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Answers to Children’s Author Trivia Volume 10

September 2, 2010 in Children's Author Trivia by Roberta | No comments

We have two women authors this week to make up for discussing three men last week.

23. This author’s first book was a fictional account of her older sister’s early death, called A Summer to Die. For later books, she won Newbery Medals in 1990 and 1994. Who is she?

Lois Lowry has included some of the speeches she gave throughout the years on her website. For example, she has included the speech she gave when she won the Newbery for The Giver in 1994. If you have some time, it is well worth poking around her website and blog.

Check out these videos, too. In this video, Time for Kids reporter Hannah Spicijaric interviews Lois Lowry, particularly about The Willoughbys.

In this video, Lowry is interviewed by Time for Kids reporter Sarah Horbacewicz about her recent book The Birthday Ball.

What a fascinating person!

24. This writer enjoyed fairy tales as a child and her books often have a fairy tale quality. She was given art lessons by her mother, and has worked as an illustrator as well as a writer. In fact her first book was a collaboration with her husband. He wrote the book and she illustrated it. Two of her books have been made into movies, and one was a Newbery Honor book. Do you recognize the author?

Natalie Babbitt has had two books made into movies:  Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis.

We were introduced to Natalie Babbitt’s work when my son chose Search for Delicious for a book report. It is definitely a story with multiple layers of meaning and complexity. It will stick with you after you read it.

Here are some of her other books:

Can you see the fairy tale influence?

Note: Children’s Author Trivia is taking a vacation this week, but will be back next Thursday.

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Wild Wild Alphabet

August 30, 2010 in Nonfiction Monday Review by Roberta | 2 comments

Wild Alphabet by Dan Green, with design by Mike Haines and paper folding by Julia Frohlich, is a pop-up book of cool animals and fun information that is sure to be “pop”-ular as a gift book. wild-alphabet

Dan Green has chosen some common animals to highlight, like the elephant and the hippopotamus, but also a few unusual ones like the narwhal and wallaby. Each two-page spread has the name of the animal, a photograph of the animal, a few facts about the animal written in an engaging way, and then a big bold capital letter with a black-and-white image that pops up or interacts with the letter kinetically. My favorite is the dinosaur, Utahrapter, which requires you to actually open the letter to see what is underneath.

Of course this book is designed to be engaging to young children, but I noticed the older ones like to take a peek too. If nothing else they try to figure out, “how did they fold that?”

To get a better idea of the book, here’s a very well-designed trailer. Isn’t the music fun?

What child wouldn’t enjoy the thrill of Wild Alphabet?

Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 52 pages
Publisher: Kingfisher; Pop edition (September 14, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753464721
ISBN-13: 978-0753464724

nonfictionmonday

Nonfiction Monday is a blogging celebration of nonfiction books for kids. For more information, stop by Anastasia Suen’s Nonfiction Monday page. This week’s post is at TheBookNosher.

This books was provided for review.

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Children’s Author Trivia Volume 10

August 26, 2010 in Children's Author Trivia by Roberta | No comments

How about some better clues today? Can you guess who these children’s book authors are?trivia-logo

23. This author’s first book was a fictional account of her older sister’s early death, called A Summer to Die. For later books, she won Newbery Medals in 1990 and 1994. Who is she?

24. This writer enjoyed fairy tales as a child and her books often have a fairy tale quality. She was given art lessons by her mother, and has worked as an illustrator as well as a writer. In fact her first book was a collaboration with her husband. He wrote the book and she illustrated it. Two of her books have been made into movies, and one was a Newbery Honor book. Do you recognize the author?

Are the clues with more details helpful? What do you think?

Answers to Children’s Author Trivia Volume 9

August 26, 2010 in Children's Author Trivia by Roberta | No comments

20. How do you change a simple picture book into a full length movie? The filmmakers must have had a few nightmares trying to get this one right. Or maybe just a wild time…

Yes, the movie was based on Maurice Sendak’s picture book, Where the Wild Things Are.

Maurice Sendak is a fabulous illustrator, but the books he authored are the ones that have grabbed the most attention. One of our family favorites is the rollicking romp through the months, Chicken Soup With Rice.

21. Do made-for television movies count? If you suffer from arachnophobia you might not enjoy this movie as much as most children do.

Guess I should have given better clues for this one. David Kirk’s Miss Spider books are unlikely to instill fear in anyone. Starting with the release of Miss Spider’s Tea Party, this vegetarian spider has been helping countless children learn how to get along with others.

David Kirk lives in upstate New York. He started out making toys, but says the little book The Gnome’s Almanack, illustrated by Ida Bohatta Morpurgo (1942) inspired him to try children’s books. The result has been a rousing success. (Note:  To show how much of a book nerd I am, I actually found a copy of The Gnome’s Almanck to buy after reading about David Kirk’s affection for it.)

Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Kids was released for TV in 2003, with Brooke Shields as the voice of Miss Spider and Rick Moranis as Holley.

Now you can buy an iPad App for Miss Spider’s Tea Party. Bet Ida Bohatta Morpurgo didn’t see that coming!

22. This author also had more than one book made into movies. His books are best known for their animal main characters. Arachnophobia might be a problem for people watching one of these movies as well.

E.B. White wrote Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan, and Charlotte’s Web, which were all made into movies. In fact, Stuart Little led to a series of three movies, the last being Stuart Little: Call of the Wild, and Charlotte’s Web can be found in both animated and live action versions. The Trumpet of the Swan was released as an animated film in 2001, but did not receive much popular acclaim.

Stuart Little is about the adventures of a mouse who is born to human parents. It was E.B. White’s first children’s book.

The Trumpet of the Swan features a swan who learns how to play the trumpet. The swan has a human friend, a boy named Sam.

Charlotte’s Web is the story of Wilbur the pig and his great friendship with Charlotte the spider. I thought my reference to arachnophobia my trigger someone to think of Charlotte, although I don’t think anyone could fear spiders after reading this classic book.

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Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction

August 23, 2010 in Middle Grade Nonfiction, Nonfiction Monday Review by Roberta | 2 comments

Do you know a child who is interested in science but finds the traditional nonfiction books a bit too tame and lame? Looking for something a little edgy with a bite of humor (”You have to keep your ‘Ion’ this bunch…”)? Then you might want to take a look at the Basher series science books. chemistry-basher

Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction! by Dan Green and Simon Basher is not written like a textbook. It is organized more like a reference book, such as a dictionary or an encyclopedia. The different terms/concepts are developed as characters. The sections are written in the first person from that character’s point of view, and each section stands on its own. For example, Acid says, “I’m mad, I’m bad, and thoroughly dangerous to know. Given a chance I’ll eat away Metal and burn through your skin.” (In case you wondered, all characters’ names are capitalized.)

As with Punctuation: The Write Stuff, each character has an accompanying illustration to show what it would look like. The illustrations appear to have roots in Japanese chibi; they are cute and brightly colored, such as the bright orange character in the center of the cover, which represents “Combustion.” These images really help visual learners remember details about what the terms mean. The symbolism of the illustrations works more clearly for some concepts than others, probably because of the complex nature of the topic.

I like that Green chose to include organic materials like esters, found in ingredient lists on labels of common products. The section on “Smart Materials” is fascinating. It inspired me to look up more and write a blog article about them.

The overall organization of material, however, is not as strong as it could be. Why did Green add a discussion of the elements carbon and nitrogen at the very end of the book, after a discussion of complex molecules like proteins that are made up of those elements? He also talked about enzymes, which are basically proteins, well before defining and discussing proteins.

Organizational flaws aside, this book would be useful for the child that needs to brush up on chemistry terminology or who has struggled with chemistry presented in a more traditional way. The concepts are really shaken up and given a lively new twist, which makes them fresh and interesting.

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Kingfisher (July 6, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0753464136
ISBN-13: 978-0753464137


In this video, you can see some of the other books offered in this series.

nonfictionmonday

Nonfiction Monday is a blogging celebration of nonfiction books for kids. For more information, stop by Anastasia Suen’s Nonfiction Monday page. This week’s post is at Playing By The Book.

This book was provided for review.

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