It tells the tale of a tiny boy. It never really specifies exactly how small he is, but the illustrations suggest his is maybe an inch or two tall, small enough to sleep in a matchbox, climb a mountain of legos, ride on the back of a grasshopper, and stretch out on a lily pad. It describes the struggles he faced when he started school: being too small for his desk, racing away from being squashed by a basketball, and avoiding being trampled by his classmates. It says he preferred to spend time alone and draw. It says he teacher worried about him, wondering what would become of him. But just as the reader is starting to wonder how would this small one survive and manage in our big world, the story tells us he did grow up “(But not much bigger.)”. We see the house he built himself, under the shade of a tomato plant that stretches over the roof like a tree, and a stool made of a matchstick and bottle cap. And it reveals what job he finds that just suits his size: he draws stamps. The final page declares, “One can never be too small to be a GREAT artist!” It’s fanciful and fun.
Author Archives: Courtney Morgan
Monster’s New Undies
It’s a silly, rhyming story about a monster who is picky about his underwear, and doesn’t really want any new underwear, but finally admits, when his trusty old ones completely fall apart, that a shopping trip may just be unavoidable. His mother manages to find a whole, giant emporium dedicated entirely to underwear, but he finds something objectionable about every variety with which he is presented. Until at last he discovers the perfect pair, just like his old ones…he buys 18 pairs. It’s irreverent, full of words like tush and buns and rump that will leave kids giggling over feeling like they are skirting the line of polite society reading about underwear, yet it doesn’t cross the line into objectionable.
Twilight Chant
The whole book is a poem celebrating that time after the sun sets before dark fully settles in. The illustrations are full of the colors of sunset and twilight. Each two-page spread includes two stanzas describing how different animals behave in the twilight. Repeating lines that come back on each page is one way it ties together in continuity; also the last line of each page gives a foreshadowing of the page to come. Sometimes the illustrations do likewise. An author’s note in the back offers further scientific information about what defines twilight and the animals who are active at that time of day. It really is a beautiful book.
Dreaming of You
This book is well-designed as a bedtime story. The illustrations are soft and full of dark, soothing colors. The text is poetical, full of rhyme and repetition. Each two-page spread describes what a different animal dreams of, always in sets of three, and always ending with a dream that includes the listener. In the end the reader encourages the listener to dream of what animals do and when they awake to remember those sweet animals are dreaming of him/her too.
School People
It’s a collection of poems, each written by a different author. In the past I have sometimes found such collections inconsistent in quality, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of these. Each poem honors a different role within a school, from bus driver to crossing guard to principal to lunch lady, etc… And it begins and ends with a poem dedicated to the school itself. A wonderful tool to celebrate the start of a new school year as well as all those who make it what it is.
Tool School
The illustrations are full of bright, vivid colors and friendly personified tools. The text is full of rhythm and rhyme and more than one good message. The tools each start with a verse to introduce themselves, then they sing together about their excitement and joy over starting school. They’re all excited to get started at building time, but find that working on their own they’re not getting very far; when they cooperate, with each contributing his/her own specialty they have a lot more fun and success. Mistakes are still made, and they have to try, try again, but they discover that though sometimes it’s fun to work alone, some jobs take teamwork.
Great Big Things
I really like the cover, and many of the illustrations. They evoke a sentimental mood celebrating the grand landscapes of our world and the grand gesture of a small mouse traversing the globe to bring a single crumb to his love. But the text just doesn’t quite hit the mark. It alludes to the sentiment it’s trying to convey, without really managing to make clear what it’s actually trying to say. It’s fuzzy and garbled and falls flat.
I Got It!
Admittedly, I am prejudiced, because I am a fan o David Wiesner’s work. In this nearly wordless picture book, he uses his art to tell the story. It opens with an illustration of a boy standing outside a fence at a baseball field, watching the kids within getting a game going. Then he’s on the edge of the crowd, then approaching the boy who seems to be the leader, who sends the new boy off to the field. After the batter swings, we see our protagonist racing out with his glove outstretched, and with a joyful look on his face the only words in the book repeat the title, right before the boy trips on a root, falling flat, missing the ball while everyone looks on in dismay. Then in the true “Do over” spirit of playground sports, we see a series of fanciful repeats in which the sequence returns to the point where he’s about to catch the ball, with other(s) coming up behind, also with glove(s) outstretched: in one version the root that tripped him is now a full tree; in another the ball grows to the size of an incoming jetliner; in another the whole team goes after the incoming ball while our hero shrinks to the size of one of the others’ shoe, yet still manages to overtake the crowd and actually catch the ball. In the end, he has become part of the crowd of which he was once an outsider.
Sometimes You Fly
I’m not sure it lives up to the hype printed on the gold sticker on the cover which proclaims it, “A natural successor to Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” but it does share a similar philosophical bent on the nature of growing up. The text is fairly repetitive: a series of rhyming “before the X…” statements. The point is made via the illustrations, which use a page-turning format to show the struggles that come before each accomplishment/joy/milestone in life. They follow a sequence from the messy kitchen preceding the first birthday cake, to practicing as a student driver before becoming an independent driver, to the studying that leads to graduation. It does point out in the end that for every try you may fail, or you may fly, but what is important is what you learn in the trying.
The Ugly Five
It’s a fun spin on the old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which also exposes children to a variety of animals of which they may be unfamiliar. The rhyming text and Scheffler’s familiar big-eyed illustrative style make the book fun and inviting. An author’s note at the front gives readers a context, as the author explains her experience of being on Safari in Africa where others were focused on spotting The Big Five animals, while she found herself more intrigued by The Ugly Five. In this story, the wildebeest, the hyena, the lappet-faced vulture, the warthog, and the marabou stork each sing about how ugly they are, banding together to form The Ugly Five. But eventually they come to a gaggle of their own babies, who declare that to them, The Ugly Five are really the The Lovely Five. A two-page spread in the back shares a variety of other animals that readers might want to investigate, grouped as to The Big Five, The Little Five, The Shy Five, and The Ugly Five. Throughout the book, illustrations include a variety of other African animals. One thing I would have liked to see would be another set of pages in the back that named the other animals included in the book, so that curious students would have a starting place for further exploration.