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There have been A LOT of books coming in lately about rabbits. Maybe there’s something to them being all in the delivery truck together. Maybe books about rabbits multiply like…rabbits? Maybe after you read these books, you’ll want to find one to come live with you!
Bunny Days, by Tao Nyeu, is a great mix of cartoony graphics, gentle storytelling (it made me think of Dog and Bear stories) and woodland creatures using appliances. Six bunnies get into a couple tight spots, through no fault of their own. Fortunately, Bear is there to help out. There’s a subtle humor in the way that muddy bunnies (the first of the three stories in the book) can be helped by being put in a washing machine and hung up to dry. Sound grim? Don’t worry, everyone is okay in the end.
Peter Rabbit Show Me Your Ears, a nice BIG touch and feel book, takes the characters from Beatix Potter’s popular stories and highlights their features by inviting readers to feel Tom Kitten’s icky sticky paws (really sticky!) or the soft fluffy tail of Squirrel Nutkin (My new bowling name, by the way, will be Squirrel Nutkin). The large drawings look inviting but the original illustrations make an appearance as well, in all their fancy timelessness. Look for this one in the board book section.
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 The lastest Wee Little title from Lauren Thomson follows Wee Little Rabbit as he scampers playfully around a meadow, getting into all kinds of encounters with his fellow creatures. The large, zoomed in and realistic illustrations really animate the li’l critters. They are drawn to scale which is really cool if you’ve ever imagined an encounter between a baby rabbit and a porcupine. All in all, this a very viewable feel-good book.
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As you can see,Sergio Ruzzier’s Rabbit has a suitcase. There are more than a few animals hoping that there’s something in it for them. Something personal and reminds them of their home. And there is! In fact, there’s a pretty amazing amount of stuff for everyone. But what about for Rabbit?
Before we are out of February’s special spotlight on the contributions and endeavors of African American individuals and culture, we should make sure to note this year’s Caldecott award winner, Jerry Pinkney. His detailed watercolors have won a handful of Coretta Scott King Illustrator awards – literally, he has won five times. His other hand is full of Caldecott Honors, five of those as well, including his most recent Medal for The Lion and The Mouse. Mr. Pinkney has a large body of work illustrating Aesop’s Fables and many other works with African American subjects. He’s a really thoughtful artist; just listen a little of what he has to say in some of these interviews. I was especially rapt with his comments on the Magic in the Line segment, the power of lines to create moods, set rhythms, and define spaces.
Here are some more paintings from Mr. Pinkney to persuse.  If you love ‘em, reserve them and borrow them from the library!
What do you see when you look in the mirror? Yourself, sure. But who is that? There’s a lot of answers, which is just what a young, handsome looking dude finds out in this book. As he goes through his day, he meets people in his life and realizes as he meets them that he is something different to each. The meetings take place through lyrical phrases and metaphors written over evocative photographs, each one involving someone holding out a fist that’s met with a BAM! to punctuate the encounter. It’s fun to think of all the relationships you have to other people, and how they see you. The boy reflects “I’m walking tall and/ I’m walking proud./ Looked in the mirror-/ I look like a crowd.”
The author is Walter Dean Myers, who recently won the first ever Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton lifetime acheivement awards this January. The illustrator is his son, Christopher. They make a terrific team.
So, I’m kind of nervous for polar bears. They’ve been listed as a vulnerable species since 2006 and reports last year of unusual, exhausting long journeys ending in tragedy make me feel like I’m watching something slow and inexorable unfold like getting near the end of my pile of clean socks. Granted my dwindling footwear isn’t anywhere near as grave as the polar bear’s disappearing habitat (even if there is some similarily in a shrinking pile of white), if you are at all sensitive to the need to this situation, you’ll realize just how dire some people think it is.Â
What to do? At very least, we can recognize how captivating these creatures are. Imagine what it would be like to be a polar bear! Tasting snow, diving, swimming, eating fish, staying warm in snowstorms, eviscerating seals….though the polar bears that come most quickly to mind are the ones who helped fuel my youth with coke and Klondike bars, there are plenty in picture books. Some have been with us long enough to become familiar, such as Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?. While it’s great to have the limelight of the cover, this book isn’t really about polar bears per se, they are just one animal in a cast. To get a better picture of the polar bear, which I can mean literally when talking about picture books, check out these two new, awesome selections:
My Little Polar Bear simply and gently tells the story of what young polar bears need to know about finding their way in snowstorms and cold ocean waters. It’s really a story about learning confidence and growing into what (eventually) comes naturally.
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Baby Polar is much the same story but it shows a love and fun of exploring the neat parts of being a young polar bear. Sliding down hills, eating snow, staying warm with Mama Polar, making tracks in the snow. It’s fun, and the illustrations make me want to be a polar bear too with nuzzle noses and green claws.Â
***JUST SO YOU KNOW*** All of the posts in our book discussion series contain questions and reviews that could possibly reveal parts of the plot you may rather discover by reading the book. Proceed with caution!***
The Book Discussion Series enhances the reading experience by providing a list of interpretive questions compiled by librarians of the Cleveland [...]
***JUST SO YOU KNOW*** All of the posts in our book discussion series contain questions and reviews that could possibly reveal parts of the plot you may rather discover by reading the book. Proceed with caution!***
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The Book Discussion Series enhances the reading experience by providing a list of interpretive questions compiled by librarians of the Cleveland [...]
We need books! We need stories and voices that say the same things that we hear in our heads; we need to know there are other like us. When I read Lenny’s Space by Kate Banks, that’s exactly how I reacted. Lenny is a boy who is very intelligent and creative but not emotionally on [...]
The buzz of Harry Potter is so huge, at least in my head, that I haven’t been able to put the books down. I reread the Half Blood Prince in anticipation of the movie and then immediately went onto the Deathly Hallows. I loved the movie, too! Excited utterances of “Won-Won!” and “Merlin’s beard!” can [...]
Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father — the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
 Meet peaceful, patient Capricorn Anderson, a dyed-in-the-wool hippie who has grown up on the Garland Commune  for all of his 13 years with his grandmother Rain. It’s been just the two of them until Rain falls and breaks her hip. Cap drives Rain to the hospital, getting arrested in the process. That’s just the beginning of the upheaval in [...]
Peter Rabbit Show Me Your Ears, a nice BIG touch and feel book, takes the characters from Beatix Potter’s popular stories and highlights their features by inviting readers to feel Tom Kitten’s icky sticky paws (really sticky!) or the soft fluffy tail of Squirrel Nutkin (My new bowling name, by the way, will be Squirrel Nutkin). The large drawings look inviting but the original illustrations make an appearance as well, in all their fancy timelessness. Look for this one in the board book section.
My Little Polar Bear