One of the liabilities of being a teacher and children’s librarian for 45 years is that it’s difficult to get through a day without thinking of a children’s book…images, both literary and graphic, come to me almost daily! Being newly retired I miss all those opportunities of sharing my favorite books with children and teachers. So perhaps you can imagine the joy and appreciation I felt when the editors of the MSLA Forum asked me if I’d be interested in doing a column about children’s books. I didn’t hesitate -- though now I am, hoping that the books I select will be books that many of you are not so familiar with, and ones that you might find useful and as delightful and compelling as I do! I would love to have some feedback (positive or negative/constructive) which will help me formulate this column to be something you as librarians will enjoy and be able to use within your work with children.
I decided that a good topic for the Fall Forum might be “trees” – how can we miss them? For us in New England, trees bring untold color and beauty in the fall and spring, shade and comfort in the summer, and beauty and promise in winter.
One of my favorite fall books (I must make a disclaimer here, I have lots and lots of favorites, as I’m sure you do, too!) is The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger (N.Y.: Greenwillow, 2008). I find this book filled with a child’s wonder. What if…you were the very least leaf on a tree, out of how many thousands or more, and you just couldn’t let go. I loved to have children think about that. Would they have let go with all their friends, been the first? What would it feel like to be the very last? And then…how would you feel looking to another part of the tree and finding out that you weren’t alone. There’s another leaf, a red one, over there! “You’re here?” “I am.” “Like me!” “Will you?” “I will!”
I decided that a good topic for the Fall Forum might be “trees” – how can we miss them? For us in New England, trees bring untold color and beauty in the fall and spring, shade and comfort in the summer, and beauty and promise in winter.
One of my favorite fall books (I must make a disclaimer here, I have lots and lots of favorites, as I’m sure you do, too!) is The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger (N.Y.: Greenwillow, 2008). I find this book filled with a child’s wonder. What if…you were the very least leaf on a tree, out of how many thousands or more, and you just couldn’t let go. I loved to have children think about that. Would they have let go with all their friends, been the first? What would it feel like to be the very last? And then…how would you feel looking to another part of the tree and finding out that you weren’t alone. There’s another leaf, a red one, over there! “You’re here?” “I am.” “Like me!” “Will you?” “I will!”
The illustrations in this book are equally engaging…follow the swirly yellow line at the beginning of the book through the endpapers and the title page to the little yellow leaf, and again at the end when it lets go, soaring with its friend, the red leaf. The font changes in style, size and color on the pages of many types of paper: graph, lined, colored and collages. Berger is known for her use of ticket stubs, newspaper, receipts, and all sorts of ephemera in her illustrations. Especially effective, I think in her double page spread collage illustration of the sun, and the bird’s eye view of the patchwork fields. All of the elements of this book work together to give the reader a total sensual experience.
Massachuseets state science standards includes the study of trees. I loved to share A Log's Life by Wendy Pfeffer (N.Y. Simon & Shuster, 1997) with my students. I would open the book and begin leafing through the pages. Then I would read Robin Brickman’s ”Illustrator Note” on the dedication page “I made the illustrations by cutting, painting, sculpting, and gluing pieces of watercolor paper together … with the exception of an occasional human hair, the illustrations consist only of printed paper and glue.” Suddenly everyone is looking, coming closer, and there are words of disbelief.
I’ve got them! The book begins, “Deep in the forest a great oak tree stands”. There is a picture of the great tree, but it’s a bird’s eye view! The different perspectives the illustrations take throughout this book encourage the reader to look more closely. And then the text, the beautiful descriptive text takes us through this circle/cycle adventure of what happened to the old oak tree. The text uses verbs that are rich and just as descriptive as the adjectives. Here are some from one of my favorite pages “strong wind whips…old oak bends…rain pelts…wind tosses…lightening flashes and sizzles down its trunk…thunderous crack startles … tall oak begins to topple…squirrels scramble…blustery wind tears …tree crashes down, shaking the forest floor…Branches break. Limbs splinter. Leaves scatter.” The story continues with what happens to the tree, the animals that inhabit it, the weathering and rotting of it, until “What is left looks like dirt. It feels like dirt. It smells like dirt. It is dirt.” And of course, an acorn falls. From a nearby oak tree…
Poetrees by Douglas Florian (N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, 2010) is a wonderful book to share because its message is completely meshed in the structure of the book. In order to read it, you need to hold the book vertically, as a tree stands. Florian’s poetry and his stylized illustrations give readers an image of the uniqueness of each tree. I especially love the “Baobab”. Having seen these trees in the African landscape of the Serengeti, it’s hard to not be impressed by them. “Upside –Down Tree” perfectly describes the Baobab with its branches looking like a tangle of roots at its thick top instead of reaching out sideways from the tree. This book is made for reading aloud. The white text often blends in with the pictures and is sometimes hard for a child to read. Reading it aloud, however, the text blends with the pictures and students can see what they hear - rich descriptive language blending with loose illustrations using a variety of medium, selected appropriately for each of the different trees. Many appear childlike and students can feel as though they could have done them.
The poem for “The Seed” takes the form of the infinity sign, appropriately representing the cycle of life. If you look closely at “Roots” you can see a stylized picture of a person and the lines going down and sideways are the roots “to help the tree get a grip, To anchor it so it won’t slip”. “Tree Rings,” with concentric circles, “Leaves” on a long leaf, and “Bark , vertical bumpy lines, all have illustrations that highlight the topic. In the back of the book there’s a “Glossatree” with an informative paragraph about each tree.
A more recently published book, As an Oak Tree Grows by G. Brian Karas (N.Y.: Penguin Random House, 2014) takes a historical look at an oak tree and how it changes along with its surroundings. Inspired by an oak tree in his own yard, Karas has written a picture book about what has happened in history during the span of the oak tree’s life, 1775-2000. Across the bottom of the book is a timeline that adds a highlighted date with each 25- year period. The illustration of the tree in the center of each double page spread grows as the story continues, but the emphasis is on what is happening in the surroundings. A town is built, factories, a port and ships, and railroads all change the original landscape. “The land twinkled with lights (electricity) as stars faded in the night sky”. Carts and buggies are replaced with automobiles, and the air is “filled with jet controls and radio waves”. The oak tree is now 200 years old and has seen many changes and survived many storms, except for the last one, which splits it in two. The wood from the tree is recycled for furniture, firewood, and mulch. There is an illustration showing the stump of the oak tree with its many rings and a fold-out poster of the stump with all 200 rings entitled “Watch the World Change As an Oak Tree Grows” is included in the back cover. There is a page in the back of the book with some facts about oak trees. I was a bit disappointed in how the author handled the ending with an illustration of the stump and along side it a tiny sprout of a new oak tree and the words, “A new day dawns. Once again the ground is warm and welcoming, as a new oak tree grows.” No indication about how the tiny sprout got there, or that the new tree was from an acorn, which was only mentioned in the first line of the story. Reading this book along with A Log's Life might be a good pairing. One gives an inclusive background on the cycle of life, and the other an appreciation of how long a two hundred year life really is!
The last book to share is The Ghost-Eye Tree by Bill Martin, Jr. and illustrated by Ted Rand (N.Y.: Henry Holt, 1985). This is a book to be shared when the leaves are no longer all on the trees and the trees become an ominous sight at night in the shadows and light of a full moon. Set in a time before grocery stores when children were sent out at night to do errands such as getting milk in a pail from a neighboring farmer, it’s a story that needs some historical explanations and staging before reading. I used to turn out the lights to set the mood. Written mostly in dialogue, it’s best to use several voices for the different characters. Brother and sister go off together to get some milk from a neighbor, but they have to pass by the frightening old oak tree, the ghost–eye tree halfway there. The brother wears a hat and when his sister teases him about it, he mutters his responses. They talk themselves through the way to the farmer’s barn, but on the way back, taking turns carrying the milk bucket, their fears are heightened by the hooting of an owl. Ted Rand’s dark water-colored pictures of the tree span two pages with a narrow strip of text in between. The moon is the eye of the tree and the long branches appear to be large hands reaching out for the children. “ Oooo…look…look… The halfway tree, the Ghost-Eye tree…turned its head and looked at me… Oooo…The halfway tree…the Ghost-Eye tree…shook its arms…and reached…for ME!”
When I reach out for the children then, I get them every time! Reading with different paces, fast and slow, also accentuate the scariness and the relief in the text. They run all the way home, spilling a lot of milk and the sister realizes her brother doesn’t have his hat! He lost it back by the tree. His sister runs off to get it in spite of his protests and comes back with it. She adds water to the pail to hide the spilled milk. The relationship of the brother and sister in this story is a special one where they both tease each other, but look out for each other. A satisfying story to read aloud with a gripping sparse text and beautiful moody water colored illustrations to heighten the drama, this is a book my students would request for weeks afterwards.
Char Sidell is a retired Library Teacher from the Needham Public Schools. Contact her at charlottesidell@gmail.com to share ideas for this column.
Char Sidell is a retired Library Teacher from the Needham Public Schools. Contact her at charlottesidell@gmail.com to share ideas for this column.