The Nonfiction Monday Roundup

Hello and welcome to Nonfiction Monday at books together!  My contribution this week is Gifts from the Gods by Lise Lunge-Larsen [review coming later this morning]. Please comment with a link to your Nonfiction Monday post (and a brief description if you'd like), and I'll round them up here throughout the day.  Thanks for participating in this edition of Nonfiction Monday!

The night before (good morning, UK!)

Zoe at Playing by the Book reviews What Mr Darwin Saw by Mick Manning and Brita Granström in association with London's Natural History Museum.

Morning edition

Medea of Perogies and Gyoza reviews Japanese Celebrations for her first Nonfiction Monday post.  Welcome, Medea!

Also contributing for the first time, Tara of A Teaching Life reviews The Harlem Hellfighters, an account of the brave regiment who fought in World War I.  Welcome, Tara!

Jone of Check It Out reviews Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom by Shane Evans.

Gathering Books reviews The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss.

Jeff of NC Teacher Stuff reviews The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Two reviews at Ms. Yingling Reads: a book about lost cities (Pompeii) and a book about vampires in Transylvania.

Shelf-employed is featuring some light reading today with 1st and Ten : Top Ten Lists of Everything in Football.

At Ana's NonFiction Blog, three articles from kids' science magazines featuring confused spiders, revealing bandages, and scuba spiders.  Congratulations, Ana Maria!

Roberta of Wrapped in Foil took a look at Cybils nominee Digging for Troy: From Homer to Hisarlik.

Anatomy of Nonfiction features Marc Tyler Nobleman on Heroes--Super and Otherwise with a review of Boys of Steel and interview with the author.

Wild About Nature reviews Sea Stars: Saltwater Poems by Avis Harley.

At Bookends, Cindy and Lynn review Every Thing On It by Shel Silverstein.

And Shirley at SimplyScience introduces Enterprise STEM, a new Rourke book by...Shirley Duke!  Congratulations, Shirley!

Afternoon update

Learn about animals through their ears, noses and tails in What Do I Do with a Tail Like This?, reviewed by Camille at A Curious Thing.

Kids' travel guides from Arcadia reviewed by Jennifer at Jean Little Library.

At The Fourth Musketeer, a review of Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz, a new nonfiction title for adults that's also suitable for high schoolers.

A picture book biography of an artist, just for books together's focus on art and artists: Jeanne at True Tales & A Cherry On Top features Diego Rivera: His World and Ours.  Thanks, Jeanne!

Jennie at Biblio File reviews Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy.

Wendy at Blog from the Windowsill reviews Celebrate Hannukah. Welcome back, Wendy!

Good evening

Heidi highlights a series called Fall's Here at Geo Librarian.

The Nonfiction Detectives have a review of Balloons Over Broadway on the blog today.

Janet at All About the Books reviews A Wizard from the Start: The Incredible Boyhood & Amazing Inventions of Thomas Edison written by Don Brown, .

That's all for now!

National Hispanic Heritage Month Roundup

Let's celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month! From September 15 to October 15, the Library of Congress officially recognizes the "histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America." Here's a roundup of children's and YA book reviews, author interviews, and more to help get the fiesta started at your house.

Picture books

Jeff reviews The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred by Samantha Vamos (illustrated by Rafael Lopez; Charlesbridge, 2011) at NC Teacher Stuff (thanks, Jeff!).  Note: The Books Together Test Kitchen is making arroz con leche using the farm maiden's recipe. Review coming soon!

Author Monica Brown shares "the story behind the story" of Waiting for the Biblioburro (illustrated by John Parra; Tricycle Press, 2011) at Paper Tigers.

Tasha reviews Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina (illustrated by Claudio Munoz; Candlewick, 2011) at Waking Brain Cells.

Roberta reviews Ellen Ochoa: The First Hispanic Woman Astronaut (PowerKids Press, 2001) at Wrapped in Foil.  In honor of World Space Week and National Hispanic Heritage Month!

Chapter books and middle grade novels

Alma Flor Ada and her son and co-author Gabriel Zubizarreta (Dancing Home; Atheneum, 2011) talk about immigration and collaboration in an interview at Kirkus Reviews. See Alma's website for more reviews of Dancing Home, which is also available in a Spanish edition (Nacer bailando). The gorgeous cover art is by Edel Rodriguez.

Charlotte reviews The Cheshire Cheese Cat by Cuban-American author Carmen Agra Deedy (and Randall Wright; illustrated by Barry Moser; Peachtree, 2011) at Charlotte's Library.

And her favorite Hispanic-themed children's book of the year, Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes (Chronicle, 2010).

Young Adult

Charlotte also reviewed The Queen of Water by Laura Resau and Maria Virginia Farinango (Delacorte, 2011) at Charlotte's Library. See Laura's website for the story behind this important book, and her blog for the inside scoop on its gorgeous cover. [Extra thanks to Charlotte for helping me to populate this list!]

Deviant (Adrian McKinty, Abrams, 2011), a YA novel with a Latino main character, reviewed at Finding Wonderland (thanks, Sarah and Tanita!).

 
For your consideration

The Heartland Chapter of REFORMA has posted a list of titles under consideration for their 2011 Mock Pura Belpre Award Session. This list is a great place to look for children's books by Latin American authors and illustrators, very much in the spirit of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Please leave a comment if you would like to contribute a post to the National Hispanic Heritage Month roundup, and I'll add it to the list. ¡Muchísimas gracias a todos!

Before They Were Famous for Nonfiction Monday

The latest entry in Bob Raczka's series of Art Adventures, Before They Were Famous: How Seven Artists Got Their Start (Millbrook, 2011), takes a look at the earliest known work of artists ranging from Albrecht Durer to Salvador Dali. Thank goodness for Paul Klee, whose drawing of a carousel (made at age ten; you can see it on the front cover next to a photo of a young Klee) looks like it might actually have been drawn by a child; because the early work of some of the other artists is already incredibly accomplished. Michelangelo, I'm looking at you.

Before They Were Famous gives kids a natural entry point into the lives and work of the seven artists featured. Each gets two double-page spreads, including one page of text about his or her childhood and apprenticeship or training in art, one example of his or her mature work, and at least one portrait, self-portrait, or photograph of the artist (another of Raczka's Art Adventures books, Here's Looking at Me: How Artists See Themselves, focuses on artists' self-portraits). Even the author photo is of Bob at age 11, although we don't get to see any of his early work.

Raczka shares the story behind the book in a guest post on the Lerner blog, in which he discusses the Picasso painting (made at age eight) that inspired him to look for the childhood artwork of other artists. Here is Picasso's Little Picador in the context of the book:

Raczka also talks about how hard it was to find at least one female artist to include (he ended up with Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, whose earliest known work was painted when she was between the ages of seventeen and nineteen).  He says in the interview that would have loved to include this 20th century female artist, but didn't locate her early work in time.  Can you guess her identity?

[It's Georgia O'Keeffe, who made this drawing of an animal head when she was about fourteen.]

A Walk in London for Nonfiction Monday

A mother and daughter take A Walk in London in this lively, lovely picture book guide to the city by Salvatore Rubbino (Candlewick, 2011). Their day begins at 11am in Westminster and includes Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard, the lions in Trafalgar Square, lunch at Covent Garden, a climb up to the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of England, the Tower of London, and a boatride on the Thames. For the record, it took my daughter and I ten days to do all of that! (But we went to the British Museum, too.)

While the main text recounts the day's events in the daughter's voice ("Hello! There's me, and that's my mom!"), spot text in a smaller font highlights related trivia (during a sudden shower, "London is Europe's third rainiest city. About twenth-three inches of rain falls here every year"). Rubbino's mixed media illustrations, often double-page spreads of city scenes, are carefully laid out and layered with just the right amount of detail. They also have lots of retro appeal. Here's an example from his first picture book, A Walk in New York (Candlewick, 2009; I couldn't find any interior images of London online):

London features a foldout Thames Panorama that would have come in handy on the London Eye, while the endpapers trace the mother and daughter's route on a map of the city. Don't forget to look for the royal family's car along the way!

Reminiscent of but more child-friendly than M. Sasek's classic This is London (1959; reissued by Universe, 2004), the picture book we referred to most prior to our trip, A Walk in London is the one we read to remember it. Mr. Rubbino, if you're reading this, please take us on a walk in Rome next!

My Havana for Nonfiction Monday

My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood by Rosemary Wells with Secundino Fernandez (illustrated by Peter Ferguson; Candlewick, 2010) encompasses the decade of my own parents' childhoods, and the city young Dino describes in it is almost as familiar to me as if I remembered it myself:

Until I [Dino] am six years old, in 1954, my world is sweet. "We live in a city built by angels," Papi says. There is no cold in Havana, only sunshine and warm rain. The city's avenues are lined with arcades of coral stone archways, ancient doors, and window frames....

The architecture of the colonial capital fascinates Dino (he grows up to be an architect), and he fills his sketchbooks with drawings of buildings, windows and doorways. As if taken from Dino's sketchbook, pencil drawings of architectural details are overlaid on a view of the rooftops in this wordless double-page spread:

Peter Ferguson's painterly illustrations, done in oil with spot art in pencil, capture a city suffused with golden light: very different from both Madrid, where Dino lives with his maternal grandparents from 1954-56, and New York City, where he and his family settle in 1959 after Castro comes to power in Cuba. They're an integral part of this relatively short (65 pages), yet surprisingly rich book.

Rosemary Wells was inspired to write My Havana after hearing an interview with Secundino Fernandez in which he described his intense homesickness for Havana, and his attempt to alleviate it by building a cardboard model of the city on the floor of his bedroom in New York (that episode makes it into the book, too). It's a beautiful and evocative example of the power of place in childhood memory, and one for which I am especially grateful.

A note on politics: The text of My Havana touches on the repressive Franco regime in Spain as well as on the Batista dictatorship and the Cuban revolution under Castro. I only wish the author's note had not.

Moo, Moo, Brown Cow for Poetry Friday

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is probably my favorite nursery rhyme--I sang both my children to sleep for years with Raffi's extended version, Cluck, Cluck Red Hen (Milly still likes to hear it at bedtime).  In Raffi's version, the singer asks a hen for eggs, a cow for milk, and a bee for honey. Here's the exchange with the cow:

Moo, moo, brown cow, have you milk for me?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, sweet as it can be.
Churn it into butter or make it into cheese.
Freeze it into ice cream or drink it if you please.

The little boy in Phyllis Gershator's new picture book Moo, Moo, Brown Cow (illustrated by Giselle Potter; Random House, 2011) does the same sort of thing (he also asks a gray goose for down, but otherwise the animals are the same); however, Gershator's narrative is more purposeful: the little boy is looking for a blanket for his bed, a pillow for his head, and a sweet and simple bedtime snack of bread and honey with a glass of milk.  Here's his exchange with the cow for comparison:

Moo, moo, brown cow, have you any milk?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, smooth as silk.
Does milk make me sleepy before I go to bed?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, the brown cow said.

It's also a little more difficult to sing (lines 3 and 4 of each stanza especially), but even I was able to manage it. The reward comes in the closing stanzas, when animals and boy alike go to bed ("in the hive... / in the barn... / in the coop... / in the shed").  Giselle Potter's final illustration shows him tucked in bed with his own collection of farm animals (there's even a bee mobile), dreaming of jumping over the moon.

Potter's palette could have been inspired by the classic colors of old-fashioned milk paint, which lends her work here a folksy farm feel. My favorite illustration is this one of the black sheep knitting the boy's blanket out of a ball of his or her own curly wool:

Bonus points for showing the sheep holding the needles correctly; how many times have you seen them pointing up in picture books?

Delicious: The Life and Art of Wayne Thiebaud

One of my favorite paintings in the East Building of the National Gallery is Wayne Thiebaud's Cakes (1963). Kids tend to love Cakes, too: the subject (of course), the number and variety of cakes in the painting to choose from, the ribbons and swirls of paint like icing on each one. It does look delicious.

Thiebaud paints more than just cakes, though; and Susan Goldman Rubin's Delicious: The Life and Art of Wayne Thiebaud (Chronicle, 2007) is an appealing introduction to both.  It's also ideal for upper elementary and middle school students looking for something more substantial (at just over 100 beautifully designed pages) than a picture book biography of an artist.

Rubin's text--like Thiebaud's life, it would seem--is simple and straightforward, punctuated with quotes from the artist in oversize block letters and illustrated on almost every facing page with carefully chosen examples of his work (many of which are from private collections). I especially appreciate Rubin's attention to these individual works of art: in just a few sentences, she models how to write about art in a way that kids can understand and appreciate.

For example, in Chapter 6, "From Farms to 'Fantasy City'," Rubin focuses on Thiebaud's landscape and cityscape painting. Here's Rubin's description of Dark City (1999):

Dark City portrays San Francisco at night. Tall skyscrapers painted in deep shades of purple and periwinkle blue create a mood of excitement. The colors, though not true to life, give the feeling of nighttime. Little dabs of yellow and red suggest lit windows, street lamps, and cars driving up and down a hill that seems to go straight up into the air. The painting is huge--over 6 feet high--and is all verticals. Even the steep hill rising up in the middle like a roller coaster is shaped like the rectangular buildings on either side. (84)

[Me again.] Dark City is also gorgeous, all the more so for being a bit of surprise (to me, at least). Thiebaud's landscapes of the Sacramento River Delta, too, are strikingly beautiful.

But he always returns to Cakes, and so will I. At the gallery, I like to ask kids to sketch just one cake, making it fill the whole page. Next time I might ask them to describe it in words as well. Which cake would you choose?

Spellbound

Spellbound, the second volume of The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West (Dial, 2011) picks up right where The Shadows left off, with eleven-year-old Olive stuck outside the magical paintings in the McMartin house, and what's worse, her friend Morton stuck inside them. The cats (especially Horatio) are reluctant to help Olive--in fact, they're actively discouraging her. But when her new neighbor Rutherford suggests she look for the McMartins' spellbook, Olive is somehow inexorably drawn to it (that's it in the painting on the cover). Can she use the spellbook to help Morton escape Elsewhere, or is it using her to help the McMartins do the same?

I loved The Shadows, which won a Cybil award last year; and Spellbound might be even better, in that there is more of everything to love and some new things besides.  Olive continues to explore the old stone Victorian on Linden Street (which West says looks almost exactly like the LeDuc House in Hastings, MN): the library, the attic, the basement (sorry, Leopold!), and the garden, as well as some previously undiscovered paintings.

Spellbound also introduces a new character in the gallant yet rumpled Rutherford, and revisits Morton, whose plight is increasingly poignant (spoiler alert: he's still stuck inside his painting). Olive herself does some devastating things while under the spell of the spellbook--even the cats abandon her at one point--but ultimately faces up to Annabel McMartin and the mysterious Mrs. Nivens. Not for the last time, though: now Olive is more determined than ever to rescue Morton...and Annabel is on the loose.

I read an ARC of Spellbound (thank you, Penguin!) with cover art and fantastic black-and-white interior illustrations by Poly Bernatene, who also did the illustrations for The Shadows. I wish all my favorite middle grade novels had illustrations as perfect for them as these, actually--they add so much atmosphere. Spellbound will be out in hardcover on July 12, and I'm already looking forward to Volume 3.

A note about the author: When asked what paintings she might sneak into if she got her hands on Olive's glasses, Jacqueline West said she'd have to go with Salvador Dali's, "because they would be such amazing worlds to explore. I imagine everything would feel rubbery and slick, sort of like Silly Putty or fried eggs." I would pick Vermeer, because of the order and light.  What about you?

Books that Cook: The Runaway Wok

[Books that Cook: A very occasional feature in which the Books Together Test Kitchen (that would be me and my kids) prepares a recipe from the back of a picture book.]

The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale by Ying Chang Compestine (illustrated by Sebastia Serra; Dutton, 2011) doesn't overflow with rice (more's the pity, because the Festive Stir-Fried Rice recipe we tried was really good)--it's based on a traditional Danish folktale, The Talking Pot, instead. I found the economics (not to mention the ethics) of The Runaway Wok a little problematic, actually: the wok steals from the selfish, rich Li family to give to the poor, generous Zhang family. The Zhangs share the wealth with all the poor people of Beijing at a New Year's feast. And then they open up a wok shop!

Ying Chang Compestine, who has written a number of cookbooks as well as children's books, includes an informative Author's Note about the Chinese New Year. She says, "The most significant dish for children is the festive stir-fried rice, cooked in a wok. The various ingredients in this dish represent harmony and happiness. Parents urge their children to eat it so they will get along in the coming year." We'll see.

Notes from the Test Kitchen

• This recipe works best with day-old rice. We used brown rice to make it extra-healthy. 
• Feel free to make substitutions, like cubed fresh mango (instead of dried cranberries) and cashews. Delicious! I just hope it doesn't void the "harmony and happiness" clause.

Me, Frida

Amy Novesky's picture book biography of Frida Kahlo, Me, Frida (illustrated by David Diaz; Abrams, 2010), encompasses only one year--from 1930 to 1931, when the newly married Frida accompanied her husband Diego Rivera to San Francisco--but it's a critical one in Frida's development as an artist. Rivera, already an established artist himself, had been commissioned to paint a mural for the city and set to work almost immediately.

Novesky's elegant text delineates Frida's initial sense of loss and isolation (she had never traveled outside of Mexico and didn't speak English or have friends in San Francisco); her growing self-confidence as she explores the city on her own; and her arrival at what would become a distinctive style of painting--very different from Rivera's--intimate and inspired by 19th century Mexican folk art and portraiture.

The book culminates with the painting of this portrait, now in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (and reproduced in the Author's Note):

"That night, Frida painted something great: a colorful wedding portrait of herself and Diego. She painted Diego big, and she painted herself small, just as the world saw them.

But Frida knew she was more than this. And she put herself first. In the beak of a pink bird, she wrote a tiny note on violet ribbon:

Here you see us, me, Frida Kahlo, with my adored husband Diego Rivera. I painted these portraits in the beautiful city of San Francisco, California...in April of 1931."

David Diaz's paintings for Me, Frida are gorgeous, glowing works of art themselves. They were done in acrylic, charcoal and varnish on primed linen; in vibrant colors (acid yellow, turquoise, red-orange and hot pink) evocative of Frida's Mexico, and of San Francisco, too. I especially love their composition, the way Diaz's final painting, in which Frida stands in front of the wedding portrait at the opening of her first show, neatly reverses the scale of the two figures to herald Frida's arrival as an artist in her own right:

Diaz includes the pink bird from Frida's wedding portrait in almost every double-page spread, perched beside Frida or peering over her shoulder as she works. And although Novetsky's text doesn't mention the childhood illness and injuries that made walking painful for Frida (so often the focus of books about her, such as Jonah Winter's Frida--I should review that one next), she is sometimes shown, statuesque and beautiful, carrying a cane.

David Diaz and Me, Frida won a 2011 Pura Belpre Illustrator Honor.  Richly deserved, and highly recommended, for everyone.