Author Focus: Virginia Lee Burton

As a child, a favorite book of mine was Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House.  Growing up in a county which was constantly losing it’s farmlands and forests to new housing developments, I empathized with the little house.  I loved that Burton made the text of the words go in the shape of the roads on the facing page, and the details of the city being built up around the house.  I never read any of her other stories until I had my own children.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is a timeless classic like The Little House that comes out every now and then and is deeply loved by my kids.  This one is about Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel, Mary Anne who is powerful and strong and a bit prideful but is eventually sidelined for digging jobs by the more powerful diesel engines. 

As in The Little House, the theme of old things being tossed aside for new in the name of progress is evident.  In both stories, both the house, and Mary Anne find new lives and new purpose, despite their age and decrepitude.

The other day I just learned of another of Burton’s books, Katy and the Big Snow. This one is about Katy the snow plow who comes to the rescue of the town of Geoppolis when they are hit with huge amounts of snow.

Katy is the only plow able to dig out the town.  This book has Burton’s signature illustrations weaving from side to side across the page and the lovely detailed drawings.  There isn’t as much of a message about old things becoming new again as in the previous books, but it’s a fun story nonetheless.

Burton has several other books probably of equal quality that I hope to get a hold of soon:  Life Story, Choo Choo, Maybelle the Cable Car, and Calico the Wonder Horse.

Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science

I’ll admit it, I hate teaching my kids science.  It’s not the subject that frustrates me or is uninteresting, quite the contrary.  It’s that there is just so much out there and so many different ways to go about doing it that I get overwhelmed.  In our homeschool I tend towards thinking that a science lesson has to be a big production with experiments, museum visits, real life experience, record keeping, etc.  But the fact is, that sometimes the simplest presentation of a lesson works just as well.  Don’t get me wrong, experiments and big productions to teach a lesson are fun, but if a big production is out of the question (because you have sick kids, or a toddler that destroys anything in his path that might resemble a science project, or you simply have run out of time to plan anything), sometimes just finding a decent book to read is a great substitute.  Read the book, talk about it, point things out, ask your kid questions about what they think or to make observations from their own life.  Then if you’re feeling really school-ish you can have them write down something they learned and draw a picture.  That’s it!  Science is done for the day.  Nice and easy.

So where to find good science books?  Well, there are tons.  But if you need a good series to rely on for any topic, my favorite is Harper Collins’ Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series.

These books are appropriate for K-4 set, but I have a 4 year old who has enjoyed listening along with big brother for about a year or so.  This series has a book about virtually any science topic you can think of.  Archaeology, Biology, Botany, Geology, and many more.  They are written as a story, with the facts and ideas woven in.  There are bright illustrations.

Each one is written by a different author.  There are older books, I’ve seen ones as old as the 1980s I believe.  They are still writing books for the series.  The newer books are leveled.  Level 1 is for the younger kiddos, the books are more story-like with characters.  The Level 2 books are more detailed and have more words on each page.  They are more focused on the facts.

Most likely you can easily find many of these books in your library system.  Because they all have different authors, try searching under the series name.

You can find a complete list of the level 1 books here, and the level 2 books here.  At the Harper Collins’ site you can also search by topic if you’d rather narrow it down.

Let me know if your child has a favorite science book, I’d love to hear more ideas!

Holy Friends

Over the past few years we’ve given this book as a gift to several of our friends children for baptisms, birthdays, etc.  I’ve always had it on our list of ones to buy for our own home library but never have, until our own children were lucky enough to receive it for Christmas from a family member!

Diana M. Amadeo has compiled a lovely book about saints and blesseds of the Americas.  There are some wonderful stories of missionary saints in the Americas that often get overlooked in saint compilations.  Holy Friends:  Thirty Saints and Blesseds of the Americas is well written, and a joy to page through.  There are some well known saints in there, such as Katherine Drexel and John Neumann, but there are also lesser known ones (well, to me they are lesser known), such as Saint Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga.  The saints are arranged by country, alphabetically.  Each one has a full page color drawing of them doing their work.  The drawings are very realistic, detailed and captivating.

The details that I appreciate about this book are the flags that show each country that the saint did his or her work.  At the end of each write up about the person, the date of their feast day is given, and there is a short prayer at the end of each one as well.

This book would be a great addition to any history study, especially if using a secular text.  These early missionaries had a huge influence on the beginnings of the Americas and are often overlooked in history texts.  This book also gives the opportunity for geography study along with the saint study.

My only complaint about the book (and it’s a very small one) is that there is no separate listing of the feast days.  In our family, we try to read about the saint on his or her feast day.  It would be helpful to have a list in the back of the book that arranged them by month, rather than having to look at the last page of each write up to find the date.

Candy Cane Update

I previously reviewed a book about the legend of the candy cane. The gist of it is that book had a good idea but the storytelling was lacking.  Well, I found a better option for those wanting to learn about the legend of the candy cane.  This one is creative, weaves a story around one candymaker who developed the candy as a way to teach his granddaughter and other children about the true meaning of Christmas.

David and Helen Haidle have a beautiful story called The Candymaker’s Gift. 

The book tells about the candymaker’s desire to teach the children in his life about Jesus, the real reason for celebrating Christmas.  He creates a new candy, and each step of the process reminds him of some characteristic of Jesus.  Then his granddaughter, Katie, has the idea to add the red stripes to make it pretty, but the candymaker says it reminds him of Jesus’ suffering.

In my opinion, the book goes on too long, with the two characters talking about how they helped each other, something about the flow of the story was off.  But overall, it was a great story and lovely illustrations.

The book also includes ideas of how to incorporate the candy cane theme into Christmas celebrations and a summary of the meaning of the candy cane with relevant scriptures to read.

My kids enjoyed listening to this one with a cup of hot chocolate and candy canes!

Epiphany reading

Today the church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany.  Traditionally on January 6, but often moved to the preceding sunday.  Here are some wonderful stories to enhance your children’s observance of this day.

Gennady Spirin has a stunning but simple book entitled We Three Kings. It is quite simply, the words to the carol of the same name.  Each page has just a line or so from the carol, but the pictures are amazingly detailed and colorful.

Another book that would be appropriate for Epiphany is The Last Straw.  You can read my previous review of that one, here.

And of course, my personal favorite would be Tomie DePaola’s version of the Epiphany story.

“Like a flame of fire that star pointed out God, the King of Kings.

The Story of the Three Wise Kings is a traditional story, pulling on the account in Matthew’s gospel, as well as traditions about the names and attributes of the kings.  I’m definitely a huge fan of DePaola’s style of storytelling and illustrating.

Three Trees

I’m not even sure how this book showed up on my library search for Christmas books, but I’m glad it did, anyway.

Angela Elwell Hunt has retold a traditional folktale called The Tale of Three Trees. It’s a wonderful, little story about 3 trees who had wishes to be great things and ended up each serving Jesus in different ways.

One little tree wished to hold treasure, but instead was made into a feed trough for animals.

The second tree wanted to be the strongest ship to carry kings but instead was made into a small dinghy.

The third tree just wanted people to see itself and think of God, but instead was made into rough logs.

As you can probably guess, each one was disappointed with its lot in life and wondered what had gone wrong.  But each one was used for important parts of Jesus life. The feed trough was used to cradle the baby Jesus.  The dinghy carried the king Jesus and his disciples when he calmed the storm.  The third tree, as a log, held Jesus on the cross and helped people to think of God.

This was a great story to spark some discussion about vocation, and how God transforms us to do great things.

This legend is told simply and beautifully.  The illustrations (by Tim Jonke) are definitely unique.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen trees drawn like that in books.

What I like about it is when each tree is given it’s job, it’s not explicitly said, this is Jesus.  The kids have to figure that part out.  For instance, it simply says:

…a young woman placed her newborn baby in the feed box….and suddently the first tree knew he was holding the greatest treasure in the world.

Highly recommend this story.  It’s short enough for younger children, and meaningful enough for olders.  Appropriate for Christmas time, Easter, or really throughout the year.

Hee Haw!

We watched the season’s obligatory It’s a Wonderful Life on tv the other night.  At the friends’ every mention of “hee-haw” I was reminded that I had gotten a Christmas book out of the library and hadn’t yet read it to the kids.  We remedied that yesterday and even made a school lesson out of it.

St. Francis and the Christmas Donkey is by Robert Byrd. The story tells of St. Francis walking in the woods when he started a conversation with a very grumpy donkey who was tired of being pushed around by the other animals.  St. Francis then tells donkey the story of how he became a beast of burden and ultimately how that prepared him for his most special job of carrying Mary and her unborn baby Jesus.

Overall we all enjoyed this story.  It reads wonderfully, smoothly and tells the story simply yet dramatically.  It reminds me a little bit of a gentler, better version of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, because it talks about how the donkey got his long floppy ears and scraggly tail.  It’s a longer story, better for 4 and up, most likely.  The illustrations are lovely and vibrant.

The story talks about the story of Creation, but takes great liberty in recounting the events, so that may be a concern to some people.  But it is in typical legend form and reads as such, not meant to be taken as a literal account of the creation of the world.

We used this book as our daily advent reading, then transitioned to a science lesson about donkeys and their characteristics, and how they have been used in different cultures.  This could also be a great book to read for St. Francis’ feast day.

Sorry Ludwig

We are currently in the middle of a Beethoven unit in our homeschool.  There are quite a few books that I found that have enhanced our studies.  But one in particular was a flop. I don’t even have a picture.

The Value of Giving:  The Story of Beethoven is just such a bizarre story I’m not sure where to begin.  It’s from a series of “ValueTales” by Ann Donegan Johnson. The illustrations are on the creepy side, very comical faces, which can be fine, these just seem more like the Sunday Comics.  The story is about Beethoven’s childhood and growing up with a drunk, sometimes abusive father.  Ludwig makes up an imaginary cat as a friend and stumbles through life being teased by others and just trying to write the music he heard in his head.

It could be a decent story.  But somehow he became the go-to person in history to teach kids about giving????  I’m at a loss.

Here’s the quote from the last page of the book:

“Of course not everyone can give the world great music, as Beethoven did.  But sooner or later, everyone has the opportunity to give something to make someone else happier.  Your gifts may be very simple, but if they make someone else happy, you will probably be happier too.”

Oh, I get it now.

Up next:  books about Beethoven that are worth reading.

A new spin on the nativity story

This nativity story focuses on a legend about the gift of a particular spider.  The Cobweb Curtain:  A Christmas Story by Jenny Koralek, is not the typical nativity story.  It begins with the birth of the baby Jesus, and tells how the holy family fled out of the city to escape Herod’s wickedness.  A shepherd helps them leave and finds a cave for them to hide in for the night.  During the cold night, a spider spins large web that spans the opening of the cave.  As a result, the next morning, Herod’s guards don’t bother to look in the cave.  They assume that no one had been there recently if a spider had time to make such a large web.

The story goes that later the shepherd takes the web home to his family to put on their tree.  Every year after his children find a frosty web to hang on the little tree to remind them of the Christ Child’s birthday.  The connection at the end is drawn to modern day garland and tinsel on our trees.

My kids enjoyed this story.  It was fairly short, and took a familiar story and made it interesting.  The illustrations are unique.   Overall the quality of the story and illustrations make up for the possible inaccuracies of the story itself.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Tomie DePaola has written a beautiful children’s book to educate them about the events that this feast commemorates.  The Lady of Guadalupe is quite a detailed re-telling of Juan Diego and how Mary visited him to increase his faith.  The illustrations are very Tomie-like, but he does a stunning job with Our Lady’s image.

This is a great book to have in your own home library, but you can likely find it at your local library.  It’s a nice one to have on hand for any study about Mary and her apparitions, or names.