The results are in

October 6, 2014 by bclyp

As part of the fifth annual Dominican University Caritas Veritas Symposium the Butler Center staged a Book Identity Project through which we solicited from members of the university community a book (or six) from childhood that contributed to their identity. Participants were given an old-school check-out card asking for the book and we lined the front door and window of the center with old-school check-out card pockets to receive them. We had a tremendous response, with 101 books listed on 86 different cards.

identity cards The submissions are fascinating, with a surprising variety. To be sure, the collection includes some well-loved, to be expected titles. Where the Wild Things Are gets three mentions, and Dr. Seuss shows up six times, twice for The Cat in the Hat, twice for Green Eggs and Ham, and once each for Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I’m not surprised to see Louisa May Alcott or A.A. Milne, C.S. Lewis or Lewis Carroll (or Robert Louis Stevenson) in the mix. The single most-cited title is Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, with four mentions, which is something of a surprise, not because it’s a book I don’t care for (indeed, I don’t care for it) but because it seems to have the sort of nostalgic perspective that I never thought spoke strongly to children. Consider me schooled. I was somewhat surprised, too, to find books outside the children’s canon, by the likes of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Dwight D. Eisenhower. We didn’t specify that the book needed to be a book written expressly for children, just that it resonated in the participant’s childhood, so it makes perfect sense that books like these would show up. It’s a great reminder of my own myopia, that I automatically understand young people’s reading through my deep engagement with the body of literature I study. Schooled again!

Quite a few series made the cut, including Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, of course, Harry Potter (I was 32 when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published, and it’s just a little sobering to realize how many of our students read it as children). Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day got two mentions (I wonder if those folks saw the movie) as did The Runaway Bunny. Andrew Clements’ Things Not Seen, published in 2004, is the youngest book mentioned, and the oldest is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, first published in 1855.

Here’s the complete list. Check it out. Are you surprised by what you see? And while you’re at it, let us know if you can identify the authors of any of the first few books listed, unfamiliar to us.

Here are Butler Center Student Assistant Kara Pauley and LISSA President Stephan Licitra collecting entires (and passing out candy). It sure is great to have such friendly, diligent assistance.

Oh, and for the record, my choice was Spectacles, by Ellen Raskin. It’s a great book. You should check it out.

Here is the World: A Year of Jewish Holidays

September 25, 2014 by bclyp

Here is the World: A Year of Jewish Holidays

written by Lesléa Newman

illustrated by Susan Gal

Abrams, 2014

Sometimes I love a book on sight. It’s not fair, I know, or smart, really, to offer up my affection before I have really gotten to know the book a little, but sometimes I can’t help it. I had just such a reaction to this book. And I’m happy to report that deeper study and familiarity prove that my instincts were right. It’s splendid. And this, Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish year, seems the perfect day to sing its praises.

My affection began with the images. They are bright and cheerful and immediately arresting, but that basic appeal is just the beginning of their wonder. Susan Gal is a master of composition and shape. Every spread exhibits ordered balance and movement, reinforcing the sense of celebration with steady energy. And her figure work is just exquisite, with impeccable proportion and individual consistency. This seems a small thing, perhaps, but I can think of plenty of illustrators, some of them household names, who don’t approach the skillful grace of this warm, vital portraiture.

The color work enjoys the same sense of energy and balance, with rich, saturated jewel tones humming beside one another, glowing with naturalistic light. Indeed, whether lit by sunlight or stars, every spread elicits a sense of presence, so immediate is the setting.

And Gal employs all of this skill and style to a cumulative visual story that threads the family’s experience through the year. These holidays are not abstract, isolated festivities, but the real and meaningful celebrations of a close family.

For her part, Newman’s rhythmic verse scans beautifully (would that all rhyming text scan this well!), inviting, even imploring to be read aloud. But, just like the pictures, there’s substance behind the style, with family as the central theme.

This wonderful book will find its way to many libraries because of its useful and accessible treatment of important cultural information, but I sure hope it has a chance to extend beyond its simple utility and has a chance to delight with its profound and handsome charms.

Shanah tovah.

What book from your childhood contributed to your identity?

September 18, 2014 by karapauley

On September 23rd, Dominican University will be holding its fifth annual Caritas et Veritas Symposium, and the Butler Center will be taking part in the festivities. We’ve created library date-due cards with space for members of the Dominican Community to answer a single question: what book from your childhood contributed to your identity? Participants are encouraged to bring their cards to the Butler Center on the second floor of Rebecca Crown Library, room 214, where we will collect your responses.

But for now, a preview: what book contributed to my identity? To answer this question, I first had to ask myself, how exactly do I identify? In the most basic terms, I classify myself as a reader, a writer, a geek. If there was one work really started me down the path to becoming what I am today, it was Kevin J. Anderson’s and Rebecca Moesta’s Young Jedi Knights series.

Prior to reading this series I would not have identified as a reader. I remember reading being a struggle for me until middle school. But after reading the Young Jedi Knights series (more commonly known among fans as the YJK books) I suddenly wanted all the Star Wars literature I could get my hands on. And since LucasFilm continually publishes Star Wars novels, there are always more Star Wars books to read.

The YJK books made me a reader first, but the writer and the geek followed in quick succession. By the time I reached high school, I was writing and posting Star Wars fan fiction online, which led me to pursue a major in Creative Writing as an undergraduate student. Eventually, I began writing original stories. Reading the Star Wars books also steered me toward other science fiction works, such as Ender’s Game, 1984, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I steadily became indoctrinated in other fandoms, making me the geek I am today.

The YJK also had a specific effect on the way I viewed myself as a young girl. While it could be argued that although all five main characters were equally important, Jaina Solo (the daughter of Princess Leia and Han Solo) acted as the leader of the group. She was introduced as an inquisitive, mechanically-minded girl who preferred grease stains to makeup. She was always the character to stay cool when a situation heated up, and has continues to be my favorite character in the Star Wars universe. The YJK books also featured Tenel Ka, an athletic, rustic girl from a backwards planet with a no-nonsense attitude. Like Jaina, she wasn’t worried about her appearance, but rather about developing her abilities. Four books into the series, however, she lost her left arm in a lightsaber training accident, and as she recovered it was revealed that she has a somewhat secret identity: she was really the princess of a 36-planet cluster. Both girls were able to become strong characters without losing their their femininity and were displayed in leadership roles more prominently than the three boys who made up the rest main cast.

The YJK was a series filled with great role models, fast pacing, and valuable lessons. Best of all, it was easy to read. These were definitely high-interest, low-level books. Although the characters began at the age of fourteen, the series was really written at a fourth grade reading level, which is just another reason why they were able to pull me in when I was a struggling reader. Without it, I wouldn’t have become the reader, writer, and geek that I am today.

So what book from your childhood contributed to your identity? Stop by the Butler Center next Tuesday and let us know, or fill out the form below!

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Theseus and the Minotaur

September 15, 2014 by bclyp

Theseus and the Minotaur

by Yvan Pommaux

Toon, 2014

I grew up with ancient mythology. My parents met in graduate school, themselves 1/2 of the first cohort of Classics PhD students at the University of Washington (three men and one woman–my mom used to joke that my dad “won” the contest) and our childhoods were steeped in the stories of ancient Greece and Rome. Indeed, the ancient world was everywhere, in the pictures on the walls, the statues on the tabletops, the books on the shelves, even the secretive Latin conversations at the dinner table. And the myths were our bedtime stories. Think about that for a minute. I remember being five years old and feeling plainly terrified that if I looked my mother square in the face I’d be turned to stone. I got past it, of course, but these stories will always feel very close to me.

I also remember struggling with the definition of mythology as organic, adaptive story that grows and mutates in different cultural iterations. I wanted to know the real, official account of Medea, and resented my father’s challenging assertion that all of the versions are equally valid, right up to the contemporary reimaginings (perhaps my students, themselves occasionally frustrated by my refusal to offer a straight answer to anything, now know whom to blame). But I have come to love the idea that these ancient stories represent deeply resonant foundations on which all manner of human interaction can be explored. And I am always on the lookout for new contemporary volumes to add to the canon.

This one does not disappoint.

Like all Toon books, the comic format relies on careful reading of the images to digest the story. Word balloons, and, in this case, some general narrative, further the account, but the large spreads and small detail images constitute the heart of the story. Pommaux’s simple pencil line drawings are easy to follow, yet display remarkable sophistication in their style and execution. Small details, like the family resemblance between King Aegeus and his son Theseus reinforce the bountiful mythology. The artist superimposes crisp, flat figures on smudged, sketchy grounds, establishing a sort of cinematic energy that propels the story along. Pommaux plays with the organization of the (often unframed) panels as well, stretching them across the top and/or bottom of both pages, effectively playing with the tropes of the comic canon in the same way bards and playwrights played with the stories themselves. There’s some terrific front and back matter here, too, including endpaper maps, character sketches for principle players, shorter definitions of people, places and things in a longer index, and suggestions for further investigation.

It’s easy to imagine kids reading these words and pictures, over and over. With any luck we can look forward to Perseus and the Gorgon coming up next!

Hug Machine

September 8, 2014 by bclyp

Hug Machine

by Scott Campbell

Atheneum, 2014

I love this book. I love it up. Indeed, here is a place where one is glad one is blogging, and can set aside the more formal trappings of professional writing and just gush with abandon.

Ready? Here is a list of my impromptu enthusiasms:

1) The faces. Campbell does some good faces. His style is particularly loose and sketchy, but boy, howdy, he can capture emotion and attitude in a few watercolor gestures. From the resolute purpose of the hugger, expressed in his firm mouth and closed eyes, to the variety of surprise among those being hugged (catch the look on his dad’s face, and that turtle?! shut up!), the priceless range of emotion adds meaning and depth to what might have been one note mawkish.

2) The composition. Some spreads are open, and some are crowded. But whether it’s the ominous space between the hug machine and his intended porcupine, or the busy, serial hugging along the dotted line (a la Family Circus), the composition is never accidental and always effective.

3) The font. Everything is hand painted, with the same easy watercolors as the pictures, reinforcing the child-perspective and adding to the insouciance.

4) The arc. It’s not uncommon to happen upon a picture book whose words and images match its listeners. But I can’t remember the last time I encountered a book whose story arc was so well calibrated to its audience. The pagination, the pacing, the implicit pauses and inflections. Here is a book that will blossom when read aloud, over and over (and over).

5) The details. They got everything right here. The buff heavy stock feels delicious under your fingertips. The endpapers, with their empty and completed checklists, even the author flap of the dust jacket (with our hero hugging a fire hydrant while a curious dog looks on), all of it contributes to a cohesive, thorough, and endlessly appealing experience.

6) The edge. I’m not exactly allergic to sincerity, but I do like my earnest cut with a healthy dose of dry. This is an undeniably sweet outing, but between the bodacious humor and the appreciable astringency, it is anything but cloying.

7) The timing. Hug Machine did not come out in February (see above).

8) The gender expression. This is a book all about warmth, doused in pink and glowing with ardor, and the bearer of all of that fervent affection is a little boy. Boom.

I leave you with an instructional video on 90-second hugs by the author himself. I suggest you put in some practice, and then go out and get your hug on.

p.s. September 6-14, 2014 appears to be Hug a Book Week, so if you’re looking for a recipient, you might start at your local library.

Animals at war

September 4, 2014 by bclyp

Bunny the Brave War Horse: Based on a True Story

by Elizabeth McLeod, illustrated by Marie Lafrance

Kids Can Press, 2014

Bunny, a magnificent horse, and two brothers, Bud and Tom, ship out to Europe in 1914 among a group of police horses and officers sent to fight on the battlefields of WWI. Bunny is initially assigned to Bud, and when he is killed he becomes Tom’s horse. The two form a close bond, and survive the conflict together, performing acts of heroism and sacrifice along the way. At war’s end, however, the two are separated; Tom returns to Canada, and Bunny is sold to a Flemish farmer. McLeod tells Bunny’s story with a combination of poetic license and narrative restraint. Her straightforward prose tells Bunny’s story simply, without drama or sentiment. We experience the hardships of war–the hunger and danger and death–but the matter-of-fact tone with which they are expressed establishes Bunny’s and Tom’s resolute, impenetrable bravery. Lafrance’s folk-like illustrations reinforce this sense of plain strength. Spread across double pages, the images are a bleak amalgam of murky greens and greys, setting a desperate tone broken only by the brilliant poppies immortalized in Dr. John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.” McLeod includes an author’s note in which she explains just how much isn’t known about Bunny’s story (even “Bud,” the name given Tom’s brother, is an invention), and confirms the heartbreaking conclusion. The Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication assigns fiction subject headings to this title, and I’m inclined to agree. This is a fiction with roots in fact. But it is no less a powerful and touching evocation of the perpetual price of waging war.

Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of World War I’s Bravest Dog

by Ann Bausum

National Geographic, 2014

In stark contrast to Bunny, Stubby the War Dog is a presentation of a bodacious collection of scrupulously documented facts surrounding one formidable dog. Sergeant Stubby, as he was known, was a dog with a personality as outsized as his antics. He presented himself as a stray to the 102nd Infantry, training at Yale University in 1917, and so endeared himself to the soldiers that one Corporal Robert Conroy smuggled him onto their ship bound for the theater in Europe. From there Stubby’s infamy grew and grew. Bausum offers a series of almost unbelievable anecdotes–Stubby saluting the officer who discovers him as a stowaway, Stubby rescuing a French toddler from oncoming traffic, Stubby recovering from grievous injury sustained on the battlefield–which establish his irrepressible persona. She also surrounds Stubby’s own story with rich and extensive context, offering lots of information about the greater war and its impact on everyone it touched. The narrative follows Stubby back to the United States after the war, where he travels, parades, and generally contributes to the post-war effort, and even chronicles his story after death, and the eventual inclusion of his remains at the Smithsonian Institution. What is most striking about this masterful exposition, to me, is the journalistic integrity of Bausum’s language. She makes it crystal clear, at every juncture, what she knows and what she wonders, and how she knows the difference. At no time does the reader question the veracity of the facts being presented, yet the narrative’s careful precision never intrudes on the accessible flow of the story. It’s easy to imagine kids enthralled with Stubby’s bigger-than-life life. And it’s just as easy to imagine them fascinated by the curiosity that prompted the investigation and the research that followed. I consumed the story through the Recorded Books audiobook version, narrated by Andrea Gallo, and even the experience without a single image was riveting.

These two books differ from one another in interesting ways. One uses snippets of history as a foundation for a largely fictionalized story while the other offers a detailed account sourced from the (admittedly much more plentiful) historical record. Yet, almost counterintuitively, it is Stubby’s “true” story that brims with outlandish, colorful flourishes, while Bunny’s “imagined” account offers a much more reserved and stoic vision of the animals-at-war experience. And this juxtaposition, in a nutshell, is what I love so much about the work of librarianship for the young. It is not ours to determine which is the better, truer, more legitimate approach, We get to put these books on the self, together, and invite kids (metaphorically, or directly, too, if we want) to ponder them both.

William Wegman board books

June 11, 2014 by bclyp

3…2…1…Circus and Early Rider

by William Wegman

Dial Books for Young Readers, 2014

When I was in Library School (that’s what we called it back then) fine-art photographer William Wegman began exploring the world of picture books as a medium for sharing his doctored photographs of his weimaraner dogs. He staged fantabulous vignettes with his dogs acting out famous fairy tales (like Red Riding Hood, pictured, from his book Little Red Riding Hood) or engaged in everyday activities (like harvesting, also pictured, from his book Farm Days). The results were weird and fascinating and beautifully child-centered; while some adults found them creepy, kids were captivated.

Wegman’s children’s literature output has been spottier of late, though experiments with a new style, inserting digital images of the dogs into scribbly, painterly paintings, have produced some recent charmers, including two board books out this month. 3…2…1…Circus! sees the dogs in all manner of circus scenarios, beginning with ten and counting down to a literal, lone puppy blast-off. Early Rider sets the puppies to get about in all manner of transportation, from pogo stick to hot-air balloon, described in rhyming couplets. The production values here are pleasantly rough, with sketchy objects on even sketchier backgrounds, offering a pronounced contrast to the digital clarity of the puppy pics. And Wegman’s ability to interpret the puppies’ playful positions, painting them into cockpits and clown suits, adds lots of dynamic energy.

A successful board book speaks to its infant audience with color, content, and imagery. All too often we see popular picture books reformatted on board pages, to take advantage of some sort of classic status, forgetting that babies have special (literary) appetites. This pair does a great job combining raucous color, meaningful concepts, and adorable puppies into a chewable package just right for babies to devour.

Here are a few book trailers from Wegman’s YouTube channel, because puppies.

Paperboy

June 6, 2014 by bclyp

the paperboy Paperboy

by Vince Vawter

Delacorte, 2013

audiobook by Listening Library, narrated by Lincoln Hoppe and Vince Vawter

As 2014 ALA Annual approaches I find myself, as ever, catching up with the award-winning books of the year, in anticipation of the upcoming conference’s many festivities. I just finished listening to the affecting recording of Newbery Honor-winning Paperboy by Vince Vawter, a semi-autobiographical story of a boy with a stutter coming of age in Memphis, TN in 1959.

The entire novel takes place over the course of a few weeks in the summer before 7th grade. Our protagonist, whom we come to know as Vince at the end of the book, takes over his friend Rat’s paper route and though his interactions with the people he meets as a consequence learns about himself and his place in the world. I will leave the details to you (if you’ve read the book you already know them, and if you haven’t, I don’t want to spoil them) but I do want to look at a pivotal scene where Vince and his guardian find themselves in grave peril, due, to some degree, to Vince’s disobedience. There is risk of real bodily harm, death even, and yet in the moment of danger there is no guilt and no reproach, only devotion and commitment. I credit the author for his keen characterization and careful plotting. He telegraphs none of these feelings, focusing instead on the circumstances and allowing the emotions to course underneath, organically. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, successful for its simple clarity and for the well-crafted build-up before it.

The scene has been much with me of late. Beyond its own literary resonance, it speaks to my understanding of the news of the day, specifically the aggressive scrutiny of prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl negotiated release. There are some who proclaim Sgt. Bergdahl a deserter who besmirched his homeland’s good name. They see his exchange for five Guantanamo-detained members of the Taliban as an abominable expense of geopolitical capital. They call him a traitor and thereby invalidate any claim he might have for American support. But my recent experience with Paperboy reminds me that our relationships have value expressly because they are not dependent upon our perfect behavior. We are allowed mistakes. Those who love us and assume responsibility for us take care of us. No matter what. I would hope that a soldier putting himself or herself in harm’s way could expect no less of his or her government, regardless of whether or not that soldier had stepped afoul of the line. I imagine that the circumstances surrounding Sgt. Berghadl’s initial disappearance will be investigated, and that strikes me as wholly appropriate. But I’m thankful and proud that the United States Government negotiated his release based upon his citizenship, not his conduct.

We all make mistakes, and none of us would want to be defined by our worst ones. Life is so very complicated, and how lucky we are that we have fine books like Paperboy to help us make sense of it.

Sparky!

April 22, 2014 by bclyp

sparky! Sparky!

by Jenny Offill, illustrated by Chris Appelhans

Schwartz & Wade, 2014

Girl wants pet. Mother agrees, so long as pet is low maintenance. Sloth arrives via express post. The premise is simple enough, but Offill and Appelhans veer off script just enough to take what might have been simply charming and make it particularly funny, in an irresistibly peculiar way.

The story’s initial progression follows tropes as we might expect. The girl makes lots of plucky attempts to make Sparky into a perfect pet (or at least believe him to be), playing all manner of games at which she can beat him. But her smart, bespectacled frenemy isn’t having it. So our protagonist casts Sparky as the star of his very own talent show, and, on the day, he fails. Miserably. Frenemy departs in a fit of superiority, and all seems lost. Here’s where the script flips. What’s supposed to happen is the girl discovers some secret, sloth-specific talent Sparky has that rescues the day from some convenient cataclysm, shining on him a new and heroic light. Instead, he just sleeps in his tree and the girl engages him in a game of tag. “‘You’re it, Sparky’ I said. And for a long, long time, he was.”

Beyond the achingly sweet double meaning of that final phrase, the situation’s refusal to conform to our expectations adds a lovely meta-humor to the tale. The funny comes from dodging our expectations, as funny often does. But in this case those expectations are not part of the situation itself but come from the literary tradition surrounding it.

But funny is just the beginning. The earnest perspective of Offill’s first person narrative is enchanting. The girl is trying so hard to believe in Sparky’s wonders herself that she convinces us in the bargain. Appelhans’ muted watercolor sketches wring buckets of charm from the characters and circumstances in open, expansive compositions with plenty of laughing room. Even the typeface, based on Appelhans’ hand lettering, adds to the story’s soft and tender heart.

This is the sort of book that makes one long for a regular group of preschoolers to read it to, at least if that someone is me.

The Caldecott measuring stick

April 12, 2014 by bclyp

The Caldecott terms and criteria constitute a particular, prescriptive lens through which to look at picture book illustration. The Caldecott Medal is arguably the most prestigious prize a picture book can win, and as such the specific elements and attributes it recognizes have a particular role to play as we examine and evaluate books in the canon. To be sure, the Caldecott terms and criteria are not the only measure we can apply. Indeed, in our day to day work with children, other things–iconic characterization, accessibility, suitability for a group read aloud–can be much more significant. Still, measuring picture books with the Caldecott measuring stick allows us to delve deeply into the quality of the illustration, and gives us meaningful information about the application and legacy of the Medal itself.

And so, for our final project in my intensive picture book course this semester, we are putting the books we’ve looked at through the Caldecott paces. From the 80 titles we’ve looked at the students have nominated 12 for our Mock Caldecott (stipulating that all are eligible, regardless of date or place of publication, or nationality of creator). It is fascinating too see which titles stand out in a Caldecotty sort of way, and which have announced to us their qualities in that respect. Here they are:

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Quentin Blake, written by Michael Rosen
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, by Peter Brown
Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me, illustrated by Bryan Collier, written by Daniel Beaty
Locomotive, by Brian Floca
The Great Bear, illustrated by Armin Greder, written by Libby Gleeson
Wild, by Emily Hughes
Flora and the Flamingo, by Molly Idle
This Moose Belongs to Me, by Oliver Jeffers
Waiting for the Biblioburro, illustrated by John Parra, written by Monica Brown
Here Comes the Garbage Barge, by Red Nose Studio
John, Paul, George and Ben, by Lane Smith
And Then it’s Spring, illustrated by Erin Stead, written by Julie Fogliano