Posted on by TracyC

Picking Peas for a Penny

Picking Peas for a Penny by Angela Shelf Medearis, drawings by Charles Shaw, 1990.

This picture book is based on stories from the author’s family and is told from the point of view of her mother, when she was a child in Oklahoma in the 1930s. The story is told in rhyme with a kind of sing-song counting from one to ten as they pick peas and put them in their baskets.

The 1930s was the time of the Great Depression. Many people were out of work, but this African American family has a farm and makes money by growing and harvesting crops. It doesn’t pay much, and everyone needs to help, but because times are hard, they are glad that they are able to do the work and earn the money.

It’s hard work that takes all day in the hot sun, but the girl telling the story says that she and her brother have a little fun while they’re doing it, too. Their grandmother tells them not to goof off because they work to finish. The grandfather of the family offers the children a penny for every pound of peas they pick and says that he’ll take them into town to spend it, so the children start a pea-picking race with each other.

After the work is done, they visit the general store in town, and the children have the opportunity to buy treats for themselves. They only have pennies, but it’s enough to buy some penny candy and soda pop. After the hard work they’ve done, it feels like a rich reward.

In the back of the book, there’s a picture of the author’s family. Although the story itself doesn’t mention it, the name of the girl in the story is Angeline.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman, 1991.

Grace loves stories, both hearing them and acting them out. She is imaginative, and likes playing games of pretend and acting out adventures.

When Grace’s teacher tells the class that they are going to perform the play Peter Pan and will be holding auditions for parts in the play, Grace wants the title role of Peter Pan. A couple of the other kids think that it’s odd for her to want to be Peter Pan because she is both a girl and black, which is exactly the opposite of how they usually see the character.

However, Grace still wants to play Peter Pan. When she tells her mother and grandmother what the other kids said, they reassure her that she can get the part if she really wants it and puts her mind to it.

To prove to Grace that a young black girl can get starring roles, her grandmother takes her to see a ballet where the granddaughter of a friend of hers from Trinidad is playing the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.

Seeing the performance cheers Grace up and gives her the confidence to audition for the part of Peter Pan. When her classmates see how good she is when she performs, they all agree that Grace should have the role of Peter Pan.

The message that young girls like Grace can do what they set their minds to, even if the roles they want in life aren’t quite traditional, is a good one. As I read the story, I was also thinking that the objection that Grace can’t be Peter Pan actually doesn’t make much sense if you know that Peter Pan, of all roles in plays, is one that is often played by a female. I remember that when I was a kid in elementary school, there was a girl who played the part of Peter Pan, and one of the teachers explained that women sometimes play Peter Pan, especially when the actors are all adults, because women have the higher-pitched voices that the part really needs. I would liked it if the teacher in the story also mentioned that. Also, acting is about capturing the spirit of the character in the story, thinking and feeling like they would think and feel and acting the way they would act. I would have liked it if they had mentioned that. Grace may not look quite the way people might picture Peter Pan, but if she can capture the character in her performance, she’s a good actor.

I liked the pictures in the book for their realism. In a couple of the pictures which show how Grace like to act out fantasies, she is shirtless, but she is very young and it isn’t possible to really see anything, so I don’t consider it inappropriate, but I thought that I would mention it.

This is a Reading Rainbow Book.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Hundred Penny Box

The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis, 1975.

Michael’s great-great-aunt, Aunt Dew (short for Dewbet), has moved in with him and his parents because she is one hundred years old and no longer able to live on her own.  It has been a big adjustment for the entire family, but even though Michael has had to give up space in his room for her, he is glad that she has come to live with them because the old woman fascinates him.  She is (apparently) extremely absent-minded, often calling Michael by his father’s name, John, although some of that seems to be deliberate because she wishes that Michael’s parents had named him after his father.  Other times, she seems to forget that she’s no longer living in her old house or just starts singing an old spiritual song, forgetting what she was talking about before.

John is extremely fond of his elderly aunt because she raised him after his parents died in a boating accident, and she loves him like a son.  Aunt Dew’s own sons are long grown and gone.  However, Michael’s mother, Ruth, finds Aunt Dew’s presence in the house difficult.  Ruth thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t appreciate some of the nice things that she does for her, and she thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t like her.  It’s not completely true, but Aunt Dew does seem more comfortable around Michael after spending many years of her life raising boys, and Aunt Dew admits to Michael that she finds it difficult to talk to Ruth because they don’t know each other like she and John do. Aunt Dew and Ruth also have a conflict over some of Aunt Dew’s old possessions.

Aunt Dew is upset that Ruth got rid of some of her old things after she moved in with them.  Michael thought it was a mean thing to do, and Aunt Dew misses these objects.  When Michael argues with his mother about these objects, Ruth explains to him that she’s not trying to be mean.  Ruth compares Aunt Dew to a child, like Michael, saying that she “Thinks she needs a whole lot of stuff she really doesn’t.”  Ruth sees it as just clearing out things that are old and worn out and no good in order to make room for newer, nicer things, comparing it to when Michael got old enough to realize that he didn’t need his old teddy bear that was falling apart and was willing to get rid of it along with some other things in order to make room for Aunt Dew to move in.  Ruth sees clearing out old things as a way to move forward in life and thinks that it’s important to help Aunt Dew adjust to her new life with the family.  However, a lot of Aunt Dew’s long life and past are tied in with some of these objects, and as a one-hundred-year-old woman, Aunt Dew has more past behind her than future life to make room for.  Michael helps her to hide some of them in her closet to keep them from being thrown out, but he’s particularly concerned about her hundred penny box.

When Aunt Dew’s husband was alive, he started a penny collection for her with one penny to represent every year that Aunt Dew has been alive.  After his death, Aunt Dew continued to collect pennies, putting another penny into the box every year to represent her age.  Michael loves the pennies in the box because, when he counts them with Aunt Dew, she will stop him at certain years and tell him stories about things that happened during those years, telling him a lot of family stories.  Michael’s mother isn’t interested in taking the pennies, but she thinks that the old box they’re in is too worn out and should be replaced with something else.  However, Aunt Dew sees that box as being like herself: old and worn and holding all of the years of her life.  To throw it out would be almost like throwing out Aunt Dew herself.  Michael’s mother doesn’t see it that way, but Michael sees the connection.  To try to save the box, Michael hides it from his mother.

The conflict about Aunt Dew’s things isn’t really resolved by the end of the story because Michael’s mother still doesn’t understand how Aunt Dew feels, and we don’t know if she will come to understand or if the box will remain hidden or not.  I found parts of the story frustrating because Ruth doesn’t seem to want to listen to either Aunt Dew or Michael, discounting them as the kid and the old lady.  Even though Ruth is frustrated with Aunt Dew, I think that part of it is her fault for not really listening or trying to understand how she feels. This may be part of the reason why Aunt Dew feels like she can’t really talk to Ruth. To be fair, Ruth doesn’t mean to be mean, but at the same time, she kind of is because she’s too stuck on what she thinks is best and that idea that she knows better than a young boy and an old woman to consider that her ideas might not be what’s best for her family and family relationships and that she needs to give a little. My guess is that she’ll understand how Aunt Dew feels when she’s also an old woman, with more past than future ahead, but with a little imagination and empathy, I think she could see that decades sooner.  I remember reading this book when I was a kid and liking it for the concept of the hundred penny box and the old woman’s stories, but I find the lack of resolution a little frustrating now.  It’s one of those books that makes me want to sit the characters down and explain a few things to them, but I can’t.

Besides the concept of the penny box, I’m also fascinated by the name Dewbet, which I’ve never heard anywhere else besides this story.  The pictures in the book are also unusual, and there’s a note in the back of the book that explains a little about the art style.  The pictures, which are in sepia tones, are painted with water colors, and the light areas were made with water and bleach.

This is a Newbery Honor Book, and it is currently available online through Internet Archive.

There is also a short film version that is available to buy or rent from Vimeo. Teachers Pay Teachers has lesson plans for this book. If you would like to see a reading and discussion with the author of the book, there is a copy on YouTube.

Posted on by TracyC

I Like Things

I Like Things by Margaret Hillert, illustrated by Lois Axeman, 1982.

This is a cute little picture book about the fun of collecting things.  A young girl talks about the things that she collects and why she likes them.

She enjoys collecting all kinds of things with different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Sometimes, she likes to sort the things in her collections, like buttons, by color or size.

Sometimes, her father helps her with her stamp collection.  She also likes to find seashells and rocks at the beach.  Sometimes, she and her friend trade sports cards from their collections.

At the end of the story, the girl asks readers what kinds of things they like, so adults can use the story to get kids to talk about what they like to collect.

I thought it was interesting how the girl put one of the bigger rocks in her collection into a jar that was partly full of water so that the water would act as a magnifier, making the rock look bigger.

One thing I noticed is that the girl never refers to the objects in her collections by name.  Mostly, she just talks about what she does with them using very simple words.  I think that’s to make the book easier for younger children.  There is a word list in the back of the book of all of the words used in the story, and there are only 64 different words.

Posted on by TracyC

The Snowy Day

SnowyDay

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, 1962.

This is a pleasant, slice-of-life story about the fun and wonder of a snowy day for young children.

A young boy named Peter wakes up on a winter morning to discover that it snowed during the night.

SnowyDayMorning

Peter hurries out into the snow, experiencing all of the fun it has to offer.  He studies the footprints that he makes in the snow and uses a stick to make marks in the snow and knock snow off of tree branches.  He’s still too little to join in the snowball fight that the big boys have, but he has fun making a snowman and snow angels.

SnowyDayAngels

The snow is so much fun that Peter makes a snowball amd put it in his pocket to save for later.  Of course, the snowball in his pocket doesn’t last, and he worries that the snow outside will disappear as well, but there is even more snow the next day.  He gets a friend of his to come outside and join him in the fun.

SnowyDaySnowball

It’s a simple, sweet story about one of the simple pleasures in life and one boy’s discovery of the wonders of snow. It would make a nice, calm bedtime story for young children.

SnowyDayFriend

This book is also a Caldecott award winner, and it is noted for being one of the first children’s books to feature a black main character.  Peter’s race is never mentioned in the text and is not directly a part of the story, but it is shown in the pictures.  Really, I think that’s part of what makes the book so great; although the book was considered ground-breaking for representing minorities, it does so in a way that’s completely relatable because his story could really happen to just about any child.

Posted on by TracyC

The Spooky Halloween Party

SpookyHalloween

The Spooky Halloween Party by Annabelle Prager, illustrated by Tomie de Paola, 1981.

This book was an old Halloween favorite of mine when I was a kid.  It’s funny, slightly spooky, and has a bit of a twist ending!

Albert’s friend, Nicky, is inviting all of their friends plus his cousin Suzanne to a spooky Halloween party at his new apartment on Halloween night.  Albert hasn’t been to his new apartment yet, and Nicky says that it’s going to be really scary because he wants everyone to come in costume and to not tell anyone what they’re going to be so that everyone will be surprised when they take off their masks at the end of the evening.

SpookyHalloweenNickysParty

Albert doesn’t think Nicky’s party is going to be all that scary because he’s pretty confident that he’ll know who his friends are right away, even in costume.  Some of them have already given him hints.  Nicky was practicing going, “Whoo, whoo!” in order to scare people, so Albert knows that, whatever his costume is, it’s something that makes that sound.  Jan called up and asked Albert if he had an old mop that she could borrow, so he thinks that she’s probably going to be a witch and that she just got confused, thinking that witches carry mops instead of brooms.  Dan told Albert straight out that he’s going as a pirate because he doesn’t see the point in keeping his identity a secret.  So, Albert isn’t expecting any real surprises at Nicky’s party.

As for Albert’s costume, he’s tired of wearing the usual old clothes in the dress-up box, so he decides that this time, he’ll wear the box itself.  He cuts holes for his eyes and arms and decorates it so that he looks like a robot.  Almost completely covered by the box, he’s sure that everyone will have a harder time guessing his identity than he will theirs.

SpookyHalloweenElevator

When Albert arrives at Nicky’s new apartment house, he meets a girl dressed like a princess in the elevator.  She says that she’s going to the Halloween party on the fifth floor, and when Albert says that he is too, she suggests that they walk there together.  Albert guesses that she is Nicky’s cousin, Suzanne, who he hasn’t met before.

The apartment is pretty spooky, lit by jack o’lanterns, and there are already some guests there.  Albert is a little surprised that he doesn’t see a pirate, but there are a couple of witches and an owl, who could be Nicky.  Yet, when Albert tries to talk to the other guests, they seem to be acting strangely, and he realizes that he’s not quite sure who is really who.

SpookyHalloweenArrival

The princess is pretty spooked, and as the party goes around the apartment house, trick-or-treating, she kind of clings to Albert.  When some strange noises and a far-away “Whoo, whoo” sound startle her, Albert reassures her that it’s only Nicky in his owl costume.  Then, the princess tells him that she knows the owl, and it’s not Nicky.  That’s when Albert really starts getting scared, wondering why he doesn’t seem to know his own friends.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

The reason why Albert doesn’t seem to know anyone becomes apparent when they unmask themselves after trick-or-treating.  Albert is really among strangers!  The princess isn’t Nicky’s cousin at all, and he followed her to the wrong Halloween party!  There were two Halloween parties on the fifth floor that night.  Nicky lives in apartment C, and Albert accidentally joined the party in apartment B.  Fortunately, Albert’s friends are also trick-or-treating around the apartment building and show up at that moment.

What started out as a potentially embarrassing mistake actually ends up making the evening more fun for everyone.  Albert’s mix-up brought an element of real suspense to both of the Halloween parties, with him wondering who everyone really was, the guests at the wrong party wondering who he was, and all of Albert’s friends wondering where he was.  Also, Albert gets some new friends out of this experience, and both parties end up combining into one big party at Nicky’s apartment.

SpookyHalloweenBigParty

Race isn’t important to the story and is never mentioned, but I’d just like to say that I appreciated the diversity of characters in the pictures.  Albert is black and so is Jan (you can see that when she isn’t wearing her clown costume), and the boy in the owl costume looks like he might be Asian.  I also really love that owl costume!  I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone dress as an owl for Halloween, but it looks awesome!