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Somewhere in the World Right Now

Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Schuett, 1995.

This picture book explains time zones by showing what people and animals all over the world are doing at the same time, reminding children that, somewhere in the world right now, it’s a different time of day.

The book begins with A Note to the Reader, explaining that it takes 24 hours for the Earth to make one full rotation on its axis and that the Earth is constantly turning. This rotation is what makes the sun seem to move across the sky and creates our periods of day and night. Then, it explains how, in 1884, our formal system of time zones was established to standardize how times of day are expressed around the world. There are 24 time zones, roughly equal in size, with a few adjustments for geographical boundaries. Within each time zone, it is the same time, and it is one hour different from the time zones on either side of it. It also explains that the international date line is an imaginary boundary drawn through the middle of the Pacific Ocean that marks the point at which new days begin. There is a map in the book that illustrates all the time zones we will be traveling through and the International Date Line. The places we see in the rest of the book are also labeled on the map.

The main part of the book shows what people and animals around the world are doing “right now”, compared to a child in the United States. We don’t see the child in the United States until the very end of the book, but everything else is based around her “right now.” The text doesn’t specify where each of the places are, but each picture has a map in the background with labels that indicate the location to readers.

The first place we see is London, England. It’s the middle of the night (or possibly very early in the morning, after midnight but the sun isn’t up – according to the map at the beginning of the book, it’s 1 am), but a baker is preparing fresh bread to sell in the morning. Meanwhile, there are elephants sleeping in Uganda, whales swimming in the sea, penguins protecting their chicks in Antarctica, and a little girl sleeping in Madagascar.

It’s dawn in India, and people there are waking up. People are eating breakfast in Bhutan, and people are on their way to work in the morning in China. At the same time, it’s lunch time in Siberia, and there are kangaroos and koalas eating their own lunch in Australia.

Meanwhile, it’s afternoon on the western coast of the United States. There’s a fishing boat returning to port in Alaska, and a girl on a farm in California. As we move further east, it gets later and later. When we reach Chicago, it’s evening, and people are heading home. In Guatemala and Honduras, children who have been playing outside head for home, and families are having supper.

Eventually, we reach Boston, Massachusetts, where someone is reading a story book to a little girl before bed. It’s 8 pm, according to the time on the map at the beginning and the clock next to the little girl’s bed. All the things that we’ve seen in the book are happening, somewhere in the world, right now, as she is going to bed.

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

My Reaction

This book is educational, showing children how time and time zones work around the world, but it’s also a good, gentle bedtime story. Although we don’t really know it until the very end, it’s framed around a girl who is going to bed and is hearing a bedtime story. It is relaxing to think about how different things are happening in different places, to people and animals around the world, almost counting them off like counting sheep. No matter when it is or where you are, there’s someone, somewhere in the world, going through a different point in their day.

I found the human parts of the story more interesting than the animal portions, but I think children would enjoy hearing about the animals and seeing the animal pictures. It’s also relaxing to think about animals just going about their routines, like people go about theirs. There’s nothing stressful happening to any of the people or animals in the story.

I remember, when I was younger, I sometimes pictured things happening around the world when I had trouble sleeping. I can’t remember why I started doing this, if it was because I read this book or one like it. Somehow, though, I found it reassuring to think that, somewhere, it was daytime for someone else and that there were always people awake somewhere. It might be just me, but somehow, I found that idea reassuring because it meant that there were other people taking care of things, and it was their turn to be awake and do things, so I could have my turn to relax and rest.

All in a Day is a picture book on a similar theme, but instead of just showing what’s happening around the world at one particular moment, All in a Day follows children in various countries through the course of an entire day.

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All In a Day

All in a Day by Mitsumasa Anno and others, 1986.

The format of this book is a little unusual. The book was a cooperative project among authors and illustrators from different countries to show children what is happening around the world at the same moment in different time zones.

Mitsumasa Anno, the primary author of the book, is from Japan, but he writes as a boy called Sailor Oliver Smith, or “SOS”, who has been shipwrecked with his dog on an uninhabited island near the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean at noon on January 1 (which is also midnight on New Year’s Eve, Greenwich Mean Time). He is on the island for a full day before he is rescued, sending out appeals for help and thinking about what other children around the world are doing at every hour of the day as they celebrate the New Year.

As you read through the book, the small pictures of the children in different countries tell a complete story for each child in each country. The little mini-stories within the main story are presented almost comic book style. They contain no text themselves, but the boy on the island offers commentary on what’s happening with the children in other countries. During the time when SOS is asleep on his island, his dog, Matey, takes over the narration.

Children in Brazil are making and flying kites with their family and going swimming at the beach. People in Australia also go to the beach because it’s summer there in January, and they camp out overnight. A boy in the US sneaks out of bed to get a look at the party his parents are having at midnight, and is woken by his cat the next morning. The boy in England wakes up his too parents early in the morning by playing his trumpet. People in Kenya go a busy market and have dinner as a family. Children in China set off firecrackers, watch fireworks, and eat special foods. The story in Japan is about a little girl whose toy is stolen by a dog, and her cat chases after the dog to get it back. At first, they worry because the cat doesn’t return home for dinner, but the cat eventually comes in late with the toy, eats its fish, and goes to bed. Because this book was written in the 1980s, the book refers to Russia as the Soviet Union. The boy in the Soviet Union goes sledding with his friends and tries to ride his bike in the snow, which doesn’t work well. Children in various countries watch tv and read books during the day, and readers get to see their dreams when they sleep. At the end of the book, SOS sees a ship coming to pick him up at 9 am on January 2.

There is a message at the beginning of the book from all of the authors and illustrators who participated about children around the world, encouraging children to think about children in other places and what they might be doing throughout their day. Because it’s a different time of day in different places, some children are asleep in bed while others are awake and playing. However, it reminds readers that, no matter who we are, where we live on Earth, or what we look like, we’re all human beings on the same planet with the same sun and moon looking down on our days and nights. It’s a call for empathy and unity among nations and the people who live everywhere on Earth. In the back of the book, there is more scientific information about the movement of the Earth around the sun and the rotation of the planet and what makes different time zones. There is also information about the different authors and illustrators around the world who contributed to the project.

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

My Reaction

I have a vague memory of reading this book when I was young, but I can’t remember exactly when I read it. I think I was an older child because I already understood the concept of different time zones. I do think that kids who are a little older would get more out of the story and the concept of different time zones than very young children.

Older children would also probably find it easier to follow the different story lines of the children in each country. The format of the story may be a little difficult for very young children to follow because it does feel a little disjointed, getting just a snippet of each child’s day and night per page. However, the book is interesting to reread multiple times, following each child’s day, and I remember being fascinated by the notion of what everyone around the world was doing at different times.

The call for people to think about other people in other places and the call for international understanding is a nice, peaceful message for the New Year. As an adult, I was interested in seeing which authors and illustrators contributed to the book. Each set of illustrations for different countries has a different style. The illustrator for the boy in the US is Eric Carle, known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Not all of the illustrators are actually from the countries they illustrated, but more are. The two exceptions were for Brazil and Kenya, but the illustrator who did the pictures for Brazil did live there for a time, and the the couple who did the pictures for Kenya wrote and illustrated other books about Africa.

Somewhere in the World Right Now is a picture book on a similar theme, but instead of following children around the world through an entire day, it just shows what’s happening around the world at one particular moment. I think that makes Somewhere in the World Right Now a little easier to follow for younger children.

Posted on by TracyC

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, 1985, 1989.

On the first night of Hanukkah, a tired travel, Hershel, trudges through the snow on his way to the next village. There, he hopes to get something to eat and celebrate the holiday with the local villagers. However, when he reaches the village, nobody is celebrating.

When he asks the villagers why they’re not celebrating, they tell him that they can’t because there are goblins haunting the old synagogue on the hill. Every time they try to celebrate Hanukkah, the goblins come after them, blow out the candles on their menorahs, breaks their dreidels, and throw all the potato latkes on the floor.

Hershel decides that he isn’t scared of the goblins, and he’s going to put an end to their mischief. The village rabbi says that the only way to get rid of the goblins is to spend all eight nights of Hanukkah in the synagogue, lighting Hanukkah candles every night. Then, on the final night of Hanukkah, the goblin king must light the candles himself. Although this sounds difficult, Hershel is confident that he can do it. Although the villagers aren’t really expecting Hershel to succeed, they support Hershel in his mission, and they give him some food, a menorah, candles, and matches.

The old synagogue is creepy, and when Hershel lights his first candle, a small goblin appears to ask him what he’s doing. Herself isn’t intimidated by the little goblin, and he tricks the goblin into thinking that he’s strong enough to crush rocks in his hands by squeezing a hard-boiled egg in his hands until it breaks. The little goblins is scared away but warns him that bigger goblins than him will come later. The next night, a bigger goblin comes, but he isn’t very bright and gets his hand stuck in a jar of picks when he tries to take too many. The night after that, tricks the third goblin into playing dreidel with him and giving him all his gold.

It continues like this, night after night, with Hershel tricking the goblins in various ways so that they’ll let him light the candles on his menorah. Finally, Hershel comes face-to-face with the most sinister goblin of all – the king of the goblins. Can Hershel find a way to trick him and get him to light the candles of the menorah himself?

The book is a Caldecott Honor Book and named a Sydney Taylor Honor Book by the Association of Jewish Libraries. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was originally published as a short story in Cricket magazine and later as a book, which is why the story has two copyright dates.

My Reaction

I’m not Jewish, and I admit that this isn’t a book I read as a kid, although I do remember that it was one that was often recommended when I was young. As an adult, I decided to try it, since I just never got around to it before. I really do like this story. I enjoyed the folklore elements, and I also appreciated that the main character saves Hanukkah, in much the same way that various characters had to “save” Christmas when I was a kid.

It makes me laugh to think about it now, but Christmas always seemed to be an extremely endangered holiday in Christmas television specials from my childhood. Some evil person or being was always out to destroy Christmas, for various reasons, with varying degrees of logic, and popular television characters always had to “save” it from being destroyed or canceled or whatever. It was fun and entertaining, but when you consider the entire canon of endangered Christmas holiday specials all together, it does seem like there isn’t a single year when Christmas isn’t in danger from somebody or something, making it weirdly routine for Christmas to almost not happen. At some point, I think my brother pointed out that Christmas was always in danger, but it seemed like Hanukkah was relatively safe. (At least, in the land of holiday-themed winter television specials starring well-known cartoon characters.) I figured that Christmas was likely a bigger target for the forces of evil due to its wide mass appeal because there were just more people who celebrated Christmas where I lived than Hanukkah (and also because of the all the related Christmas toy tie-in commercials and advertising sponsors for those shows).

So, I was delighted to see Hanukkah get saved from a band of comically nefarious goblins in this book. The goblin king is a sinister figure in the pictures, but fortunately, he’s not too much brighter than his cohorts. The book has been adapted as a stage play (you can sometimes find clips or trailers from performances on YouTube), and there is also an animated short film of the story. I think it would be fun to see a longer version, though, in video or movie form. The book skims over the details of what Hershel does to trick some of the other goblins after the third one, so there’s room to elaborate and make the story longer. I think I would have been a little scared by the final goblin when I was a little kid, but the goblins not being particularly bright and easy to trick does help remove some of the scare factor.

At first, I though that the story of Hershel might have been a folktale because it reads like one. In the back of the book, the author explains that he wanted to write a story that was somewhat like A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens but about Hanukkah, and he took his inspiration from the folktale Invanko, the Bear’s Son (also known as Jean de l’Ours or John the Bear), which is includes the hero tricking a goblin, and he added in a Jewish folk hero, Hershel of Ostropol. The resulting story is sort of like a new folktale, remixed from old ones, which is fitting because that’s what happens with folk stories Overall, I thought it was a fun story.

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The Legend of the Christmas Rose

The Legend of the Christmas Rose by William H. Hooks, paintings by Richard A. Williams, 1999.

Dorothy is a 9-year-old girl with three brothers, who are all much older than she is. Her three brothers are all shepherds, and her daily chore is to take water to them when they’re out in the fields with the sheep. Her brothers love her, but they always treat her like a small child because they’re so much older.

One day, she spots some strange travelers on the road. She worries that they might be robbers, but her brothers tell her not to worry. There are more travelers on the road these days because the Roman Emperor has ordered everyone to return to their home towns to be taxed. However, because there are so many strangers traveling through the area, Dorothy’s brothers plan to spend the night in the fields with their sheep to keep an eye on them.

Early the next morning, the brothers return to the family home, excited. They tell their father that they saw angels in the field during the night. An angel appeared to them and told them that they would find a newborn Savior in a manager in the City of David, which is Bethlehem. Their father says that there is a prophecy about this. Because God has sent His messengers to announce the birth of the Savior to them, the brothers should go to the city and take a lamb with them as a present to the Savior.

Dorothy helps her brothers to pack their supplies for the journey to Bethlehem, but she knows that she will not be allowed to go with them because she is too little. In spite of that, Dorothy makes the sudden decision to follow her brothers secretly. However, as they travel, Dorothy suddenly realizes that she doesn’t have a present of her own to offer when she arrives.

When Dorothy begins to cry about her lack of a present to give, an angel appears to her and produces snowy white flowers. Dorothy is happy because she can bring the flowers with her as a present.

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

My Reaction

There is an Author’s Note at the back of the book that explains about the Christmas Rose plant and its associated legends. The Christmas Rose is a real plant, but technically, it’s not a rose, and it doesn’t always bloom at Christmas. It’s native to southern and central Europe, where winters are relatively mild, and the flower can bloom in Christmas, but in colder climates, it tends to bloom in spring. It’s actually a member of the hellebore family, which is toxic to humans, although it has been used medicinally as a purgative, and it does contain a chemical that can be used to treat heart conditions. The story in the book also references the plants’ medicinal uses.

There are multiple legends about the origins of the plant. The version presented here, the legend about an angel giving the flower to a young shepherd girl to offer as a present to baby Jesus, comes from Medieval nativity plays. There is an older Greek legend where the plant was discovered by a shepherd around 900 BC. In that version of the story, the shepherd used the plant to cure three princesses who were afflicted with delusions that they were cows. After he cured them, the princesses’ father, the King of Argos, allowed the shepherd to marry his youngest daughter.

Overall, I liked this picture book version of the legend. I like books about folklore, especially ones that use lesser-known stories. The pictures in this book are also realistic and beautiful, taking up full pages.

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The Little Fir Tree

The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Jim Lamarche, 1954, 2005.

A little fir tree feels lonely among the large trees in the forest, but something happens that changes his life forever – he is chosen to be a living Christmas tree for a little boy!

One winter, the boy’s father carefully digs up the tree and brings it home to his young son, who cannot walk because of a lame leg. The boy has been wanting to see the trees in the forest, but since he can’t go to the forest himself, his father has brought a free to him. The little fir tree loves being decorated, and the next evening, guests come and gather around him, singing Christmas carols.

In the springtime, the boy’s father takes the tree back to the forest, where he found it, and he plants the tree again so it will continue to grow. However, the following winter, the boy’s father returns to dig up the tree again and take it back to the boy for Christmas.

The little fir tree loves this ritual of visiting the boy and his family and being their Christmas tree every winter, but the next winter after that, the man doesn’t come to dig him up. The little tree is disappointed and lonely, but he is in for a surprise. This winter, the boy and his family come to see him in the forest!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive, although that copy has different illustrations.

My Reaction

I mainly know Margaret Wise Brown for Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, but I found this Christmas story charming. I don’t like Christmas stories from the point of view of trees that are cut down, like the Hans Christian Andersen story, The Fir-Tree, which has a really depressing ending. I like it that this family in this book keeps the tree alive, returning it to the forest every year to continue growing. Things change for both the boy and the tree over the years, as they both continue to grow, but they change for the better, and they continue to be fond of each other and a source of inspiration for each other.

When I was a kid, our elementary school had a large tree on a hill on the kindergarten playground, and the story behind it was that it was once a living Christmas tree from the very first kindergarten class at the school. That tree is still there and alive today, about 50 years after it was first planted there and more than 30 years after I used to play under it. I like to imagine that it will be true of the little fir tree, too, that it will continue growing over the years.

Earlier versions of this book had different illustrations, but personally, I love the illustrations in this printing because they’re detailed and realistic. The version on Internet Archive has illustrations by Barbara Cooney, who is known for Roxaboxen and Miss Rumphius. Cooney’s illustrations are also good, but not as realistic as Larmarche’s, and they’re in a limited color range.

One other difference between versions of the book is that the earlier version also included the musical notes for the carols that the children sing and additional songs that aren’t included in the later version of the book. I enjoy books that include actual music and lyrics, like books that include recipes, because they are fun extras and add an extra dimension to the story by providing an accompanying activity. Although I like the more detailed and realistic illustrations of newer edition of this book, I do prefer the actual music and wider range of songs from the older version.

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The Gift of the Christmas Cookie

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie by Dandi Daley Mackall, illustrated by Deborah Chabrian, 2008.

This is a sweet Christmas story that discusses the meaning of Christmas along with the history of Christmas cookies.

The story doesn’t provide a year, but it seems to be implied that it takes place during the Great Depression because Jack’s father is described as hopping a freight train to find work and send money home. Since then, Jack and his mother have lived alone, saving every penny that Jack’s father sends to them.

Then, before Christmas, Jack arrives home to find his mother making cookies. Jack is thrilled at the idea of having a rare treat, but his mother says that the cookies are for the needy at church. It’s disappointing because Jack has been feeling rather needy himself.

Then, his mother shows him the wooden cookie board molds that they will use. They are big with elaborate carvings of Christmas symbols. Making the cookies is labor-intensive, and Jack wonders why they’re working so hard to make such elaborate cookies that people will just eat anyway.

Jack’s mother tells him a story that takes place in the “Old Country” of their ancestors during the Middle Ages. (It’s in Germany, although Germany didn’t exist as the single country it is today back then.) Times were very hard, and people couldn’t afford much, but one family wanted to do something special for their neighbors for Christmas. The father of the family was a woodcarver, so he considered carving Nativity figures, but his wife said that many people were hungry, so it would be better to bake something they could eat. The woodcarver made wooden molds in the shapes of figures associated with Jesus’s birth, and his wife made the sweet dough to put in them, and they made cookies to share with their neighbors.

Jack’s mother saves one cookie from their batch in the shape of an angel for Jack so he can have a treat, but when a hungry man comes beginning for something to eat, Jack considers his own father, who might be traveling and hungry.

Jack is inspired to share his special Christmas cookie with someone who might need it more than he does and to pass on the story that goes with it.

My Reaction

I like stories that include some history, and I enjoyed this story about the origins of Christmas cookies and a lesson in generosity, giving to someone else as he hopes other people will be generous with his father. The invention of Christmas cookies can’t be traced back to any particular family, like the story in the book tells it, and Christmas cookies might have actually originated in Medieval monasteries because the monks would have had greater access to the sugar and spices needed than most people. However, the general concept of Christmas cookies made with molds is accurate. There is a brief note in the back of the book about the cookie boards or springerle molds that come from the Schwabian region of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and how these molded cookies have had religious shapes since the Middle Ages. The book also notes that some cookie molds take the form of specially-carved rolling pins rather than the flat boards shown in the book, and this was the type of cookie mold that my grandmother used to use. When she made molded cookies, they were anise-flavored, which is traditional and tastes like licorice, although I prefer to make ginger cookies with my cookie mold rolling pin. The book includes a simple recipe for cookies that you can use with cookie molds or cookie cutters, and it uses the traditional anise flavoring.

Posted on by TracyC

Christmas Trolls

Christmas Trolls by Jan Brett, 1993.

In this Scandinavian Christmas story, young Treva and her brother Sami are getting ready for Christmas when strange things start to happen.

First, Treva feels like someone is watching them when they go to pick out a Christmas tree in the forest. Then, after they start decorating for Christmas, some of their decorations start to disappear. They had already wrapped Christmas presents and hidden them away, but they discover that those are gone, too!

Treva begins to realize what is causing these disappearances when she spots their Christmas pudding, apparently moving quickly across the snow, stuck to the back of a hedgehog! Treva follows the hedgehog and pudding into the forest, where she finds two trolls, pulling the pudding up into their tree house.

In the tree house, Treva finds the trolls arguing over all of the Christmas things they’ve taken from Treva’s family. Treva confronts them about stealing their Christmas things. The trolls say that they just want Christmas. They’re like small children who want something but don’t know how to get it or make it for themselves, so they just started trying to take it from other people.

Treva tells them that she will show them what to do for Christmas. She helps them clean up their little house, make decorations, and decorate their tree for Christmas.

She also explains to them that arguing and being greedy isn’t the proper Christmas spirit, and it’s been ruining their mood. She tells them to try cooperating with each other and playing nicely together while they decorate. Finally, she teaches them that Christmas is about being generous and giving something to each other, not just taking things. To demonstrate what she means, she gives them their first Christmas present, her favorite Christmas decoration.

With the trolls now able to have Christmas on their own, Treva is able to reclaim the rest of her family’s Christmas presents and decorations. However, the trolls and their hedgehog friend have one more special Christmas present to give now that they understand what giving is.

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

My Reaction

This is a fun Christmas story with beautiful, colorful illustrations! I really loved the pictures in the book, with all the colorful Christmas decorations. The designs of the family’s Christmas decorations are traditional Scandinavian decorations. The side and bottom panels of the illustrations also explain some of what’s happening even before the main character understands.

I also loved the designs of the troll and their fun hedgehog friend. Around the time this story was published, troll dolls, which have existed since the late 1950s, were having a rise in popularity. The trolls in this story somewhat resemble troll dolls, with their fluffy hair rising to a point, although the troll dolls have more colorful hair options. I enjoy stories that use fantasy creatures, especially ones that aren’t especially common. The trolls in this story are troublesome, but in a little kid manner, not overly threatening. They’re more about mild magical mischief and lessons they have to learn.

Posted on by TracyC

The UFO Mystery

The UFO Mystery by Mary Blount Christian, illustrated by Joe Boddy, 1989.

This book is part of the Sherlock Street Detectives series.

Halloween is approaching, and the Sherlock Street Detectives are talking about their costumes. David is going to be a bear, and he made his costume out of an old rug. Pedro is going to be a clown. Walter and Ann, who are twins, refuse to tell anyone what their costumes are because they want it to be a surprise.

Then, David says that he has to go home because it’s dinnertime, and after dinner, he’s going to look for a comet with his telescope. Pedro says that he’s never used a telescope before and asks if he can look, too. David says he can, and Pedro says that he will come back to his house when it’s dark.

When David and Pedro meet to use the telescope, David shows Pedro how to use a star map to find the constellations. While Pedro is looking through the telescope, he thinks that he sees a UFO! At first, David doesn’t believe him. It’s too early to see the comet, so he thinks maybe Pedro saw a meteor. Pedro insists that it was a UFO, and David points out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. That means that anything that “unidentified” can be a UFO. Pedro can’t identify exactly what it was he saw, but that only means that he didn’t recognize the object. It doesn’t have to be an alien spacecraft, just some normal thing he didn’t recognize, like a meteor, a comet, or even just a firefly.

Since David’s dad works for NASA, Pedro says that they should ask him if it could have been a comet other than the one they were expecting to see. However, David’s dad confirms that there should only have been one comet that night and that the comet should have been in a different part of the sky. The boys talk about getting Walter and Ann to help them investigate, but then, they see some strange creatures in the bushes!

What did Pedro really see through the telescope, and could those weird creatures really be aliens?

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

My Reaction

This is fun mystery picture book! Figuring out what/who the aliens are is the easiest part of the mystery, since this is before Halloween and the twins were being mysterious about what their costumes are, although it might seem harder to young children. The answer to what Pedro thought he saw through the telescope is revealed first, although I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of it myself. At first, I thought that the “aliens” might have been throwing around some glowing toy or something, but they would have to have thrown it really high to get it in front of the telescope because the boys were using the telescope on the roof. There’s a perfectly logical explanation behind the phenomenon, and David figures it out by noting where the object was and it was moving. David’s father confirms David’s guess with a call to NASA.

One of the nice things about this simple mystery story is that it introduces some real concepts for stargazers and amateur astronomers. There is a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.

This series also offers good representations for racial diversity. Racial issues don’t enter into the story. The kids are just a bunch of kids who happen to live in the same neighborhood and are friends and like to solve mysteries, but they are a mixed racial group, and that’s nice to see. David is black, Pedro is Hispanic, and the twins are white. The children’s races are not referred to in the text of the story, but they are shown in the pictures.

Posted on by TracyC

The Halloween Play

The Halloween Play by Felicia Bond, 1983.

Halloween is coming, and the students in Roger’s class at school are preparing for their Halloween play. The class rehearses their play every day, and they make invitations to the play to send out to people in town.

On the night of the play, the school’s auditorium is full of people waiting to watch the play, and Roger waits backstage for his turn to go on stage. He doesn’t have a big role in the play, but his role is important.

The other students in Roger’s class go on stage, dressed as witches, ghosts, and skeletons. They perform the songs and dances they’ve rehearsed. The audience laughs at the funny parts, and everyone is enjoying the play.

All the time, Roger is backstage, listening and preparing for his part. He counts down the lines until the moment comes when Roger steps on stage for the play’s finale!

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 little kid, and it was a Halloween favorite of mine! Felicia Bond is better known today as the illustrator (but not the author) of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which was originally published two years after this particular picture book. The art style between the two books is noticeably similar, but the book about the Halloween play is different because this is about mice who live like people and do not interact with humans. I was also amused that one of the student mice in this book was dressed in an orange shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts, like the cartoon character Charlie Brown, who wears a yellow shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts. The tv special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was known for popularizing the concept of Halloween tv specials, and Roger the mouse plays a large pumpkin in his class’s Halloween play, although Roger isn’t the mouse wearing the Charlie Brown style clothes. Roger is the one in the sweater with an R on the front. I was just amused by this little detail in the pictures of his class.

This picture book is a sweet little story about a mouse boy and the Halloween play given by his class. School plays on a wide variety of themes are a common experience for human children attending both public and private schools, and they are often memorable points in children’s school experiences. They can also be very emotional experiences. Students can be nervous about plays and being on stage in front of an audience, and sometimes, there are conflicts about which students get the best parts. This cute little picture book doesn’t have any drama in it and doesn’t talk about stage fright, although there are other children’s books that address these issues.

Instead, the story is more about a magical evening and the small but important role played by one particular student. Much of the story shows the build-up to the play, and when the play begins, Roger only appears on stage at the end of the play. The rest of the time, he’s listening to the other students from back stage, waiting for his cue to step into the spotlight. We don’t know exactly what the play is about, but it’s not that important. Those quiet moments of anticipation backstage are magical, and Roger will never forget how exciting this evening has been!

Posted on by TracyC

Everyone Goes as a Pumpkin

Everyone Goes as a Pumpkin by Judith Vigna, 1977.

Emily thinks that she has the best costume for the upcoming Halloween party! It’s a beautiful dress that makes her feel elegant and magical.

Emily takes the costume on the bus to show her grandmother, but somehow, the box with the costume in it disappears during the ride. Emily is upset at losing the costume and doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to go to the party as something ordinary, like a pumpkin.

Then, her grandmother suggests that she just go as herself. As herself, Emily is truly unique!

My Reaction

I liked the grandmother’s unorthodox solution to the problem of the missing costume. I can understand a kid loving a particular costume so much that it seems like nothing else will do, but showing Emily that she’s just fine going to the party as herself is a good way to show her that she is just fine as she is, just being herself. Emily would have liked going with the costume she loved, but she doesn’t need any costume in particular because she is good enough by herself.