Monday Reading - Beauties From 2019

              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.  

           You can find my #MustReadin2020 post here! 

           Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a super holiday with family and friends, and have had a great start to 2020!

            Here is a story for young readers who may not know what D-Day really meant in all its horror, yet triumph, too. The relationships already there, then made during the battle are not as deeply shown. After all, it is only the description of one day. Yet the gathering together of all the parts, all the people who fought, perhaps fell, perhaps survived, beautifully exemplifies the definition of 'allies', which is "to unite or form a connection or relation between". The code name examples like "Operation Overlord" for the entire operation are used and Gratz further explains the background of some of his own invented names, like "Operation Bathing Suit", based on some truths. He manages to include areas not always included like the prejudicial treatment of black soldiers and the exclusion of women on that day. Many, many parts make the whole and while I'm glad they were included, sometimes I wished for more of the stories. It is a good introduction to that important day in history.


              It's number one of my #mustreadin2020 list!

          I first learned about Ashley Bryan through his gorgeous picture book Freedom Over me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan. This time he writes about the years of his life spent at war, a time he rarely shared with anyone until now. It is an artist's book, created something like a scrapbook with lots of original material included, but also shown in small paragraphs in case it's hard to read his writing. He was in art school when he was drafted in 1943 during World War II, eventually ending up on Omaha Beach during D-Day. He worked within an all-black battalion, is sharing some of the prejudices and restrictions placed on black soldiers, no matter the good work, no matter that many died for their country just as others did. His thoughts tell the readers that despite the terrible time, his art was at least part of how he survived. He carried paper and pencil, sometimes crayons, everywhere. And when supplies were low, he used toilet paper, one sheet at a time. From war to peace, Bryan drew scenes and people, recording the who and the what of his contacts, from Boston to Scotland to France. Touching on racism and the Nazi beliefs offer a story of interest to us today as well as the yesterdays. The art highlights the words as he tells this story of his life in the army. It's a beautiful book that brings much to ponder as we know those prejudices continue to exist today, nearly seventy-five years later! 


           The following books center on both memories and the importance in one's life about a place, each one special.

             I grew up with one set of grandparents running a full working farm, with such a barn that Patricia MacLachlan describes in this story. It's told by a boy who was five when many came to help build this barn. A picture of the more than 100 people who helped hangs on a wall inside. MacLachlan lets the storyteller take us readers through the beginnings and through the years as he grows up, returns home to help run the farm, tells of sleepovers in the loft, a resident owl and mice scurrying for the crumbs left by the children. I participated once during a harvest time on a friend's farm, and the picture of a very long table heaping with food to feed the construction helpers made me remember that's how it was, all gathering to celebrate something wonderful and complete. There are other special parts, shown in gorgeous paintings by Kenard Pak as he shows the wide-open prairie where (perhaps) a hundred-year barn still sits. 

   
      Up early to dress warm and then off a dad and son go, through this "winter city", the destination, "big icy sled hills". On the way, James Gladstone describes the in poetic words as they take a toboggan down the street "a soup of salty slushes, full of sliding buses splashing, spraying, sploshing, soaking walkers on the sidewalk". Illustrations by Gary Clement fill us with shivery and detailed pictures of this journey, ending with snow angels in this 'icicle factory". It's a delight to see and read! Endpapers are such fun with more than one glimpse of the sledding down that hill!

        Imagine an adventure where one travels a river, from its mountainous beginnings, to see and experience what one can do, can see. This is the travel on the great Hudson River, all the way to New York Harbor, to the incoming Atlantic Ocean. This traveler, a young woman, faces rapids and dams, is helped by locks and a few people on the shore. She stops to pick blackberries until a young bear cub arrives, then scurries into the canoe again. She camps out, and Elisha Cooper describes my favorite line: "The moon climbs up among the stars. She is alone, but not. The river stays beside her, mumbling to her and to itself all through the night". Cooper captures the idea of being small in such an adventure but shows the beauty seen when one opts to take it on. Cooper adds a note to tell how he did his research, admitting he would not be strong enough for this trip, but someone could. And he adds a page of the Hudson River's history, too. It's a lovely book to read together, to talk about how it might be to do. 

           In Spanish and English, the author, René Colato Lainez, tells his own story of his travel from El Salvador with his father to join his mother, already in the US. The shoes were sent to him by his mother for the journey and he uses them to tell that tale. Those shoes experience so much, become 'swimming shoes' when a trailer they stayed in flooded. They pick up a nail that makes a hole and keep him going when the mountains are high and they are so tired. Cruzando Tres Fronteras's art fills the pages with the colors of motion and fatigue, happiness and danger. They travel three countries; Papa once loses his wallet and they must stop while he works to earn some money. While it's hard to imagine the perils faced on these trips, we know that even now a Papá and his son are making the journey, perhaps with new shoes!

Now Reading: Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker