Book Review: Mrs Noodlekugel by Daniel Pinkwater

From the publisher: "Nick and Maxine live in a tall building with one apartment on top of another. So when they look out their window and see a little house they never knew was there, of course they must visit (especially when their parents tell them not to!). Going through the boiler room, they’re amazed to find to a secret backyard with a garden, a porch, and a statue of a cat. And they’re even more amazed when that cat starts to talk. . . . Welcome to the world of Mrs. Noodlekugel, where felines converse and serve cookies and tea, vision-impaired mice join the party (but may put crumbs up their noses), and children in search of funny adventures are drawn by the warm smell of gingerbread and the promise of magical surprises."

This book would have been ideal for my newly emerging readers:  it has a kid-appealing story with just enough fantasy, folly, and humor (and plenty of charming black-and-white illustrations by Adam Stower) to keep a beginning reader's attention, in addition to great cover appeal (for girls, anyway.) But be aware that this book has a limited readership, given that the text is overly simplistic (quite Dick-and-Jane-ish, just in longer chapter form.) It is, in effect, a long beginning reader, when the child has mastered the basics but still needs some help. 

The problem is that the publisher's info page of the book makes no mention of the ages for which it's suited.  Upon further research online, it is listed for the 5 to 10 age group, but again, just be aware that this is for young beginning readers. They will likely be the only ones excited about the story. (Both my older girls tried reading the book. My nine-year-old brought it back to me after a couple of pages, declaring it a book for babies and utterly annoying. My seven-year-old persevered to the end, declaring it a cute story, but written for "little kids." She hadn't heard her sister's scorn of the book, as she was asleep the night her sister tried to read it.)


Published in March 2012 by Candlewick.

Book Review: Deep in the Forest by Brinton Turkle

Deep in the Forest. Brinton Turkle. 1976. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. Ages 3 and up.

A bear cub stumbles across a cabin in the woods and wreaks havoc, Goldilocks-style, in this wordless picture book. Although the illustrations are rendered in dark, autumnal colors, the charm of the pictures wasn't lost on my young daughters. They laughed at the cub's antics, and were delighted when he safely escaped back to his mother. Personally, I like this version of Goldilocks, since it makes more sense for a bear cub to wreak that kind of careless havoc than for a little girl to do so.

A short rant about book lengths and lack of editing

I've got about a dozen books in various stages of reading progress, and while they aren't awful, they're not holding my interest very well (hence the dozen), mostly due to the fact that they are needlessly, freakishly, disproportionately long for the plot, action, and characters.
Is it just me or do authors seem to think they need to write epics? Long, droning tomes in serious need of editing. What has happened to editors? Doesn't anyone value pithy, substantive writing anymore? Please, editors, for the love of all that's good and right, wield those red pens with more fervor! Stop the madness!

Recent Reads

Scarlet by A. C. Gaughen (2012). What bookish girl doesn't fall in love with Robin Hood at a fairly young age? I've been fascinated by the legend of Robin Hood since I first read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of his exploits when I was eleven or so. I loved that book and reread it often. Years later when my parents took us to England for vacation the summer after I turned fifteen, we decided we had to go to Sherwood Forest. It was there that I learned, to my supreme disappointment, that Robin Hood was just a legend. (I wonder why I thought he was real?) This book is a reworking of the Robin Hood legend from the standpoint of a knife-wielding, female "Will" Scarlet, disguised as a boy. I'm not sure how I feel about this book. For sheer entertainment value, it did pretty well. With a few exceptions, I stayed interested in seeing what was going to happen. I mostly liked the characterizations, although I personally don't think the strength of Robin's character features very clearly. Little John features a little too much. I didn't care for him. The story has good action, but the plot is a little lacking, and had too many repeats of the same incident (Scarlet sneaking into somewhere to snoop or free people and getting beat up/wounded in the process), just tweaked a little. I also didn't like the love triangle going on. I think it was relied on too heavily as a plot device, and the many jealousy scenes got old. (I get so tired of love triangles in YA fiction.) But for all my little peeves, it was a very decent read.

My cousin Suey of It's All About Books brought this one to my attention. (Clicking on the website link will take you to her enthusiastic review.)

For a better retelling, read Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood. Apart from the Pyle book, it's probably my favorite. It's suitable for readers as young as eight.

Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax (2005). I read this one on the recommendation of a speaker at the last homeschool convention I attended. The book discusses the differences in the male and female brains and the author draws some conclusions about the ramifications of those differences. I'm not sure what I feel about it. I think that the common trend for gender-sameness in public schools is problematic, especially for boys. (By "gender-sameness" I mean the idea that there are no physiological or chemical differences -besides the obvious glandular and hormonal ones- in boys and girls and how they learn best.) I'm not sure I would draw the same conclusions he does in some instances regarding what to do about those gender differences, especially in regard to those children he terms "anomalous." But the book makes for fascinating reading.

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. (Unabdridged Audiobook, read by Esther Benson) I had only a vague recollection of this book, centering exclusively around Pippi herself, her little monkey Mr. Nilsson, and the horse on the porch. I do remember one of my elementary school teachers reading it aloud, but I couldn't for the life of me remember anything of plots or stories. Since it's a childhood classic, I have long been toying with the idea of reading it aloud to my girls, but other, more interesting books have always gotten in the way. We found the audiobook at the library and decided to get it to listen to during our about-town errands. Esther Benson does a good job with the narration, but I have to confess that I'm not a fan of the story. It's like nails on a chalkboard. And I know why I remember almost nothing about it. There's not much there to remember. My feelings can be summed up by my seven-year-old Karina's comment, "For all her travels, she's not very smart, is she?" For all her wildness and shenanigans, she's also not that interesting. I can only attribute the book's lasting impact being due to the wildly outrageous, non-conformist main character, because everything else about it, including the "adventures," is boring. And why, for being as old as she is, does she never learn from her social gaffes? Her wide-eyed, quasi-innocent, "isn't-this-jolly" preciousness (as my grandmother would have said) is nauseating and irritating. Her wildly braggadocio lies aren't even very interesting. This is one book I won't be adding to our personal library. If my children end up loving it down the road ('though they don't seem very keen on it at present) they can buy it with their own money. So there.

Picture Book Biographies: Poets

April is National Poetry Month here in the United States. I've read poetry to my girls from the time they were babies, because I love it and want them to love it and to not be intimidated by the format. But I've found that sharing poetry with them is even more effective after they can first see the poet as a real person. Here, in no particular order, are some picture book biographies -some deal only with a certain portion of the poet's life- of poets that combine a well-told narrative with striking pictures to capture and keep children's attention. Each book is illustrated in a different style. (I'd recommend these books for ages 7 and up.)

William Carlos Williams

(Written by Jen Bryant; illustrated by Melissa Sweet)

Walt Whitman

(Written by Barbara Kerley; illustrated by Brian Selznick)

Emma Lazarus

(Written by Linda Glaser; illustrated by Claire A. Nivola)

Langston Hughes

(Written by Robert Burleigh; illustrated by Leonard Jenkins)

Emily Dickinson

(Written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter)

Pablo Neruda

(Written by Monica Brown; illustrated by Julie Paschkis)

Robert Burns

(Written by Joanne Findon; illustrated by Ted Nasmith)

Picture Book: Shibumi and the Kitemaker by Mercer Mayer

Shibumi and the Kitemaker

Written and illustrated by Mercer Mayer
Picture book
Ages 5 and up (Reading Aloud)
Published in 1999 by Marshall Cavendish

In this original fable by Mercer Mayer, Shibumi is a young princess of a "far-away kingdom" sheltered behind garden walls she isn't allowed past. She dreams of the wonders on the other side of the wall. When she overhears some children outside the wall making fun of the princess they've never seen, Shibumi climbs a tree to set them straight, but the squalor and deprivation she sees from that tree shatter all her illusions of a better world beyond the wall. Fearing that her father will punish her for climbing the tree, but driven to change what she sees, she conceives a daring plan (that only a child would think of) that will force her father, the emperor, to make the situation better. Her drastic action gets his attention, and through it, she finally tells him what she wishes to happen. As he starts to implement a plan to fulfill her greatest wish, his councilors, thinking he has lost his mind and not eager to have the status quo changed, engage in a treacherous plot that results in Shibumi fleeing into exile. Despite his broken heart, or maybe because of it, the emperor works for years to implement the needed changes to his land, but is now, many years after Shibumi's departure, besieged in outright war by angry nobles who want things to return to the way they were. A young samurai goes in search of Shibumi, knowing that her father needs her to help him continue what she started.

Mayer's love of Japanese art and culture is evident in every beautiful and meticulous illustration.

This is a book with some heavy themes for young children: inequality of classes, the "haves" vs. "have-nots," and the difference one person can make in a seemingly impossible situation. I appreciated how Mayer allowed Shibumi's "grass-is-greener" attitude to develop into a deep conviction that she needed to be -and believed she could be- an instrument of change. I also appreciated that he didn't show the process as being easy or quick. I expect it's a book my girls will think about for years to come.

My seven and eight year-old daughters loved this fable. My four-year-old at least stayed beside me while we read, sometimes tuning out, but then something would draw her back in.

Sadly, this book is out of print. Our copy was borrowed from the library.

Popular Books Everyone Else Has Read But Me (It Seems)

• The Hunger Games trilogy. I'll mention this first because of all the movie hype surrounding it right now. My mom and sister have both read it and recommend it, but it's not a series I've had a burning desire to read.
• The Harry Potter books. I should probably have my children's-lit-lover card pulled, but I couldn't get into this series. I've tried several times with the first book, and I've quit every time.
• The Chronicles of Narnia. I yawned my way through the first book when I was 11, and remember very little about it. I never had any desire to read the rest of the series. On the other hand, my sister read and re-read them.
• Charles Dickens books. I've tried at various times over the years, but I'm just not drawn to his writing style. I've never been able to finish one of his books.
• John Steinbeck books. I never had to read any of his works in my British international high school, or at university (amazingly) and I've still not gotten around to it as an adult.
• Stephen King books. I'm not into the horror genre, and until recently, I thought that was all he wrote, but I've since learned that's not so, however...so far I've not given any of his books a try. (I love the movies The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both film adaptations of his works.)

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.