Visit Milwaukee: In Real Life, and in a New Picture Book!

It's summer tourist season and Milwaukee is waiting to welcome you. Ever since I first arrived in Wisconsin to attend Marquette, the downtown area won my heart. In my first years here, Summerfest was launched as a soggy lakefront music festival.  It has since become the annual "World's Largest Music Festival" and anchors a summer-long series of ethnic and themed festivals, drawing millions of visitors from around the USA and the world.

Sleeping Bear Press, 2019

Each and every one of these (and other) events features kid-friendly activities.  Even so, I urge families to check out a recent picture book before and during visits to the city. ROCKY & LULU in MILWAUKEE is written by Barbara Joosse and illustrated by Renee Graef. This talented pair is noteworthy for individual achievements, including many award-winning and classic books (Joosse's MAMA, DO YOU LOVE ME and  PAPA, DO YOU LOVE ME; Graef's many LITTLE HOUSE picture book adaptations, and illustrations for titles in the nonfiction Alphabet series). These two are close and longtime friends from the Milwaukee metro area who enjoy traveling together as much as Lulu and Rocky do. This is their first title in a planned series about other cities, published by reliable Sleeping Bear Press. Because I know them both I was picturing the fun they must have had in doing the background work for this book.

The story opens with an invitation to the pair (and Lulu's friend Pufferton, a penguin) to visit Milwaukee. They meet doorman Norman at the luxurious landmark Pfister Hotel, then spend three days exploring iconic locations in MIlwaukee's city center. 

The characters are all delightfully humanized animals, each more charming than the next, but the sites featured reveal kids-eye-views of some of the best year-round attractions this city has to offer. The text is direct but not simplistic, and Norman's comments offer some fun examples of figurative language from an earlier generation.

The level of detail is "just right" for young readers, with informative labels and enough color and side details to spark curiosity and develop an appetite for exploration. 
This lively pair (and observant penguin) cover a great deal of territory in a short amount of time, which happens on vacations, right? 
Out-of-towners with kids would do well to spend some time with this book prior to a visit and encourage the young ones to state a preference for side trips. Most won't be able to stay at the Pfister, but it does offer tours, including stories about ghostly residents!  Back matter provides accessible details about various high points and icons visited throughout the story.

Once families get their hands on this book the adults will be as enthused about visiting Milwaukee as the kids will be. In fact, I encourage classroom teachers and local families to check it out, too. I'm sadly aware from leading school field trips (for many ages) that there are thousands of people living within a few miles who rarely visit downtown and are unaware of its many treasures. 
Milwaukee offers something for everyone in every neighborhood and district. Summer isn't the only time to explore the city, but it does offer an ideal opportunity to get to know it better, or for the first time.
And there's no better souvenir (or gift of any kind) than picture books!

Unsung Women... and Titles

All across the blogosphere and print publications the celebration of Women’s History Month is well underway. Engaging posts feature important and worthy picture book titles about women who have made contributions to the course of history. Many of these are recent releases and attention allows these titles to find readers- and fans.

This week I’ll use some older titles to call attention to some unsung, often anonymous women and girls who helped to build this country. These heroines bore the many burdens of expansion and homesteading with strength and courage, but not without fear and suffering. Their names are unsung because the roles they played were so unremarkable, so typical, yet no less heroic.

Sketchy details about real women, sometimes family ancestors, are often the prototypes for historical fiction. Stories based on these family retellings and supported by extensive research generate wholly authentic tales that deserve to be told, offering admirable icons of everyday women.

Ann Turner’s DAKOTA DUGOUT uses only 126 words and Ronald Himler’s richly detailed line drawings to trace one such woman’s prairie years from the days of her soggy sodhouse, blizzard devastation, and searing crop destruction to her eventual life in a clean clapboard home in a thriving community. Each of Turner’s 126 words is precious, especially the final eight: “Sometimes the things we start with are best.”

Eve Bunting, a notable woman of history herself, brings us DANDELIONS, illustrated by Ronald Himler. In this case a young girl tells her version of the struggling, often miserable first year in a sod home on the prairie, desperately transplanting a stray dandelion on their roof. The only hint of time passing occurs on the final page with a view of sprawling dandelions.

These are terrific books to pair with the 2012 middle grade release, MAY B. by Caroline Starr Rose. At 225 pages, this, too, is a fairly easy read with few words per page. The story in verse relates not only preteen May B.’s life-or death challenges but also reveals that not all prairie wives withstood the stresses of soddy life.

In each case the simplicity of the words require the reader to engage deeply with ideas and the realities of a ruthless time in our history, weighing the costs and consequences, considering what their own choices might have been.

A humorous but equally revealing tale is APPLES TO OREGON: BEING THE (SLIGHTLY) TRUE NARRARIVE OF HOW A BRAVE PIONEER FATHER BROUGHT APPLES. PEACHES. PEARS. PLUMS. GRAPES, AND CHERRIES (AND CHILDREN) ACROSS THE PLAINS. Deborah Hopkinson’s text and Nancy Carpenter’s illustrations invite repeated readings , raise questions, and encourage further research. Young Delicious (yes, she was named for the apple) is no less courageous because of her age and stands proudly in the ranks of women who shaped America.

Among many other earlier titles, don’t miss THE PRAIRIE TRAIN, written by Antoine O’Flatharta, illustrated by Eric Rohmann. It’s a wild and rollicking view of the impact of railroads in the settlement of the west. Rail passage brought access to supplies, but it also provided the woman and child power needed to make homesteads into homes in that exhausting, demanding new world.

The comparative value of children, not to mention of boys versus girls, is depicted in TRAIN TO SOMEWHERE, also by Eve Bunting, illustrated (once again) by Ronald Himler. Based on true stories of children transported by train from east coast orphanages to stops along the route, they would line up at each station to be selected (or passed over) by locals as needed. Newspapers advertised their scheduled arrival and, quite naturally, able-bodied lads were the first to find homes. In fact, though, these often proved to be little more than unpaid slave markets.

One final reminder, here, of the series of picture books, illustrated by Wisconsin’s own Renee Graef, which introduces younger readers to Laura Ingalls Wilder. MY FIRST LITTLE HOUSE SERIES, including A LITTLE PRAIRIE HOUSE, reveals the humor and challenges of families moving to the outer edges of our land.



Speaking of word counts, I’ve far exceeded a reasonable number of words here, but the potential for titles, links, and tributes goes on and on. The collection sited above includes Caldecott illustrators, Newberry notables, and more starred reviews than you can shake a cornstalk at. So, just as we can search out the everyday heroic women of past and present, I urge you to read, share, and celebrate the books already on our library shelves.

***I hope you’ll also check the links to these authors and illustrators- notables one and all.