Strollerderby : kids' books

Sharing African American History and Culture Through Kids' Books: Elementary Edition

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

It's African American History Month and since we have made some critical African American history already this year at Barack Obama's inauguration, there's more to celebrate than ever.

To help you share some special touchpoints of African American history and culture with your kids, I've rounded up a few favorite books on these themes.

Share and enjoy!

Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma RudolphBecame the World's Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull

I confess, I didn't really know much about Wilma Rudolph before I read this book to my daughter. The illustrations are amazing and the story can be read aloud, but it is short and simple enough for young readers to handle too. Baby Wilma was born weak and sickly. Polio forced her to wear braces on her legs. Yet she grew up to be the world's fastest woman. Find out how in this gem of a book!

Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat edited by Nikki Giovanni

Poet Nikki Giovanni puts hip-hop beats into child-appropriate form with her new edited book of rhymes old and new for kids. She draws on material from the Harlem Renaissance and material from the radio to share the genre with kids who love rhythm. But no mere book can convey the joy of the music, so this one comes with a fun CD to play along as you read.

Remember: The Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison 

With her typical genius, Toni Morrison writes a fictional, first-person narrative of the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of children integrating schools. It's creatively real, featuring black and white photos from the time, but perfectly age-appropriate for a child's first introduction to a tough, but critically important part of U.S. history.

Harlem Stomp: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance by Laban Carrick Hill 

This is a really cool book! If you don't know much yourself about the Harlem Renaissance, you'll learn a lot from this book. It's a great reference for any age, but geared to older children. Filled with art, poetry, music and vivid scenes of life in Harlem, you won't want this one to be hidden away in the kids' room, but displayed on your own coffee table for easy, frequent family browsing.

Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson

This lovely story tells of a little girl born into slavery. She is taught to sew in order to gain a place working in the house, rather than the fields. But as she sews her quilt, she begins to create a map north to freedom. Once the quilt is finished, the map is written in her mind. Clara sneaks away to follow the way it taught her, but leaves the quilt behind so that others can learn the way too.

Sharing African American History and Culture Through Kids' Books: Preschool Edition

Shannon LC Cate — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It's African American History Month and since we have made some critical African American history already this year at Barack Obama's inauguration, there's more to celebrate than ever. To help you share some special touchpoints of African American history and culture with your kids, I've rounded up a few favorite books on these themes.

Share and enjoy!

Come Look With Me: Discovering African American Art for Children by James Haywood Rolling, Jr.

The Come Look with Me series offers introductions to great art for the youngest children. This one pairs twelve famous paintings by African American artists with simple questions for even the smallest children to encourage more thinking about the pictures and the way they were made. The book includes more "grown up" information to grow on or to help the adult reading with the child understand more about the art.

D is for Drinking Gourd: An African American Alphabet by Nancy I. Sanders

This is another book that can be read to the youngest child, but can grow with that child, or be enjoyed by an older sibling at the same time. Every letter of the alphabet is a piece of African American history or culture. Each letter of the alphabet represents a concept or figure in African American history. There is also a short piece of rhyming text that explains a bit about what each concept or figure means, then a sidebar entry with two or three paragraphs of text explaining in detail an older child or adult can appreciate.

Visiting Langston by Willie Perdomo 

This book is a lovely introduction for a young child to Langston Hughes, one of the most important writers in American letters, let alone African American letters. The book is written in the rhyming first-person voice of a little girl spending a day with her father touring Langston Hughes's home as a historical site. The little girl feels a special connection to Hughes because she is a poet, too! Brief, rhyming text and bright, colorful illustrations make this a captivating read-aloud for young children.

Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter

Once you know drinking gourd begins with D, it's time to explore the song that made history by teaching enslaved African Americans the way to freedom. This book tells who wrote the song, how it was learned and used by people traveling the underground railroad as well as sharing the complete words and music on the last page so everyone can sing along.

Obama's Pajamas by Jeff Nave

There are a lot of Obama books out there for adults and children alike. My favorite is this colorfully illustrated (not photographed) version that shares a day in the life of Barack Obama and some simplified versions of his philosophy that kids can understand, like "Respect your elders and be polite/Anything worth doing is worth doing right." Preachy? Maybe a little, but awfully cute!

The Demise of the Fairy Tale

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Do you read traditional fairy tales to your kids? If so, you are in a dwindling group of parents. According to a survey of 3,000 British parents, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel are increasingly being replaced by happier modern favorites like Gruffalo and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 25 percent of parents choose not to ever read fairy tales to their kids and 65 percent do not choose fairy tales for bedtime stories.

According to the parents who object to fairytales, Cinderella is not empowered enough. Rapunzel is “too dark.” Little Red Hiding is a bad role model for kids because she walks alone in the woods. And one-tenth of parents believe Snow White is offensive because of the un-PC term “dwarf.”

I can certainly understand the need to carefully introduce your kids to fairy tales—some of them are pretty scary, and I’ll be the first to admit that being rescued from a life of servitude by a handsome prince is no healthy goal for a young girl. But if you’re going to shield your child from Cinderella so as to avoid imparting gender stereotypes, you would have to shield her from nearly all pop culture. If Little Red Riding Hood is violent or scary, even commercials for the latest Superman movie are downright terrifying. And if Snow White wrongly teaches young women the value of being the “fairest in all the land,” Bratz dolls wrongly teach girls to be the most scantily clad in all the land.

This is not to say that we should just give up on fighting media that gives kids the wrong messages, but perhaps Jack and the Beanstalk is not the best battlefield.

Photo: The Daily Mail

Moose With Loose Poops: Most Disgusting Book Title Ever?

JeanneSager — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:28:00 GMT

Sometimes a little bathroom humor goes a long way. But the title of a children's book meant to help get them through the "misery of tummy aches, caused first by vomiting and then by diarrhea," is just plain disgusting.

The Moose With Loose Poops will hit shelves in January, the fifth in the Dr. Hippo series from Charlotte Cowan, M.D., a practicing pediatrician at Boston's Mass General Hospital for Children. The actual story about Papa Moose's bout with gastroenteritis sounds innocuous at worst. At best, it could be just what the doctor ordered for helping little ones through their fears about an upset tummy. I suppose this is the one to read AFTER Everyone Poops doesn't work and you have to dose them with Pedia-Lax for holding it in.

But that title? Where do we begin? It's "dung" got us in a tizzy here on the 'Derby. The rest of the Dr. Hippo books have run-of-the-mill monikers like Peeper has a Fever and Katie Caught a Cold. Yawn-a-palooza? Perhaps, but I could read them to my daughter without losing my lunch.Then again, the family that hangs out on the toilet together, stays together, right?

We figured we'd lend Dr. Cowan's publishers a hand and spice up her titles a bit. Here's what we came up with:

Zilly the Zebra Has Got the Diarrhea (cha, cha, cha)
Prudence the Porcupine With Projectile Vomiting
Danny the Dinosaur with Diarrhea
Henry the Hippo with Hershey Squirts
Randy the Racoon with the Runs
Fanny the Frog and the Trouble With Flatulence
Pat the Cat Is Making Scat
Fred the Fox is Fecally Challenged
Carl the Crocodile is Constipated
Tery the Turtle and the Terrible Turds

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Image: Amazon

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Book of the Week: Daddy Hug

editors — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:05:00 GMT

The world is made up of all kinds of dads -- busy, strong, slimy, wobbly -- and the new book Daddy Hug celebrates all of them. With charming, vivid illustrations of animal dads and their children, Daddy Hug goes through a litany of daddies that makes for a fantastic read-aloud. To wit, here's the text of a double-page spread with an otter dad on one side and a moose dad on the other:

Daddy squeak, Daddy chirp
Daddy hiccup, Daddy burp!

Yeah, it's not Proust, but it's much more fun at bedtime. The final illustration of all the animal dads hugging their progeny -- from raccoons to walruses -- is a Father's Day card unto itself. -- Gwynne Watkins

Daddy Hug (HarperCollins, 2008) by Tim Warnes and Jane Chapman is available for $11.55 on Amazon. You can also preview it at the HarperCollins website.

Book of the Week appears every other week on Babble.

Book of the Week, with Video!: Me Hungry

editors — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:07:00 GMT

In The Happiest Toddler on the Block, parenting expert Harvey Karp compares toddlers to caveman. In Jeremy Tankard's new picture book, Me Hungry!, the toddler is literally a caveman. And a hilarious one, at that.

When the little caveboy (improbably named Edwin) announces that he's hungry, his parents both respond "Me busy!" So he begins an unorthodox journey to find food, approaching a rabbit, a porcupine, and a tiger. None of these potential meals will cooperate -- until Edwin runs into a wooly mammoth who's just as hungry as he is.

The story, told in two-word chunks of caveman-speak ("Me eat rabbit!""No, me hide!"),will strike a chord with stubborn, snacktime-obsessed toddlers, who will no doubt find the idea of eating a tiger hilarious. Of course, we have an additional reason to endorse this book:

Jeremy Tankard? Kind of a hottie. -- Gwynne Watkins

Me Hungry! (Candlewick Press, 2007) is available for $12.47 on Amazon. Also, there's this cute YouTube video trailer:

Book of the Week appears every other Friday. Sometimes every Friday. We’re fickle like that.

Book of the Week: Mary Had a Little Lamp

editors — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:01:00 GMT

Kids get attached to some weird things. When my brother was little, his favorite toy was a neon-green toothbrush holder: his "lightsaber." And our blogger Kori's daughter was once obsessed with a sweet potato she named Ryan. That unique kind of object love is the inspiration for the delightful new book Mary Had a Little Lamp (Bloomsbury, 2008).

Written by Jack Lechner (in the cadence and rhyme scheme of "Mary Had a Little Lamb") and illustrated by The New Yorker's Bob Staake, the book describes little Mary's peculiar attachment to a desk lamp: she takes it for walks, sleeps with it, and brings it to the circus. Her parents and friends are baffled -- until one day, just like that, Mary moves on. As a cartoonist, illustrator Staake is a master of funny facial expressions, and his gaudily colored illustrations -- paired with Lechner's wonderfully silly premise -- really set this book apart. Give it your child when he develops a sudden strange obsession with a spatula. -- Gwynne Watkins

Mary Had a Little Lamp, $10.85 on Amazon.

Book of the Week appears every other Friday. Sometimes every Friday. We’re fickle like that.

Breaking News: Laura Mallory, anti-Harry Potter Crusader, gets "Bludgered" in Court

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Tue, 29 May 2007 20:59:00 GMT

Laura Mallory, the mother of four whose mission is to ban Harry Potter books in Georgia schools, lost her case today in a Gwinnett County Superior Court. The judge says the books stay.

Mallory hasn't read the books yet she is convinced that they promote "the religion of witchcraft," and leaves people wondering, "where is God?"

This story hits home for me as a former teacher. I had a similar experience with the books when I taught third grade. Parents expressed concern about the book and didn't want their son to listen to me reading it aloud. They cited the same reasons as Malloy, apparently following the fundy talking points on the subject. Coincidentally, their son looked just like Harry Potter down to his scruffy hair and scar on his forehead. After having several discussions about it and sending the book home for them to read (they hadn't), they eventually decided to let him listen and they would talk about it at home. No one loved the books more than this boy who sat in the front of the group and listened intently during read-alouds.

The message I love about the early books (I stopped reading at book three) is that Harry is not a perfect boy. He has real feelings and doesn't always say or do the right things. In the classroom, we often used Harry's actions as a jumping off point for discussions about what we could have done differently or better.

Mallory, who gets all choked up when she talks about all the kids Harry Potter will turn into real. live. witches!, intends to take her case to a higher court. Good luck with that, Laura.