The Wednesday Surprise

The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting
no awards that I'm aware of

I loved this book. Eve Bunting is a pretty amazing author. She has written GOBS of books (I'm quite sure it's more than 100) and I have enjoyed several of her picture books. She takes on challenging topics like the Vietnam Memorial (The Wall) or anti Arab prejudice (One Green Apple) or surviving the German concentration camps (One Candle) or a riot  in the inner city (Smoky Night).

She has other books that are easy readers or chapter books or retelling of Folk Tales, but it's these sensitive picture book stories about children in relation to real live situations that I'm most familiar with and stay with me. She's won a bunch of honors and awards, but one of them that she herself holds dearest was a "Heal the World" award given to her by an elementary school.

The Wednesday Surprise falls in the category of a well told picture book story about a sensitive subject. I don't want to spoil the surprise! But it's a wonderful story and I recommend it!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems
2004 Caldecott  Honor

Also:
Don't let the Pigeon Stay Up Late
The Pigeon Wants a Puppy


I have to admit, I think Mo Willems is brilliant. He has a way of getting in the brains of young people like few others. My daughter age 7 LOVES his books, particularly the Knuffle Bunny series and the Pigeon series, both of which seem to be based on his "hands on" experiences with his own daughter.

He has a couple of websites worth checking out. He has one: Mo Willems
and the Pigeon (and other characters) have their own! : Pigeon Presents! Starring Mo Willems' Pigeon!

Anyhow, back to the book report. The pigeon books are funny. Based on a one sided conversation full of all the things kids say. "Hey, can I drive the bus?" "Please?" "I'll be careful."

In a cartoony style with "talk bubbles".

At my house our favorite hands down, is Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late.  I have read that one to my 7 year old daughter at least once or twice a day since it arrived from the library. And I'm afraid there are reasons she finds it funny (but I won't go into the bedtime issues at our house at this time!)

I've just about memorized it, in fact if I'm not getting these quotes exactly right it's because the book is downstairs beside the bed, and I"m quoting from memory, but I think you'll get the idea!

 "But I'm not tired! In fact, I'm in the mood for a hot dog party! What do you say? . . . NO?! . . . humpf."

"How about five more minutes? . . . What's FIVE MINUTES IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS?"

"YAWN . . . That was NOT a yawn! I was stretching!"

"It's the middle of the day in China!"

etc.

Hilarious. I recommend Mo Willems in general and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late in particular!

The Hello Goodbye Window; Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie

The Hello,  Goodbye Window by Norton Juster, illustrated by Chris Raschka
2006 Caldecott Medal

Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie by Norton Juster, illustrated by Chris Raschka

Both of these books feature a girl and her visits to her Grandpa and Nanna. The Hello, Goodbye Window got the award, but at our house we LOVE Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie  even more! Sourpuss and Sweetie pie discusses the very relevant topic of rapid mood changes in young people!  My seven year old daughter has asked us to read it multiple times each day for the past couple of weeks!

Both feature these wonderful loose colorful illustrations by Chris Raschka. And a really fun connected loving relationship between the grandparents and kid. There is humor and wisdom which is a combination I favor. I'd recommend both books, but especially Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie! 

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? and more by Steve Jenkins

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
2004 Caldecott Honor

Big and Little by Steve Jenkins

What Do You Do When Someone Wants to Eat You?  by Steve Jenkins

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this author illustrator. Since I also have environmental education in my bag of tricks, I have a particular appreciation for these books that convey fascinating information about animals together with beautiful paper cut collages made from hand painted water colored paper. Luscious combination!

The illustrations remind me a little of Eric Carle, these are also paper cut collages, but the papers used for the collages are more delicate--- water colored and hand made paper, and the results are a little more refined. (Make no mistake I love Eric Carle!)

What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? talks about unusual animal body parts. Noses of platypuses, elephants, star nosed moles, hyenas, and alligators. Ears, tails, eyes, feet, mouths of an array of other animals. The format gives close ups of the featured body parts first, and then you turn the page to learn more. That way you can guess at what's going on before turning the page. I like a book that is interactive that way. At the end of the book there is more information about each animal. I love it when facts are so amazing they read like poetry. . . . "The platypus closes it's eyes under water and uses its sensitive bill to detect the faint electric pulses emitted by its prey." Or "The entire human body has more than 600 muscles, but there are as many as 100,000 muscles in an elephant's trunk."

What Do You Do When Someone Wants to Eat You?   Introduces us to 14 animals peculiar defense mechanisms. "The blue-tongued skink startles attackers. . . by sticking out it's large, bright blue tonuge and wiggling it from side to side." Or, "The basilisk lizard is known in South America as the Jesus Christ lizard. It can escape it's enemies. . .  by running across the surface of ponds and streams, using its large feet and great speed to keep it from sinking into the water."

Again the wonderful paper cut illustration and "wow" inspiring fascinating facts!

Big and Little is about animals that are related to one another but very different in size. The animals are illustrated to scale for comparison (one inch equals 8 inches). "The capybara, the world's largest rodent, weighs as much as one thousand deer mice." OK, I'm totally a sucker for this kind of thing. I love it.

He also has a page of silouettes that are at the scale of one inch equals two and a half feet. With a human being included to compare all the animals at once. And there is a couple of pages of additional information about each animal. I always find this "additional information" to be really interesting, but also hard to get through for some reason and I wonder how many young readers actually get to read it. My kids never have the patience for that kind of thing!

Anyhow, I can totally recommend this author illustrator and look forward to seeking out more of his books! Plus I'll be sharing these with my outdoor explorer campers tomorrow!

Knuffle Bunny

Knuffle Bunny; A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems

2005 Caldecott Honor Book

Knuffle Bunny Too; a Case of Mistaken Identity  by Mo Willems
2008 Caldecott Honor Book


Knuffle Bunny Free; An Unexpected Diversion by Mo Willems

I love the Knuffle Bunny books and so does everyone in my family. They are worth reading again and again. They are hilarious and deal with the stuff real kids care about!

The series begins with Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale where in our hero Trixie is a pre-verbal toddler and on a trip to the laundry mat with her dad, her beloved Knuffle Bunny gets thrown in with the wash. After a frantic race through the neighborhood back to the laundry mat, the bunny is recovered.

The pictures in these books are extra cool. They have black and white PHOTOS of real places with cartoon characters "playing" in these photographed "sets." So, there is, for example a photo of a city block with cartoon people walking down the real sidewalk and Trixie's mom standing on the front steps waving. There is something really fun about this juxtaposition of real and imaginary. I love the luscious art work of many other picture books. These illustrations are not that. They are silly. Profoundly, wonderfully, silly.

I viewed an interview with Mo Willems on you tube and he said that he purposely tried to draw his main characters so SIMPLY that a small child could make a reasonably good drawing of Knuffle Bunny or Trixie themselves, and thus extend their adventures into their own imaginative play.

In Knuffle Bunny Too Trixie is a little older and she and Dad are walking throught the neighborhood on the way to Pre-K at the local school. Trixie is excited to be taking her one-of-a-kind Knuffle Bunny to meet all her friends at school.  When she gets there another girl Sonja has Knuffle Bunny too! "Suddenly, Trixie's one-of-a-kind Knuffle Bunny wasn't so one-of-a-kind anymore."

So many conflicts arise that the teacher takes the bunnies! And returns them at the end of the day. In the middle of the night Trixie realizes "That is not my bunny!" at which point Trixies daddy tried to exaplain what "2:30 a.m." means. Another race through the neighborhood in the middle of the night returns the bunnies to their rightful owners.  And a new friendship is forged!

Knuffle Bunny Free concludes the saga. When Knuffle Bunny is left in an airplane after an international flight. And then miraculously FOUND on the way home. And then even more amazingly, then given to a small baby who was crying on the plane.

The books acknowledgements refer to "The real Trixie and her mommy" and I very much WANT these to be true stories. I searched for the answer to my question (Did this really happen? Is Trixie your little girl? Are YOU the Dad?) In his FAQ someone asks "Are the Knuffle Bunny stories true?" and he replies "They are completely true, except for the parts I make up."

The Red Book; The Museum Trip; The Secret Box

The Red Book by Barbara Lehman
2005 Caldecott Honor Book

Also by the same author---
The Museum Trip
The Secret Box


I am pretty excited to be introduced to this author who I was previously unfamiliar with. I looked up The Red Book because it was a Caldecott Honor book, and when I saw it was a wordless picture book, I got everything on the shelf that she had written! My kids like wordless picture books. Jabu (age 10) likes graphic novels and comic books and these are akin to that somehow. And Makayla  (age 6) is just learning to read, so to be able to "read" a book entirely on her own is satisfying to her.

Some wordless picture books are designed with pre-readers, that is VERY YOUNG children in mind. But this author/illustrator is more in the ilk of David  Weisner (Flostsom, and Tuesday, among others). She creates, through pictures alone, COMPLEX, intriguing story lines that are engaging for all ages, including adults!

Her illustration style is very different from David Weisner. His pictures are very fine and detailed. Her pictures are warm and simple. But The Red Book really does remind me of Flotsom.

All three of these books I read this evening by Barbara Lehman involve the characters entering into pictures or pages and thus entering other worlds. So, there is a surreal, fantastical element.

In The Red Book a girl finds a book and sees a boy finding a book and looking at HER in the book, while she looks at HIM in her book. It's all a little twisted and hard to wrap your mind around ---- in a good way!

The Musuem Trip shows a boy getting lost on an art museum field trip, entering a little door to a small room where there are pictures of mazes in a glass case. He runs onto the paper, and works the mazes,  running each one's route successfully, into the center and out again.

In The Secret Box three children find a small collection of treasures left by a child long ago. They travel into the world of the clues left in the box. . . some ticket stubs, a postcard, etc.

All very cool stuff. Much cooler than I'm able to describe here. I like this author A LOT. And am so very happy to have discovered her as a result of this project!

Tuesday; Art & Max, both by David Wiesner

Tuesday by David Wiesner
1992 Caldecott Medal Winner

Art & Max by David Wiesner
caldecott author

David Wiesner as I've mentioned before has won the Caldecott Medal THREE times (and has a couple of Caldecott Honor books as well) so, after reading Flotsom and  The Three Pigs I was eager to see some of his other books. Here are two more. . .

David Wiesner enjoys fantastical journeys of various sorts. Tuesday is another almost wordless visual story involving things fantastical. Mainly,  frogs lifting off the pond and flying on their lily pads, all through one Tuesday night.

The next Tuesday it appears to be flying pigs. And in fact it is those very flying pigs that inspired The Three Pigs story (also a Caldecott Medal winner.)

Art & Max I was especially curious about since I'd watched a video interview of the author talking about his creative process with this book. It features two lizards, both artists, one more established one a student and it's a grand  and fanciful exploration of different art media.

Fun Stuff. I recommend this author in general.