Can we read? No. 36

(I would like to be chocolate-d, I think?)

Apr 28, 2021

“Hurray for Spring Mud” by Judith Kinter

My sisters pick buttercups bursting with spring;
My brothers chase mayflies while mockingbirds sing;
My friends splash in puddles and brooklets that flood;
But I love that swishable, squishable mud!
It chocolates my fingers, my knees, and my toes;
It makes mud pies to sun-bake and mud balls to throw;
Let others go wild about bird, bee, and bud;
Just give me my swishable, squishable mud!

When I read this poem to my children over breakfast Monday morning I knew immediately when I got to the use of chocolate as a verb that I wanted to send it to you. It’s from the book, Puddle Wonderful: Poems to Welcome Spring, selected by Bobbi Katz, which I featured in my special edition on spring a few weeks ago. (It’s OOP but readily available very cheap on the used market.)

Onwards, today, in all senses!

Luba and the Wren by Patricia Polacco (1999)

It’s a good thing Patricia Polacco has written so many books because I pretty much want to review them for years, and the size of her oeuvre will allow that. I’ve said in the past that when I see her titles at library sales I just put them straight into my bag without even flipping through them — I believe that’s exactly what happened with Luba and the Wren, which just proves my point: Polacco’s work is that reliable.

Here we meet Luba, who, though she lives in “a humble dacha” with parents in dire straits, “was full of joy and free from care as all children should be.” One day she saves the life of a wren, who happens to be an enchanted wren and as such, offers to grant any wish Luba asks. She’s a content child so Luba declines, but the wren makes it clear the offer stands if she is ever in need. When Luba tells her parents of this weird situation they implore her to go back and ask the wren for a bigger house, which she does, and her wish is granted. Thus begins a cycle that anyone who has ever read the story of The Fisherman and His Wife will recognize immediately: every time the wren grants Luba’s parents’ wish, they ask for more and more and more. Of course they go too far — the moral in this story, regardless of the culture from which it springs, is always that greed will be punished by returning the grasping one to the state of life at the time of the original wish — and end up, full circle, back in their humble dacha. Polacco, whose Georgian, Russian and Ukrainian-Jewish descent frequently informs her work, has put her own Eastern European touch on this tale through her rich, evocative illustrations and her use of a wish-granting bird rather than a fish, adding a final element that really makes it her own: somehow, on the other side of the drama of their avarice, Luba’s parents come to see that the real treasure in their life is their daughter. This is an engaging and welcome version of an old tale.

Under My Hijab by Hena Kahn, illustrated by Aaliya Jaleel (2019)

I first heard about this title from a woman I follow on Instagram, Hana from Pepper & Pine — she is a Muslim homeschooler who has worn hijab since she was a teenager, and is exploring books about the transition to hijab with her middle school daughter. When she mentioned this was her favorite of them all, I put it on hold immediately — and my children, who adore the book Mommy’s Khimar by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow (I reviewed this in issue No. 20), were immediately thrilled. Thankfully Under My Hijab did not disappoint in any way — Khan’s rhyming text paired with Jaleel’s bright, colorful illustrations tell the perfect story of the two sides of life when you wear hijab: the public one, in which you are covered, and the private one, in which you are not. This is, to the best of my knowledge (and Hana confirms this) the only title out there that shows this part of Muslim womanhood truthfully and realistically. If that wasn’t enough, this book gets extra points for me for its realism: the girl’s mother is shown in her office, as a doctor with a patient, wearing her hijab, and then at home, doing some gardening without it; the girl’s troop leader is hiking down the trail with a hat covering her hijab, and later in a tent full of girls, uncovered. It’s a supremely well-done book about something that has gone unaddressed thus far in children’s literature, and I’m grateful for its excellence, because that means it’s also a book that my children enjoy reading. Highly recommended.

Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Mark Hearld (2012)

If there is a singular defining feature of Nicola Davies’ work, it’s that it is chock-full of nature. This makes sense, given that alongside her career as an author, she’s a zoologist, and according to her website, doesn’t “remember a time when [she] wasn’t fascinated by animals.” This lifelong love for her subject matter comes through clearly and with great passion in all her titles, this one included. Outside Your Window: A First Book About Nature is a book of poems that contains exactly what it promises — nature in all its glory, from dandelions to rainbows to spiderlings to fungi, from “Five Reasons to Keep Chickens” to “Things to Do in Your Den.” This is a large, substantial book, which makes it feel like it might be possible, for even just a minute, to dive into Hearld’s sweeping, colorful mixed media illustrations, though the poetry is bite-sized — some poems are no more than one long, profound sentence. What they lack in length, however, they make up for in depth: each poem is written by an adult that has not forgotten what it’s like to be a child. Davies says as much herself, in a note included on the back inside jacket with her bio: “I cast off my grown-up self and found the me I was at five or six. From inside that younger self I could see the world as I saw it first — not just the sights and sounds of nature but also the feelings and the thoughts about it that ran through me, strong as the tide. This book comes to you from that little girl, who sat in a barley field at dusk and felt the world turning.” I can confirm that it does, indeed.

Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists by Jeannine Atkins, illustrated by Paula Conner (2000)

As I wrote in a review of another one of Jeannine Atkins’ titles about pioneering women in issue No. 31, her great talent lies in her willingness and enthusiasm to bring greater awareness to the lives of various women who have contributed in one significant way or another to the world, specifically in the fields of STEM. This title — one of her older ones — covers the lives of Maria Sibylla Merian, Anna Botsford Comstock, Frances Hamerstrom, Rachel Carson, Miriam Rothschild, and Jane Goodall in a narrative format, making the reading (and learning) about their lives less a textbook experience and more a storytelling one. Her accounts are by no means exhaustive — the entire book is only 63 pages long, including a handful of Conner’s black-and-white illustrations — and yet she does just enough justice to each women’s life that one is left both satisfied and wanting more. (I originally pre-read this book for our great experiment of homeschooling this year, to see if I’d be able to read it aloud to my 1st grader and the answer is absolutely, yes — but perhaps more importantly, I learned a great deal I didn’t know and was motivated to seek out more information about each of these women for the sake of my own curiosity). I definitely recommend this for an excellent view of women in science if you’re reading for pleasure with your children, and even more strongly were this to end up in a classroom or library — while the lives of some of these pioneers are well-represented in current picture book literature (Carson and Goodall especially though Merian and Comstock are getting there), others are nowhere to be found (Hamerstrom and Rothschild).

I have to say that I am bothered by Atkins’ lack of inclusiveness when it comes to the women she chooses to portray, though this seems to be something she is remedying in her more recent works — see Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis (2017) and Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math (2020) — and I am glad for that. Atkins’ gift — and it is a gift — lies in making the lives of some under-appreciated or straight up overlooked women in history come alive, and it would be a shame if her clear and masterful lens continued to focus on such a narrow view.

If the women in this book spark your child’s (or your!) interest, I recommend any/all of the following:

Maria Sibylla Merian

Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science by Joyce Sidman
Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science by Jeannine Atkins (this is the title I reviewed in issue No. 31)

Anna Botsford Comstock

Out of School and Into Nature: The Anna Comstock Story by Suzanne Slade
The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock (intended to be used with children rather than read or given to them — it’s mindblowing)

Frances Hamerstrom

Walk When the Moon is Full by Frances Hamerstrom (shout out to a transplant Wisconsinite who had a huge impact on environmental conservation in my beloved home state — she also published a handful of terrific books for adults)

Rachel Carson

A Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson (again, not a children’s book, but in my opinion should be read by anyone with children in their lives in any way)
Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor
Spring After Spring: How Rachel Carson Inspired the Environmental Movement by Stephanie Roth Sisson

Jane Goodall

See yesterday’s Ten Titles on Tuesday for more about Jane (I swear I did not plan to talk about Jane Goodall twice in one week — though she deserves it)

That’s it for today. Thank you, as always, for reading. I’m truly grateful for you.

Sarah
@can_we_read

Can we read?