The Little Bookroom

counting

One Some Many. By Marthe Jocelyn. Illustrated by Tom Slaughter. Toronto: Tundra Books, 2004.

This is a phenomenal counting book! Not simple counting by rote from one to ten, One Some Many instead explores the concept of number for very young children while also providing the standard progression to ten. One is a beautiful golden pear against a bright red background. Turn the page to see… two? No, to see some: three golden pears against the same bright red background. And on the facing page: many, as a golden pear drops from a tree laden with pears. And then hardly any, a pear eaten to the core. Jocelyn picks up again with the number two, introducing other relative quantities along the way. The gorgeous cut-paper illustrations, in bold primary colors, are utterly arresting to the eye, and invite you to linger on each page, happily contemplating the combinations of objects and numbers before you.

For a different take on numbers, look for Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak’s My Arctic 1,2,3, which features illustrations of Arctic animals in their natural settings and in relation to each other—as in “Nine snowy owls, beginning their hunt, take to the air... Ten lemmings scurry among the dwarf willows.” This book includes the numbers twenty, one hundred and one million, as well as an afterword about life in the Arctic and a glossary of Inuit words that makes this suitable for children as old as eight or more.

telling it again

Mary Pope Osbone, Kate and the Beanstalk. Illustrated by Giselle Potter. (New York: Aladdin Books, 2000.)

The story of Jack and the beanstalk always frightened me as a child--and not just the giant himself. The rage of Jack's mother, his stupidity, the giant's cupidity, the unjustness of the ending--all of it horrified me. But here is a reworking of the tale that is tremendously satisfying because of its emphasis on justness.

Kate and her mother are terribly poor, and so are forced to sell their only cow at market. But on her return, Kate encounters a beggar who offers her a handful of magic beans that shine like dark gold. Her mother, however, is despairing, and throws the beans out the window. Kate, unable to sleep that night, goes into the garden, where she discovers a gigantic beanstalk that stretches into the clouds. And she climbs it.

She arrives in another country, where an old woman tells her the story of a noble knight murdered for his treasures, his wife and child spared only by their absence, but suffering now in terrible poverty. The return of the treasure that is rightfully theirs would save them. Kate determines to help them. She enters the castle not once but three times to rescue each precious object, and only then does she discover the whole truth of the castle.

Potter's stylized drawings strike just the right note here, dramatizing the story while removing it from the realm of the real.

metafiction for children

I'm sorry about yesterday--we're all getting better, but things seem to be moving at a snail's. And one child's interruption led to the loss of yesterday's work. But here I am with...

Catherine and Laurence Anholt, Come Back, Jack! (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 1993).

The endpapers of this little book are filled with nursery rhymes, and the title page features a picture of two little children sitting together over a book. "There was once a little girl who didn't like books," this story begins. But her little brother Jack does, and one day, when she is supposed to be watching him, he disappears into his book. She hurries after him, to find herself standing on a hill, listening to the sound of crying--it's Jill at the bottom, just having tumbled down. But Jack has moved on. His heroic sister follows him through one rhyme after another, until at last they emerge from the book. The Anholts always create such sweet confections of children that this slight book is hard to resist, and tremendously exciting for those who can see the delicate web of references being built.

jacks

This week, I'm looking at jacks--or rather, Jacks--in rhyme, story, song and games. Here are a few rhymes for the youngest ones:

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner/Eating his Christmas pie/He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum/And said, "What a good boy am I!"

Jack Sprat could eat no fat/His wife could eat no lean/And so between the two of them/They licked the platter clean.

See-saw, Margery-Daw/Jack shall have a new master/He shall have but a penny a day/Because he can't work any faster.

Jack be nimble/Jack be quick/Jack jump over the candlestick.

And this lovely song (for those of you who don't the tune, I wish I could reproduce it! I'll look around on line):

The hunter went a walking-o/He carried an arrow for his bow/And for to hunt the merry little doe/Among the leaves so green-o/Jackie-boy, master/Sing you well, fare-thee-well/Hey-down, ho-down, derry-derry-down/Among the leaves so green-o.

the politics of food

I'd planned a really thoughtful post for today, but everyone at my house has been sick and getting sicker, so it'll be briefer and more superficial than I'd hoped--sorry about that.

If you've read any news at all over the last couple of years, you'll be aware that the public debate over the the intersection of children, food and politics is ever more heated. Indeed, it's had a major impact on British electoral politics, with chef Jamie Oliver transforming school lunches to varying degrees of delight, and weighing in on public obligations to children. And in short order, Jeanette Orrey published The Dinner Lady (London: Bantam Press, 2005), a charming and inspiring book about her career in school cafeterias in England, and the changes she has created in them. It has fantastic recipes that my children will really eat, and made me feel better about what my children actually do eat since I'm constantly worrying that not enough vegetables get inside them. More than other books, somehow, this one allowed me to recognize that each child has foods they like and foods they don't like (sadly, rarely agreeing with one another, as one will eat broccoli, sugar snap peas and the other green beans, zucchini, mushrooms and tomatoes, but not vice versa--carrots, potatoes and asparagus are among the only foods they both like, and neither likes leafy greens, my own favorite), and that as long as I serve them all on a regular basis, everyone will be fine. (And I try also to remember that for one school year, I ate nothing for lunch but baloney and mayo on white bread--and still turned into someone who loves Asian and South Asian cuisines. And greens.)

Here in the U.S., Alice Waters has long sought to transform children's relationships to food through her Edible Schoolyard project at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, near her restaurant. (The website, at www.edibleschoolyard.org, is fabulous.) Ann Cooper, another revolutionary lunch lady in the U.S., recently published Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). It's a good review of childhood nutrition and the politics of food, so if you're looking for a primer, start here. Unfortunately, I haven't had great success with the recipes. Cookbooks focused specifically on foods for children that I have liked include the Orrey book mentioned above, Rachel Anne Hill's Healthy Food for Kids (London: Ryland Peters & Small, 2005) and the couple of pages in Anna Thomas's The New Vegetarian Epicure (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996) on which she also agonizes about her own children's refusal to eat vegetables, and the compromises that have worked for her.

The other thing that has really helped us has been packing good lunches. We use lunch boxes with compartments and containers that prevent awful squished sandwiches, and allow for fruit salads and raw veggies and a treat as well from www.laptoplunches.com. Their site also has some great lunch ideas and great links. There's lots more on the web, but today's just not the day. If there's something you like, please do mention it in the comments.

Lately, we've been inspired by news of the 100 Mile Diet (see www.100milediet.org). I'm now waiting for the book to come out. and are thinking carefully about have to buy more foods locally. The website allows you to figure out the 100-mile radius around your home, which is really helpful. With kids, it seems like a bit of challenge--things I'd be willing to give up for myself (like bananas), I'm reluctant to remove from my children's diet. But as I've begun researching local options, it's clear than we can nonetheless switch from national organic brands to local organic ones in many cases, and I'm slowly coming to understand that buying locally in just as important as buying organically, if not more so--and, of course, I can often do both anyway.

So that's it for today. But I'll come back to this issue. I'm sure.

a lot of serious things start silly

Natalie Babbit, The Search for Delicious. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1969.

Again the conjunction of politics and food! After the Prime Minister, hard at work on his dictionary, suggests that "Delicious is fried fish," conflict arises among the King (apples), the Queen (Christmas pudding), and the General of the Armies (a mug of beer)--indeed, everyone is inflamed by the debate, since everyone has their own definition. Even the Queen's brother, Hemlock, a friend to none, not even his sister, insists on being heard--before riding off on his big gray horse. The best solution, it seems, is to survey everyone in the kingdom, hold a vote so that whatever gets the most for delicious can be entered into the dictionary. But who will conduct the survey? The Prime Minister is too old for journey--so he sends his adopted son, Gaylen.

Because the kingdom is not a large one, it seems that the poll should take no more than four weeks. And so Gaylen sets off. But when he reaches the first town, it seems that someone has gone on before him, stirring up trouble, talking against the king. And though it takes three days to register all the suggestions for delicious, not one is repeated. And everyone's passions are aroused by the conflict. But it is here that Gaylen first hears of the woldweller--a magical guardian of the forest--from Medley, daughter of the Mayor. She urges him to find it, and ask what it thinks is delicious.

Indeed, everywhere that Gaylen goes, he finds increasing dissension, more magical creatures, and the keys to a mystery whose origins lie deep in the past. The way in which he brings them together, prevents civil war, and oversees the creation of the definition of delicious, forms the rest of this gorgeous story, told in sparkling language.

food, magnified

John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway, The Giant Jam Sandwich. Illustrated by John Vernon Lord. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

Like Pearl Moscowiz's Last Stand, The Giant Jam Sandwich explores the conjunction of food and politics. Here, the village of Itching Down is invaded by four million wasps. What to do? The villagers hold a meeting in the village hall to debate the possibilities. "Then Bap the Baker leaped to his feet/And cried 'What do wasps like best to eat?/Strawberry jam! Now wait a minute!/If we made a giant sandwich we could trap them in it!'" And so they go to work. Following its engagement in democratic processes, the village becomes a model of collaboration: the villagers make an enormous loaf of bread, and then use dump trucks to unload butter and jam onto the huge slices of bread. The wasps--all four million of them--do indeed smell the jam, and dive into it, only to become stuck there. And then they are truly sandwiched, and the sandwich removed from Itching Down, "which is not a waspish sort of town".

A masterwork of hyperbole, this book provokes laughter--and thoughtful consideration about our relationship with pests, and how to resolve them.

magical food

Mem Fox, Possum Magic. Illustrated by Julie Vivas. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1983.

Food has magical properties, as all children know. Notions of distinctness and indistinctness, of separateness and togetherness, all are mediated through food. That it becomes you is a profoundly unsettling notion for many.

So Mem Fox's Possum Magic seems to speak clearly to children, despite the slender plot. Grandma Poss uses her magic to make little Hush invisible--mostly to protect her from snakes, though invisibility has other benefits. But one day Hush wants to see what she looks like again, and asks Grandma Poss to make her visible once more. And though she tries, she can't manage it: "Grandma Poss looked miserable. 'Don't worry, Grandma,' said Hush. 'I don't mind.' But in her heart of hearts she did."

Grandma is not so easily defeated, however. And the next morning, just before breakfast, she remembers that the magic has something to do with food. And so the two of them embark on a voyage around Australia, sampling regional delicacies wherever they go, in an effort to render Hush visible once more. And slowly but surely, Hush reappears.

This is the kind of book that gets children really excited about food. Be prepared to try new ones!

eating out

Helen Oxenbury. Eating Out. New York: Penguin Books, 1983

The thing about reading with toddlers--well, really, with any child who cannot yet read themselves--is that you have to read the book. So you must find a book not just that you both like, but rather that speaks to both of you, because with toddlers especially, you will read favorite books over and over and over.

Personally, I never tire of Helen Oxenbury. These days, with older children of my own, I miss her tremendously. Her illustrations capture the essence of young children: their solid, round bodies, the way they squat to look at things on the ground, their faces flushed with feeling. But more than that, her stories brilliantly recapitulate life with young children, which is why they are so appealing to both children and their parents--everyone can recognize themselves, and each other, in these books that are so faithful to our experiences.

Eating Out is one of a series she wrote for children between the ages of two and four. It opens with a small image of an androgynous child standing over a ball and broken vase, looking up with interest at its mother, who stands looking despairingly down at the mess, one hand resting on her hip, the other on her brow. And, like all truly great picture books, there is a delicate tension between the image and the text, for this image is followed with these words: "Mommy said, 'I'm too tired to cook.' 'Me, too,' said Daddy. 'Let's go out for dinner.'"

What a fatal error! From the condescending waiter--"'I suppose you need a highchair,' the waiter said to me."--to the hot and crowded room, from the long wait for the food to the inevitable need to go the bathroom just when the food finally arrives, from the overwhelmed and overwhelming boredom to the dreadful disaster involving children under tables, waiters and trays of spaghetti, it is a singularly bad idea. And everyone look much happier at home in the kitchen, eating cereal. This book is so funny and so true.

But don't even bother looking in new bookstores for this book--it is out of print. Happily, you can still find it at abebooks, and maybe other used bookstores.

chickens in mind

As this week's books suggest, chickens are good for thinking with. They show up in proverbial thinking too. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end.

Having thought all week about chickens on the run, it seems only right to observe that more and more people--at least in my neck of the woods--are keeping chickens in the city. Right here in Portland, you follow one family's progress as they share their experience on the www.enviromom.com site. More specifically: http://www.enviromom.com/chicken_mom/index.html. Inspired to do the same? Look at The City Chicken: http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/index.html, or at Backyard Chickens: www.backyardchickens.com/.

Eggs are associated with spring because chickens need sufficient exposure to light in order to lay. When daylight hours increase in the spring, egg production returns or rises, hence the association of eggs, fertility, and spring holidays like Pesach and Easter.

Want to share one more book with your kids? Look for Ruth Heller's Chickens Aren't the Only Ones, at once a celebration and exploration of the many creatures who lay eggs, ll done in verse.

Happy spring!