Some Kind of Love: A Family Reunion in Poems, by Traci Dant (ages 8 - 12)

My children are definitely excited about Halloween, but my thoughts are turning toward Thanksgiving. I'm especially looking forward to our family reunion this year, as our extended family grows bigger and bigger. Both of my brothers have had new babies in the past year, and my oldest niece is now 16 and taller than her mother! Family reunions are full of chaos, cooking and laughter. Some Kind of Love, a collection of poems by Traci Dant, captures all of these feelings perfectly.

Some Kind of Love:
A Family Reunion in Poems 
by Traci Dant
illustrated by Eric Velasquez
NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2010
ages 8 - 12
available on Amazon and at your local public library

Every summer, relatives (old and young, big and small) come together from all over the country for a huge family reunion with cousins, brothers, sisters, grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles. All have one thing in common: their love for each other. This African American family gathers every summer at their grandmother's house, with folks sleeping wherever there is room.

"Must be some kind of love
that moved my grandma to say,

Always come home.
Come home so I can see your faces."

Kids and grownups eat and laugh and tell stories and remember. There are sleepovers, days spent fishing, cousins riding bikes, and men telling stories that "make my work-hard Daddy laugh like / he'll never have to janitor all night and farm all day again." Told through the eyes of a nine-year old boy, this set of poems captures the moments of a family reunion - from the laughs to the heart-felt tender moments.

Traci Dant dedicated this book to her father, Melvin Dant Jr.. He "inspired me to write the poems in Some Kind of Love. He is the one who grew up attending every Mother's Day reunion in Hannibal, Missouri. He is the one who told stories about aunts and uncles and cousins I'd never met."
 
I adore Eric Velasquez's paintings - he is one of my favorite illustrators, especially for capturing emotion in people's faces. Here, he creates oil paintings that capture the warmth and depth of feelings in each family member.He's chosen to make the paintings soft and warm, almost like memories. I miss some of the clarity that I sometimes see in his work, but appreciate the feelings that come through.

I love being able to share with my children and students this African American family full of love for each other. As we head toward Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, it's the love I feel for family and friends that I want to celebrate. And I think children really understand this. As Traci Dant writes,

"What love you must feel
for your family. Those folks

who nutured you in the garden
of their hearts. What a special

special something it must be
when you all get together."

Many thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy. If you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this page, a small portion will go to Great Kid Books (at no cost to you). Thank you for your support.

Takeshita Demons, by Cristy Burne - exciting fantasy with Japanese mythology (ages 9 - 12)

I'm always looking out for books that bring in mythology or settings from other cultures, but that are exciting and fun to read. The Percy Jackson series grabs kids because it's exciting and fun, but it fascinates them because it introduces them to a whole world of Greek mythology. Takeshita Demons is an exciting adventure story that introduces children to Japanese spirits and demons.

Takeshita Demons
by Cristy Burne
illustrated by Siku
London: Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2010
ages 9 – 12
available on Amazon and at your local library

This exciting adventure features Japanese supernatural demons – yokai – and a young girl’s fight to protect her younger brother. Yokai are well known in Japan and still an important part of Japanese folklore, but they are little known outside of Japan. Twelve-year-old Miku Takeshita has recently moved to London, but she misses her grandmother terribly. In Japan, her grandmother taught her about the secrets of the spirit world, including Zashiko, the child-ghost who protected them from hostile spirits and demons. But Miku’s grandmother has died and it is up to Miku to remember these traditions and secrets. Every day, Miku tries to remember to check that the cedar leave is still placed above the door to protect her family from evil spirits. But her mother thinks this is all nonsense.

One winter day, Miku arrives at school to find that they have a substitute teacher who turns out to be an evil, child-eating nukekubi demon. That night, strange events start happening and Miku’s little brother disappears while she is watching over him. A breathless adventure follows, with Miku and her friend Cait battling the nukekubi, with her flying head and supernatural powers.

This is a fast-paced story that will appeal to readers who are looking for a scary story with a Japanese Manga twist. It is smaller in scale than the Percy Jackson series; Takeshita Demons is just under 150 pages long, while Rick Riordan's novels regularly weigh in at 400 pages plus. I think this is a huge advantage for many readers. I would gladly hand this to a 4th grader, or perhaps even a 3rd grader who likes action and is okay with some scary confrontations.A little brother is kidnapped and threatened by the demon, but no harm comes to him.

Takeshita Demons was original published in the UK, and won the inaugural The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Childrens Book Award for diversity in children's fiction, for a middle grade novel by a previously unpublished author. Author Cristy Burnes spent many years in Japan and became fascinated with folklore about the yokai, Japanese spirits and demons.

For another review, check out the always-excellent Paper Tigers. "Cristy Burne has created a fast-paced story full of suspense that is further intensified by Miku's matter-of-fact narration.  Cait’s incredulity at Miku’s initial explanations, and then her own involvement in subsequent events allow Western readers to be pulled into the Japanese spirit world that Miku so takes for granted."

The review copy was kindly sent by the publisher. If you make a purchase on Amazon using the links on this page, a small portion will go to Great Kid Books (at no cost to you). Thank you for your support!

Bay Area great author events

Just a quick note - if you live in the Bay Area, there are some fabulous author events coming up.

Lisa Brown has several events for her new book: Vampire Boy's Good Night. I love this sweet Halloween tale, perfect for young kids (ages 2 - 5).

 Sunday, October 17th
11:00 am
A Great Good Place for Books

6120 LaSalle Avenue, Oakland, CA
Tel: (510) 339-8210
This is a great neighborhood bookstore in the Montclair neighborhood of Oakland.

Saturday, October 23rd
3:00 pm
Booksmith
Join us for a Halloween party and a Bloody Benefit! Please come in costume!
Storytelling, mask-making and yummy snacks!
With benefit to The Blood Centers of the Pacific.
1644 Haight Street
San Francisco, California 94117
415.863.8688

Smile, by Raina Telgemeier
This was one of our family's favorite books this year, and one of the most popular books at the school library.  It is a graphic novel that tells the story of how Raina lost her two front teeth from a simple accident, and her journey to restore her smile and navigate life through middle school.
Here are some of the stops on her tour:

Monday, October 18th
Green Apple Books: Book signing & presentation
506 Clement Street (@6th Ave)
San Francisco, CA
7 PM

Thursday, October 21
Alameda Free Library: Presentation & Workshop
1550 Oak Street
Alameda, CA
3:30 – 4:30 PM

Friday, October 22
Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts: Signing/Reading
2904 College Ave
Berkeley, CA
7 PM

Saturday, October 23
STORYTIME! Activity Day at the Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA
1 – 3 PM
Come hang out with Raina and a bunch of the creators in the museum’s STORYTIME! exhibit, where you can see a bunch of original pages from Smile on display!

Suzanne Collins, the author of the bestselling teen trilogy: The Hunger Games, will be visiting the Bay Area in November at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park and Hicklebee's in San Jose. This is sure to be a packed event. Call the stores for details to see if you need advanced tickets. For more tour locations for Suzanne Collins, sehttp://www.scholastic.com/thehungergames/about-the-author.htme the Scholastic Site.
Wednesday, November 3rd
7:00 pm
Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA
650.324.4321


Thursday, November 4th
7:00 pm
Hicklebee's Books
1378 Lincoln Ave.
San Jose, CA 95125
408.292.8880

Jane Wattenberg (aka Mrs. Mustard) will talk about Edward Lear and her vibrant take on Lear's creative poem The Duck and the Kangaroo, with her real live Duck, Edward. The event is at Temple Israel in Alameda, for their Book and Cookie event. Edward will wear a tiny hand-crocheted, duck-size yarmulke for the occasion. Come join us.

Sunday October 17th
12:30 pm
Temple Israel
3183 Mecartney Rd. Alameda CA

Have fun! It's great to share the excitement with your children, and realize that their favorite books are written by people just like them.

Haunted Houses, by Robert San Souci - for kids who want creepy, scary stories (ages 9-12)

My students clamor for really scary stories, especially at this time of the year. They love, love, love Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. If your kids like those creepy stories, but are ready for longer short stories, check out Robert San Souci's Haunted Houses - it definitely got under my skin.

Haunted Houses (Are You Scared Yet?)
by Robert San Souci
illustrated by Kelly Murphy
NY: Henry Holt, 2010
ages 9 – 12
available on Amazon or at your local library

It isn’t often that I recommend a book that I haven’t read in its entirety, but I am – I admit it – a scaredy cat! You see, I started this collection, but I just couldn't finish it. And now, I can’t stop thinking about San Souci's creepy stories.

You’ll find ten tales of haunted houses in this collection by Robert San Souci, one of San Francisco’s great storytellers and folklore collectors. In one story, a boy’s family is vacationing in a house that is taken over by spiders. Now, these aren’t your typical garden spiders. They are spiders who want revenge for the damages done to their forest and homes. Danny starts to get worried when he finds the rabbit cage filled with spider webs, and then realizes that the bundles in the corner are the dead rabbits encased in spider webs. The story proceeds to even creepier, as Danny discovers more ways the spiders have wrecked damage on previous owners of the house. Needless to say, every time I walk into a spider’s web now, I jump even higher.

These stories are not for the faint-hearted or those prone to nightmares, but for kids looking for spine-tingling tales, this is your perfect find.

Robert D. San Souci is the award-winning author of the Short & Shivery series of tales, as well as many picture books based on folktales from around the world. He is also the author of Dare to Be Scared, named a Children's Choice for 2004 by the Children's Book Council.

The review copy came from my local bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway's, in Berkeley. They have a wonderful selection of children's books, and staff who can really help you find the right book for your child.

Please note, if you make a purchase using the Amazon links on this page, a small portion will go to Great Kid Books (at no cost to you). Thank you for your support.

Vampire Boy’s Good Night, by Lisa Brown (ages 3 - 6)

Yesterday, a little kid was riding his scooter to school wearing a bat mask and cape. It was the cutest thing ever, and reminded me how much little kids love dressing up and how they get especially excited about Halloween. And yet I remember when my kids were little how hard it was to find a Halloween picture book that celebrated the fun side of Halloween, and wasn't too scary. If you have little ones, Vampire Boy's Good Night is a great find for you.

Vampire Boy’s Good Night
by Lisa Brown
NY: HarperCollins, 2010
ages 3 –6
available on Amazon and at your local library

As this story opens, Bela, a young vampire boy, is awakening for the night to play with his friend Morgan, a young witch. They set out to look for children Bela is sure that there are children out there playing, but Morgan is sure that there’s no such thing as human children.

When they come across a Halloween party, for it is Halloween night, Bela and Morgan are in for a treat — it’s a party full of other witches, goblins and vampires. But the two friends are surprised to discover that the monsters and witches are actually children dressed in Halloween costumes. When Bela and Morgan sail off on the witch’s broom, it’s the children’s turn to be surprised!

Lisa Brown, a local San Francisco author and illustrator, has captured just the right balance between a dark Halloween night and a sweet vampire boy and young witch. Young kids really enjoy getting the joke that children really do exist. The speech bubbles bring children right into Bela and Morgan’s perspective, and the understated prose lets readers discover the tricks for themselves.

If you want more of a flavor of the book, check out this trailer on Lisa Brown's website for Vampire Boy's Good Night.

For all Bay Area families - there's a special treat happening at Kepler's this weekend in Menlo Park. On Sunday, October 10th at 11am, Lisa Brown and Lemony Snicket (husband and wife duo) will be doing a joint story time. It should be a treat for all!

All images are copyright to Lisa Brown. I would like to thank Lisa for kindly sharing them here. The review copy was kindly sent by the publisher. If you make a purchase on Amazon using the links on this page, a small portion goes to Great Kid Books (at no cost to you). Thank you for your support!

Guest post: Nathaniel Marunas, co-author of Worst Case Scenario, Gross Junior Edition (ages 8 - 12)

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Nathaniel Marunas, the co-author of  The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook Junior Edition: Gross. This is an entertaining book that draws 4th and 5th graders to it like flies to a pile of ... you get my drift. Without further delays, here are the details and then some thoughts from Nathaniel.

The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook 
Gross Junior Edition
by David Borgenicht, Nathaniel Marunas,
and Robin Epstein
San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2010
ages 8 - 12
available from Amazon and your public library

Hi, my name is Nathaniel Marunas and I am the co-author of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook Junior Edition: Gross, just published by Chronicle Books. It is a disgusting, informative, and hilarious tour of the most repulsive things kids (and adults) face on a regular basis, from breakdowns in personal hygiene to some of the grossest animals and diseases known to humankind. Most importantly, it teaches kids of all ages how to keep their cool when everyone around them is losing his or her lunch. Maybe I’m biased, but I think the book should be required reading in every household, especially those with pets and kids. You know who you are.

Researching the book, I learned an astonishing amount of stomach-churning information about things most people never think about (and for good reason). For instance, what is the composition of a fart? Can you actually blow your eyes out by trying to hold in a sneeze? And what is the smelliest animal on Earth? For answers to these questions and many more, you’ll have to check out the book, but there was a lot of other amazing and revolting stuff that didn’t make it in. In particular, I didn’t get to discuss even a tiny fraction of the mind-fryingly disgusting parasites and symbiotes that populate our world.
Nearly every species on the planet is tied in some intimate and hurl-inducing way to some other species, from the vast colonies of bacteria that live on and in our bodies (as much as 9 pounds of bacteria per adult, by some estimates) to the blood-sucking, food-stealing, poop-dwelling animals that can be found almost everywhere you look. Some work with their hosts, some are on the selfish side, and some have complex relationships with their biological partners. One sea-borne parasite is a worm that, when it enters a particular kind of fish, devours the fish’s tongue and replaces it with its own body, in effect becoming the fish’s tongue. This enables the worm to feed on what the fish eats. Gross, right?

Now that I’m attuned to the weird world of parasitic behavior, I’m always on the lookout for new examples. I was obsessed for a while with the many species of parasitic wasps, some of whose strategies are downright mind-blowing. One species of wasp lays its eggs inside a caterpillar, which is then doomed to a particularly unpleasant fate. When the eggs hatch, the larvae partially eat the caterpillar, then leave the caterpillar host and create cocoons nearby. The caterpillar then arches up and protects the wasp cocoons until metamorphosis is complete and the adult wasps emerge. After the wasps take off, the mind-wiped caterpillar eventually expires from starvation.

Recently I’ve been fascinated by the symbiotic relationship between the carrion beetle and the mite. Like maggots, carrion beetles feed on, and lay their eggs, in carrion. They are part of the complex system of nature’s undertakers, which work together to dispose of dead animals. Unlike flies, though, carrion beetles only eat and deposit eggs in meat, whereas flies can also use poop for these purposes. This is a plus for the flies because there’s a lot more poop in the world than there are corpses. Another advantage enjoyed by flies is that they are much faster and nimbler than beetles and so are quicker to arrive on the scene. What’s a carrion beetle to do?

To compensate for its disadvantages, the carrion beetle carries around a colony of mites on its back. Even though the additional bulk slows down the beetle even more, it is worth the effort because the mites eat fly eggs and maggots (the larval stage of the fly). As soon as the beetle settles in for a meal and to lay its eggs, the mites jump off and go to work. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Except the flies, maybe, but they can always look for the nearest pile of excrement for safe harbor. Incredible, right?

If you’ve read this far, you are probably the kind of person who will enjoy The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook Junior Edition: Gross. It’s full of queasy information and practical advice for how to keep your wits about you when the going gets gross. And fair warning: It’s also full of bathroom humor, and everyone could use a little of that from time to time. Especially your kids. Just saying.

—Nathaniel Marunas, Brooklyn, NY