Another Greg Foley written and illustrated winner is Purple Little Bird (2011, Balzer + Bray). In this story, Purple Little Bird loves everything purple. One day, he feels he’s missing something and he goes on an adventure looking for what it could be. No other place he finds feels like home, but he finds what he was
My 4-year-old son and I discovered Jan Thomas’s illustrated picture books this summer. Two that we read were Can You Make a Scary Face? (2009, Beach Lane Books) and What Will Fat Cat Sit On? (2007, Harcourt Children’s Books). My son was able to read many of the words in these books, and he loved the silliness of both
Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan Shea (2011, Blue Apple Books) is simple, delightfully fun picture book for the discerning child. Using windowed lift-the-flap pages, Shea asks which things around us grow, using familiar growing progression as a comparison. For example, my favorite one was this, “if a kit grows and becomes
At one point in my life, I thought I was destined to be a writer: a writer of fiction, that is. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that writing fiction was not my forte. I still love to write, but it took the direction of literary criticism (in college) and now, blogging
The three plays by Tennessee Williams that I’ve read in the past few weeks all dealt with loneliness, the fragility of dreams, and the masks we all wear as we go through life. Given these themes, it’s no wonder a thread of discontent and depression seemed a hallmark of Williams plays. But add a stupendous
In The Grapes of Wrath (published 1939), John Steinbeck captured the lives of his contemporary Americans, those living at or below the poverty line in the midst of the Great Depression. While the Joads’ migrant story was moving and I came to love many of the family members, The Grapes of Wrath is so much
Voltaire’s Candide (originally published 17581) is alternatively titled Optimism. A rosy outlook on life is the main target of Voltaire’s satire. Rather than embracing a truly pessimistic approach to the world, however, Voltaire seems to me to be arguing for a realistic and reasonable approach to life. The humorous look at both optimism and pessimism
Through a series of vignettes, Tove Jansson in The Summer Book (first published 1972) manages to create a magical summer on an island, a summer in which one young girl grows up a little and a grandmother comes to terms with her advancing age. Young Sophie has recently lost her mother, and that’s all we
Melodrama is defined by Merriam-Webster as a work characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization. By creating a world with both excessively good characters and excessively evil characters, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel about the horrors of slavery is certainly melodramatic. Yet, given her intended audience and the
I often enjoy the experience of reading a comic novel, and the two I read in the past month were refreshing, original, and fun. Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol Anya tries hard to avoid sticking out at her private high school, but that’s hard to do when she’s awful in gym class and stuck with
I don’t often have the urge to seek out a young adult novel, but this month has been one of them. I’m pleased to say that I really enjoyed the two I chose. After deals with a teenage mother, and An Abundance of Katherines deals with a genius teenager dealing with yet another break up.
Neftalà is a dreamer, always looking for objects to treasure. When special things happen to him, his imagination takes him away on a wave or a cloud. But his father constantly berates him, calling him an absent-minded idiot. As Neftalà grows, he finds that the poetry he sees in the world around him must escape
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