Monday Reading - More Wow!

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

        I'll have a giveaway post tomorrow. Be sure to look for it!       
       If you are interested, I'm writing a poem a day for poetry month, posting a second post on the days that I share reviews.
        I also read The Rent Collector by Camron Wright, review here on Goodreads.

        One doesn't always have to write a story about racism, you can create a graphic novel about it. Jerry Craft has done just that in this book, New Kid. Every stereotype occurs as Jordan, the kid who is new, attends a wealthy, mostly white independent school. He comes from a regular neighborhood and faces incorrect assumptions often, those about skin color and an expectation of poverty or being raised by one parent, food preferences, sports preferences. Others face incorrect assumptions, too! I like that every kid is treated as unique. The white kid who lives in a mansion sees his busy father rarely, appears lonely. The black kid who lives in a mansion does not like video games. This particular main character, Jordan, has never played a team sport.  His love is art. He shows that he understands how different neighborhoods call for different actions as he rides the subway back and forth to school. He really wants to go to a special school for the arts. 
          Enhancing the text and the action, of course, is Craft's work in a graphic style. Expressions on faces are brilliant. When one kid wants to express OMG, all that is needed is to see a head leaning back so far, it's nearly upside down! When Jordan is being talked to by his parents, Craft shows this seventh grader shrinking, shrinking, into Baby Jordan! Once in a while, readers get to see a double-page spread of Jordan's own art of one subject or another, like "The Dude Pyramid, A Guide to Cafeteria Hierarchy." And the chapter headings give fun previews of what's ahead. Did the book end too happily? I don't know, but I did see all kinds of kids, teachers, too, learn to bend and change assumptions, so perhaps it is not so unrealistic a story, if everyone's in it to learn about others.
        

Thanks to Charlesbridge for the following two books.

          This heartbreaking and heart-mending story was first published in 2008, now brought out again this year in paperback. Priscilla is a slave, only four when her mother is sold to another master. She remembers the hollyhocks her mother planted by the cow pond, and at ten she, too, is sold to a Cherokee family but slips some seeds into her pocket. We watch her continuing to plant while growing up and ending freed through a fortunate meeting of a man who, with his wife, spent their money purchasing and freeing children, then adopting them. More details are added in an author's note from which this true story is based along with instructions for creating hollyhock dolls. Alter's realistic illustrations keep some of the hollyhock theme that tells Priscilla's story, but adds in stark paintings too, like the double-page spread showing one harsh part of the Trail of Tears. It is a lovely story.

        Part imagination, part true story, Yevgenia Nayberg tells about Anya, the young girl growing up in Russia, the young girl who used her left hand. Neighbors told her that was NOT right. People whispered about Anya's left hand. She was forced to learn to use her right hand in school. In Russia, only the right hand was "right". But in art, to draw, she secretly drew with her left and she formed a secret society who all were 'lefties', her own discoveries. Who were they--da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Michaelangelo! What happens later when the family moves to New York City is a pleasure to read and see. Yevgenia's art, a mixed media wonder on the pages, shows enough realism to accompany the words, but her imaginative art fills her story with whimsical parts, too, like the page when she shows Anya's skill with her right hand.  but it is not her right hand, only looks like a right one because she is upside down in a handstand (right one) holding a spoon. To be "right" is subject to varied interpretations for sure.

          You simply have to read it, because. . .  And you need to see it, because. . .  Thanks Mo Willems and Amber Ren. I love that both shared the 'because' of why they write and why they paint on the inside cover.

         If we take the time to look, and take the time to wonder, many things in our wide world tell us that we'll be okay, just listen to them. In rhyming text, Shelley Moore Thomas writes a book of inspirational learning, "from Tree to Sea". The opening part is a beautiful welcome into our earth's treasures: "Trees show me how to stand tall. Even when the wind tries to blow me down, I dance with the breeze. I do not fall." Christopher Silas Neal's illustrations fill these moments with beautifully colored settings:  a young girl dances beneath a tree in the wind, two young boys care for seeds in a garden like caring for a friend, and clouds flow across a page as the young girl floats above her problems with a kite. It will be fun to read this with a group of students, hearing their conversation after.

         The bear (on his piano) is still doing well, and this time we first meet Hector, a fiddle-player and Hugo, his dog. Close companions, Hector finally realizes he will never play the big halls in his dreams, so packs away his fiddle. Surprises do happen, and Hugo must miss that playing, begins to play himself, and gains a crowd on the roof. The bear is gathering a band of musical animals and Hugo is invited. That's when the friendship tie is broken. What happens when one loses a friend because of envy? Sometimes sad things; sometimes sweet ones.  

What's Next: Children of Blood and Bone - Toni Adeyemi, on my must read list. Her next one is out this fall.