Provo Library Children's Book Blog

HORSE SONG: THE NADAAM OF MONGOLIA; Ted and Betsy Lewin; New York: Lee & Low, 2008; unpaged. Juvenile Non-fiction. If you have never seen the lovely Mongolian film "Naran" (and you probably never will, since it has become impossible to find), Ted and Betsy Lewin's Horse Song is the next best thing. Both stories follow a young Mongolian boy as he prepares to ride in the Nadaam, the summer horse racing festival in Mongolia. Tamir is a nine-year old boy who will ride his family's stallion. The Lewin's join the rest of the family in their ger , the portable Mongolian house that can be moved around the lande as needed. The Lewins drink fermented mare's milk, eat cheese curd, and paint beautiful, evocative, atmospheric pictures of one of the last unspoiled landscapes on earth--the steppes of Mongolia.

SWORDS: AN ARTIST'S DEVOTION; Ben Boos, author and illustrator; Cambridge, MA:Candlewick, 2008; unpaged. Juvenile Non-Fiction. Any child (teen, or adult) having the slightest interest in swordcraft, swordplay,and medieval battle should haste to the library for this lavish and beautiful new book totally devoted to swords. Boos, who worked as an artist on the Diablo video game franchise, has brought his considerable talent and his own fascination to bear on medieval weaponry, and the result is a book about knights, ninja, samurai, and war maidens, with all the grace and beauty, and none of the blood. (Good and bad that way.)

In a refreshing retelling of a classic story, The 3 Bears & Goldilocks shows Goldilocks not as mischievious but simply curious, adventurous, and with a very good-hearted desire to help. The bears, also, are shown in a more realistic way--eating porridge mixed with bugs and living amidst debris--although granted, they still live in a rather un-bear-like abode. The story is well told, the illustrations are inventive and suit the story perfectly with mixed painting and photographic collage, and altogether, it's a wonderful take on a very familiar story. Two thumbs up!

A book about baseball . . . and so much more. Two little league teams, Earl Grubb's Pool Supplies and Northeast Gas & Electric, are in the championship game. The players are twenty four baseball loving boys, age eleven to thirteen. Inning by inning, play by play, the game unfolds before us, tense and exciting. I could almost taste the hot dogs and sunflower seeds as I read it! But there's more to this story than the pitches, hits, and runs. Preller takes us, not just play by play, but boy by boy, inside their individual lives, which are so varied from each other yet full of similar triumphs and heartaches. Baseball fans will enjoy the intricate knowledge of the game the author shows throughout the book. But it's the life stories of these young boys that make this a worthwhile read. Find it in Juvenile Fiction, under Preller, 143 pages short.

St. Barnabas has some strange teachers. Yet none of them can get Class Three 's Disruptive Element under control. Enter Miss Wisdom, better known as Ms. Wiz. She is the strangest of them all with her jeans , black nail polish and her pet rat. The kids in Class Three quickly figure out that Ms. Wiz is more than just a teacher, she is a witch - actually a Paranormal Operative. She casts spells that only help, never hurt. The magic is a secret only known to those of the class. The other teachers are extremely suspicious of her since she is the only teacher to ever control Class Three. Several teachers start spying on her and do everything in their power to get her fired. Ms. Wiz tells her students not to worry, she will visit each of them again (a promise of a fairly lengthy series), whenever her magic is needed. A fun series from a British author so there will be some British terms, but nothing to foreign. A book to be enjoyed by beginning chapter book readers.

Annabelle is starting sixth grade. Normally that could be bad all by itself. Add to that living in a new house in a new town with Mom's boyfriend and there will be even more problems. Annabelle misses her best friends and her old apartment. She is not a fan of Dweeble , her mom's boyfriend, and she is sure the two of them are trying to bribe her with the gift of an adorable puppy. She decides to start training the puppy even though she isn't giving in to the bribery. Meanwhile at school, she is having a hard time with the sixth grade boys. She has never had to deal with boys before. Her old school was an all-girl school which made life much simpler. One night inspiration strikes and she realizes that boys are dogs ! Her Dog-Training Guidebook also seems to apply to members of the male species. Craziness follows as Annabelle tries to train the boys in the sixth grade! A fun chapter book most likely to be enjoyed by girls in the fifth and sixth grades. Annabelle is a very rea...

HEROES OF THE VALLEY ; Jonathan Stroud; New York: Hyperion, 2009. Juvenile (upper) and Young Adult fiction. Halli Sveinsson is a son of the House of Svein in the valley of the heroes, men whose cairns line the valley they died to protect in a pitched battle against the dreaded trows, ghastly nocturnal creatures of razor-sharp claws and hideous mien. A second son, Halli chafes against his lesser station, the prospect of being a farmer for life, and the cloistered life that shields him from the heroic opportunities his ancestors had. A menace and a gadfly, he eventually alienates his family, has only one real friend, a daughter of the House of Arne, and brings trouble to his House that may have no remedy. But Halli, a short, stocky, unheroic looking boy is much more than the sum of his parts, which in the beginning make him less than a sympathetic character, even to the reader. But during the course of the story he becomes, and reveals himself to be, a young man of honor, intelligence, a...

WARNING: DO NOT READ BEFORE YOU EAT OR IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH! That is the warning that should be included in the front of Bug-a-licious , a great book for those who love gross things. Meish Goldish presents fascinating information about how insects are eaten in various parts of the world. The text is simple and reader friendly while the photos are large and colorful. In particular I enjoyed seeing the before and after photos of the insects. Check out this book to learn about bug pizza, grasshopper tacos, and wasp crackers (picture to the left) just to name a few. Our own country even contributes to the grossness with cricket lollipops (below)! Now I just have to hope that our library gets the rest of the disgustingly fascinating Extreme Cuisine series!

Have you ever wanted to play a fun (yet harmless) prank on a friend? Maybe you want them to think that Bigfoot has been walking around in your backyard or that you have seen a UFO. Just read Gotcha! and you will learn how to do these and many other mysterious and magical tricks to freak out your friends and family. The step by step instructions seem easy to follow using basic materials found around your home. Even if you don't actually do any of the tricks, it is still fun to read the book and see how some of the world's biggest mysteries can be faked.

DUEL! BURR AND HAMILTON'S DEADLY WAR OF WORDS ; Dennis Brindell Fradin; illus. Larry Day; New York: Walker, 2008; unpaged. Non-fiction. Most of us know that Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in the early days of the Republic, but who knows the details? I didn't. Larry Day's illustrations are the perfect complement to Dennis Fradin's spare but telling narrative of the two boys who arose from difficult beginnings to become leaders of the fledgling United States. And what a sad story this is, of two great and good men whose unyielding animosity led to Hamilton's death and Burr's shame and ruin.

KNUCKLEHEAD: TALL TALES & MOSTLY TRUE STORIES ABOUT GROWING UP SCIESZKA ; Jon Scieszka; New York: Viking, 2008. 106pp. Knucklehead is just about what you would expect from Jon Scieszka, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and world-class knucklehead. This memoir of his boyhood in the fifties should not only appeal to kids (probably mostly boys) but to anyone who grew up during those years. Bathroom humor abounds, as do stories of homemade games like Ghost Rider and Slaughterball (a sport that makes rugby look like chicken feed). As anyone knows who has read any of his books from Squids will be Squids to The True Story of the Three Little Pigs , Jon Scieszka is a very funny man (and in person, even more so). In this book we see also the value of a loving family where boys could very much be boys, and the rich inner life of children could find full play in books read, games invented, practical jokes played, and brotherhood forged. Great fun.

ALL STATIONS! DISTRESS! Don Brown; New York: Roaring Book Press, 2008; unpaged. Non-fiction. In this book, Don Brown has created a near-perfect account for young people of the Titanic tragedy. Not overburdened with detail ("The wound was fatal. The ship was doomed."), the basic narrative tells exactly what happened, with plenty of fascinating detail to fill out the story. Brown's illustrations are atmospheric and memorable: the great liner steaming across a starlit ocean. The older couple holding each other close before the end. This lovely book tells the terrible story precisely and with great dignity.

REMEMBER VALLEY FORGE ; Thomas B. Allen; Washington, D. C.: National Geographic, 2007. One in a series of excellent historical texts for children done by the National Geographic Society, Remember Valley Forge is a deeply touching, powerful, broadly informative account of the Continental Army's privations and triumphs at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778. Stories of troops who refused, as many did, to desert or to resign their commissions even though they had insufficient clothing and food, and no shoes are heartbreaking, but the ultimate encouraging conclusion to Allen's work is that overcoming the hardships of Valley Forge strengthened and molded the Continental Army into a brotherhood and a fighting forcethat would eventually lead to British surrender. Familiar and not to familiar historical figures populate these pages: we mostly know the Marquis de Lafayette's contributions to the American cause, but how about Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, late of the Prussian a...

Isabella's great imagination takes her on a whirlwind day in which she is an amazing astronaut, a speedy sharpshooter, a brave activist, a brilliant scientist, a kind doctor, and a dear mother. Each identity is that of a famous woman who changed history. A wonderful story, My Name is Not Isabella shows the importance good role models can have in our lives and gives honor to women everywhere who use their influence to better the world. Litwin's interesting illustrations that combine digital collage with pastel-styled drawings are bright, charming, and the perfect complement to Fosberry's energetic text.

Now that the polar ice caps are melting, all sorts of interesting things are coming to the surface—like the dead bodies of all the people ever lost in those regions. According to the book Bodies from the Ice , this is a rather larger number than I would ever have imagined before reading this book. The oldest body recovered from the ice was a man who had died 5,300 years earlier. A lot of people can get lost in 5,000 years. This book gives the reader a good look at some of the most interesting discoveries that have been made over the years. The complete stories of how the bodies were discovered, how scientists figured out what century they lived, and how they died are drawn out in great detail. The full color photos of the mummified remains are thoroughly fascinating, but not for the squeamish. I was completely engrossed in this book and could not put it down. If you need a book sure to make any reluctant reader want to read it, this is the book for you.

A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg Historical Fiction, 289 pages This is one of those books that, at the moment you finish reading it, you need to lay down somewhere soft and comfy, a nice warm blanket over you, and then do two things: rest and think. Rest - the story of Addie Ann Pickett in Mississippi in the summer and fall of 1963 will pull your emotions in several different directions. You'll feel her joy and sweetness as she cares for the toddler of a woman from the "white side" of the tracks. You'll feel her fear as two white boys rip her pet cat from her arms and attempt to kill it. You'll feel her anxiety and worry over her older brother who has to disappear for awhile. And you'll feel the frustration and anger that black people in the south felt for decades from the abuse at the hands of whites. Think - What would you have done if you were there during the civil rights movement? How could the injustices have been allowed to happen? As you think abo...

STEINBECK'S GHOST; Lewis Buzbee; New York: Feiwel & Friends, 2008. 340pgs. Fiction. This is an odd little book because it doesn't seem like it would be good, but it is. Travis and his family have moved from their comfortable older neighborhood in Salinas, California, to Bella Linda Terrace, a new housing development with cookie cutter domiciles and no grass or trees. Travis hates it. And he hates even more that his parents are rarely ever home because they are working long hours to pay for the new house he can't stand anyway. By and by he finds some comfort in a familiar place, the Salinas Public Library where his old pals Madeleine L'Engle, Ray Bradbury, and John Steinbeck populate the shelves. Soon mysterious things begin to happen: Travis sees someone writing in the upstairs room of the John Steinbeck House and museum; an elderly Mexican man shouts at Travis that he is Gitano and has come back. On the hillside, Travis sees The Watchers. In the midst of these myst...