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Books for Kids

Picture Book Monday: Eric Carle

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The first thought I have when someone says Eric Carle is, “I could go for some pancakes right about now.”

That’s because probably my favorite Eric Carle book is Pancakes, Pancakes!

This book tells the story of a very hungry boy named Jack, who wants some pancakes for breakfast, and his mother sends him to collect the ingredients. Not just from the fridge, but from the farm.

So he collects wheat, then mills it, then collects the milk, eggs, churns the butter, and so forth.

Hungry yet? You will be when you see the creative tissue-paper illustrations, replete with melting butter, jam, and fluffy pancakes flipped on a griddle.

I always crave pancakes after reading this book, and I’m not a big fan of pancakes. And I’m happy for Jack when he finally gets his well-deserved pancakes.

Probably the main reason I like Eric Carle’s picture books is that his art is very soothing. Carle illustrates his books using painted tissue papers that he cuts into different collages.

Many years ago, I bought a Klutz book called, “You Can Make a Collage” by Eric Carle. I see it’s no longer available new. That’s too bad, as while the associated book describes how he makes the tissue paper and his collage illustrations, even better was that the back of the book included 50 or so sheets of printed versions of the painted tissue papers he uses were attached to the book.

Over the years we’ve made many collage prints using those tissue papers.

For a person wanting to do some art in the style of Eric Carle–and I highly recommend you do so if you enjoy Eric Carle–visit the “Creative Projects” page of Eric Carle’s website  for some slideshows describing how he makes his materials, as well as the art. This kind of project would be fun and satisfying for an arts-minded kid (or mom!) to do on his or her own, over the course of a week or so.

Creating the painted tissue paper would be messy, but after that step, this is a pretty low-mess art project, as it just involved cutting and gluing the scraps of tissue to paper.

Other books by Eric Carle:

*The Very Hungry Caterpillar

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

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and pop! out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.

Yes, once again, another book I can recite with my eyes closed because I’ve read it so many times.

Since the The Very Hungry Caterpillar was one of the board books that our family was given when I had my first baby, it has seen many, many readings. I’m pretty sure our first copy did not survive a teething (and or hungry?) baby, and so we have another well-worn copy of this fun board board. And true to Eric Carle’s style, it makes me hungry.

Eric Carle is prolific, but two other books that have been especially popular at our house: The Tiny Seed and A House for a Hermit Crab.

I knew that I liked Eric Carle, but was excited to find out that he and his wife created a museum of picture book art makes me even more grateful for him.  I’m already (in my mind, of course) planning a trip to Massachusetts to go to the Carle Museum. Our family has seen several exhibits of picture book art at the Art Institute of Chicago, but an entire museum to explore–wow.

I’ve also had fun exploring Eric Carle’s charming blogspot blog.

Four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Google Doodle was Eric Carle inspired.  Nice.

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Do you have a favorite Eric Carle book?

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Great Read

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My younger kids and I got the chance to meet and hear Holocaust survivor Marion Blumenthal Lazan speak yesterday at a local Catholic school, and it was very moving.

Marion (along with Lila Perl) is the author of Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.  When her family came to the United States after the war, she ended up in Peoria, so she has been back here several times for talks since her book was published.

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I heard her speak at our local Barnes & Noble back in 2004, and I was so moved that I bought a copy and had her sign it. My children were all too young to read the book at that time, but a few years later my oldest read it. When I heard she was going to be in Peoria again, I found it on the shelf and had the younger two read (or begin it, in the case of my youngest) it before we heard her speak.

The book of her story of surviving the Bergen-Belson concentration camp and the aftermath of World War II is excellent and well worth reading. But her presentation was unforgettable.

Here is a YouTube video of her story. The presentation we attended was about an hour and half presentation (including wonderful questions from the kids). Here’s one great thing about her presentation (and the book): it was factual. She didn’t shy away from some of the graphic details of living in a concentration camp, but she did not dwell on those details. So even though the presentation was intended for fifth grade on up, even younger kids with longer attention spans could learn from her without being traumatized.

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My tween told Marion that she was most interested in the leg injury Marion describes in the book, since she is still on crutches.

I found her husband, Nathaniel Lazan, to be just charming, and so here is a quick cellphone snap of him from yesterday. He takes wonderful photos of her speaking and accompanies her around the world to share her story and her message.

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Finally, I couldn’t resist sharing one book of fiction about this time period that is great for younger kids to read.

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Number the Stars  is Lois Lowry’s Newberry award-winning story of a young girl in Denmark whose family is involved in hiding and transporting Jews to freedom.  Definitely worth a read; our girls book group read this book several years ago. We had a memorable discussion and activities related to the book.

Picture Book Monday: Five by Margaret Wise Brown

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Picture Book Monday starts today.  I explain about it here.

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Years ago, a friend’s dear young daughter–about two years old at the time– was hospitalized for a life-threatening infection. I went to visit the family in the hospital, and the little girl was just so forlorn, so small on the hospital bed.

So I told her hello, and I asked if she might like a story (and mentally berating myself for not bringing a book as a gift).

She didn’t respond.  So I closed my eyes and began:

In the great green room

There was a telephone

And a red balloon

And a picture of

the cow jumping over the moon

I knew the book by heart–surely I’m not the only parent out there who’s been asked to read a book so many times she can do it cold–and continued.

When I finished, her eyes were big, and they never left me.

“Would you like me to read it again?”

A nod.  And so I did.

The next day, I brought her mom her very own copy of Goodnight Moon, probably Margaret Wise Brown’s best-known and loved book.

If there is a more soothing bedtime story, I’d like to know what it is, so be sure to let me know in the comments.

Here’s what I love about Margaret Wise Brown at her best: she is a poet.  Her words often read like prayers.  There is humor and poignancy in her work.

She died very young and had an interesting and in some ways tragic life. I’ve got her biography, Awakened by the Moon, on hold at the library, and I will update this post after reading that. But regardless of her life, her books stand the test of time and reading aloud.

Most people will be familiar with Goodnight Moon and another of our favorites, The Runaway Bunny.

Our funny family story about The Runaway Bunny is that when I read it to my oldest, a girl, she insisted (as only an oldest, and a toddler–can) that the child bunny was in fact a girl bunny, no matter what the words said.  So that I had to substitute “she” for “he” and “her mother” for “his mother” and so forth throughout.

We stuck with our female runaway bunny until our third was born, and then he (being a strong personality) insisted it was a boy bunny, so back the original.

One of the most moving scenes in the play Wit (not for kids, but made into a beautiful movie with Emma Thompson in the main role of a demanding English professor dying of cancer) is when a visitor, her former mentor, reads her excerpts from The Runaway Bunny.

This may seem depressing, but that scene makes a person realize that The Runaway Bunny would not be a bad book to have read on one’s deathbed.

But I can still think of a better book for that purpose: MWB’s The Important Book, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard.

I almost always get emotional when I read The Important Book, for many reasons. It’s a prayer and a poem both, and Weisgard’s illustrations make it nearly perfect.

The frontspiece begins with a tiny illustration of a open book. On the right-hand side of the tiny open book is an illustration of a cricket. On the left-hand page are the words in cursive:“The important thing about a cricket is that it is black. It chirps, it hops, it jumps, and sings all through the summer night. But the important thing about a cricket is that it is black.”

And the book continues this way, though with full-size illustrations in the rest of the book. What makes—a spoon, an apple, the wind, the grass, a child’s shoe, much more, and finally, you–important.

I was so taken by this book that eventually, I made a “Grandpa and Grandma Important Book” for my in-laws. Each page of this scrapbook was about what made Grandpa or Grandma, their children and grandchildren important, with accompanying photos. (“The important thing about Grandma is that she makes the best chocolate milk.”)

I made it just before my father-in-law passed away, and now that both my in-laws are dead I treasure this “Important Book” as a family heirloom; it’s alongside our copy of The Important Book. And now I wish I had made one for my parents, but that one is in my heart.

Two other MWB books are well worth having. The Golden Egg Book is another nearly perfect bedtime book–perhaps especially during the Easter season–about both friendship, sleepiness, and adorable lifelike bunnies. Lovely illustrations by Leonard Weisgard again.

Finally, Nibble, Nibble: Poems for Children is sweet, and would be worthwhile to consider reading during April, National Poetry Month.

We’ve read many, many other Margaret Wise Brown books at our house, and we own probably half a dozen more book by her, but these are the ones I’d keep no matter what:

Goodnight Moon

The Runaway Bunny

The Important Book

The Golden Egg Book

Nibble, Nibble: Poems for Children

Do you have a favorite Margaret Wise Brown book?

Backlist, and Picture Books

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Several weeks back, Seth Godin had a great reflection, “Building your backlist (and living with it forever” on how each person should pay attention to his or her backlist , and I’ve been pondering it ever since.

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from my Jane Austen bookcase

Here’s what I think: First, I have a considerable “backlist” here on Reading Catholic of book reviews, author interviews and other content. Part of what I’d like to do is organize that a little better so that it’s easy to access, but I need to be proud of that work and say “way to go, me” about it.

But I also realize that I’ve got a great backlist “in my head” of, in particular, book lists of:  (this is only a partial list)

*great picture books for families to own

*great young kid books

*great beginning chapter books

*great audiobooks for family listening

*great young adult novels

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from the C.S. Lewis/Tolkein bookshelves (clearly in need of reorg)

Often, someone will ask me in person or, as happened on Facebook recently, for good suggestions for picture books, or middle-grade novels, or great books for girls, or … And I think, it’s all in my head, but I can’t access it easily.

So the goal here will be to gradually work to get some of these “backlists” out of my head and here for readers to reference, springboard from, and incorporate into their family libraries.

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a tiny portion of the picture book bookcases–also in need of reorg

I’m starting with picture books because I have a ready library at home to share, so for the time being it will be “Picture Book Monday” here on Reading Catholic. I hope you will discover some great picture books and picture book authors. Eventually, I would love to add on other book categories.

I’m acknowledging here the inspiration of the wonderful Cay Gibson, the author of Catholic Mosaic: Living the Liturgical Year with Children, as well as “A Picture-Perfect Childhood. Cay blogs at http://cajuncottage.blogspot.com. Both of those are great resources and book lists, and both are available on Amazon.

Many years ago (when my oldest was a pre-schooler, I think) Cay moderated a now-silent yahoo group called “Literature Alive!” One year, Cay organized for us an “author study” of picture book authors, one per week. The prospect of one author per week was almost too much, but I was in heaven getting to discover so many wonderful authors and classic works.

Some were new, some were old favorites, and some were not very interesting to us after all. But every week I would faithfully go to the library with my family (only two little girls at that time) and take out every book by, say, Dr. Seuss.

I’d also give a hand-written list to Miss Glenda, our library’s wonderful inter-library loan person (this was before you could order books from the library on the Internet) various other titles that the yahoo group members would recommend.

And over the course of that year, I discovered picture book authors that our family adored, and we gradually assembled a home library of wonderful books. More importantly, we accumulated wonderful stories and family traditions related to the book.

Come Monday, we shall start with probably my favorite picture book author, Margaret Wise Brown, and feature five of her books. I hope you’ll enjoy learning about some of the books and our family stories, and consider discovering some of these authors and picture books. Most of all, I want to encourage families to make picture books part of your family life.

Do you read picture books at your house?  What are some of your favorites?

First, What Are You Reading? Volume 31 (Easter edition)

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Here are the questions I ask and answer on the first of each month.  I’m so incredibly grateful that it is Easter, in so many ways.  There are so many wonderful things to celebrate in this season of joy.

The questions, as always, are:

first, what are you reading?
what do you like best about it?
what do you like least?
what’s next on your list to read?

As always, I hope you’ll consider your current reads on your blog and/or sharing here in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter. Happy reading!

First, what are you reading?

I’ve actually been reading a lot these days, but not writing about it very much.

My husband and I were out to lunch with a (Franciscan) priest friend, and he  enthused about Francis of Assissi: A New Biography by Augustin Thompson, O.P.    So I ordered it from the library.

I’ve been interested to read what Pope Francis is saying in his homilies, and so I’ve been reading those as they are published.

I’m also reading and re-reading a lot of picture books with my kids in preparation for a new feature here on Reading Catholic.

What do you like best about it?

Francis of Assisi is a scholarly work, and while it’s a bit of a challenge, I’ really enjoying this life of St. Francis.    Thompson goes back extensively to original sources and Francis’ own writings to put together an exhaustive view of the saint’s life and times. Fascinating to me: the custom at the time was for babies to receive First Holy Communion the day after their baptism; so Francis most likely did.  In addition, Francis was really particular not that his followers would beg for alms to survive, but rather work at manual labor (day jobs) to support themselves.

In addition to the history lesson I’m getting, this is also an eminently quotable book, no doubt about it.  Here’s what I have just from Thompson’s introduction, finishing with what he learned most from the life of Francis:

First, he taught me that the love of God is something that remakes the soul, and doing good for others follows from this; it is not merely doing good to others.

Second, rather than a call to accomplish any mission, program, or vision, a religious vocation is about a change in one’s perception of God and creation.

Third, true freedom of spirit, indeed true Christian freedom, comes from obedience, not autonomy.

Last–and I hope this subverts everything I have just written–there are no ready and clear roads to true Christian holiness.

I’m only a few chapters into the book, and I’ve already written down many more quotes.

Here is one quote from Pope Francis that I really enjoyed; it’s from his homily at Tuesday Chrism Mass:

This I ask you: be shepherds, with the “odour of the sheep”, make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men. ….Dear lay faithful, be close to your priests with affection and with your prayers, that they may always be shepherds according to God’s heart.

I have to say that my husband pointed out that quote, and translated it (before the official Vatican translation) as “a shepherd should smell like his flock.”

What do you like least about it?

Nothing; I am really enjoying everything about this book.

What’s next on your list to read?

I pre-ordered the new book by the Heath brothers, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life & Work.  I really need this book, and I have enjoyed very much their other books.

This isn’t exactly reading, but now that it’s Easter, I can’t resist sharing one video from an hilarious series on Youtube called “Kid Snippets.”  (HT to “I Wonder Why”).

The videos superimpose kids’ imagining different scenarios, and then adults acting them out.  Yesterday, I laughed so loud at this one about math.  Enjoy the laugh:

What are you reading (or laughing at) these days?

Q&A with Colleen Swaim, author of “Radiate: More Stories of Daring Teen Saints”

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As I wrote in my March column, I’m a big fan of Colleen Swaim, who’s written a second book in a series of “teen saints” biographies.  First was 2010’s  Ablaze: Stories of Daring Teen Saints, (here’s my review of that), and just a few months back Radiate: More Stories of Daring Teen Saints.

I did a Q&A with Colleen when Ablaze was released, so I knew I wanted to do another one.  Colleen is the kind of person I just know I’d love to meet for coffee and talk over books and everything else (for instance, she and her husband write a blog together called Duel to the Death), and I hope I will some day.  Thanks, Colleen, for being willing!

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Tell “Reading Catholic” readers a little more about you, your family, and your writing.

My husband Matt and I live in a late nineteenth-century era house in Cincinnati, Ohio with our 14-month-old son Zeke and Libby, our 10 year old English Bulldog. When we’re not writing books, I teach high school religion and English in the Diocese of Covington and Matt produces the EWTN-syndicated The Son Rise Morning Show from Sacred Heart Radio. We enjoy exploring the city, cooking together, and are really looking forward to a fun summer of seeing the world through our toddler’s eyes – everything’s new and an adventure!

–You had a lot of success with Ablaze: Stories of Daring Teen Saints, and so I’m glad you decided to write a “sequel” book with more saints.  Did you have any trouble picking the saints for the book?

Making the choices of whom to write about has been the primary challenge of each book, although with Radiate I focus on ten stories of saints, two more than the eight I originally profiled in Ablaze, so it was a little less difficult. However, my aim was the same with both books, as it was very important to concentrate on stories focused on an equal number of young men and women from all over the globe and spanning the ages of the Church.

I think that, with Saints Agnes; Gabriel of Duisco, Louis Ibaraki, Juan Soan of Goto, and Thomas Kozaki (The Japanese Martyrs); Bernadette; Lucy; Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin; Luigi Gonzaga; Rose of Viterbo; and Peter Yu Tae-Chol; as well as Blesseds Laura Vicuña and Ceferino Namuncurá, that balance was again able to be struck.

– I found Radiate more appropriate for older readers than Ablaze, both in the writing style and the content–there is more intensity in some of the martyr stories, for instance. Your thoughts on this, and who you consider to be the “ideal” reader for Radiate?

One of the things that is a goal of mine both as a writer and a teacher is to convey the saints’ stories, their hagiographies, in a way that both grabs onto the sensibilities of present-day teenagers with the sometimes high drama of these holy people’s stories – encompassing both their joys and trials/tribulations – without jeopardizing the precious commodity that is young people’s inherent integrity, including their senses of modesty and chastity. With stories like, for instance, Laura Vicuña’s, where the subject matter involves abuse, that can be a precarious path to tread, but I maintained a tone of honesty and nuance that I hope parents of pre-teens and teenagers can appreciate.

That’s why, when family members, religious educators, or others who are buying specifically for young people ask me, I recommend Radiate for students roughly in the 12-19 year old age range. Both Ablaze and Radiate are formulated for individual, small group, or classroom use, so they can really lend themselves to a variety of learning and reading environments.

– I asked this question in our last Q&A, but I think it’s worth re-visiting.  You’re a high school teacher. Other than this book, how do you challenge students immersed in the popular culture to pause and really take a look at these saints and their lives?

The single most important thing for Catholic young people living in the world today to realize is that, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, keeping the commandments is way more radical and counter-cultural than breaking them! Of course, personal and familial holiness are issues we all struggle with on a day to day basis, but teenagers especially need to realize that the yearning that they seem to have (and I believe that they all indeed have it) for solidity and truth is noble and needs to be nurtured.

The saints were some of the most fascinating people to ever live, they’re now with God for eternity in heaven, and they can offer us both a framework and the inspiration to do likewise amazing things. One of my favorite things when researching saints’ lives is to draw the connections between them.

I’ve never run across a saint who wasn’t deeply influenced on the path to holiness by yet another saint or blessed, and as a flawed human being who is holiness work in progress, I find that very comforting. Young people need to be imbued with the sense that sanctity is going to be foolish to a lot of people out in the world, but it is the best opportunity we have for both happiness and fulfillment, even if it can be quite arduous at times. Teenagers like a challenge, and the call to be a saint is the ultimate.

– I also asked this question when we discussed Ablaze so let me ask it again.  Do you have a favorite saint in Radiate?  If so, why?

I can honestly say that I resonated with every single saint or blessed in the book, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have made an appearance at all, but I have to say that the story of the Japanese Martyrs just blows me away. It is difficult to imagine a group of young men, part of a religious minority in a land that was intensely hostile to Christianity, acting more courageously than those teenagers led by St. Paul Miki.

Whenever I hear of a martyr group of “and companions” my curiosity is piqued – “Just who were all of those companions?” – and this situation was no exception. These young men were berated, abused, made examples of, and literally lashed to crosses to die, and they did it all with a sense of fearlessness that is just awe-inspiring. They were not the only group of martyrs to die in Japan during this time period, as its estimated that there were about 1, 200 over the course of several hundred years of persecution and the Church going underground, but the witness of their blood made it possible for about 20, 000 Japanese Catholics to keep the faith alive underground in Japan for about 250 years without an organized church.

Can you imagine living your whole life as a Catholic without ever meeting a priest? It makes you want to pray for people who are dealing with similar religious persecutions in the world today, and makes me as an American want to cherish and fight even harder for the cause of religious liberty, both here and abroad.

– What’s your next writing project?  Will there be another in this series?  If so, can you share some of the saints you might explore?

I don’t anticipate another book that is specifically a sequel to Ablaze and Radiate, however my husband Matt and I just released a new book, Your College Faith (Liguori, 2013), which is, in many ways, a natural follow-up. It is meant for high school seniors and college students who want to ignite the flames of their faith, and do it in such a way that is conducive to the college experience, whether that is at a faithfully (or unfaithfully) Catholic college or university, a state school, another sort of private institution, or anything in between.

In Your College Faith, we do profile saints within each chapter in the Alumni Directory feature, such as Saints Peter Gonzalez, Tarcisius, Monica, Augustine, Josephine Bakhita, Edith Stein, Maria Faustina Kowalska, Maximilian Kolbe, as well as Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. It is also set up with some of readers’ favorite features from Ablaze and Radiate, like the reflection questions, prayers, memory verses from Sacred Scripture, practical steps to take, as well as some new features.

It was a new experience writing a book with my spouse, but one which I’m looking forward to doing again. Additionally, having written Radiate and Your College Faith while I was in the third trimester of pregnancy and then with a newborn/infant, I’ve become very interested in early childhood catechetical materials, as I seek out some for my own family, so perhaps one of my next writing projects might even span into that arena.