To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers

To Fly: The Story of the Wright Brothers

by Wendie C. Old

illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker

This week, I've been lucky enough to look at TWO nonfiction picture books about famous pioneers of flight! This book, about the Wright brothers, is much different than the one about Amelia Earhart because its content spans a much longer period of time (the Earhart book only described one night in her life, the night of her trans-Atlantic flight), and contains much more text. This book would be much too wordy for primary elementary students, but it would certainly fascinate 4th and 5th graders. Even intermediate elementary students might have to read it over a few sittings, not just in one. It even has a table of contents that make the aspects of the Wright brothers' journey, in chronological order, more manageable and organized.

The watercolor illustrations were very interesting because the illustrator also clearly outlined in black pen, and made features on faces and bodies very scraggly and unclear. This technique reminded me very much of a Christmas picture book about mice that I used to read, but I can't remember it's title for the life of me. It was exciting to me that I was reminded of this book immediately when I turned to the first page, even if I can't remember it's name! The illustrator paints in mostly light, but bright colors that remind me of dawn and morning, while his characters are darker and more shadowy.

The author clearly did expansive research on this topic. He packed every page with detail about the Wright brothers and has clearly become an expert on them. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about their personal lives, like that their parents challenged all their children to think for themselves, and that they did not have a typical brother relationship. They challenged each other, bounced ideas off of one another, and loved arguing, not maliciously, but for the sport of it. I was surprised to hear that "The Wright brothers did not dress in the work clothes of the islanders. They always wore business suits. And they never flew on Sundays." They wore work clothes in the bicycle shop but wouldn't on the beach in the sand and dirt while experimenting?! How odd! The author exhibits a great combination of research and style when he adds vivid details like "once a package arrived [to their nieces and nephews] with a dried horseshoe crab, bottles of salty seawater, and fine seashore sand," and "Wilbur kept crashing into the ground. Sand got in his mouth and eyes and hair."

The epilogue at the end of the story highlights how, out of all the inventors at the time searching for a solution to making man fly, Orville and Wilbur Wright were the ones to do it. The author emphasizes the power of two: it was the combination of Wilbur's social skills and innovativeness and Orville's optimism that led them to victory.

The back pages include a "Flight Timeline" and book suggestions to read further, both of which would be useful and interesting to young readers.

http://www.wright-house.com/wright-brothers/Wrights.html

Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers

Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers

written and illustrated by Karen Winnick

This was a very different non-fiction picture book indeed. Though it contained some interesting factual information that I was not previously aware of, I did not really enjoy its language, the author's craft, or the illustrations. I felt that the oil paint illustrations were too dark and gloomy, and the characters were very crude and unappealing to me, in my opinion. I know that if I were a child picking up this book and doing a picture walk, I would probably be bored in just a few seconds and start searching for another book because the pictures did not put me in awe and make me want to find out the text that goes along with them.

However, this book did spike my curiosity to know more about Grace Bedell and her family. With siblings' names like Levant and Una, I am wondering if her family is of foreign decent or if those are old names common during the Civil War Era? I also admired Grace's devotion to Abraham Lincoln and rallying votes for him, even if she could not vote for him due to her age and gender at the time. She seemed so young--just a child--yet so passionate about ending slavery and supporting him! The author doesn't really use any significant craft or style, and I felt that the text itself was pretty boring; this makes me wonder if this was an intentional decision, and if it wasn't, is the author an expert on this subject? How do I know she did the best possible research on the topic? Maybe this could warrant more historical investigation, though I doubt a publisher in 1995 could let this go to press without accurate information.

Consequently, this picture book did increase my admiration of Abraham Lincoln, if that's possible. In the afterword, the author displays a copy of the letters that Grace and Lincoln exchanged in 1860, and it just warms my heart that he would respond to the letter of a little girl in New York, when he was so busy running for election from Springfield, Illinois. He seems to be a man who really cared about all of his constituents, and his devotion to this country stands evident still today.

The Grace Bedell Foundation:

http://www.gracebedellfoundation.org/

Boy: Tales of Childhood

Boy: Tales of Childhood

by Roald Dahl

When I first picked up this book, which I remember reading in 3rd or 4th grade, it was so interesting how very different it is than The BFG, which our book club read for the fantasy discussion. Even though Roald Dahl lived in a completely different time than today's children, without common vaccines and treatments for diseases like pneumonia and measles, and with names foreign for American children, like Astri, Else, and Roald, he does such a wonderful job of making his life seem just like any of his readers'.

He begins the book with a dedication to his siblings and this great lead-in sentence: "An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography." Dahl just sets us up for an adventure in the beginning, and has an amazing way of telling his life story while being completely modest and entertaining. The end of his introduction is powerful also: "Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true."

I soon learned that this statement is completely ratified throughout his book. I laughed out loud at some moments, yet was very saddened by others. One of the memories that impacted me the most and made me admire Dahl even more was his description of a terrible event that happened to his family when he was very young. The eldest daughter Astri, died suddenly of appendicitis in 1920 at seven years old. Dahl's father loved Astri best of all his children and was so depressed by her death that he too fell ill, with pneumonia. As his fever worsened and his pulse increased, he didn't put up a fight due to his grief over Astri, so he too passed away at age 57. Dahl's mother, having lost a husband and a daughter, was forced to be incredibly strong in the face of tragedy, and raise the five other children alone. What stung even more about this situation was that 42 years after, Roald's daughter Olivia died of measles, the same age that Astri was at her death, and today, all of this would be completely prevented by penicillin and vaccinations. Very depressing indeed.

I liked finding out how Dahl's imagination would run wild and some of the irrational thoughts he had as a child. I know that I certainly had some, and when I look back on them I wonder, wow, HOW could I think that something like that would happen? Or why would I ever worry about that? It's certainly nice to know that other people, including famous authors, had a similar experience as me in that regard.

Probably my favorite memory that made me laugh was "The Great Mouse Plot," in which Roald and his gang of 9 year-old friends from Llandaff Cathedral School find a dead mouse that they put in the jar of Gobstoppers at the sweet-shop so that the horrible Mrs. Pratchett, who runs the place, would touch it with her dirty hands next time she reached for one. However, it was extremely difficult to get through the scene afterward, "Mrs. Pratchett's Revenge," when the headmaster beats with a cane the boys involved in the prank: "At first I heard only the crack and felt absolutely nothing at all, but a fraction of a second later the burning sting that flooded across my buttocks was so terrific that all I could do was gasp."

It amazes me that Dahl can recall such vivid memories, fifty and sixty years later! I wonder if the dialogue that he includes truly happened word-for-word, or if he is improvising dialogue to fit with the events? I also love that he includes pictures from his childhood, most with captions in his handwriting, such as "the house at Radyr," "a picnic with Mama." There are some illustrations included as well, such as a (joking) "WANTED FOR MURDER!" poster with Roald's picture on it, the cane-beating scene, and the candy from the sweet-shop.

I think that if children (or adults) have hesitations about non-fiction, this book could definitely be used to break those down. It's practically written like a fiction story, complete with humor and sad parts, just in a string of memories rather than a beginning, build-up, climax, and resolution.

Roald Dahl's site:

http://www.roalddahl.com/

Very sad account of tragedy in Dahl's life:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/7930233/Roald-Dahls-darkest-hour.html

Anne Frank

Anne Frank

by Josephine Poole

illustrated by Angela Barrett

As one might suspect given its content, this is probably one of the more depressing picture books out there. This narrative biography tells the well-researched story of Anne as a young girl, both before and during her hiding in the secretive annex in Amsterdam.

It opens with a paragraph from Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, which was extremely confusing for me out of context because I have not read the book, but makes much more sense after finishing the picture book. Regardless of background knowledge, it prepares the reader for the rest of the picture book, with a tone of desperation, helplessness, and fear. The lead-in paragraph of the story is also very intriguing. The author starts, "The story of Anne Frank begins with an ordinary little girl, someone you might sit next to in class," which immediately relates the story back to the personal lives of the readers, making them imagine that Anne is one of their friends, that this event could have happen to anyone. Poole continues very straightforwardly, hiding nothing: "Mostly Anne felt on top of the world. But sometimes she was afraid. There was a good reason for this: Adolf Hitler ruled Germany then, and he had vowed to get rid of the Jews. Anne Frank was a German Jew." Thus a very serious and somber tone is set from the start.

I thought it was very interesting that the author then spoke about the poverty of the German citizens in general leading up to Hitler's reign, how their country was in debt paying for damages of World War I, people were out of jobs and food, and they were searching desperately for a solution and someone to blame. Turn the page, and we see a stark quarter-page vertical spread of a LARGE mural of Hitler with a shocking red background, two little children like ants in comparison. The author describes how Hitler became the solution for many German citizens, and he pointed fingers at the Jews. Poole uses a metaphor that moved me: "It was no threat to begin with--no more than a spark. But the spark was to turn into a flame, and the flame into a blaze that would consume the whole of Europe before it was put out." 70 years later, I feel that this wildfire metaphor describes the Holocaust perfectly.

Poole also made me contemplate aspects of this horrible discrimination that I had not considered before. Often, differences in race and religion are overlooked by young children; however, the author makes it clear that Hitler's nonsense trickled down to very young children, which amazed me. "At school, children began to notice who was Jewish. Some of them mocked and even bullied their classmates. It was very bitter for the Jewish children, to be pushed around and called dirty names by boys and girls who had been their friends."

Several of Barrett's watercolor images impacted me. One passage that describes "the grown-up world" and that Germans were smashing the windows of Jewish shops contains a three-quarter spread where you can follow the flying broken glass from the text top right diagonally down left to the shopkeepers ducking behind their counter for protection. This action image frozen in time of millions of tiny shards of glass, as thin as paper, is incredible. Another painting that touched me was a half-page spread next to a passage that described the horror stories told by the Franks' new neighbors just moving to Amsterdam. Anne is in the dark hallway, overhearing her parents talk in the kitchen. The only light in the painting is coming from the slightly-open door to the kitchen, and it shows Mr. and Mrs. Frank in a worried, tight embrace. Little Anne, in her pajamas, looks so frail and wispy, and the dark hallway has a blue hue that just evokes such extreme sadness and helplessness.

The language that the author uses is incredibly specific and well-researched. For instance, "Early next morning, she struggled into several sets of underwear, two pairs of stockings, a dress, skirt, jacket, raincoat, stout shoes, a cap and scarf. It was the only way to carry her clothes--any Jew with a suitcase looked suspicious." How detailed she is! And the whole book is like this! Poole includes the detail that Anne had to leave behind her cat Moortje when her family moved into the annex to hide: this fact is easily relatable to children and helps readers empathize further with Anne if they haven't already.

The book continues to describe Anne's struggles with her family in the annex for two years and how she records it in her diary to release her frustrations, her relationship that she develops with another boy who hides in the annex Peter, and the day her family is captured and separated. We learn that Mr. Frank is the only one to survive the trauma, and Anne died of typhus in a concentration camp. The ending to the story was very abrupt and unexpected: "Anne Frank was no more than a girl, and her short life had come to an end. But her story was just beginning."

There is an afterword describing the publishing of her diary, and also a detailed chronology of German history and the Franks' story 1918-1980--definitely useful for readers!

Anne Frank House Museum:

http://www.annefrank.org/

The Boy Who Bit Picasso

The Boy Who Bit Picasso

by Antony Penrose

photographs by Lee Miller

artwork by Picasso

"I couldn't speak French or Spanish, but it didn't matter at all because we didn't need a language for our games. Picasso was great fun to play with. He liked to romp around on the floor and have pretend bullfights. His tweed jacket was nice and scratchy. He smelled good, too. He smelled of cologne and French tobacco" (17).

Before I read this book, I had no idea who Antony Penrose was. A child, friends with Picasso?! Wasn't he kind of an eccentric man who wasn't friends with many people? Turns out that, while "he got very upset with adults if they touched anything" that he was working on in his home in southern France, he loved letting children tinker with his artwork and items in his house (37). Turns out that Antony Penrose, son of famous model and photographer Lee Miller and surrealist painter Roland Penrose, who were friends of Picasso, is now a writer who has spent a lot of time publishing his mother's photographs, developing the Lee Miller Archive, and crafting this book and The Lives of Lee Miller, and upholding his parents' legacies .

This book is different from the other picture books I've examined because it contains a combination of photographs by Tony's mother, creative maps, and inserts of Picasso's art. The text is set on bright colors that contrast with Miller's black-and-white photographs, and the author varies the font styles to emphasize certain words. For example, in the sentence "He was always experimenting, always inventing, always making things," the word "experimenting" is larger and in a squiggly shape, which reminded me of the motion of a roller coaster, which invokes excitement and risk-taking. On the next page, he messes with the fonts of "junk" and "art," in the sentence "He made them from junk, which he transformed into art," emphasizing the relationship between the two. This concept that art can result from junk is intriguing for children, pushes their imagination and creativity, and shows them how easily they too can be artists: they don't have to have the best and most expensive materials to do so.

As a French major, I was personally delighted with this book as it described Picasso's various homes and movement around southern France. I laughed out loud when I read the scene after which the book is titled: "I don't remember this, but Mom told everyone that one day, when we were playing, I got overexcited and I naughtily bit Picasso. Picasso turned around and bit me right back--hard! Just before I started to yell, Mom heard Picasso say, in French, "Gosh! that's the first Englishman I've ever bitten!" (19). Penrose sets this scene apart by putting it in larger font than the rest of the book, with a bright orange two-page spread background, accentuated with drawings created by children, rather than Miller's photographs or Picasso's artwork.

I loved how the author discussed Picasso's creative process in this book and feel that it would be especially interesting to young readers, who may be aspiring artists at their age. For example, "Picasso did not often use precious materials like gold or silver. Instead he used the things he found around him--things you might see in your garden or kitchen at home. He made this baby out of bits of broken pots" (30). And, "I did see the sculpture Picasso made of a monkey mother with a baby. Take a look at the mother's face. Can you see what Picasso used to make it? He used Claude [his son]'s toy car" (33).

Finally, I loved the concluding paragraph of Penrose's book because he connects to the lives of young readers by suggesting that artists really are ordinary people and more accessible than you may think: "Today he is one of the most famous artists in the world...but to me he will always be my extraordinary friend, and I hope he is now yours, too" (47).

Check Out these links!

Interview in which Antony Penrose talks about the time he bit Picasso:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/aug/22/picasso-lee-miller-tony-penrose

Video interview with Antony Penrose about life growing up on the Farley Farmhouse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObp0I5U5fs

Night Flight:Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic

Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic

Written by Robert Burleigh

Paintings by Wendell Minor

Night Flight, written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Wendell Minor, is the terrifying and inspirational tale of Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic journey May 20-21,^,1932.

Overall, the combination of the author’s awesome descriptive words and the illustrator’s gorgeous paintings create a stunning picture book that captivates from the start. Every sentence is rich and exhilarating, and it feels like the words Burleigh uses could control our emotions and sweep us away at any second! For example, he invokes terror when he states, “Rivers of quicksilver darkness drown the moon. The wooden Vega wobbles on invisible hills of air. Lightning scribbles its zigzag warning across the sky: DANGER”. He also uses short sentences occasionally for emphasis, such as “It is Ireland,” when Earhart finally reaches land. It touches on deep concepts, such as death, danger, fear, loneliness, and desperation that younger audiences (K-3) may not be able to grasp very well. The author uses some complex words that would also be very difficult at an early level. Depending on students’ prior knowledge, a teacher reading aloud might have to stop and explain some hard words to the students; if the students are too young to understand a majority of these words, the comprehension and value of the story may be lost. If the teacher only has to explain a few words, the students can still appreciate the story.

But any audience will enjoy the magnificent watercolor illustrations in this book. Every painting, from the construction of the plane, to the hairs on Earhart’s head or the sparkle in her eyes, to the crashing waters of the Atlantic, is precise. The illustrator uses a variety of painting techniques to display what he wants to portray: pointillism for the gravel and grassy hills that Earhart leaves behind in Newfoundland as she soars into the great unknown, softer watercolor strokes for the wispy night clouds, small frantic strokes for the wrinkly ocean, and even some splattering for the crashing lightning storm. Minor does a wonderful job of incorporating Earhart’s emotion into his paintings. For example, when it first turns to night, the text reads, “Her mind soars. She loves what she likes to call ‘first-time things.’ She remembers roller coasters, bicycles, barebacked horses.” On this page, the artist uses watercolors to create a shimmering night in all shades of blue, laced with white specks for stars. This painting instills wonderment and mystery and is conducive to Earhart’s connection of her childhood memories to her unpredictable future ahead. If we aren’t mesmerized by the front cover, we certainly are taken by the map we see when we open the front cover. It integrates geography and history into the text by charting Earhart’s course from Newfoundland to Ireland, pointing out the distance she traveled and start and stop times. It also models the Vega plane she used and gives the statistics of the plane’s construction, which is such interesting information for kids! Although there are lots of picture books out there on Amelia Earhart, I feel like this one is different because it focuses less on her journey during which she disappeared, and more on her courage and triumphs against adversity during her successful voyage.

Official Amelia Earhart Biography site:

http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/bio.html

Woodsong

Woodsong

by Gary Paulsen

To be honest, I wasn't quite in love with this book from the start like I thought I would be. But I think it won me over in the end. Woodsong is a memoir of Gary Paulsen's life, that features the lessons he learned as a woodsman and his experience running a team of sled dogs in the epic Iditarod race. For me, the first few chapters were very slow, and the bloody descriptions were painful. However, things started to pick up for me when I read the account of one of the dogs, Columbia, teasing another, Olaf by pushing his bone incredibly close, but just out of his reach, and how this action and focus on the humor felt by the dominant party led Paulsen to quit trapping animals. In class, we've recently been discussing author's craft and leads into stories. I loved how not just the first line of the book, but every chapter really, had an intriguing lead in this book. For example, chapter one: "I understood almost nothing about the woods until it was nearly too late. And that is strange because my ignorance was based on knowledge." And chapter four: "The adventure really begins in differences--the great differences between people and animals, between the way we live now and the way we once lived, between the Mall and the Woods." In relation to this second lead in particular, Paulsen goes on to discuss how the difference between animals and people is fire. Not technology or resources or physical ability, but fire. I also really enjoyed that his memoir was not just about his life story, but truly focused on lessons, which makes it perfect to read in an educational context. In addition, I feel that the lessons he learns don't just teach him about his life, but can be applied in other contexts as well. For example, I think the most important lesson he learns, that he learns from a 400-pound bear who could have easily killed him after Paulsen threw a stick at him but chose not to, is that "when it is all boiled down I am nothing more and nothing less than any other animal in the woods." I think this lesson applies to Paulsen's life but is also a good moral for children in general, meaning that they are no better than any of their peers and no better than the other creatures on this earth and thus should not destroy them. I will admit that some of the content in this book is very sensitive for elementary age, and I was shocked in horror and upset by some of the scenes he described. But he did also have a sense of humor in describing the animals that kept me entertained throughout.

The description of the Iditarod was kind of presented as a separate portion of the book, and its exhilarating, much more active tone, certainly separated it so. I was shocked to learn that the race takes seventeen days, and cannot imagine something more grueling and consuming, but also rewarding in the end. I think the feeling he describes of The Run being something that can't be done, but once you do it, you never want it to end, may not be a feeling that children can relate to right now, but I have full confidence that later in life it is a feeling they will experience and hopefully will be able to relate back to this moment in the book.

Paulsen answers questions submitted by children to Scholastic!

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/iditarod/top_mushers/index.asp?article=gary_paulsen