Posted on by TracyC

Emma

Emma by Wendy Kesselman, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, 1980.

Emma has had a full life, and she has many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. However, she is often lonely when they aren’t visiting her. Most of the time, it’s just her and her pet cat, Pumpkinseed. It’s not a bad life because Emma loves the many simple things in her quiet life, but she unexpectedly discovers a new interest in life when she turns 72.

Her family comes to visit for her birthday, and one of the presents they give her is a painting of the small village where she was born. Although her family doesn’t entirely understand her attachment to her memories of her home village, they know that she is very fond of remembering it. 

However, the painting bothers Emma because it doesn’t look the way she remembers she remembers her village. The village has probably changed since she was last there, but the way the artist has painted it isn’t the way she remembers it. Emma realizes that she wants to capture those memories. Because no one else can paint her village the way it looks in her memories, Emma decides that she will do it herself. She buys an easel and paints and makes her own painting of her village. 

It makes Emma happy when she hangs her painting up in place of the painting that her family gave her because it looks like her memories. However, she doesn’t want her family to think that she didn’t appreciate their gift, so she is careful to replace her painting with the one they gave her whenever her family comes to visit. Everything changes one day when she forgets to makes the switch before her family visits her.

Everyone notices that the painting on the wall is different from the one they gave her, and they ask her where it came from. Emma is embarrassed and admits that she painted it. At first, she wants to put it away, but her family tells her not to do that because it’s a wonderful painting, and they encourage her to paint more.

Emma admits that she already has painted more, and she brings out her other paintings for everyone to see. From then on, she paints more paintings of her village and all of the little things around her that she loves to notice, and she openly displays them. Aside from her family’s visits, she also starts receiving other visitors who come to see her paintings. There are still times when she is alone, but she is no longer lonely when she is alone because she has her art to keep her busy and her memories of all the places and things she loves hanging on her walls.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I’ve been trying to figure out what this book is for years! I vaguely remember my mother telling me about this book when I was little. I can’t remember if she read it to me or just told me that she had seen the book somewhere, but the vague concept of the story about a grandmother who started painting because her relatives gave her a painting of her home town that didn’t look the say she remembered it stayed with me.

What I didn’t know or didn’t remember was that the grandmotherly painter in the story is based on a real person. In the back of the book, the American author explains that she met Emma Stern when she was living in Paris. Emma Stern was German, and she was born in 1878 and died in 1970. She is known for painting countryside scenes and village life. I’m not sure exactly where the village or small town where she was born was, although this website, which shows a selection of her paintings, has labeled most of them as being St. Wendel.

The story is inspirational because it’s an example of someone who found a new interest in life and a new talent when they were elderly. There are other examples in life of people who were “late bloomers” and found new careers or achieved something amazing in life at a time when many other people are just retired or taking it easy. It’s never too late to do something you really love!

Posted on by TracyC

Grandma’s Records

Grandma’s Records by Eric Velasquez, 2001.

Every summer, a boy goes to visit his grandmother. He loves summers with his grandmother because she plays records from her record collection, teaches him to dance, and tells him stories about life in Puerto Rico, where she grew up.

She instills a love of music in her grandson and uses it to share memories with him about his grandfather and their home town. Sometimes, she lets him choose records from her collection to play, complimenting him on his choices. The boy likes art, and he makes sketches based on the album covers.

Then, his grandmother’s nephew comes to visit from Puerto Rico, along with his band. The boy is thrilled to meet them, and they give the boy and his grandmother tickets to see them perform in New York.

It’s a special occasion! They love the performance, and afterward, they visit with the band backstage. The boy and his grandmother continue sharing music with each other as the boy grows up, and as an adult, he continues to play it in his art studio.

At the end of the book, there are lyrics to one of the songs, In My Old San Juan (En Mi Viejo San Juan – YouTube video), both in English and Spanish. It’s a popular sentimental and nostalgic song for Puerto Ricans living abroad, as this YouTube video explains. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

The story is really about the author/artist of the book and his own grandmother. At the end of the story, the picture he’s drawing in his studio is the cover of this book. It’s a touching tribute to his grandmother and the special memories he shared with her as they bonded over music! Parts of the story reflect on their Puerto Rican heritage, which is something they share and discuss with the grandmother’s nephew and the members of his band. I like how the author emphasizes that what makes the music so special are the memories associated with it. At first, the memories are his grandmother memories, but through his experiences with his grandmother, he builds memories of his own associated with the music they’ve shared. It is these memories as well as the music that helps to fuel his art.

Posted on by TracyC

When Aunt Lena Did the Rhumba

When Aunt Lena Did the Rhumba by Eileen Kurtis-Kleinman, illustrated by Diane Greenseid, 1997.

Sophie’s Aunt Lena loves music, dancing, movies, and theater, and she especially loves Broadway musicals. She goes to a musical matinee every Wednesday. After seeing a musical, she comes home, singing and dancing and acting out parts from the play she’s just seen.

One particular Wednesday, when she’s acting out a particularly dramatic dance in the kitchen, she accidentally slips and sprains her ankle. She has to stay home and rest until her ankle gets better, which means that she won’t be able to go to next Wednesday’s matinee.

Aunt Lena is so sad about missing the musicals she loves that Sophie gets an idea to cheer her up. Sophie recruits other members of her family to put on their own musical to entertain Aunt Lena.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea at first, but when Sophie gets her grandmother to help her put together a costume fit for a Broadway musical and choose some music, they begin drawing other family members in.

Aunt Lena loves their performance, and when she’s better, she takes Sophie to a matinee so she can see a real Broadway performance, too!

This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was also a Reading Rainbow book, and the episode of Reading Rainbow is also available to watch online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I didn’t see the original episode of Reading Rainbow that included this book when I was a kid because this book was published after I was too old for that. However, I always liked Reading Rainbow when I was a kid, and later, after I started this blog, I decided to go back and check out some of the books covered by Reading Rainbow after I stopped watching it. If you’re not familiar with Reading Rainbow, it was a children’s television program on public television in the US that encouraged children to read by discussing books and showing children things that were related to the books they were reading. For example, if they were reading books related to animals in an episode, the host, Levar Burton, might take a trip to a zoo and talk to zookeepers about animals in the zoo.

The themes of this particular story and the Reading Rainbow episode are music, dancing, and theater. In the episode, they show a boys’ choir and dancing class and talk about how performing helps the boys and young men develop confidence and maturity. There’s also a comedian who specializes in physical comedy, who talks about how he does his stunts, and an actress who plays one of the cats in the famous Broadway musical Cats.

I love how the aunt in the book shares her love of dancing and theater with her niece. The two of them have similar personalities and interests, so when her aunt is injured, her niece knows how to cheer her up. The ending of the story implies that the niece will now be going to performances with her aunt, or at least, will sometimes go with her. I also liked how the rest of the family participated in the girl’s plans when they saw what she wanted to do, even if they weren’t as enthusiastic about the idea themselves at first. Enthusiasm can be contagious, and I do think that adults sharing their interests with kids can spark lifelong interests in the next generation.

I also noticed that this seems to be an unconventional family, although the family’s living arrangements aren’t the focus of the story. The girl’s parents are never mentioned. She seems to live with just her grandmother, her aunt, and a couple of uncles, and there is no explanation why because it’s not directly important to the story. In any case, it seems to be a happy, close-knit family, with family members caring for each other and supporting each other’s interests.

The pictures in the book are bright and colorful, fitting with the energy, enthusiasm, and theatricality of the story.

Posted on by TracyC

Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Doghouse

Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Doghouse by Jean Lewis, illustrated by Richard Lowe, 1975, 1983.

Scooby-Doo’s friends are building a new doghouse for him! They can’t decide what color to paint it, so they make half of it red and half of it blue. Scooby loves his new doghouse, at first, but then, something spooky happens!

One night, Scooby comes running into the house, scared. While Scooby cringes under the covers of Shaggy’s bed, Shaggy gets a flashlight and goes outside to see what scared Scooby.

When Shaggy looks in the doghouse, he sees a glowing pair of eyes, and then, something white runs past him with a shriek! Scooby and Shaggy both stay inside for the rest of the night, and in the morning, they tell their friends that they think the doghouse is haunted.

Their friends are sure that there must be some other explanation for what happened, but who or what was in Scooby’s doghouse?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Scooby-Doo was my favorite cartoon when I was a kid, especially Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, and I’m still nostalgic about it! The mystery in the story is very simple, but suitable for young children with nothing truly scary about it. Even kids might guess what the solution is before the characters realize what’s in the doghouse.

Now that I think about it, it seems out of character for Scooby-Doo to have a doghouse because I don’t think he had one in the original cartoon series. I remember that he had a fancy one in one of the later spin-off series, but in the original series, he just always slept inside with his human friends. Of course, one of the hallmarks of the Scooby-Doo series is that there isn’t really a strict canon. Details about the characters and the Mystery Machine can change from episode to episode to suit the story without any real explanation because it’s a just-for-fun series.

One of the things that I liked about this book was that it reminded me of all the other books I read as a kid that were based on popular cartoon characters. I think most of the cartoon series from my childhood in the 1980s and 1990s also had related books. On the back of this book, there are pictures of other books in this series, based on other Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, including other Scooby-Doo picture book mysteries.

Posted on by TracyC

Harry the Dirty Dog

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, pictures by Margaret Bloy Graham, 1956.

Harry, like other dogs, hates baths! One day, when he finds out that his family is about to give him a bath, he decides to steal the scrub brush! He buries the scrubbing brush in the yard and runs off into the city to have some fun and get good and dirty!

Normally, Harry is a white dog with black spots, but after a day playing with other dogs and running through construction areas in town, he’s so dirty that he looks like a black dog with white spots.

Eventually, he gets tired and hungry and misses his family, so he goes home. However, he has trouble getting his family to recognize him because he’s so dirty. Even when he does his usual tricks for them, they still don’t think he looks like their Harry.

At first, Harry fears that he’s lost his family because they don’t know who he is. Then, he realizes that what he really needs is the scrub brush and a good bath! He digs up the scrub brush again and manages to persuade his family to give him a bath.

Once he’s clean, his family recognizes him. Harry sees the benefits of getting a bath, but he still doesn’t really like them, and he still enjoys the thought of getting nice and dirty again.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

Dogs in real life often don’t like baths, and this whimsical picture book is about a dog discovering the benefits of a bath. When I was a little kid and I first saw this book, I was really worried that Harry would lose his family because they didn’t recognize him, but really, the family would have to be pretty dense for thinking that this dog, which looks like the same breed/mix as theirs and acts like theirs and does all the tricks their dog does but is just covered in dirt, must be a completely different dog. The story is just meant to be humorous, and it’s questionable in the end whether any lessons are learned. Yes, Harry now sees that getting a bath and being clean help his family to recognize him, but he still dreams about getting dirty, and he’s hiding the scrub brush under his bed. My dog also hates baths and fears the groomer, but I have assured her that I would still know her anywhere!

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Runaway Bunny

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd, 1942.

A little bunny tells his mother that he’s thinking about running away, but his mother assures him that, no matter where he goes or what he does, she would always come after him because he’s her little bunny, and she loves him.

The pictures where the little bunny talks about all of his ideas for running away and evading his mother and where his mother explains what she would do to follow him are in black-and-white.

However, there are large, full color pictures after each of these sections showing what would happen as the mother follows her little bunny.

The little bunny’s plans for running away become increasingly imaginative and outlandish, from going up a mountain and joining the circus to transforming himself into a fish, a bird, or a sailboat.

No matter what the little bunny thinks of for running away and changing himself into something else, his mother assures him that she would find a way to come after him and be there for him. In the end, the little bunny decides that he might as well stay with his mother, just as they are.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

This is a very well-known and much-loved book about parental love and the lengths that parents will go for their children. The mother bunny is determined to be there for her child, even when the child wants to run away. We don’t know why the little bunny was talking about running away from his mother, and without that, it seems just like the little bunny was just trying to provoke his mother to find out how much his mother loves him. When she tells him all the things she would do to reach him if he ran away, he seems reassured and content to remain her little bunny.

This book was originally published during WWII and is a calm and reassuring story that probably comforted many children living through unsettling times. It has never been out of print since its original publication.

The author and illustrator of this book also later wrote and illustrated Goodnight Moon. The scene where the little bunny imagines himself as a boy in a house and his mother says that she would still be his mother reminds me of the illustrations in that book, and I wonder if the mother and child rabbits in that book came from this one.

Posted on by TracyC

Easter Stories for Children

Easter Stories for Children edited by Van B. Hooper, 1962.

This book was published by Ideals, and if I remember right, is part of a series of holiday/seasonal books for children. (I don’t have a list of other books in the series, though.) It has short stories and poems about Easter. Largely, they’re not very religious in tone, tending to focus on fairies and the Easter bunny. I actually found all the references to fairies confusing because I never heard anybody talk about fairies being associated with Easter when I was a kid. On the religious side, there is one poem about prayer and a story about how the dogwood plant represents the crucifixion. There is also some information about how Easter is celebrated around the world.

The pictures are in sepia tones. Mostly, they’re drawings, but there are also some photographs of cute bunnies and kittens wearing human clothes. The only full color pictures are on the inside of the front and back covers, and they’re scenes of rabbits painting Easter eggs. All in all, it’s a very cute book for Easter.

Stories:

How the Forest Fairies Get Ready for Spring – “Written especially for you by SPARKIE” – All of the forest fairies have special tasks for getting ready for spring.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (1886-1943) – A classic children’s story about a bunny who disobeys his mother.

Just After Easter by Maryjane McCarthy – Mr. Bunny Rabbit is worried about next Easter because the farmer is having trouble affording grain to feed his chickens. If he can’t keep the chickens, where will they get their Easter eggs? This is the story that has pictures of bunnies and kittens in costumes with props. The kittens try various ways to raise money for the chickens.

The Legend of the Dogwood – author unknown – The legend is that the cross of Jesus’s Crucifixion was made from dogwood, but the plant felt badly about it, so Jesus made the plant too small to be used for such a purpose again and gave it a cross-shaped flower.

Easter in Many Lands – About Easter customs in different countries, and the origins of the word “Easter” and how symbols like bunnies and eggs came to be associated with Easter. This is my favorite section in the book!

The Story of the Colored Easter Egg by “Maryjane” – A fairytale about a kind queen and the origins of Easter eggs.

Poems:

The Magic Pool by Dorothy Weiner – Bunnies color eggs in a magical pond fed by a rainbow.

Easter Bunny’s Secret by Mrs. Roy L. Peifer – The Easter bunny collects drops of paint that Jack Frost uses to paint leaves in autumn and saves them for Easter eggs, but when the paint gets spilled, he needs to get colors from other sources.

The Little Spring Spirit by Leonie Miller – The spirit of spring calls to plants and animals with the change of the season.

If Easter Eggs Would Hatch by Douglas Malloch – What would come out of an Easter egg? Brightly-colored chickens or maybe a little silver bunny?

In Cottontail Town by Marguerite Gode – A famly in Cottontail Town takes in an elderly rabbit and nurses him back to health. He starts a school there to teach the other rabbits how to paint Easter eggs.

The Gray Bunny’s Night – “As told by The big black Bumblebee” – A little gray bunny wants to be brightly colored for Easter, and his wish is granted by the queen of the fairies.

Hippety-Hop to the Barbershop by Claribel Ream – The Easter Bunny is going to the barbershop to deliver eggs and candy for the barber’s children.

Helping One Another by Mrs. Roy L. Peifer – The Little Red Hen helps the Easter Bunny to fill his basket for Easter.

His Bunny by Marilyn Jean Fais – About a little boy’s stuffed bunny. It can be hard on a toy to be a child’s favorite, worn and dragged everywhere, but it’s worth it!

Prayer by Ethel Romig Fuller – If we can hear songs from radio waves that travel through the air, God can also hear prayers.

Seed Thoughts by W. M. Walker – Good and kind thoughts produce good deeds, like plants sprouting from seeds, but selfish thoughts are like weeds that get in the way. Be careful what seed thoughts you grow in the garden of your mind!

Jack in the Pulpit by Mrs. Jessie S. Manifold – Spring plants and animals celebrate the Sabbath Day.

And He Hippety-Hopped Away by Rowena Bastin Bennett – The Easter Bunny delivers eggs and candy to children before sunrise.

Posted on by TracyC

Lowly Worm Sniffy Book

Lowly Worm Sniffy Book by Richard Scarry, 1978.

Sniffy books or scratch-and-sniff books were a new development during the 1970s, and they remained popular through the mid-1980s, along with scratch-and-sniff stickers. This particular book features characters from Richard Scarry‘s Busytown series, especially Lowly Worm. The first part of the book has Lowly and his friend Huckle Cat looking at a sniffy book and teaching readers how to use the scratch-and-sniff parts of the picture.

The rest of the book takes readers through the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. In each season, there are different objects and foods associated with the season for readers to scratch and sniff. In the spring, the characters smell violets and bananas that they eat at the circus.

During the summer, there are lemons for making lemonade and chocolate ice cream sticks that they eat at the beach.

During the fall, there are apples and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving.

The winter parts focus on Christmas, with pine-scented Christmas trees and gingerbread pigs.

My Reaction

Sniffy books and stickers were common features of my early childhood in the 1980s. I think they still exist, although I don’t know if they’re as popular in the 21st century as they were back when they were relatively new developments. This particular sniffy book was a favorite of mine and my brother when we were little kids.

One of the interesting things about finding some of these older sniffy books decades later is seeing which of the scratch-and-sniff patches have held up over the years. They do wear out over the time, especially the ones that have been scratched more than others, meaning that favorite scent patches will wear out faster. Milder scents are also harder to detect years later than the ones that were always strong. In our old copy of this book, I can’t smell the lemon, chocolate ice cream, pumpkin pie, or gingerbread any more, but the violet, banana, apple, and pine are still fine. I think those scents were always the strongest.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, 1969.

A small caterpillar hatches out of an egg and is very hungry. Each day, the caterpillar goes out looking for food, finding different things to eat.

Part of the book is a counting story, as the caterpillar eats different numbers of different types of fruit in different numbers. The format of this part of the book is really interesting because each of those pages isn’t a whole page but sections of pages that are different sizes, showing how the amount that the caterpillar eats increases each day.

Also, there are real holes in the pages to show where the caterpillar ate through different types of food. Kids like books with interesting physical features that encourage them to interact with the book as a toy as well as a story. I think that’s part of what has caused this book to have lasting appeal.

The book does also have a story to it about the growth and development of the caterpillar along with the counting part. At the end of the part that counts the number of pieces of fruit the caterpillar eats, the caterpillar eats a bunch of random junk foods and gives himself a stomachache. Eating a green leaf makes him feel better. By this point, the caterpillar is a fat caterpillar who is no longer hungry. At the end of the book, the caterpillar makes a cocoon and turns into a butterfly.

This is a cute picture book that is fun to show to very young children. The counting element is good both for teaching young children and for the children who have already learned to count because they can predict what the caterpillar is going to do next. The unusual format of those pages with the holes also makes the book distinctive.

On the 50th anniversary of the book in 2019, the BBC produced an article about the book’s history and its appeal to generations of young readers.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

Princess Furball

Princess Furball retold by Charlotte Huck, illustrated by Anita Lobel, 1989.

There was a princess whose mother died when she was only a baby and whose father never paid much attention to her. In spite of this misfortune, she had a happy childhood because her nurse loved her and let her play with other children. She arranged lessons appropriate to a princess with skilled tutors and let the princess learn how to cook in the royal kitchen.

However, when the princess was grown, the old nurse died, and the princess was very lonely. Her father only cared about the money he could get from the princess’s marriage, and to the princess’s horror, he arranged a marriage to an ogre who promised him fifty wagons of silver in exchange for the princess.

Unable to face the prospect of such a horrible marriage, the princess requests a special gift from her father for her wedding. She asks for three dresses: one golden like the sun, one silver like the moon, and one as sparkling as a the stars. She also asks for a special fur coat made of a thousand different types of fur. At first, the princess doesn’t think the king will be able to meet her demands, but to shock, he sets his people to accomplishing the task and presents her with everything she asked for.

Deciding that there is no other option but to run away, she takes the three dresses with her along with three small golden treasures that belonged to her mother: a ring, a thimble, and a tiny spinning wheel. She also takes along her favorite soup seasonings, which she got from the castle’s cook. Then, she puts on the bulky fur coat and flees into the woods.

In the woods, she is found by the hunting party of a neighboring king. At first, they mistake her for some kind of strange animal. When they find out that she’s a person, they take her back to their castle and put her to work in the kitchen. There, they make her do all the messy cleaning jobs. Nobody knows her real name, so everyone just calls her Furball after her strange, bulky coat made of a thousand patches of fur.

The princess always wears the fur coat as a disguise, but one day, she finds out that the young king of this kingdom is having a ball. She slips away from her kitchen duties and dresses in her dress like the sun. When she is unrecognizable as the kitchen servant, she is able to meet and dance with the king. Being herself is essentially a disguise!

When she slips away from the king and returns to the kitchen, the cook has her make soup for the king, and she uses her special blend of seasonings. When no one is looking, she she also puts her golden ring into the king’s bowl. When the king finds the ring, he asks the cook about it. The cook admits that Furball made the soup, so the king questions her about the ring, but she doesn’t explain.

At the king’s next ball, the princess repeats the same performance, this time wearing the dress like the moon. This time, she slips the golden thimble into the king’s soup when she returns to the kitchen. Again, she doesn’t explain when the king questions her about the thimble.

As in many fairy tales, it’s the third time that’s the charm. When the princess shows up to a ball dressed her her dress like the stars and doesn’t have time to completely change when she gets back to the kitchen that all is revealed, and there’s a happy ending!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid in elementary school! I think I read it when I was about 7 years old, when the book was pretty new. I always liked fairy tales. There is a brief explanation at the beginning of the book that the story is a Cinderella variant. This version is very similar to the English folktale Catskin and to the tale of Many Furs or Thousand Furs by the Brothers Grimm.

Like so many little girls, I was fascinated as a kid with the concept of the dresses that resemble the sun, the moon, and the stars. The fur coat made of many animals is a little alarming to me now, but it makes a good disguise in the story. I love the illustrations that show the princess in all of her different dresses and the Furball disguise!

The story doesn’t explain why the princess put her treasures into the soup, but my guess was that she wanted an excuse to see the king again and a way to keep him intrigued about her identity and her relationship to the mysterious princess who keeps showing up to his balls. It’s only after the king decides that he really loves the mysterious princess that it’s safe to reveal her identity.