pick something, so:

‘And they read a message from Richard himself: “Tell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia”‘.

EXTRAS: Well, there is a lot to talk about with this book, which you can buy here or on through Scholastic. Comparisons with the fight for same sex marriage, discussions on race etc. It opens the door to a lot of discussion. There is a detailed teaching guide designed for older kids about the Loving family that may provide some ideas.

The movie Loving based on the couple’s story was released in 2016.

A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin

One of the great things about being a library tech (even as a casual) is that it allows me to explore books that I would not have ever picked up. A few years ago, I was looking for biography style picture books. Over the past few years, I find that more and more are appearing, even for children younger than school age. For example, I happen to have four biographies on Jane Goodall that range in audience age.

This book was a great find because it introduced me to Horace Pippin and meant that I was going to introduce someone new to almost everyone in the class. The art work is colourful and vibrant, as the artist was and the story is written well and moves along at a good pace.

Horace Pippin was an African American self taught artist who was born in 1888. He lived in a time when schools were still segregated and was forced to leave school when he was 15 go to work and provide for his large family.  Even as he worked, he kept up drawing and painting whenever he got the chance. When he went to fight in the war, he even drew pictures there. Sadly, the day came where he was injured in the war and that left one arm damaged. When he returned home, it was not easy to continue with his art, but Horace would not give up. It took him three years to complete a painting upon return, but after that, he did not stop. After years of hard work, Horace eventually became recognized as a prolific artist and an American master.  This story is an inspiring and powerful example of hard work, strength and passion.

AUTHOR: Jen Bryant is an author/poet/speaker who has written several non-fiction picture books, focusing on individual biographies.

ILLUSTRATOR: Melissa Sweet is the illustrator for this book and for two more books written by Jen Bryant. They must have a good partnership to have worked on so many together. She also has authored her own books, including a biography on E.B. White. Her style is very unique, bright, and fun. Painting, sketching and collage all seem to come seamlessly together.

AGES: I have only ever used this book with my grade 4-6 students. I think that the length and topic might not appeal to anyone younger than this. Also, as I am always limited on time, there has to be a general understanding of history, so I don’t have to explain all the aspects of the book (war/segregation/museums).

BEST READ ALOUD: “As he walked along the streets of West Chester, his fingers itched to draw all the colors and textures he saw: lacy white curtains billowing in the windows, a splash of red geraniums blooming on a step, a yellow cat sprinting down and alley, deep green vines spiraling up a wall”.

EXTRAS: The illustrator has a discussion guide on her site that is great and covers a lot of different ways to examine the story. The Classroom Bookshelf also has some ideas here.

 

A Hungry Lion, or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals

 

I have not made a post in a long time! I figured ‘a long time’ might be a year and a half. Apparently it has been more like three years. So I am getting back in the swing of things now that I am back on a short 15 week school circuit.

This little book was one of those books that I ordered by chance. I was not familiar with the author, but the title was fantastic so I thought I would give it a try. I regularly laugh to myself as I read it. The idea is that there is a group of animals that the reader is attempting to tell you about, but slowly they start disappearing. It has a silly little ending with a dark surprise. Some students are not sure about it, but the ones that have that slightly quirky sense of humour love it!

AGES: The book says on the inside jacket 4-8. I don’t typically read it to my primary/ones, but grade two and three. Even my grade five’s have enjoyed it, because it is just dark enough.

AUTHOR: Lucy Ruth Cummins. Born in Canada, but living in Brooklyn. Her squarespace site says this:

Lucy is a writer and illustrator, and also a full time art director of picture books, middle grade books, and young adult novels for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and Paula Wiseman books. She is the art director for numerous New York Times and international bestsellers from authors and illustrators.

Apparently she has also illustrated a book called ‘The Taking Tree: a Selfish Parody‘ and now I must have it.

It also says her favourite food is the french fry, so we have a lot in common.

ILLUSTRATOR: She is also the illustrator. They are simple sketch/paint style illustrations with a lot character packed into them. Even without a lot of detail, she captures the mood.

BEST READ ALOUD: ” Wait a second. It seems there was just a hungry lion, a turtle, only the floppy eared rabbit, a frog, a bat, and a pig. And apparently? No one else”.

Surely you can see what is happening here? OR CAN YOU??? The end is brilliant.

EXTRAS: You can buy this beauty here. And here is some activities!

 

The Dark

 

 

This is a fun one. It is fun to read to little kids, because it is a mildly frightening story at the beginning. As soon as I tell the primaries the title, I get about 15 little hands shooting up in the air, shouting “I am AFRAID OF THE DARK!”. After I remind them that raising your hand does not actually just give you permission to shout over each other like wild monkeys, I tell them that this has a wonderful surprise ending and they will see that the dark is not so scary. “Laszlo was afraid of the dark…” usually hooks them and we go on to read the lovely story about where the dark lives and why he wants Laszlo to come down to the basement. You can see the dramatic trailer here. 

 

AGES : I read this to my Grade primaries and ones, but you could definitely read this to a four year old. 

AUTHOR : Lemony Snicket, pen name of Dan Handler, is the author of this little gem. If you don’t know who he is, then I don’t know how to explain him. Author sometimes, character other times. As Dan Handler, he has also written books for adults as well that have been well received, such as Why We Broke Up, which has reportedly been made into a movie with Hailee Steinfeld. Handler definitely has a good sense of humor, if not an almost dark one, and I thoroughly enjoyed his remarks in this interview about this book.

ILLUSTRATOR : JK. Can I just refer to him as that now? Jon Klassen. The pictures are great.  Very old school cartoonish sketches. I will not give you more important info on him, except this interesting tidbit. As a animator, he was the art director for the U2 video I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight. Guess who else did a U2 video recently? My main man illustrator Oliver Jeffers. Conversation starter for either kids or U2 fans. 

BEST READ ALOUD : “Laszlo thought that if he visited the dark in the dark’s room, maybe the dark wouldn’t come visit him in his room. But one night—“. Another great part of reading this story aloud is being the Dark’s voice. I nearly strained my vocal cords trying to go so deep, but it was worth it. I am an excellent Dark. 

EXTRAS : Okay, well, besides the lesson of not being scared of the dark, there is not much else to really do with this. I like the idea of shadow puppets, games you need the dark for in order to play, etc. 

House Held Up By Trees

 

I owned this book for about a year before I decided to read it aloud to my students. I had no idea what grade to start it in and how to explain the big concepts of the story. I read it a few times and decided to give it a try with my older students. Yes, it is a children’s book, but the emotions that arise from the story were going to be hard for the children to really grasp. After all, the story focuses on a man and his house as the main characters and how they age over time. His relationship with both his children and his property are strained and that would be difficult to explain. Luckily, there are other subjects that ‘branch’ out from this book. How nature stops for no one and the ideas of growth and decay are some of them. I related some homes in the areas, news stories etc to the book and, in the end, truly enjoyed this story. 

AGES : I only did this book with my grade fives and sixes, as I feel it is really an ‘adult’ children’s book.  There is nothing offensive or wrong for kids under this age, but it is very poetic in its writing and deep in its story.  

AUTHOR : Ted Kooser is a well known poet and writer who only recently began writing books for children. I believe this is his second. He complete two terms as the US Poet Laureate, is a university professor part time and an editor. He is a ‘successful’ poet, the most rare kind, with too many awards to name. Kooser is in his mid-seventies and still working hard to inspire. 

ILLUSTRATOR : Well, I have written about my affection for Jon Klassen before so I won’t go on too much about him again. You can check his stuff out here. Busy young man with tons of talent. Personally inspires me with his work being both simplistic and full of meaning. His images for this book were a perfect pairing to the story. Neutral and dark tones were used perfectly. It is the type of illustration that I would frame and put up in my home as art. It would actually match my living room perfectly, so hint hint!

BEST READ ALOUD : Well, it is probably the saddest lines and it tended to bring tears to my eyes, but still. “Now and then the father would come to have a look at the house, hoping that maybe somebody had left a note saying they’d like to buy it, and he would prop up the sign one more time, and maybe he’d fix one of the windows, but no one ever left a note, and in a few more years, he quit coming back’.

EXTRAS : Well, here is what Kooser had to say about the book. Not so much an activity, but helpful insight into the story. Here is Kooser’s video showing the house that acted as the inspiration. I actually used some real examples of homes that had been taken over by nature like the one here and of the homes in Detroit. We talked about why people are drawn to abandoned houses etc and why we felt sad for a house. 

 

You Are Stardust

This book was a joy to do with my students this year. While relatively short in words, the ideas are big. This meant I had to shut down discussion time with almost every class I read this to. The focus is on environmental education and Elin Kelsey really makes it interesting to the reader. Even the title sparked a lot of attention. Unfortunately, there were a few questions I could not answer, such as ‘Did God blow up that first star?’, but mostly I was able to get through. The imagery of the book is like nothing I have ever scene before and that is another contribution to making this book truly unique.

AGES : I chose to start this at grade three and go up to the grade sixes. While you could do earlier, with my limited time for discussion, I thought that I would not really be able to get the message across to the younger children. Even the grade threes struggled a bit with all the information, but that is the year that they really seem to get involved in science, so some of them were VERY into it.

AUTHOR : Elin Kelsey is an educator and author who focuses on environmental education. Her website gives insight to all the things she does. This is actually the second book written by Kelsey that I have purchased for our school collection, with the first being Not Your Typical Book about the Environment. She is Canadian, but consults around the world.

ILLUSTRATOR : The ‘illustrations’ in this book are truly amazing. They are photographs taken of three-dimensional that incorporate paper, fabric and natural textures.  I’m pretty sure the kids got tired of me saying ‘LOOK! LOOK AT HOW AMAZINGGGGG’, but I don’t care. They are amazing. As is the rest of her art, found here. This was her first book and she nailed it.

BEST READ ALOUD : “Your breath is alive with the promise of flowers. Each time you blow a kiss to the world, you spread pollen that might grow to be a new plant”. Sigh. So pretty.

EXTRAS : There are a million things you can do with a book like this, but here is the publisher’s Teacher’s Guide and the book’s website that gives you links to the app and other such things. Purchase the book from Amazon here.

Nasreen’s Secret School : A True Story From Afghanistan

 

As the school year comes to its slooooow end, I start to run out of books from my own collection and need to branch out into the library collections. I found this book in the non-fiction section under the social justice section. It was pretty much exactly what I was looking for, as I knew of a grade 6 class learning about the rights of a child in their homeroom class. The story is based on the true experience of a grandmother and her grandchild living under Taliban rule. The child’s father is taken away and the mother never returns from her search for him. The grandmother took it upon herself to find a secret girls’ school in Herat for Nasreen to attend. It is a beautiful story without a truly happy ending, but a positive message.

AUTHOR : Jeanette Winter is inspiring as an author as she has chosen to write so many books about strong women in our world. She has written stories about Jane Goodall and Georgia O’Keefe, as well as lesser known heroes like Nasreen. Stories found in real life about inspiring people are mainly her focus when writing. In an interview in A Mighty Girl Creators Series, she says, “Many of the people I write about accomplish amazing feats without any encouragement, and under the most difficult, even dangerous, conditions. Their strong belief in — and desire to — follow their hearts, is inspiring to me. Through the story and pictures, I try to make something seemingly impossible seem possible”.

ILLUSTRATOR : Winter is also the illustrator. Her style is colourful, strong and bears some similarities to O’Keefe. She speaks of her work of having strong stories with simple pictures.

AGES : I think if you had time to explain the complexities of Afghanistan and women’s rights, you could do this book from an earlier age. I decided to read it to my grade 5’s and 6’s and it was even difficult to cover everything with them in our brief time together. My suggestion is 8 to 13 for this story.

BEST READ ALOUD : “She leaned about the artists and writers and scholars and mystics who, long ago, made Herat beautiful. Nasreen no longer feels alone. The knowledge she holds inside will always be with her, like a good friend”. It was important to me for the kids to understand that Afghanistan had a culture that we do not hear much about anymore.

EXTRAS : Obviously there many subjects to cover with this book. Women’s rights, children’s rights, the history of Afghanistan, etc. Lesson plans are common for this book and you can find some here and ttp://learningtogive.org/lessons/unit362/lesson2.html. You can purchase this book here.

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK

 

Over the holidays and to this day, I have been sick with the flu, giving me plenty of time to be reading. I had a few books that I had purchased for my libraries put aside to pre-read, just so I could know the content and age appropriateness. The Graveyard Book was first on my list. While this is not a picture book, obviously, I think it is important to include any books that I really like for elementary level on my blog and I would highly recommend this book for grade 5-6’s. (And there actually are some illustrations, so there). The story of Bod, short for Nobody Owens, is a fantasy novel of my favourite type.  Yes, it starts off with Bod’s family being murdered and yes, there is a terrifying murderer still looking for Bod, but kids are into this, so let ’em have it. It was not graphic, so there is not nightmarish scenes to have to skip over. Bod finds himself as a baby boy alone in a graveyard. His recently deceased parents beg the resident ghosts to care for their baby and protect him. They accept the challenge and raise Bod as their own. As he get older, he becomes more adventurous and more curious to life outside the graveyard and about his own past. His protected world come crumbling down.  Scary, funny and imaginative.  A captivating book for YA readers and adults alike. It has won several awards, including a Newbery and a Hugo Award.

AGES : I personally know of a grade 3 that read this book, but I think that grades 4-5-6 are probably more appropriate and that is likely who I will allow to take it out. The last thing I need is a parents wrath from signing out a murder/ghost tale!

 

AUTHOR : Neil Gaiman is kind of my hero! He writes for all ages and he writes it all amazingly. Here is a personal example of the extremes of Gaiman’s literary audience : Over Christmas, my boyfriend received The Sandman, Gaiman’s graphic novel success for adults and my nephew, who is in grade two, received one of Gaiman’s latest for kids, Fortunately, The Milk.  I was reading this book at the time. Neil Gaiman for all! I could go on and on about his books, films, personal life and opinions on the world, but it would save me a few pages if you just go to his website. 

 

ILLUSTRATOR : Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman have a long standing relationship that goes back to the late 1980’s.  He is also a bit a of mixed bag of awesome. McKean is described as an illustrator, photographer, graphic artist, musician, film maker and comic book illustrator. He was the illustrator for the covers of the Sandman series, Coraline, and many other works of Gaiman’s.  He has also worked with John Cale on numerous projects as well. Remember this epic Counting Crows cover? Yeah, that is McKean. Check out his work, it is incredible. 

 

BEST READ ALOUD : I would really love to read this to a class, but as I have mentioned in the past, it is hard to read books that span over one class. It is usually 8 days between classes and sometimes more. This ruins the pleasure of reading chapter books for me and for them, as you have to do a summary every time to get caught up. 

‘There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife has a handle of polished black hone and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately. 

The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet’.

Ah…scary fun!

EXTRAS : It was about a year ago that talk was going around about Ron Howard signing on to do a live action movie and not much has been said since. This book should be a movie.  Coraline was a weird one and look at its success! I would be first in line with all those kiddos. There are lesson plans out there for this book as well. Buy the book here.