Piece By Piece, edited by Teresa Toten

Right off the bat, this should probably be two posts; the first to explain why it has been such a long time since I have posted (suffice it to say between I have been busy writing the manuscript for Reality Rules II and not will not blog about books that ALSC's Notable Children's Books committee might discuss.) So, I was delighted to come across a book that I really enjoyed, that I'm really sorry doesn't meet the criteria for Notables. Speaking of which, if anyone (Buehler? Anyone?) is going to ALA Midwinter in Dallas, our meetings are open and we will be discussing lots of great books. There, now I don't have to write the other post.

So, a great book. Teresa Toten has edited (and contributed a stirring opening) to a collection of 14 original stories - which is considered by its publisher, Puffin Canada, as an anthology of biographies, so it will be in my collective biography sub-genre.  The full title of the book is: Piece by Piece: Stories About Fitting into Canada, which is a *much* better description of the contents. The authors' stories vary considerably, although they do share some common themes, which will resonate strongly with immigrants of all ages. The contributors all had difficulties in communicating, from authors who arrived and had to learn to speak english, to Richardo Keens-Douglas, who had to lose the lilt of his accent in order to get work as an actor, to Rachel Manley, whose impeccable English did her no good whatsoever in francophone Quebec.

The authors came to Canada for different reasons and found varying levels of welcome; Rachna Gilmore grew up enamoured with Anne of Green Gables but found out that even marrying an Islander did not make her a local, and Linda Granfield found the level of anti-Americanism in 1970s Toronto to be almost more than she could bear. Throughout all of the tales runs a current of love for home, and the assurance that becoming comfortable in a new country does not ever mean one stops missing the place that helped shape us. These aspects provide the books with a universal appeal: anybody that has left their home and moved to another province, state, or country will be able to understand just how wrenching it can be to try and fit in, and how difficult homesickness can be.

It is a book that will start discussions and could supplement them. It will also lead readers on to these authors' titles, providing options from nonfiction to literary fiction, historical fiction, readers choice awards and a number of others.

The included authors are: Svetlana Chmakova, Rachna Gilmore, Linda Granfield, Richardo Keens-Douglas, Alice Kuipers, Rachel Manley, Boonaa Mohammed, Mahtab Narsimhan, Dimitri Nasrallah Marina Nemat, Richard Poplak, Rui Umezawa, Eva Wiseman, and Ting-Xing Ye.

Oh No She Didn't by Clinton Kelly

I'll admit I may be the last person to become aware of the TLC show What Not to Wear, but after picking up Clinton Kelly's bitingly funny Oh No She Didn't: The Top 100 Style Mistakes and How to Avoid Them I will freely admit to wandering over to youtube to amuse myself with clips from the series.
I'm fairly certain that Clinton (and Stacy) would have a field day in my closet: come on, I worked as a children's librarian for years, aren't I allowed to have a christmas sweater? Or three? I live in Calgary, we're pretty much required by law to wear jeans on top and bottom during the Stampede (what he says is called a Canadian Tuxedo in the Pacific Northwest.) For the record, I suppose I should mention that during the Stampede is the only time at work I'm actually allowed to wear jeans. Given that I live in a cold climate, I'll admit that I also own polar fleece. LOTS of sweaters, too. Those will probably be in his next book.
Advice on how to rectify style errors (how long hems should be/ where waistlines should be, etc.) accompany many of the articles. The humor here is sharp, and often contains references that may be directed at the over-30 crowd, but given that he pokes fun indiscriminately and more often than not at the over-30 crowd, most of the style-conscious teenagers I know would love this book.

Deadliest Sea by Kalee Thompson

On page 161 of a book that I can only compare to 2003's Left for Dead in terms of 'Disaster/Survival' books, rescue swimmer O'Brien Starr-Hollow informs the reader that "The grass is always greener over the septic tank." This is not a book to begin close to bedtime, if you have any intention of actually going to bed.

Thompson does a wonderful job of recounting the stories of the men (and woman) who found themselves on the Alaska Ranger on Easter morning in 2008 when it began to take on water in the frigid waters of the Bering Sea. She also puts this disaster in its place in the very dangerous history of Alaskan fishing. 

The training needed for Coast Guard rescue (whether swimming or flying) is rigorous: the actual practice described here, that saved more than twenty of the 47 crew members, is almost overwhelming to contemplate. No part of the 'rescue' was easy: from the difficulties the crew had abandoning the ship, to finding the life rafts, boarding the helicopter or being offloaded on one of the rescue trawlers, Thompson imparts several breathless moments. Kaley Thompson's  The Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History will appeal to high school readers that enjoy fast-paced books of adventure, survival, sports, and combinations of all three.

Sports from Hell: My Search for the World's Dumbest Competition by Rick Reilly

The premise of veteran sportswriter Rick Reilly's narrative nonfiction title Sports from Hell is a simple one: after 31 years in which a sportswriter has covered every major sport event and is starting to get a been-there, done-that sort of feeling, what is he to do? Ah-HA! He can find something "mind-warpingly...dumb." Hence, readers are treated here to chapters including everything from the World Sauna Championships to Chess Boxing to Jarts. Reilly sets out his rules for covering these events, all of which are treated with utter seriousness by the competitors. He also participates in all of them.

Readers are taken around the world, as he starts off in the World Sauna Championships in Finland, tries Zorbing in Australia and ends up at the Homeless Soccer championships in Copenhagen. His comments on the social outcomes of this last championships, which does exist and which had profound outcomes not only on the participants during their participation but afterwards. This is a very funny book with a few hidden depths -- it would make a great quick pick. While this is not a great literary work it is a highly enjoyable book that will be popular with high schoolers, whether or not they are fans of sports, as the "sports" under discussion are debatable and the book does include a chapter that discusses why baseball is a 'sport from hell.'

Strictly as an aside, perhaps if Mr. Reilly is looking for more sports for another edition, he and his assistant, TLC (The Lovely Cynthia), might consider visiting The Masters of Library Science Croquet Tournament?

Sir Charlie Chaplin: the Funniest Man in the World by Sid Fleischman

How to best understand the comic genius of Charlie Chaplin? Well, it helps if you have the writing of Sid Fleischman. The author’s last work, published posthumously in June, 2010, manages to convey Chaplin’s talent and drive while giving reader’s a full picture of the comic’s troubled upbringing and marriages.

This is a book that had me marking pages: I don’t do that very frequently. To describe the Little Tramp’s appeal for the public, readers are told that he “was forever David in a world of Goliaths.” It can be hard to understand Chaplin’s popularity in a world where movies make the kind of money they do today – the information and comparisons help to make that clear, both providing background for and giving readers justification for Chaplin’s outrage over his deportation in 1952.

Charlie’s family life and marriages, from his first shotgun marriage with actress Mildred Harris to his final love match with Oona O’Neill, as well as his complicated relationship with his mother are included. Charlie plumbed his own history as well as current events for his movies. This well-sourced, indexed, illustrated beautifully written book about a comic genius by a master will lead readers to Chaplin’s movies.

Tom Thumb: the remarkable life of a man in miniature by George Sullivan

George Sullivan's biography of Charles S. Stratton, better known as Tom Thumb, is a portrait of one of America's first celebrities. It is a complementary title to Candace Fleming's award-winning The Great and Only Barnum: the Tremendous, Stupendous, Life of Showman P.T. Barnum, which not only included Tom Thumb, but also pointed out that Barnum can be credited with creating the concept of celebrity as we know it today.
Indeed, Barnum is a central figure in Sullivan's book, as Stratton/Thumb was always inclined to be the center of attention and figured in a number of Barnum's enterprises, from the American Museum to tours to the circus. Barnum also introduced Tom to Lavinia Warren Bump, who became his wife.
It is worth noting that the global tours undertaken by Tom and Lavinia would be arduous today: it is almost inconceivable to think of the difficulties they must have endured in the 1800s. The reader will at least be able to picture some of the amazing moments of their lives, from multiple meeting with the Queen of England to their constant tours due to the copious photographs reproduced in the text. This is a slice of life that will be completely foreign and utterly entrancing to readers.
This title was made available courtesy of Netgalley and will be released in February, 2011.

The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics

Freddie Williams is an illustrator with DC Comics. He is unusual in that he illustrates solely with Adobe Photoshop. He mentions in the introduction to his book, The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics, that he had been faced with a bit of unease by both other illustrators and some editors when he used to mention that, as he then wouldn't be considered a "real artist." Until the San Diego Comic Con, in 2005, when he met the creative director from DC, who responded that he couldn't tell the difference. He presents a number of compelling reasons why working digitally (and readers are given all of the specifics of the kind of software and hardware he uses) works better for him than by hand.
Indeed, readers interested in creating their own comics will be hard pressed to find a more specific guide to follow. The instructions include clear graphics that cover almost all of the tools in Adobe Photoshop, with additional suggestions for marketing the artist him/herself in the form of printing off one's best works that will make this a book that includes (or could perhaps convert?) established illustrators. It does assume some knowledge of comics, but will likely entice those readers who are interested in the form into branching out into creating their own. Not a bad thing at all.

More Life Size Zoo: Give Me More!

There is something about a life-size picture that will grab a child. Teruyuki Komiya's Life Size Zoo did just that, with it's amazing photographs of more than 20 animals ranging from a fold-out page showing a rhino's horn to favourites including a lion and mother and baby elephants and animals that kids may not know quite as well such as a capybara, an anteater or a sloth.
What makes the book absolutely extraordinary, and work particularly well not only for outreach but also for an ESL audience, is that each page incorporates some really interesting facts, placed along either the side or the bottom of these truly amazing photographs. Children will be captivated by the photographs and will learn from the information. I'd never known that a rhino's horn is actually hair. This was the most popular book in the outreach (K-6) I did this spring, in an area with a very high population of ESL children.
I was absolutely delighted to see a second book in the series, More Life-Size Zoo. The quality of the photographs hasn't changed, nor has the information in the sidebars: on the page with a picture of an adorable seal, there are several leading questions, facts and tidbits in addition to the information added to the photograph. A standout is a foldout of a lion: because of the lion's size, the page needs to be folded out twice! These are books that are guaranteed to leave readers wanting more. Luckily, they will be able to look forward to Life-Size Aquarium, which will bring them up close to beluga whales among other underwater denizens.

Kakapo Rescue

The Kakapo (kar-ka-poe), the reader finds out in the latest volume of Houghton Mifflin's Scientists in the Field series, is an extremely unusual bird that not only faces constant threats from predators because it is a flightless parrot, but also that its enormous population losses are either directly or indirectly attributable to man. This beautiful bird faced dangers from predators and mankind alike because of its nature: it is very friendly, and a sad fact is that it was once so plentiful that it was a food source for polynesian settlers. Other settlers brought not only predators that thought these [flightless!] birds were a delicious, enticing food -- their feathers smell like honey -- but animals whose hooves destroyed the soil where their food grew. There are now less than 100 of the birds left. So what can be done?
Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop waited years for permission to travel to Codfish Island, the remote location where the remaining kakapo have been moved and are watched over by New Zealand's National Kakapo Recovery Team. Readers will see not only the extreme measures these dedicated scientists take to ensure that they are not passing any germs or foreign substances to the birds or chicks as well as a sense of the rewards they get from their work. This is a book that made me cry several times, and one that would be useful to encourage support for conservation. As with all of the other books in the series, there are suggestions for further reading and an index.

Poop Happened: A History of the World from the Bottom Up

On the surface, Sarah Albee's Poop Happened is an entertaining and informative history of the development of indoor plumbing. It is chock-full of more than enough illustrations and sidebars to keep the most reluctant reader going (and not realizing how much they are learning.) A lot of us get information about early Britain (London) from books, more of us are presented with stories from movies, whether on film or television. According to the author, none of these would have (or could possibly) give an accurate picture what it actually would have looked -- or smelled like, at a time when there wasn't anywhere to relieve oneself except indoors, (such as the royal court of Versailles, with 20,000 people living there, and 275 closestools - p76.) Readers will learn about the effects this sewage had on disease, how people dealt with their bodily functions at different times (how did knights 'go' while wearing armour, or french ladies in those very wide dresses...) and Albee's source notes, index and timeline are a welcome addition. This book will provide as much cultural information as historical, all wrapped up in a fun topic that will make it an easy sell to div 2 and 3 students who think they don't like history.

Edge Books. Prepare to Survive.

I recently finished the 6 books in the Prepare to Survive series, a group of books that will appeal to upper-elementary and middle grade readers. It will be useful for teachers who have either reluctant or ESL students: the titles have information that is practical, informative and has tales of survivors applying their knowledge to make it out of extremely dangerous and life-threatening situations. Potential Survivor competitors will learn how to make fire, build shelters, avoid (or catch!) animals or fish and find water.
More importantly, all of the books include information on the kind of items to be included in a survival kit. Given that more people have died of tornadoes in the United States than anywhere else on the planet, this is valuable information to have. Being prepared for a natural disaster, be it a tornado, a flood, or an earthquake, is as important as knowing what to do when a disaster happens. These slim, fast reads will capture a reader's attention.
- Doeden, Matt. How to Survive a Flood. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, c2009. 32 p. ISBN 9781429622776 M
- Martin, Michael. How to Survive a Tornado. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, c2009. 32 p. ISBN 9781429622783 M
- Montgomery, Heather. How to Survive an Earthquake. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2009. 32p. ISBN 9781429622790 M
- O’Shei, Tim. How to Survive Being Lost at Sea Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, c2009. 32 p. ISBN 9781429622806
- O'Shei, Tim. How to Survive in the Wilderness. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2009. 32 p. ISBN 9781429622813
- O'Shei, Tim. How to Survive on a Deserted Island. Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Press, 2009. 32 p. ISBN 9781429622820 M

The Hive Detectives: Chronicles of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns

The latest title in Houghton Mifflin's Scientists in the Field series is another well-written tale of an environmental catastrophe that fits in with the series.
Burns starts out by introducing readers to Mary Duane, a hobbyist beekeeper, as she inspects a beehive. Mary loves her bees, and as she interacts with them the reader is almost there in the moment with her -- able to see bees as friendly and giving, rather than evil little stinging creatures (sorry, I'm allergic.) The reader is given an understanding of the complex system that is a hive and the necessary care that it takes to maintain it.
When the book then jumps to Dave Hackenburg, whose livelihood depends on the 3000 hives he keeps, it makes it much easier to understand his dismay and the magnitude of the disaster not only for him but also for the bees and the larger ecosystem when Dave discovers that 400 of his hives -- containing 20,000,000 bees -- were empty. The bees had vanished.
Solving the mystery of what caused what came to be called CCD, colony collapse disorder, was assigned to four scientists. Readers are introduced to them in notebook-styled pages that give their specialties and follow them through bee collecting, autopsies, and much pondering over pests, viruses, pesticides and bee nutrition. While these are ongoing considerations, progress has been made and readers will enjoy both the clear and close-up photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz and the lovely, readable prose.

How...Not to?

Another genre conundrum has developed. Reading Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong, the book developed from Jen Yates's similarly hilarious blog, it is immediately evident that the book deserves its nomination for the 2011 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers list. What I'm not sure about is where in Reality Rules II it should go.
It isn't a cook book, or a how to decorate cakes book. I don't have a cake book (yet) -- although it would be a humourous readalike, should I acquire one. Hmmm.
What is certain, is if a NON-reader or a reluctant reader picks this up, they aren't going to be putting it down in a hurry. None of my colleagues did.