A PLACE FOR RAIN: Such a FUN Way to Take Action

 If you live where the recent spring rains turned gardens and farm fields into soggy swamps, you might also recall that last summer was a scorching drought. Much of the drippy midwest has been warned of likely droughts again in coming months.  The irony of those extremes, the damage of feast or famine in precipitation, provide reliable topics for casual conversations. This has been true in the past and is becoming a pattern across wider regions and with more dire consequences expected. Ask a farmer. 

NORTON KIDS PRESS, 2024

A PLACE FOR RAIN is written by  Michelle Schaub and illustrated by Blanca Gómez. I read about and reserved this delightful picture book while a downpour racketed outside my windows. The many good words I'd read about it also nudged me to take a closer look. 

I'm happy to say I was not disappointed!

The essential story is one of environmental stewardship, as achieved by young kids with some adult guidance and support. It could serve as a how-to book for anyone with the intent to make a personal contribution to improving imbalances and producing a better personal space and communities in need of balance with nature. Or, it's just a truly fun read with an underlying insight. 

In the first few pages we meet a diverse group of kids in their rainy-day school environment. The rhythmic and cleverly rhymed text can read as if describing a single day event, but easily suggests that this is a multi-stepped project taking days to accomplish, one that will serve the environment for years to come.

A raincoated, booted woman with a wheelbarrow enters in images, serving the project throughout, but without a single ext mention. That allows the busy, cartoonish kiddos to take center stage in this problem-solving process. 

And what is the issue? Well, early pages focus on an onomatopoetic engagement with rain, in the moment, unthreatening. Then a few spreads reveal that when rain becomes a downpour, it creates gushing, rushing, sogging flows that flush various detritus from roofs, gutters, asphalt, and more, flooding that debris into our waterways. That raincoat-clad adult and a couple of kids raise and answer this central question: 

"Can we lessen that mess?  Yes!"

Using available space and materials, they roll a barrel under a downspout, note the overflow when full, create a winding, shallow trough to channel that flow to a catchment area. That collection site is planted with water- and drought- tolerant native plants to absorb water and sludge. The bonus benefit of a colorful perennial garden that serves as insect and bird habitat is delightfully portrayed. This diversion from urban sewers and waterways that feed into lakes, rivers and oceans is unmistakable.

Illustrations are vibrant and vital, with  nearly geometric shapes and  soft-edged style that suggest universality among the diversity. The text is a terrific mentor pattern for those attempting to write in rhyme. That's not because it follows the usually mandatory strictness of meter and rhyme scheme. Instead, a rollicking but regular rhythm develops throughout, with lines that celebrate internal rhyme (see that masterful line above), interjections, sudden stops, and perfected pacing to enhance page turns. Granted, this would not be a challenging approach to mmimc, but it does confirm that those who choose to step aside from strict rules need to be VERY sure they can do it well. Schaub does exactly that!

I expected back matter, but there is none. As i considered the target age and intentions of the text, the thoroughness of embedded construction instruction, I could see why backmatter was not necessary. In fact, on the page that shows preparing the collection basin readers find a helpful chart explaining how to easily determine how well your chosen area drains and how to calculate an effective depth. Very clever, indeed!

I hope that many schools, families, day care centers, libraries, and others will find and share this entertaining and inspiring picture book.The language invites repeated readings, and the suggested project can be scaled;ed up or down to allow possible success for any readers. The more who take part, the greater the benefit to Earth, Water, and all of us. 

Ready for a Reading Road Trip? LEAFY LANDMARKS!

 

SLEEPING BEAR PRESS, 2024

With a few weeks of summer still ahead, and a gorgeous fall forecast (quote me- I'm predicting it!), you'll want to know about this remarkable new picture book, LEAFY LANDMARKS: Travels with Trees, written by Michelle Schaub and illustrated by Anne Lambelet. I have nothing but praise for this new picture book which is structured with individual poems about specific iconic trees, paralleled by informational sidebars providing details and background about that tree, beyond the rich content of the poems themselves. Each poem is also in a particular poetic form that is named and explained briefly, and each is masterful in execution. 

The premise is revealed in end papers that feature the named trees and poetic forms on leaves with brief descriptions, followed by a double-spread map of the continental USA showing the trees, their approximate locations, and the coast-to-coast-and-back route that the imagined explorers are traveling. The explorers on this journey represent a diverse and delightful family, with others along the way equally representing our mosaic of Americans. 

Some  trees are familiar (Japanese Cherry Blossom trees in Washington, D.C.) while most will be exciting discoveries and offer new connections to familiar history. In the same way, the poetic forms range from those that will be familiar to even young children (list poems, narrative poems) to forms that offer entirely new challenges and fun. 

The blend of poetry and informational text is well-balanced and appealing, moving readers from the lyrical lilt of a poem that evokes emotions and reactions to the nonfiction content that is accessible and often intriguing. The only drawback to this lovely new offering is my question about how it will be shelved-- with poetry, with nature, with history, with geography, or...? The good news is that Leafy Landmarks offers such appeal to individual readers and for use by teacher and librarians, it is not likely to be left for long on whatever shelf is used. Give it a look and plan to hit the road!

 Whether you and your own carload of leaf-lookers attempt cross-country travels like these, or locate one of these remarkable living-history trees within a day-trip of home, just learning about them should be an inspiring mind-trip for readers of any age.

A Bounty of Farm Picture Books

It's officially summer now, and farmers' markets are in full swing. I don't know about you, but even one visit takes me back to times on farms, including field trips with classes or visiting grandparents in Kentucky on their pocket farm (not the gentrified version!) or living "in the country" where every neighbor was a farmer/large-scale gardener of some sort or other. I've gathered up several picture book titles to share in hopes it will nudge you out to a local farmers' market soon, no matter what the weather. If they can spend countless hours in the elements, daily, we can support their commitments to providing the very best and also benefit from the inevitable plusses to mind and body that straight-from-the-farm goodness provides.

FEEDING MINDS PRESS, 2023

The first of two books are from a tremendous pair of creators and an awesome small press you should know about.  FARM BOOTS  is written by Lisl Detlefsen and illustrated by Renee Kurilla. In this delightful story-in-rhyme, it's the boots that star. Revealed in short couplets and brightly illustrated pages, the many ways that boots are part of life on the farm throughout the year are celebrated through a year's seasons. These certainly involve work of many kinds, but also reveal the types and variations of fun and adventure that can be had in footwear that we rightly label boots.

The end papers are a visual glossary of the variety of boots (and related farm elements) that can be spotted within the pages. In repeated readings (which both the story/concept and the rhymes will invite) young audiences may try using that array inside the covers to play a find-and-search game in the illustrations. 

Many who write and publish picture books are likely to caution that getting a full year span into a single story (unless the story is intentionally about seasons) is challenging and can be awkward. Detlefsen and Kurilla accomplish this with grace, allowing  boots to reflect work, play, holidays, weather changes, skating, sledding, and much more. Illustrations reveal detailed scenes that, to my eye, are in temperate- zone mid-America, but the circumstances shown are common to farming worldwide. Characters illustrated are diverse. Some aspects that are common to farming and shown in appealing detail include working with animals, harvesting crops, competitions, markets, and so many more. The back matter has a simple glossary that groups multiple boots under broader labels with a category name, and is then followed by a brief descriptive passage. This well-paced and lively concept book has limitless value for a wide range of young audiences, including naming objects and colors, recognizing and predicting rhymes, and retelling. Never let such useful purposes override the sheer joy of a book like this. If you've never known a child who refused to have anything on their feet but boots for a phase of their development, you've known very few children! This is winner.

FEEDING MINDS PRESS, 2019

Next up is RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE: A Table-to-Farm Book About Food and Farming, also written by Lisl Detlefsen and illustrated by Renee Kurilla. These two books are quite different and yet they share some stellar qualities. The endpapers serve up an invitation to notice the farm-based products/objects and link them to the processed results on the closing endpapers. Throughout, the illustrations again provide a child-friendly but richly detailed and informative view of specific farm/food settings and steps in  growing, harvesting, processing, and delivering food to our supermarket shelves. Language and descriptors are accurate but not excessive and make this a great book for early childhood.

The text is not rhymed but uses a very intriguing hook for each cluster of pages. Direct address to the reader/characters inquiries- 

"What's that, you say? You'd like ________?

    RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE? Then you need a farmer."

The questions arise in everyday homes, include a variety of families and identities, and range from pancakes to fruit to dairy to veggies, to... more. Each page and element involves the farm-to-table stages, showing complex situations that subtly include features related to safety, health, and mechanical aspects bringing seed to supermarket. The concluding pages encourage young readers to grow food themselves and to "see" the process behind their bounty in every bite they eat. The cover does a great job of suggesting the way a simple dinner can call to mind the farmer on a tiller, a rancher with cattle, an orchard, bees, and more. 

Alfred A. Knopf, 2024

If this is your first time finding Lisl Detleftsen's books, be sure to click her name above and learn more. She, with her young family, is a working farmer whose titles reflect a wide range of farming life that could likely be new to you. She does write on other subjects, too, like her recent picture book AT THE END OF THE DAY , illustrated by Lynn Bontigao. Visually referencing one very familiar family and feelings in opening pages, the narrator reminds us that school and work days are often exhausting, draining, sending us home, "at the end of the day" with more to do and little energy to draw on. 

Page after page we share in the sigh-inducing realities of bad weather, chores, sibling squabbles, disappointments and actual appointments. By mid-book we see that military mom is only able to coach and support her drooping mixed-race family via screen, but dad is valiantly seeking reasonable management along with moments of joy- as fleeting as a firefly, as corny as a knock-knock joke, as loving as puppy licks. I won't spoil the surprise climax, but the warmth and restoration of it is palpable and reassuring. The exhaustion is also real, the do-it-again-tomorrow reality is wry. But, especially at the end of the day, family is family and love is love.

Charlesbridge, 2017

When it released  several years ago, I wrote about FRESH PICKED POETRY: A Day at the Farmers' Market, written by Michelle Schaub and illustrated by Amy Huntington. They, too, are a masterful pair of creators whose combined text and images generate a virtual life experience for readers anywhere. The poems in this entertaining and informative collective are arranged so as to reveal a visit to a farmers market as if stopping stall by stall, sampling delectables, and making those visits a regular part of life. Give these books a try, then get yourself to a farmers market!

Sunny, Springy Selections: Fruits, Veggies, and Farmers' Markets

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising, and my in-box just announced that the local farmers market will open in two weeks. As it happens, this lovely selection happens to be on the top of my ever-growing stack of poetry to share. There's no better time to share it than this very moment! 

Charlesbridge, 2017

FRESH-PICKED POETRY: A Day at the Farmers' Market was written by Michelle Schaub and illustrated by Amy Huntington. With humor, delightful word choice, colorful  and diverse illustrations, and a variety of poetic forms, this day-at-a-Farmers' Market poetry collection unfolds with huge appeal. Forms vary, providing multiple mentor text samples, and each is an impressive poem of intricate rhythm, rhyme, and rationale. 

The poems are as rousing as the sun-rising start, romping kids and dogs, and the tempting fruits, veggies, and bakery on display. The ongoing visual narratives of multi-generational and diverse two- and -four-footed folks offer rich invitations to browse the action as thoroughly as shoppers peruse the produce. 

Beach Lane Books, 2011

Pair this with other treats for the tongue, rollicking romps celebrating healthy, natural foods that please the ear as well as the palette. I recommend April Pulley Sayre's poetry in all it's variations, but especially urge you to explore GO-GO-GRAPES: A Fruit Chant,  and RAH, RAH, RADISHES: A Vegetable Chant.  Her rhyming text is as crisp, patterned, rhythmic, and symmetrical as the fruit and veggies it celebrates.

Beach Lane Books, 2012

 Her photography combines color, shape, patterns, cultures, numbers, comparisons... and more in vibrant books that even include brief end matter, as does FRESH-PICKED POETRY.  

Bon Apetit!