Monday Reading - Lovely Books

          Visit Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.  

          I have held onto this second book, The Remember Balloons for a while. My husband passed away from Parkinson's with its own kind of dementia, and it wasn't a book I was really wanting to read, though I know it is good to have a picture book to help open the topic for children, to help them understand. Then, Candlewick sent me this first book, Dad's Camera, and I didn't know that it, too, was about Alzheimer's Disease. Both are good reminders that dementia can take different forms and be explained sweetly to children who may need to understand a family member.

           Each person with a disease that attacks the memory is different, as is this father in this moving picture book, an emotional look at a family touched by Alzheimer’s. Dad keeps taking photos with an old camera he has found. The snapshots are meant to celebrate his memories and his life, so his family has something to remember him by. However, they don't understand why he is taking photos of strange things, like his keys, his coffee cup, the objects scattered on his desk. He starts doing a lot of things that are hard to understand, like putting items that belong in the fridge in the cupboard and ones that belong in the cupboard in the fridge. At the end, they do realize that he loved them very much. First published in Australia.

        Jessie Oliveros does a terrific job of telling about Alzheimer's Disease in an easy-to-understand way for young readers. She uses the analogy of balloons as memories and at first the boy telling the story shares he has way more "balloons" than his little brother. His favorite is the one filled with his last birthday party. His mom and dad have more than he does, but his grandpa has more than all of them together, with marvelous stories. As the story moves along, Grandpa sometimes tells about one balloon twice, and then he begins to forget those stories. They simply float away. The boy is shattered, but his parents help him realize that now Grandpa's balloons belong to him that he can share. Dana Wulfekotte illustrates the story with a limited palette except for those beautiful memory balloons.  

       It's a week after the full moon, a delightful time to read this beautiful story, a folktale, of a mother making huge mooncakes, making sure her daughter knows that she is not to take any bites of it. That daughter's name is Little Star. However, in the night, Little Star wakes to look up and see how tasty that cake looks. Perhaps she can have just a nibble? With black sky background, Little Star dressed in pajamas covered with stars, and that beautiful, glowing, delicious-looking Mooncake filling up the pages, bit by bite the reader sees the moon's monthly journey across the sky. I adore the little details, like the crumbs on Little Star's face after her first bite. And the endpapers include the cooking scene with a boxed mix titled Leo and a small splash of spilled milk turns into spiral one sees in outer space. It's a magical book.

      Halloween is Wednesday, time to share a brand new poetry book with spooky and funny poems that are just right for reading aloud, if you want a lot of "belly laughs" and "ews" from the listeners. There is that title poem, a daydream with a haunting tune and all those ghostly animals on this carousel. And there is Medusa and The Jekyll Lantern, each poem darkly illustrated with all the creepy things you want for Halloween. I laughed especially at Joel the zombie, like all children, who needed to escape a family reunion. That final verse, "Your aunties are here! With goodies" they cheer./"Scorpions,/leeches,/and slugs!" brings laughs immediately as Joel (in the picture) burrows into a hole. My favorite, however, is Insect Pie, especially silly because of all the parts about cheese! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

         

       Discovered at my library, first published in Switzerland, author and illustrator are from Argentina. The story is told by a newspaper, first born and then taken to a newsstand, wonders all the while about its destiny. The only one left, a gust of wind tears it apart and each page travels to a different and interesting destination. Perhaps it's a fable to consider through examining each page that really is a story itself. One page lands with a hard-working woman cleaning. She uses her page to clean her mirror. The text shares that "her face grew bright again." (A wadded newspaper page is a good 'rag' to clean glass.) Another page ends as a paper boat and the paper continues to share, but seems to understand that its real use, to offer information, is still not happening. Finally, that ending satisfies! The art is rough acrylic with collage, lovely muted colors. I'd love to share this with a class, feel it has numerous uses for further talk and writing, also art.

           Considering this week's horrific events, I am glad to have read another story of the Nazi rise to power, lessons from our past. This time it is a story of concentration camp prisoners Priska, Rachel, and Anka who gave birth during their terrible time from Auschwitz (fooling the horror of Dr. Mengele) to a work camp then on to Mauthausen concentration camp on a hellish seventeen-day train journey. One began that journey with a newborn, the other two gave birth on this journey. I was continually amazed at their strength despite the deprivation of water and food on a continual basis. It is non-fiction, their stories from their beginnings to the sadness after their liberation, the lives they lived and celebrated to their deaths. From Goodreads: "On the seventieth anniversary of Mauthausen’s liberation from the Nazis by American soldiers, biographer Wendy Holden recounts this extraordinary story of three children united by their mothers’ unbelievable—yet ultimately successful—fight for survival."

Still reading and loving: The Library Book by Susan Orlean