Book of the Week: Before Morning

Before Morning

by Joyce Sidman
Illustrated by Beth Krommes
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016
44 pages
ISBN: 978-0-547-97917-5
Ages 3-7

Four wordless page spreads showing a mother and child making their way home in the winter dark start this cozy offering. Once they arrive, it’s time for the mom to get ready for her job as a pilot. The thought of her leaving, it is clear, leaves the child bereft. “In the deep, woolen dark, / ” begins the narrative, “as we slumber unknowing, / let the sky fill with flurry and flight.” Snow has started falling. As the child sleeps and the mother heads to work, it continues to fall, lighting the dark, swaddling everything it touches. Across the city, including at the airport, it piles high. “Let urgent plans founder, …” With the flight canceled, the mother hitches a ride on a snowplow, arriving home to share breakfast with her family. An author’s note explains the poem that comprises this text is an invocation—a wish. Brief yet bountiful lines of possibility are set against the exquisite warmth of scratchboard and watercolor illustrations that render a world at once magical and real, and in which the gender of the second parent and the child are open to interpretation.  ©2016 Cooperative Children's Book Center

Book of the Week: The Journey

The Journey

by Francesca Sanna
Published by Flying Eye Books, 2016
44 pages
ISBN: 978-1-909263-99-4
Ages 5-9

“…one day the war took my father.” A young child describes a family’s journey to escape the war zone that is their home. The potent, matter-of-fact narrative becomes even more powerful set against striking illustrations that are stylized, beautiful, and harrowing. The mother does everything possible to reassure and protect her children as they travel, much of this conveyed through small yet critical details in the art. “In the darkness the noises of the forest scare me. But mother is with us and she is never scared. We close our eyes and finally fall asleep.” These words are set against a scene in which the children sleep in their mother’s arms while she lies wide awake, and in tears. Over and over the emotional weight of the story is conveyed through affecting, sometimes heart-rending images juxtaposed with the voice of innocence. “I hope one day … we will find a new home. A home where we can be safe and begin our story again.” There is no geographic specificity stated, but the journey from western Asia to Europe is implied in an account that includes many means of travel, tense moments of hiding, a secret border crossing, a crowded ferry, and travel by train beneath free-flying birds across many more borders in search of safety--a need that all children can understand. ©2016 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science

Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: 
The First Computer Programmer

by Diane Stanley
Illustrated by Jessie Hartland
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2016
40 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5249-6
Ages 6-10

Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace was the daughter of a poet father (Lord Byron) and a mother (Lady Byron) who nurtured her curiosity in math, science and technology. Ada loved both the arts and sciences. When her friend Charles Babbage asked for Ada’s help in explaining what the “Analytical Engine” he designed could do if it were built, Ada “had the vision to see, better even than Babbage himself, how much more a computer could do besides just processing numbers.” Ada took on the task of explaining how the machine’s ability to function required mathematical operations be converted into digital format, or code, that it could understand. In other words, she pioneered programming. This engaging, whimsical look at Ada’s brief life (she died at 36) and her extraordinary accomplishment in writing what is considered the first computer program shows that both knowledge and imagination are necessary for advances in technology and science, and that Ada embodied both. An author’s note tells more about Ada’s Notes and their impact, and acknowledges some have challenged Ada’s authorship (an idea Stanley refutes). A timeline, selected bibliography and glossary are also included in a volume set against illustrations that are blithe but never make light of Ada or her work. ©2016 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: My Lady Jane

My Lady Jane

by Cynthia Hand and Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows
Published by HarperTeen, 2016
491 pages
ISBN: 978-0-06-239174-2
Age 12 and older

Jane Gray’s short time as Queen of England (9 days in 1553) is reimagined as lighthearted blend of alternate history and fantasy. In 16th-century England, Edians, humans with the ability to transform into animals, are held in contempt by non-magical Verities, who want to purge England of magic. The resulting suspicion, animosity, and intrigue stands in for Protestant/Catholic religious hostilities of the time. Dying King Edward decrees that his beloved cousin, Jane, will become queen, arranging her marriage to secure the claim. It’s all to keep his Edian-hating step-sister Mary off the throne. Jane, who had no desire to marry, let alone a man with a reputation as a womanizer, learns on her wedding night that Gifford is a horse. That is, he becomes a horse from dusk to dawn, a well-kept secret (it’s not Gifford’s only one). Edward discovers his Edian abilities and secretly flees, escaping Mary’s attempt to poison him. On the run, he is helped by a capable thief named Gracie, and his sister Elizabeth. Jane ascends the throne and faces threats of her own, all while trying to make (horse)sense of her new husband. In the midst of it all comes a stunning self-discovery. There’s a little romance, a little magic, and a lot of humor, both slapstick and sarcastic. The omniscient narrative collective’s many droll asides are an abundant part of the fun. ©2016 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: First Snow

First Snow

by Bomi Park
U.S. edition: Chronicle Books, 2016
32 pages
ISBN:
978-1-4521-5472-5

Ages 2-6

A small girl wakes up in the night to the soft sound of falling snow. “Pit, pit pit against the window. Glistening, floating in the night.” She puts on warm clothes, walks outside, and begins rolling the snow into a ball. With her puppy following, she rolls the snowball out the yard, into the street, and through the darkened town. A speedy train passes as she goes “Fast Fast Fast.” Through a fallow field, through a friendly nighttime woods full of animals. Finally, she is moving “Slow Slow Slow” with her huge ball of snow, passing from the night into a bright, snow-white field full of children who are also rolling huge snowballs and making … snow figures! A magical, dreamlike story is told through a spare, lyrical text and stunning, textured, mostly black-and-white illustrations that are understated and exceptional. The art, which begins with nighttime black dominating has occasional, subtle accents of other colors, and whimsical punctuations of bright red for the scarves, hats and mittens on children and snow people. ©2016 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: Some Writer!

Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White

by Melissa Sweet
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016
161 pages
ISBN: 978-0-544-31959-2
Ages 8-13

Elwyn Brooks (E. B.) White, known to family and friends from early adulthood on as Andy, was shy and often anxious throughout his life. But with a pen in his hand, or a typewriter in front of him, he was entertaining and eloquent. Readers who know him as the author of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpeter of the Swan will relish the stories here about those books, but they will also love discovering White the young adventurer, White the amateur naturalist and avid outdoorsperson, White the urbane journalist, White the opinionated commentator and essayist and defender of democracy, White the humorist, White the family man, White the farmer, White the literary stylist and master of clarity, and so much more. Author/illustrator Melissa Sweet brilliantly distills these complexities into an appealing, accessible portrait of White in a book that blends original watercolors, photographs, and collage with a clear (White would approve!) and engaging substantial narrative that integrates many quotes from White’s professional and personal writing. The gorgeous book design offers a sense of effortless interplay between the visual elements and text. A timeline, ample citations and source material, an author’s note and an afterword from writer Martha White about her grandfather and this book all add to a work that will bring delight to, and shows such respect for, young readers. ©2016 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Book of the Week: We Will Not Be Silent

We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler

by Russell Freedman
Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016
104 pages
ISBN: 978-0-544-22379-0
Age 12 and older

As young adults in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Hans Scholl joined the Hitler Youth, his sister Sophie the League of German Girls. They quickly became disillusioned. The White Rose Movement grew out of gatherings of Hans and a few friends in Munich in the early 1940s. As soon as Sophie knew Hans was behind the first White Rose flyer in 1942, encouraging Germans to resist fascism “before it’s too late,” she demanded to be part of the work. The Movement’s weapons were words: flyers written and printed in secret, distributed with great planning and care. Their commitment was unwavering, right through their capture, interrogation and brief trial. “I would do it all over again,” 21-year-old Sophie told her Gestapo interrogator. “I’m not wrong … You have the wrong world view.” Along with a third White Rose member who’d been captured (they did not reveal the names of others) Hans, 24, and Sophie were executed by guillotine in early 1943. A detailed account full of intrigue and danger and heroism and heartbreak presents the Scholls’ courageous activism in the context of the terrible wrongs being committed by the Nazi regime, and the greater good that the White Rose Movement sought to inspire. Ample black-and-white photos, including candid snapshots of the Scholls, and other visual material are part of a work that ends with source notes and a bibliography.  © 2016 Cooperative Children's Book Center