Caldecott Corner: David Wiesner

David Wiesner has been awarded the Caldecott Medal three times and the Caldecott Honor twice. While his award-winning picture books are a bit out of my comfort level (for they have very words), Wiesner is able to carry stories with only illustration.

In November, The Well-Read Child did a highlight of books like this: How to Read Books without Words (Out Loud). That gave me great ideas for how to introduce my son to these books. At 15 months, he’s obviously still too young for David Wiesner’s books. But while I’m not all that comfortable with wordless books, I did find some of these to be quite interesting. Continue reading »

Martel-Harper Challenge Reviews (2009 1st Quarter)

If you would like to share your reviews for the Martel-Harper Challenge (2009 1st quarter), please leave a link to your post(s) in the comments to this post.

If you do not have a blog, feel free to share your thoughts about the works you’ve read in the comments as well.

If you’d like to join the Martel-Harper Challenge for 2009 1st quarter, visit here for more information.

Thanks and happy reading!

Material World by Peter Menzel

In a similar manner to What the World Eats (reviewed here), Material World by Peter Menzel attempts to illustrate the material wealth (or material poverty) of various families around the globe by photographing a family’s household belongings and illustrating the family’s daily life in photographs.

Using full-color photography, each country is highlighted first with a two-page photograph of an “average” family in the street (or a field) with their possessions and a listing of those basic possessions. Then, there is a summary of the country’s history and the family’s statistics, such as house size, family size, and income (which are average for the country). There is also an information bar with statistics relating to the country, such as fertility rate and country population. Text and photographs illustrate the daily life of the chosen families. Continue reading »

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkein

In flowing, beautiful language, The Silmarillion tells the origin and early tales of J.R.R. Tolkein’s middle-earth. Written as “Elven” songs, The Silmarillion is dense at times. Yet as the tale of the creation of Arda and the children of Ilúvatar (both Elves and men) unfolded, I was in awe of not just Tolkein’s incredible control over language but with his unbounded imagination in creating a new world with new gods, fantastic creatures, and a familiar story of good versus evil.

I’ve been told that The Silmarillion is not for the faint of heart. I’ve been told that The Silmarillion is only for die-hard fans of The Lord of the Rings. I’ve been told that The Silmarillion is impossible to understand and get through.

I don’t think so.

I have never read The Hobbit. I have never read The Lord of the Rings (although I started once). I watched the movies and was entertained. And then, as my husband and I read The Silmarillion together over the past six months, reading about 20 pages a week, I personally have come to love the style, the stories, and the world Tolkein has masterfully created. Continue reading »

Death in Children’s Literature: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

In the picture book Love You Forever, Robert Munsch captures every mother’s feelings of unconditional love. I can’t read it without my eyes tearing, and I love the tender expressions of love. But I wonder if children like it. Continue reading »

Fundamentals of Photography by Tom Ang

Tom Ang’s Fundamentals of Photography is aptly subtitled “the essential handbook for both digital and film cameras.” As a very amateur photographer, I was fascinated by the technical explanations for photography: how cameras work, how light is best captured, and how to process photographs appealingly. While I will never again photograph using film cameras, I was likewise fascinated to learn the technical aspects of film photography. For, just as Tom Ang seamlessly wove both film and digital photography together throughout his handbook, understanding how film photography works should be seamlessly tied to understanding the tools available to a digital photographer. I am convinced that understanding film technology (of which I was woefully ignorant) will help me in my digital processes.

Fundamentals of Photography is a dense book, full of technical terms, explanations, and diagrams. As such, it was challenging to read it cover to cover. Besides, it was a new book at the library, so I had a three-week time limit, which made it all the more challenging. I would have loved to study it over the course of an entire semester in school or maybe during my lifetime – for there are so many details within it that were unfamiliar to me. Despite the difficulty, reading it was incredibly rewarding. Continue reading »

Blogging Goals, Reading Journal (January 15), and a Winner

I have so many “reading goals” for the New Year that this week I started to feel a bit burned out, like I was reading just to cross it off the list. I should be reading for my own personal development and enjoyment. I also want to join in Reading Journal this week (is there a “day” for that meme?) and Library Loot, since they are related. Finally, I’ve selected a winner of The Book that Changed My Life. Continue reading »

Weekly Geeks and the Premios Dardo/Primo Darios Award

Weekly Geeks this week is about telling fellow readers about your favorite book blogs. Then I was awarded the Premios Dardo award (also called the Primo Darios Award) by three different bloggers: Tuesday in Silhouette, Rose City Reader, and Jackets and Covers. So I better get busy telling you my favorites!

This award “acknowledges the values that every blogger shows in his or her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values every day.”

Well, I try to!

I could turn around and give this award to those who gave it to me. I could list my entire blogroll. I’ve mentioned some of my favorite blogs before. I’m going to share 15 blogs I haven’t shared before. So without further ado, here are fifteen blogs I haven’t mentioned before who write and read good stuff. Continue reading »

Death and War in Children’s Literature: Two Newberys about the Revolution

There was no doubt that John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (reviewed here) was written to teach both children and adults lesson about Christianity and life; there was little attempt to veil the message behind the story.

While the message in modern children’s literature may not be so thinly veiled, to me it seems obvious that authors still impart their subtle messages into a text that is otherwise a story. This is all the more obvious in stories for children.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (a Newbery Award winner) and My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier (a Newbery Honor book) both tell the story of a 12- to 16-year-old boy during the American Revolution of the 1770s. Both books were written by both accomplished children’s authors and historians; both are accurate portrayals of war. And yet, each story has a distinct message about war. What that message is should be obvious to adults when they realize that Johnny Tremain was written in the 1940s and My Brother Sam was written in the 1970s.

Note: While the following review and analysis may provide “spoilers,” these “spoilers” seem pretty obvious given the subject matter of the books: The American Revolutionary War. Therefore, I don’t believe they would actually “spoil” the book for an interested adult reader. Continue reading »

Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Ficcciones by Jorge Luis Borges is about  170 pages in Spanish; the English translation of the same book is about 120 pages (within Borges’ Collected Fictions). Why, then, has this me taken weeks to get through?

Borges’ writing style is powerful. In some sense, I’m glad I struggled through Borges just to get a feel for his different style. But unlike Nabokov’s powerfully written stories, Borges’ well-written stories are weird. I seriously can’t think of any other word to describe them. I overall did not like them, and I will never read more Borges. Continue reading »