One Moose, Twenty Mice, Clare Beaton
Imagine a world inhabited by buttons, yarn, thread, and beads made into a fantastic array of animals and insects, and there you have Clare Beaton’s One Moose, Twenty Mice. While it does not strictly have a story (it’s a counting game, featuring one moose, two crabs, three ladybugs, and so on up to 20 mice), this book does have quite a dose of wit. An orange cat is peeping out behind numbers and scenery at the animals, or taking a swat at them from a safe distance. This is a favorite book for a certain pre-toddler who loves to put his finger on the cat’s face, whenever it appears. (Diane Magras)
Back to the TopMy America, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, illustrated by Ashley Bryan
My America is a 13-line poem that was published in picture book format in 2007. Each line in the poem is a question: “Have you seen my land? / Seen my beasts and fowl?” The illustrations are a collaborative effort: spreads of Gilchrist’s muted watercolors alternate with the explosions of color for which Maine’s own Ashley Bryan is so well known. Unfortunately, it had not yet been published when Born to Read compiled a list of children’s books that celebrate the United States. If we had that list to do over, My America would have a very prominent place. (Brita Zitin)
Amber was Brave, Essie was Smart, Vera Williams
What makes the really bad things in life bearable? Maybe if your dad’s in prison and you can’t accept that he’s bad? Or maybe because your electricity is cut off because your Mom can’t pay the bill? Vera Williams, who started writing as a grandmother, has written a charming picture book, Amber was Brave, Essie was Smart, about two very different sisters who support each other in the hard spots and make the most of the little joys in life, like cocoa and Wilbur the Bear and Beauty Parlor Day on Sunday. New Books, New Readers uses it in the “Real Life” series, but it’s a great gift for a sister going through a rough patch or siblings who compete rather than cooperate! (Carolyn Sloan, who has a very Brave and wonderful sister!)
The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro
Ryder, a great pianist and lecturer whose talents have healed many a town and city, arrives in some confusion in a new town where he is to give a performance and a talk that will bring a broken community together. Strange things begin to happen almost at once: an elevator ride at the hotel takes many pages, his hotel room not just looks like but is his childhood bedroom, and doors from restaurants far from the hotel lead somehow deep into the hotel again. A surreal story with true human emotion making every scene real, this engaging novel follows Ryder’s conversations and experiences with Sophie and her son Boris (quite possibly his son), from whom he is always absent thanks to his career; Brodsky, the drunken once-great pianist who is supposed to save the town with a performance of critical cultural significance; and the hotel manager’s son Stephan, also a pianist, who does not feel he is good enough at his art to satisfy either of his parents’ dreams, and who, like Brodsky, is to perform on the night of Ryder’s talk. One word in this paragraph hints at the secret that may help readers understand the construct of this beautiful novel, but even if you don’t fathom it until the end, it is a read well worth having. (Diane Magras)
Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence, Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley with introduction by T. Berry Brazelton
Having heard frequent references to this work since it was published about 10 years ago, (1997) I couldn’t resist the impulse to take it off the shelf at my local library several weeks ago. Is it delicious, cheerful escapist reading for a Maine winter night? Certainly not, but it is compelling, especially for those of us fascinated by early childhood development and dedicated to changing the culture of early childhood education and care in this country. Combining case histories of children who have committed violent crimes alongside research about many related factors, such as brain development, temperament, and prenatal exposure to adverse experiences, it reads on the one hand like the worst horror story for which there is no happy ending, and yet the very existence of the book, the research it has documented, gives much hope that it will inspire radical culture change. As Brazelton says in his introduction, “the authors have done a monumental job of capturing our present knowledge of early development and the influences of the earliest environment on a child’s development process. ....We are the richest, most powerful nation, and yet, we are the least child and family-oriented culture in the civilized world. This volume lays the foundation for a groundswell of public awareness.” (Denise Pendleton)
Notes from an Open Book welcomes feedback from its readers. Please contact Diane Magras by email at diane@mainehumanities.org or by phone at (207)773-5051 ext. 208 (toll-free 1-866-637-3233, ext. 208) to respond.