What Makes A Family: A House by Kevin Henkes

It all begins with...

A HOUSE.

This one seems simple--but geometically it is more complex than it seems. It's square, with an rectangle for a door and chimney, a circular window and doorknob, and a trapezoidical roof with with overlapping oval tiles. Its door and chimney are a dusty blue, its round window is a pale blue, and the grass is green. There are parallel lines vertically in its shape AND horizontally in its siding and roof.

It's more complex than we might think.

And Kevin Henkes' latest book for the youngest, is not exactly simplistic. It begins as a "concept" book, helping preschoolers practice their shapes and colors, and the celebrated author-illustrator moves seamlessly on to counting. But when an iconic sun and birds appear, concepts of time appear in "morning" and while two birds rest of the roof, young readers are asked to count the number of birds in flight. A similar page for the house at night identifies and counts the moon and stars.

HOW MANY STARS ARE THERE?

The House in rain is pictured with countable clouds and puddles, stressing comparison words like "biggest" and "smallest." The House in snow is next with new snowflakes appearing among raindrops until the house is heavy with snowfall.

The scene is set when Director Henkes calls ACTION!, and a family of five old fashioned Playskool-like people appears with dog and cat following behind.

COMING... HOME.

It takes something really special to make the HOUSE a HOME in Caldecott and Newbery Award-winning author-illustrator, Kevin Henkes' latest, A House (Greenwillow Books, 2021, as Henkes melds the concrete shapes and numbers of the preschool curriculum with the feelings that bring a house alive to be a family home, with flowers up front, a dog in the yard, familiar faces at the window. and yes, a cat on the roof.

Simple but endearing in the way of beloved author-illustrator, Tomie de Paola, this book should become a classic for preschoolers, and a lovely beginning reader for the lower grades.

Booklist remarks that this one does double duty, as it... "invites readers to actively participate in the story, presenting questions about colors and shapes, which quickly become more complex considerations about the locations of objects, visual action elements, time of day, and size comparisons. . . . What started as a fun, interactive visual exercise ends up with a gentle message about family and what truly makes a house a home.”

Hand-Me-Down Canines, Unite! Secondhand Dogs by Carolyn Crimi

"It's a new dog day. Miss Lottie, who adopts homeless dogs, has driven the whole pack to the park, a thing she only does when there was a new dog to join the pack."

"It'll be great," said Tank, the big bulldog. "It always is."

But Gus, the titular leader of the pack, is not so sure. So far, for a group of one-time strangers, they get along pretty well. Tank is a trustworthy bulldog backup, with some weighty muscle behind him if needed. Roo is smart but a bit flighty, observant but still unsure of herself, and the latest inductee, pug puppy Moon Pie, is enthusiastic about everything and anything. But Gus is a mature dog whose been around the block a few times, and he is wise enough to see the problems of heading the pack, especially when he sees the new dog, Decker, sitting up very straight and still on the leash, giving nothing away as the pack looks him over.

But when they get to Miss Lottie's house, Decker is already on the make, taking over, as Miss Lottie praises him and talks about how much he is like her childhood pet Mr. Beans, and he watches craftily as Moon Pie cajoles tidbits from Miss Lottie.

"Humans are such suckers," he says. He knew Miss Lottie would be easy.

And before the pack knows it, he climbs into the back of Miss Lottie's van, subordinating Gus' position, and when they are back to her house, he gets all the best food and the special place in Miss Lottie's big bed, previously held by little Moon Pie. Gus tries to smooth over his treatment, but the cat named Ghost has Decker's number already.

And the next day, the whole teamwork of the pack is in shambles as Decker has his way with them, and when Gus tries to assert his leadership, Decker bites his own foot to make Miss Lottie believe Gus is guilty. By the end of the day, Gus is in disgrace; Moon Pie is out of the big bed: and the other dogs are quarreling with each other over which side to take. And to make it worse, Moon Pie is made to share his food with Decker, who lays it out to him cruelly:

"YOU, MOON PIE, ARE THE WEAKEST, SMALLEST SILLIEST MEMBER OF THE PACK. YOU ARE LOWER THAN THE CAT!"

"I AM THE TOP DOG NOW."

But Decker is not done with his takeover. He convinces Moon Pie that his former owner, Miss Gertie, is still alive and is searching for him, and then hints that there is a hole in the fence hidden behind some bushes, a good place to escape and find his way back to Gertie's big bed and popcorn. Overnight, the wishy-washy Roo follows Moon Pie into the alley behind Miss Lottie's house--despite the scary scent of coyote there.

But despite her distrust of the dogs, Ghost the cat has it all figured out and finally tells Tank about Decker's plan to take over Miss Lottie's house as the only pet. It's up to Tank to convince Gus to take back his job as leader of the pack. At last, Tank and Gus slip out and brave the outside world, coyotes and all, to try to rescue the lost little Moon Pie and recover and rebuild the family of Miss Lottie and the whole pack.

It's finally all for one and one for all, when the showdown with both coyote and Decker comes, in Carolyn Crimi's latest middle grade novel, Secondhand Dogs (Balzer and Bray, 2021). Gus sees even the fear behind both Decker and indeed even the young coyote, as he retakes his place as leader, stronger and wiser, in an exciting animal tale for middle readers told by veteran author Carolyn Crimi with understanding and insight into both human and animal nature.

Mountain Top Experience! Hiking Day by Ann Rockwell

 

TODAY MY MOTHER, MY FATHER, AND I ARE GOING TO CLIMB HICKORY HILL--THE MOUNTAIN I SEE FROM MY WINDOW.

Lacing up her sturiest sneakers and wearing her floppy sunhat, she loads fills her water bottle and stows it in her backpack. After a twenty-minute drive, they arrive at the bottom of the mountain and choose the red trail to follow. The leaves crunch under their feet as they reach the tall trees. Squirrels are stowing away nuts and woodpeckers are tap-tap-tapping the tree trunks for insects to eat.

"YUCK! BUGS!!" THE GIRL AND HER DAD SAY AT THE SAME TIME!

They stop to look at a fat brown toad, blending into the leaves, who greets them with a croak. The trail gets steeper, and Mom worries about finding the trail marker until they spot a porcupine going up a tree and see the blaze of red paint on its trunk. They spy yellow mushrooms and red berries along the trail, which is growing steeper. The girl sees a deer with big antlers leap away vanish among the trees.The girl notices that the trees are not so tall and the trail is stonier than before. Looking up, she can see glimpses of blue sky above. And then...

SUDDENLY THE GROUND IS A BIG FLAT ROCK.

"WE'RE AT THE SUMMIT!" SAYS DAD, "THE TOP OF HICKORY HILL."

"WE DID IT!"

The first mountain to climb is quite an experience, in Ann Rockwell's Hiking Day (A My First Experience Book), illustrated with the detailed and realistic drawings of daughter Lizzy Rockwell, much in the style of her famous father Harlow Rockwell. Getting to the top is a milestone for a young child, whether it's a mountain or the Washington Monument, and this vicarious "first experience" may get young children ready for their own first hike or walk up the mountain. Although they may not "climb every mountain," they will always remember their first climb with mom and dad. Says School Library Journal, "Anne Rockwell knows how to create a narrative that is engaging, soothing, and informative—just right for inquisitive young readers."

Gaining Perspective: LOVE by Sophia by Jim Averbeck

"TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT--DRAW SOMETHING YOU LOVE," SAID MS. PARADIGM.

SOPHIE KNEW JUST WHAT SHE WANTED TO DRAW!

But when she's finished, it's NOT what she wanted! Not at all!

ART IS HARD!

Sophies tries again and again, but something is missing.

Ms. Paradign suggests perspective. She explains tha perspective can mean your personal point of view, but on a flat surface in art it is a way of scaling a drawing so that things that are in the distance are smaller and things up close look bigger. Sophie tries looking up at Noodles, her giraffe, and sees that when he stands up tall his ossicones look small, but when he bends his neck down close to her, his horns look bigger and bigger.

"WE SAY YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE," MS. PARADIGM SAYS.

Sophie works hard on her painting until she thinks it's just perfect. She names her work "LOVE" and can't wait to take it home and mount it on their refrigerator. Their refrigerator is special.

IT WAS THE GUGGENHEIM, THE LOUVRE MUSEUM, OF REFRIGERATORS!

But not only that! Their refrigerator is new, so new that there's not a single dimple of a dent, not a vestige of a scratch, nor a smudge of tape adhesive to mar its magnificent surface. To take a place on that door, her art had to pass a tough selection committee--her mother, a judge, her Uncle Conrad, a politician, her father, a businessman,--and Gran-mama' herself, chief curator of the kitchen fridge-door gallery, a place which brooks no fingerprints.

"THAT'S CENSORSHIP!" PLEADS SOPHIA.

"THAT'S STAINLESS." RULES MOTHER.

Dad declares that abstract art often suffers loss of value. Sophie says LOVE has no price, but Uncle Conrad says avant garde art is not stable in free markets and advocates adding wholesome carrots to influence public well-being. And when it comes to fine art, Gran-mama' is a purist:

"ART? A SIX-YEAR-OLD COULD HAVE DONE THIS!"

Poor Sophie refrains from pointing out that she IS a six-year-old! Will she ever see her marvelous work of art on display?

Art, it seems, is in the perspective of the beholder, in Jim Averbeck's latest in his Sophie series, Love by Sophia (The Sophia Books) (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2020). This new one is a clever story of art for art's sake which brings back his indomitable character and her improbable pet, Noodles the giraffe, along with his proactive protagonist's loving but opinionated family in a story that considers both artistic and personal perspective. Illustrated with the now-familiar rather abstract style of Jasmin Ismael, this new picture book also offers an appendix in which perspective in art is described and demonstrated and a glossary of some of Sophie's big words--censorship, ossicones, abstract and avant garde in art, and public sector, to name a few. Share this one with Averbeck's One Word from Sophia (The Sophia Books) (see my review here).

Herself, Divided: The Other Half of Happy by Rebecca Balcarcel

The good thing about this house is that we can sing!

A move from an apartment with thin walls is a good thing for Quijana's family, who likes to sing, sometimes loudly with Dad's guitar. And there's a swing in the back yard.

The bad thing is that she has to start seventh grade at a new school.

"Don't you speak Spanish?" a girl with glasses says.

A light-haired girl looks over. "Oh, you're one of those. You don't speak Spanish, right? A coconut!"

They speed off, leaving me in the dust. I pull out my phone and type quickly. "Coconut": slang term for a Latino who acts white."

This isn't me. My mom is white. How do I act half Latina?

Quijana feels as if she has two halves, and only one can be happy at a time. She loves her kind Guatemalan father, his jokes and songs and even his annoying quotes from Don Quixote. She loves her mom's mother, her Grandmother Miller, who texts her everyday and loves manatees and sea turtles and takes her canoeing, but she dreads the monthly awkward phone calls from her father's mother, who speaks as little English as Quijana speaks Spanish. And then her aunt and uncle move from Chicago to live near them in Dallas, and her two cousins speak Spanish like natives. She's lost at their house with everyone rattling on around her.

Luckily, she finds two friends, a boy named Jayden and a girl named Zuri,who sit down beside her in the cafeteria and share phone numbers. But despite her Latina half, Quijana is terrible in Spanish class. Still, she has English class with Jayden and Zuri, and she loves choir, so school is mostly all right. But at home her toddler brother is behaving oddly, and Quijana's Google searches leading to autism turn out to be a likely diagnosis. She quarrels with her dad and half intentionally kicks his guitar and ruins it. Nothing is easy anymore.

But then Grandmother Miller texts her that she may have cancer. Their Thanksgiving visit to her in Florida is cancelled, and Quijana discovers that her family has been planning to spend Christmas in Guatemala with her abuela.

Quijana feels pulled in two directions, half American, half Latina, half of her happy, half sad. Secretly she plans a trip alone to Grandmother Miller's at Christmas. She manages to come up with money to buy herself a bus ticket to get there, planning to leave on the late night bus on the day before her family plans to fly to Guatemala. But then Grandmother Miller dies suddenly.

And in a couple of days Quijana gets a postcard from her grandmother. She says,

"Think of me in quiet moments and you will feel my love. Do everything for joy. I love you.

And love warms Quijana, melting her selves together, in Rebecca Balcarcel's moving coming-of-age novel, The Other Half of Happy: (Middle Grade Novel for Ages 9-12, Bilingual Tween Book) (Chronicle Books, 2019). There are many ways middle graders feel divided, half looking back at childhood, half looking forward with anxiety and hope, and Quijana deals with that dichotomy, heightened by divided families but also bound by deep love. Says School Library Journal's starred review, "Balcárcel's well-rounded characters, complex friendships, and nuanced family dynamics will resonate with many readers. This is a title that will remain relevant long past its publication date. A must-have for all library collections."

Water! Nya's Long Walk by Linda Sue Park

"Come on," Nya said. "Why are you slow today?"

"I'm tired." Akeer said.

Nya sighed. "I'll tell Mama," she said.

"Don't," Akeer begged. She started walking a little faster.

On the daily two-hour walk to a well, little Akeer is usually chipper and chatty, but this day her steps soon start to drag again. Nya tries singing a clapping song, and Akeer makes it to the well. The sisters have a long drink and rest for a few minutes before Nya picks up the now full jerry can and starts back toward home.

Suddenly Akeer plops down and begins to cry.

She looked up at Nya, her eyes very big.

Akeer was not a crybaby. Her cheeks were burning hot.

Akeer was sick.

Nya realizes that she must manage to carry Akeer and the water. She pours out more than half of the precious water, but still struggles to carry both.

|"I can't do it. It's too far," she thinks.

But she knows she must. She picks a goal, a tree or stump ahead and one at a time makes it to them. Then she begins to force herself to take just one more step and then another. Somehow she summons enough strength to reach her village, only to find that she must help her mother carry Akeer on a two-day trek to the health center, a step at a time.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," and in Newbery author Linda Sue Park's picture book adaptation of her noted best-seller, ( A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story) the just-published Nya's Long Walk: A Step at a Time (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019) focuses on family devotion and the heroic endurance of her courageous characters. There's a heroism in grand deeds, but also in small ones, one footstep at a time, as in this moving story of a sister's love.

For primary graders, who may never have given a thought to easy access to a drink of clean water, Park's sensitive story of what some children face daily may come as a shock, and author Park doesn't fail to make her case for support for the mission of the NGO Water for South Sudan. Still, as a human story of family love and perseverance, this one is a tale well told. Caldecott artist Brian Pinkney's illustrations, done with minimalist figures and expressionistic portrayal of the dusty scrub land and dry windy landscape through which the two sisters toil their way, will prompt emotional reactions from primary graders--and a lot of questions.

Peter's Present: A Christmas Wish (A Peter Rabbit Tale) created by Beatrix Potter

It was Christmas Eve. Inside a cozy, warm burrow, four little bunnies were getting ready for Christmas Day.

Flopsy wishes for a toy; Mopsy wants a tea set. Cottontail hopes for a train. But Peter just murmurs that he wants the best thing in the world.
Mama Rabbit moves them along through their baths toward bedtime, with a quiet word to the wise.

"Santa Claus comes only when every bunny is fast asleep,"she tells her brood.

But Peter can't sleep. Every little sound seems to be Santa--until he realizes he's only hearing normal night noises. He frets that if Santa doesn't come, it will be his fault for being still awake.

But somehow Santa Claus always finds the right time to come, and the first thing Peter sees in the morning are the bunnies' presents waiting under the twinkling tree, in A Christmas Wish: A Peter Rabbit Tale (Frederick Warne, 2017).

All the tingly anticipation of Christmas Eve night is here in this small board book with pictures drawn from Beatrix Potter's original Tales of Peter Rabbit, with just a tiny glimpse of Santa's boots beside the tree for young readers to discover. Whether the child is one of those who wants to wait up to spy on Santa, or one who worries that being awake will make St. Nick will pass him by, this is a good read for real Christmas Eve awaiters.

Belonging: Not Quite Narwhal by Jessie Sima

Kelp was born deep in the ocean.

He knew that he was different from the other narwhals.

His tusk wasn't as long as everyone else's. He had different tastes in food--and he wasn't a very good swimmer.

Little Kelp tries to keep up with all the others, but the little narwhals are streamlined and have strong tail flukes that speed them through the water. But his friends are kind enough to swim slowly so that he can play with them and sometimes even give him a lift on their tailfins.

Life was good...

That is, until he was swept away by a strong current.

He found himself at the surface, closer to land than he'd every been before.

And on the shore he finds another world, where he finds that with a little practice, his four little legs go quite fast over the ground. Others with legs--from a crab to a frog--welcome him. Still they don't quite look like him.

And then he sees something both strange and familiar....

LAND NARWHALS!

Kelp finds himself welcomed by a herd of creatures who look just like him. They have four legs and small horns on their heads. They seem to know what he is immediately.

"Of course you aren't a narwhal," the unicorns told him.

"I am a unicorn!" Kelp said with wonder.

Kelp is happy, but he also misses his good friends in the sea, in Jessie Sima's story of living in two worlds, Not Quite Narwhal (Simon and Schuster, 2017), and in this tale combining real and fantasy animals, there's a happy ending for our little traveler in a mutual game of beach ball volleyball between teams from the land and the sea. Kelp is amazed to learn that his narwhal pals knew what he was all along, and he looks forward to spending some time in both worlds.

Sima's is a hopeful, upbeat story of peaceful coexistence with lively dialog and engaging aqua-hued illustrations which are both comic and charming. Says Kirkus Reviews, "As seen in Sima's soft, digital illustrations, Kelp is adorable, and she evokes both undersea and aboveground environments. The message is an appealing one that could speak to many family situations relating to multiple identities."

The Secret of Harper's Woods: The Unicorn in the Barn by Jacqueline K. Ogburn

There had always been talk of a white deer in Harper's Woods. Eric Harper has always wanted to see it, but when he spots a flash of white through the trees, he discovers something else.

The animal stepped away from the underbrush.

It wasn't a deer.

White and glowing, with slender legs and a long curved neck, it raised its head. and I knew. Ponies don't have coats that shimmer like a pearl. And there's never been a pony born with an ivory horn curling from the center of its forehead.

It was a unicorn. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Eleven-year-old Eric is filled with a sense of joy unlike anything he's known. He quietly follows the shimmering figure as it limps toward the old farmhouse and barn where his family had lived always until Eric's dad was forced to sell part of the land to pay for his grandmother's nursing home. As he peers through a dusty window in the barn and sees their new neighbor, the veterinarian, Dr. Brancusi, speaking softly to unicorn as she treats her hoof, he is discovered by the vet's angry daughter Allegra. But when Dr. Brancusi learns that Maggie Harper is Eric's grandmother, she surprisingly accepts him, allowing him to listen through her stethoscope to the heartbeats of the twins the unicorn, Moonpearl, is carrying, and swearing him to secrecy, offers him a job helping care for her animal patients.

In due time Eric meets some of Dr. Brancusi's other mystical creatures, Timothy, a talking white cat with an invisible midsection, Prissy, an irascible goose who happens to lay a golden egg now and then, and the Squonk, a strange brown jelly-like thing that lives in a jar of murky water and sometimes sings exquisitely beautiful songs at night. And when his school friend Jamal brings in his gravely ill dog, Eric gets to see the magical powers of Moonpearl's horn cure the pet. Eric begins to save the long white hairs from Moonpearl's coat for a bracelet to help his grandmother. They seem to cure her arthritic hands and Eric hopes that a necklace he and Allegra make will return Grandmother to health.

But trespassing hunters in Harper's Woods, hoping to bag the white deer. spot something white in the woods.

Gunshots! I caught sight of neon orange, a hunter's vest. I crept closer. There were two of them.

I saw a flash of white near a thicket. There was a shot and a yowling sound. Timothy! Those morons were shooting at Timothy!

I stepped out from behind the tree, yelling. "Aaah!" I screamed. My left leg was on fire. I felt blood soaking through my jeans.

Eric's leg has only a minor wound, but in rapid order things take a significant turn. His dad discovers the magical nature of some of Dr. Brancusi's patients, Moonpearl takes this time to have her babies, and Grandmother has a heart attack and Eric fears he will lose the only one who understands how he feels about the creatures. And when Grandmother Harper dies, Eric feels lost in the swirl of events.

But Grandmother leaves him a personal letter which explains everything.

If you are reading this I must be gone. There are other things, wonderful, magical things that appear in our woods. We Harpers have always looked out for them. I always knew that you would be the one.

Jacqueline K. Ogburn's reverent but magical story, The Unicorn in the Barn (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) is gentle and sweet, both a fantasy adventure and a tender coming-of-age story of a young boy who feels a calling for his family's long held a unique relationship with the creatures of their land, ordinary and extraordinary. Eric assumes his role as one of the two Harpers who bear the family responsibility to protect that spirit of goodness that the unicorn represents in this moving magical tale of family and mysteries beyond things seen. Children who are drawn to myths and imaginings just beyond the real will find that this extraordinary novel points to more than a literary brush with the supernatural.

A Walk on the Guile Side: Guile by Constance Cooper

Yonie Watereye lived under false pretenses in a stuffy garret overhanging the Petty Canal, in one of the cheaper districts of Wicked Ford. Dry land never showed there, even in the midst of summer, and the rickety buildings roosted upon wooden stilts that would have long since rotted away if not for the water's high concentration of guile.

In that particularly July afternoon Yonie's hair was crawling with sweat underneath her kerchief. She longed to strip it off.

But instead she sat sedately in her chair, sweltering, because she had a customer. The kerchief made her look older, according to LaRue. Although at sixteen she'd already grown to a remarkable height, it still took the right clothing and dim light and her most imperious High Town accent to impersonate a grown woman. Even then, she might not pass as a pearly.

Orphaned and unwanted by the rest of her kin, Yonie travels downriver to Wicked Ford, eking out a spartan living pretending to be a "pearly," a part-amphibian seer who can interpret the guile found in objects left to steep in the waters of Skulk Swamp. In truth, Yonie's talking cat LaRue does the real "seeing," passing her wisdom on through Yonie on to their customers. Pearlies are shunned and feared, hiding their scales or gills under their clothes, but patronized by people with objects that seemed to have cunning powers, and a cat known to possess such powers would needs be killed if discovered.

And a customer from Damnable Swamp has a mysterious object he claims came from inside a fish. Following LaRue's vision, the object is revealed as a boat gong, probably looted from a flooded tomb. LaRue warns Yonie not to cause it to ring, but when she accidentally strikes it, she learns what its sound can do--it send folks forth, even against their will, to find their true home.

Yonie whimpered. Not since her parents' death had she felt so out of place and alone.

They had left Vile Basin behind, but Yonie was still digging in her paddle until her muscles burned.

"Yes, of course," said LaRue. "We must get home."

The bayou home where Yonie lived with her parents is gone, burned to the waterline, along with them, and Yonie sees she cannot find her home there. But with the guile-soaked gong driving her, she sets out to discover her mother's family history in High Town. She learns that her mother was a honor student at the prestigious Belflower Academy for Girls before she left before graduation to marry the man Yonie had known as her father. But Yonie's search reveals that her real father was another man altogether, and the guile drives a search which takes her and LaRue far up the Skulk River, to discover the frightful history of how guile came to flood their land and what it takes to break its hold on her.

Constance Cooper's forthcoming Guile (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2016) takes place in an alternate world, one reminiscent of the bygone Creoles and bayou Cajuns of Louisiana, a world which has endured an ancient flood and remains inundated in the magical miasma of guile, a power neither quite good nor evil, but unnatural, as murky and turgid as the greenish scum that floats upon the slowly rising waters. Cooper's narrative is as slow and meandering as the River Skulk itself, but leading implacably back to the source of guile itself. Yonie Watereye and LaRue are quirky but engaging characters who inspire loyalty, ones who make the reader follow along on their magical journey to its end.