Monday Reading - Time For Halloween

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites.  
              I arrived home last night from a Highlights poetry workshop led by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard. I am full to the brim with writing and reading many poetry books, including Halloween ones new and old. The library there is filled with their published books new and old, as is each room and cabin with a bookshelf full! I read a lot, but didn't take note of them, just enjoyed every time I opened another book! We skyped with Jane Yolen and Nikki Grimes. It was a week I will treasure. 

            One book I finished before I left!

             Ruta Sepetys tells stories that live (so far) in our past of historical events, some (without her deep research) we would never have known about without our own investigation. She says she took eight years to bring this to us, she's added a thorough author's note, research and notes, a bibliography, and a glossary to help us through the Spanish phrases included throughout. In this book of the Spanish Civil War and its effects that have stayed, she expands the complexity by allowing different characters a voice. Although there are a couple of main characters, others touch the heart, too, when learning about their experiences. We try to understand from the outside, as Sepetys expresses that she did herself. It's been a while since I've read a book that kept me worried about what's next at every spot. The resilience and different survival approaches show just how different everyone is. Yet, in that path of survival, one quote scratched in the dirt by a character in jail showed everyone's actions though they did take varied paths: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." It's a marvelous book!

Thanks to Candlewick Press - new Halloween books!

        Kim Norman's rhyming picture book begs to be read aloud, on Halloween and perhaps on "Talk Like A Pirate" Day. The end papers themselves are delightful. In the opening, human bones are scattered and labeled, except for that peg leg! The back is vertical, showing the full skeleton of a pirate, with accompanying pirate wear, like hat, sword and spyglass. He's found all his bones! The four-line rhymes on each page after the opening are good for laughing out loud every time. A poor pirate skeleton's bones have been scattered throughout the sea bed, and he shouts for the creatures down there to help put him back together again. Bob Molar's illustrations of the ocean's dark bottom serves as backdrop for many kinds of colorful creatures and plants as well as peeks at the bones needed, skull first, and on. Each verse defines the bone called for in rollicking rhyme! Here's one from this fun book: 

                                     "Who can spot my shoulder blade,

                                        my shrugging jacket-holder blade,

                                        my shiver-when-I'm-colder blade?

                                        Oh, scapula, come back!"

         It's the first U.S. edition of this imaginary tale by Katie May Green where those twins of Seen and Not Heard return as the moon wakes the children "out" of their picture frames and they climb out the window, into the woods for a hide 'n seek game. Written in rhyme with woodland animals seen having fun watching these Victorian-dressed children, some pages show the twins (on the cover) in various 'hide-outs' while the others look for them, through woods and a maze. There is so much to see and smile about on each page illustrated by Katie May Green in shadowy night-time blues, purples and greens. 

         Remember Pick A Pine Tree? I do and loved it. Here is another by Patricia Toht with perfect rhyming and a story from family to friends to neighborhood traditions, illustrated by Jarvis with pencil, chalk, paint and digital color in sunshine first at the pumpkin patch through evening, then dusky dark at the end when all is lit and Halloween arrives! It's hard to pick a favorite page spread. My favorite crows are there in day with bats replacing later in the dark. A black cat can be found on every page, a fun thing for readers, but when the pumpkins are carved, the faces delight, and first before lighting, time to decorate: 

                                   " Cobwebs strung from post to post.

                                    Rings of gauzy dancing ghosts.

                                    Spiders. Tombstones. 

                                    Dangling bats.

                                    Skeletons and witches' hats."

          Patricia Toht and Jarvis have given us readers another wonder of a book, yes, a Halloween treat, but those autumn illustrations make it a celebration of the season, too! It's wonderful.

        It's the first edition of this book in the U.S., a 'ghostly' tale by Violeta Noy about young Roderic who is the fourth Roderick and among all the ghosts wearing white sheets, is tired of being missed. Noy shows quite a creative flair for illustrating white ghosts, but thank goodness this  young ghost wants to be different. He tried a lot of ideas that do not work, but finally, finds a way to be different and insists that's the way he wants to be. When kids like standing out from the crowd, this time readers will love applauding Roderick for his persistence and courage!

                

          And an olded favorite Halloween poetry book! You can read my Goodreads review here from a few years ago!

Now Reading: I didn't get far, but Wierd Little Robots by Carolyn Crimi is lots of fun so far and I'm nearly finished with an advanced copy of Gae Polisner's new YA novel, Jack Kerouac Is Dead To Me. out next spring!