Fiction Fridays: Tales From Everywhere

Tales From Everywhere

Stories selected and rewritten by Mae Bradley 

illustrated by Janet & Anne Grahame-Johnson

World Distributors (Manchester) Limited, 1975

In Maoriland there was once a chief called Kahukura.

I'm cheating a little - my kids are not reading this book. It's one from my own childhood which I deeply loved. As a child my dad was often away on business and he loved to travel; being the 70's there were slide nights and dolls for me and my sister dressed in traditional garb from each country he visited. I was hooked, fascinated with other countries and cultures from almost as far back as I can remember. 

The stories in this book are traditional stories from around the world, each one enhanced by the beautiful and haunting illustrations:

• The Fairy Fishermen - New Zealand
• The Swans of Islay - Scotland
• The Way Things Happen - Mexico
• The Story of Semerwater - England
• The Two Brothers and the Little Mother - Australia
• How the Tribes Began - Nigeria
• The Dog's Will - Iran
• The Chatterbox - Russia
• A Friend for Man - (?Africa)
• The Story of the White Snake Lady - China
• The Magic Harp - Norway(?)
• Hudden and Dudden and Donald McGrath - Ireland

What book from your childhood is special to you?

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Fiction Fridays: Star Baby

Star Baby

by Ian Whybrow 

illustrated by Jason Cockcroft

Orchard Books, 2005

Stars are like babies,

The moon's little babies.

Bright little babies,

Just like mine.

A nostalgia trip this week. Clearing out the kids' rooms last weekend I found this book which I used to read when they were babies. I didn't so much read it to them as read it to myself - and emotional bag of hormones and gushy new-baby love that I was, I would tear up every time. I seriously could not read this book without crying!

This is a lovely book and would make a nice present for a new parent or a baby. Each page features a mother and baby animal, with a similar rhyme structure about how the baby pleases its mother by saying... (baa, neigh, cheep cheep etc).  The illustrations are beautiful.

It also reminds me of my other favourite book for reading to toddlers, Mem Fox's Time For Bed (which has since been satirized as Go The F*** To Sleep). I might feature that one (the Mem Fox one I mean!) another week.

Until then, now that my "babies" are asleep, it's time for this mama also to go to bed.

Sleep tight, star babies everywhere xxx

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Fiction Fridays: Where The Wild Things Are

Where The Wild Things Are

by Maurice Sendak, 1963

this edition: Red Fox, 2000

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind

and another

his mother called him "WILD THING!"

and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"

so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

This week Maurice Sendak passed away, so I will be surprised if I am the only one to cover this book in Fiction Fridays this week.

My kids are not so sure about this book, and when I was a kid I wasn't so sure either. It's a fantastic, compelling book, and is part of most of our childhood memories. But it sits somewhere in a child's imagination between delight and nightmares, and evokes complicated reactions.

One of the clever classics.

It's about growing up - striking out, testing your skills and learning your limits.
It's about learning self-control and anger management.
It's about the tension between independence and belonging.
It's about leadership.
It's about taming one's inner beasts.
It's about giving freedom to the magic of the imagination.
It's about the nature of love and control.
It's about family.

And of course, it's about a little boy who is naughty and gets punished, which initially makes him angry and rebellious, until he gets hungry and lonely and returns to the comforts of family.

Who doesn't love that last page about Max's supper:

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Fiction Fridays: The Fairy Dog

The Fairy Dog

by Jackie Andrews

illustrated by Mary Lonsdale

Award Publications, 2003

Jenny found the fairy dog very early one morning before anyone else was awake.

This was one of those picture books you see going very cheap on a trestle-table in the middle of a shopping centre. So you look at the book awhile to try and work out, is it good value or junk?

It seemed OK, so I bought two, one for each of my girls. At that stage (about a year ago) they were still very much into fairies and we had recently acquired our dog, so they were into dogs too.

Both girls loved this book, but we hadn't read it in awhile. This week A. re-discovered it. She asked me to read it to her and she has since been leafing through it each night before sleep. We are finding that now that they can read a little better, they are starting to re-visit their favourite picture books and read them by themselves (or read what they can), which is great to see.

In this story, the little girl is awoken one morning by a little lost fairy dog at her window. She brings it inside and takes it to her brother, and together with the help of the dog, they work out how to get him home, all before their Dad wakes up.

I like this book for the lovely pictures and the novel idea of a tiny fairy dog, but also there are a couple of subtly unusual things about it:

• There is no Mum in the picture. The only adult who features is Dad
• Dad works late and is often tired; there is an impression that things have perhaps been a bit difficult in the house

This is also one of those great books where the story line can be read as a daydream or wish in the mind of the child protagonist, or read literally as a magical story.

• The fairy dog to me is a figment of the little girl's imagination, relieving her anxiety, fulfilling a wish ("we don't have a dog"), and giving her and her brother control (an adult-free adventure before Dad gets up)
• The fairy dog to my daughters is a magic fairy dog who appears to the kids in the book and grants them a magical gift at the end (their Dad gets a better job unexpectedly)

So all in all, this was $8.00 well spent!

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Fiction Fridays (Saturday Edition): In A People House

I meant to post this Friday. I started it on Friday. I thought about it on Friday afternoon, and I intended to finish it Friday night.
But then Friday evening my daughter A. had a meltdown of gargantuan, exhausting proportions, and as soon as I got the kids to bed I flopped straight into bed and straight to sleep myself. (She's fine now, thank you).

So anyway....

In A People House

By Theo LeSieg

Illustrated by Roy McKie

Random House, 1972

"Come inside, Mr. Bird,"

said the mouse.

"I'll show you what there is

in a People House..."

Dr Seuss wrote as Theo LeSieg on books illustrated by others, and when I think back as a kid I probably liked the Theo LeSieg books best. Dr Seuss was a genius, but his illustrations could be a little creepy.

Re-reading Theo LeSieg books now what I like about them are the really simple illustrations - few of which, I think, would pass muster in a new book today.

Story synopsis:
The mouse takes Mr Bird through a typical middle-class house in 1970s America, and shows him all the things there are:

A People House has things like chairs, 

things like roller skates and stairs.

Banana, bathtub, bottles, brooms,

that's what you find in people's rooms.

As they go through the house the pictures show them using or playing with the things they find, making more and more of a mess and having more and more fun, until a pile of "doll and dishes, teapot, trash" being balanced by the mouse comes crashing down, bringing forth the people who live in the house to toss the animals outside.


Why it's good:
It's a fun book to read because the rhythm is so good, and in usual Seuss/LeSieg style it's funny too. The use of household objects means that kids can talk about which things we have at home ("big blue ball") and which we don't (piano, stairs). The pictures also tell a huge part of the story. As the animals go through the rooms, it's the illustrations that tell the story of the fun and the mess. And the story is from the animals' (i.e., little kids) point of view, in that the people (i.e., parents) are not shown except as disciplinarians at the end (and you don't see them in full). You know how much mess a small wild animal can make if it gets in your house - this story is cute because it imagines that happening because the animals are curious and having fun looking around.

And of course, what kid can't relate to being curious about objects, playing with stuff they're not supposed to, making a sudden mess and being shunted out of a room by giant grown-ups?

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Fiction Fridays: The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known (and other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls)

Hooray! My wireless is back up and at last I can return to Fiction Fridays.
(Blogging anything other than very basic formatting is too hard on an iPad - or at least it is for me).


This week's book - or actually, a story in a book:

The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known

and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls

by Christopher Milne

Hardie Grant Egmont, 2010

A Very Naughty Boy

Neil Pike was a naughty boy.

A very naughty boy.

You see, Neil did smells. All the time. Rotten, disgusting smells. On purpose.

According to the blurb at the back, this book was born when the author ran out of stories to read his kids and started making up his own, and found the more "pooey, rotten, disgusting things" in the stories the better they went over.


We haven't yet read all the stories in this book, but THIS story was a huge success with my girls, and no doubt would be with your kids too.


Neil is a chronic and disgusting farter, but manages to save the day when his whole school is swept out to sea due to some very heavy rain (??? the physics are not clear). The save involves the use of many pieces of cloth tied together and strung up on the roof to make a sail, and Neil providing the required ... propulsion to blow them back home.

Miss M. in particular laughed herself so giddy she nearly fell off her bed.

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Fiction Fridays: Disney's Peter Pan

Walt Disney's Peter Pan

Disney Enterprises, Inc, 2005 (Funtastic)

There once was a house in London where a family named Darling lived. There were Mr and Mrs Darling and their three children, Wendy, John and Michael. Watching over the children was Nana, the nursemaid, who also happened to be a dog. It was to this house that a most interesting visitor came on one magical starry night. His name was Peter Pan.

A. borrowed this book from the school library last week and has loved it. It's a large format book in the classic Disney style, retold in simple language and with magical illustrations from the animated film. 

It's not the "real" Peter Pan (which I do have a lovely edition of), but the kids love it.

Their grandmother read this to them on the weekend and both girls were transfixed, loving the story and the illustrations.

I do remember as a child being similarly enchanted by these beautiful Disney books, with their gorgeous pictures.

This one is a prized loan at the school library, and A. was pleased as punch because she had coveted it this week and managed to get it.

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Fiction Fridays: Five On Kirrin Island Again

Five On Kirrin Island Again

By Enid Blyton

Hodder Children's Books, 2009

Anne was trying to do some of her prep in a corner of the common-room when her cousin George came bursting in. 
George was not a boy; she was a girl called Georgina, but because she had always wanted to be a boy she insisted on being called George. So George she was. She wore her curly hair cut short, and her bright blue eyes gleamed angrily now as she came towards Anne.
'Anne! I've just had a letter from home - and what do you think? Father wants to go and live on my island to do some special work - and he wants to build a sort of tower or something in the castle yard!"

Of all the books I read and loved throughout childhood and into my tweens, the Famous Five books were my favourites by far. I loved them more than anything else, escaped into them often, re-read them in my teens, and still have vivid memories of scenes and dialogue in the stories. I yearned for a dog like Timmy, wished I was George and kept watch wistfully for any scent of adventure that might come my way.

It's easy to make fun of them now, and they are rightly criticized for outdated racist and sexist attitudes. There are far superior and cleverer books out there for kids now, as you'd expect when considering books that were written 70 years ago.

But I have a selection of beloved books from my childhood and some newer classics (Harry Potter) that I have put in the kids' bookshelves, and this one has now joined that collection.

When I was nine my parents relocated to the States for my dad's work, and Enid Blyton books weren't available there. So my parents did something wonderful: they bought every book they could get in the Famous Five series for me, and in the Secret Seven series for my sister.

I still remember the awe, excitement and disbelief of suddenly owning a box full of shiny new books in my favourite series - it is one of the best memories of my childhood!

Unfortunately, the books did not make it to my adulthood. Some years later we relocated from the States to New Zealand, and the two dodgy guys packing up for the removalist company took a great interest in the more unusual of our things and stole half the stuff they were supposed to be packing - including two boxes of quaint British children's books.

On a recent visit to a toy shop I bought this book on a whim and have just finished it. I enjoyed it immensely, and the bits I remember so vividly are just as I remembered them. I would have preferred to find the editions I had as a kid, which had colour photos from the 1970s TV series on the front and contemporary illustrations inside (Uncle Quentin had permed hair if I remember correctly).

This edition was published in 2009 but uses the original 1947 illustrations which I hadn't seen before.

In 2010 Hodder announced they would be modernising some of the most outdated language in the books, with words like "jolly" and "queer" being replaced with "very" and "strange". Otherwise the books will remain unchanged, with parents having to navigate the trickier outdated bits with their kids.

This edition predates that, so is all original text, but regardless I was pleasantly surprised by this book; I enjoyed it more than I expected and it wasn't as dire as I anticipated.  One for the children's library, without any qualms.

On a side note, I was interested to know what Uncle Quentin's experiments on the island were all about. I couldn't remember from my childhood, and there were not many clues throughout the story. I was beginning to think we would not find out, but we did towards the end.  Uncle Quentin divulges that his work is "to find a way of replacing all coal, coke and oil - an idea to give the world all the heat and power it wants, and to do away with mines and miners."

That's just what I love about old books - the simultaneous feeling that "the past is a foreign country" and the jolt of recognition when you see people in the past working with what you thought was a "modern" idea.

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Fiction Fridays: Mr Brown Can Moo! Can You?

Mr Brown Can Moo! Can You?

Dr Seuss, 1970 (Bright and Early Books/Random House)

Oh, the wonderful things

Mr Brown can do!

He can go like a cow.

He can go MOO MOO

Mr Brown can do it.

How about you?

I have always loved the Beginner Books, including but not only those by Dr Seuss. When I had kids and there was a subscription special at Scholastic I finally had two excuses to buy up heaps of them.

I started reading them to the kids when they were about two, and they held their attention more than many other books did - I believe due to a combination of the winning cadences, humour, unique illustrations, and mother's obvious enthusiasm while reading them.

The kids' favourites were Wacky Wednesday, The Cat In the Hat, The Eye Book, In A People House - and this one.

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Fiction Fridays: Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew: Dance Off

This week I'm featuring a book I am reading to A as a chapter a night. I picked it for her when I was looking for a chapter book she might like, and noticed this one featured dancing, a talent show and mystery-solving, which are all what she is heavily into at the moment.

Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #30: Dance Off

Carolyn Keene, 2011 (Aladdin)

"Why do we have to wear these goofy pink coats?" George Fayne asked.

She frowned at the vinyl coat draped over her arm.

"What detectives walk around in these?"

"Dancing detectives!" Nancy Drew replied.

I have mixed feelings about Nancy Drew. I read lots of the books when I was a kid but I never really warmed to her - she was too perfect. Way too grown-up and together for supposedly an 18 year old (a little like most of the other girl detective series I read, including Linda Craig, Cherry Ames and others I can barely remember now - but my absolute favourite was the younger, more modern and more "real" seeming Trixie Belden).

The Clue Crew series is a repackaging of Nancy Drew for younger kids. They are still written by "Carolyn Keene" who is obviously a completely different set of writers these days, and they are illustrated with cartoons in current style every few pages. Nancy and her friends are now in primary school, and they say things like "fave" and "totally!"

George Fayne is no longer a "tomboy", but a "computer geek".
Bess Marvin is no longer "plump".
And Nancy Drew doesn't yet have a boyfriend, just a crush on a Bieber-like character fronting a kids' talent show in this book, who may or may not (I'm going with not) be the person sabotaging the kids' auditions for evil purposes.

I'd say these books are pretty fun for older kids - mine are slightly too young, so as we read each night we are doing a lot of backtracking and discussing around plot points and who knows what and who said what and who is connected to whom, as they are finding it all a bit confusing. There is a lot of "Who did that mama?", "Why did she say that?",  "Who's he again?" etc.

But despite that I can say that A is loving the book. She loves the concept, loves the pink coats, loves the name Nancy.  Nancy is A's middle name (named for Y's mum) and she has made me re-tell again and again the story of how we came up with their names and why she got Nancy for a middle name, and how she wished it was her first name instead!

Thay's the beauty of books - even when they're not quite right, you can still get so much out of them.

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Fiction Fridays: Big Red Bath

@homedad hosts a meme called Fiction Fridays which is all about showcasing the children's books you are liking, reading or enduring.


My book this week is one the girls have loved since they were three. We recently re-read it and they delighted in remembering all the story and the beautiful pictures.

Big Red Bath

Julia Jarman & Adrian Reynolds, 2004 (Orchard Books)

 Ben and Bella in the big red bath -

"Splash you!"

"Splash you!"

Splish! Splosh! Splash!

Bubbles in the bath.

Water on the floor.

But who's this scratching at the door?

 

 

 

 

Great things about this book:

•  good cadence for reading aloud with rhyme and lots of splooshing and splashing
• the kids are twin siblings like mine; one of their second cousins is also called Ben
• fantastic pictures with the exaggeration of a kid's imagination: pretending the bath is huge, the water and bubbles fill the room, the bath flies down the stairs, out the house, in the sky, to outer space... and back home
• all the animal friends are explained in the pictures of the bathroom at the beginning and end of the book: puppy slippers, lion toothbrush cup, giraffe shampoo bottle, etc

Some of the pictures:

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Fiction Fridays: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

My first Fiction Fridays post was last week - this is my second.

What it is:
@homedad hosts a meme called Fiction Fridays which is all about showcasing the children's books you are liking, reading or enduring.


My book this week is not something we're currently reading but a personal and family favourite:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle, 1969 (Puffin)

 

In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf.

Everyone loves this book.

I have very clear memories of it from kindergarten: delight every time I found it available in the bookshelf, the gorgeous colours, the die-cut pages, poking my little fingers through the holes.

It was one of the first books I bought to read to my own children, and our soft-cover edition is much-thumbed and dog-eared.

Recently my sister bought them the hard-cover edition so we have that too.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of those rare perfect books. It is beautiful, a good story, and very clever. The blurb on the back describes it as "deceptively simple" and it is. In addition to a lovely story, these are the things covered simply, beautifully and perfectly in this book:

• nature: where caterpillars come from, what they eat
• night and day
• days of the week
• passage of time
• counting
• types of fruit
• colours and shapes
• interactivity
• nutrition
• hunger, eating too much, feeling full, how to feel better
• temperance
• metamorphosis

How many picture books cover this much ground in 11 pages?

Here are some of those beautiful pages

end papers

butterfly wing

Do you have a favourite picture book? What makes it special?

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Fiction Fridays: Amy Wild, Animal Talker: The Secret Necklace

I'm late on this because I rarely get blogging before midnight, but consider this a "Friday" post.
I just found something very cool - @homedad hosts a meme called Fiction Fridays which is all about showcasing the children's books you are liking, reading or enduring.

You share a picture of the book and the opening line, and share and link back.

So here is my first:

Amy Wild, Animal Talker: The Secret Necklace

Diana Kimpton, 2010 (Usborne)

"I want to go home," groaned Amy Wild.

"That's where we are going," said Mum with a smile. She leaned over the rail of the boat and pointed at the island that lay ahead. "Clamerkin is our home now."

I love this book, and so does my 6-year-old daughter M. She picked it out at the library and I read her a chapter each night in bed, and she has been rapt.

Last year I was looking for a chapter book for my nine-year-old niece and this (though a little young for her) was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for and couldn't find. All the boys' chapter books were cool things like Zac Power, but there was nothing like that for girls. The girls' books were all about sleepovers, being the new girl at school, birthday parties etc. That's all good and necessary of course - but where were the mysteries and adventures that I loved when I was a kid? Girls doing cool stuff? There was nothing like that in the bookshop.

Then M picked out this in the library, and it turns out this is the first in a series, about a girl who moves to a new home on an island, is given a magic necklace which enables her to talk to the local animals, and hangs out with the animals solving mysteries and fixing problems for the islands' residents.

This book has all the ingredients for a great kids' - dare I say girls' - story:

  child reluctantly moving house;
  living on an island;
  small community;
  an empathetic grandma;
  loving but lenient and clueless parents;
  a secret;
  magic;
  animals;
  independence and mobility;
  a special skill;
  solving mysteries.

Check, check, check, check, check. I'll take it!




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Until next Friday, memesters!

Jackie