Great Messages Beyond a Good Story

You may recall from a past post that I get easily annoyed by people casually writing “lose” when the mean “loose” and vice versa, or writing “alot”, or misusing apostrophes. Therefore, I was completely thrilled by Greedy Apostrophe: A Cautionary Tale by Jan Carr, illustrated by Ethan Long.  A very funny picture book that is not boringly didactic, or a boring punctuation lesson, but simply a funny story that will hopefully get into kids’ heads (you see how I used that apostrophe there?) and help them remember how to use apostrophes correctly. The story begins when punctuation marks go to the hiring hall to receive jobs.  Commas, question marks, and exclamation points all get tasks. But then all that’s left is a job for a possessive. Everyone gets nervous because Greedy Apostrophe is well known as kind of a jerk who wants to insert himself all over the place.  The Director sternly goes over the rules for his usage and off he goes.  Greedy Apostrophe does exactly what he shouldn’t. At a toy store he puts himself into signs for Puppets, Marbles, Yo-Yos, and Kites turning them into Puppet’s, Marble’s, Yo-Yo’s, and Kite’s.  He is naughty and terrible, but when he tries it in a school the class quickly sees the mistakes and tries to catch him. Even if I didn’t like the lesson of this story, I’d still think it was a fun read-aloud as I enjoy books like this where something unusual is animated  (like the Scrambled States of America, crayons,  or Chopsticks.)

What a sweet story! Brimsby’s Hats by Andrew Prahin is about Brimsby, a hat maker who leads a quiet routine life in his village. Every day he makes hats and drinks tea with his friend. But then his friend decides to follow his own dream of being a sea captain and leaves.  Brimsby is very lonely and the changing view outside his window shows that quite a long time passes.  Out for a walk one snowy day he comes across some birds who are having trouble in the snow.  A clever and unexpected choice turns Brimsby’s life around as it brings him new friends, new happiness, and new adventures.  If I was doing a storytime about hats this would be a new book to add to my hat collection.

Noah and the Space Ark by Laura Cecil, illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark is an interesting story to me because of it simultaneously being a retelling of Noah’s Ark at the same time as a futuristic story with the message that we’d better take care of our earth. I guess I found it so interesting because she didn’t have to change that much of the original story to make it work for this modern message.  I think my kids just thought it was a good story, liked the pictures, and could see the parallels to the original story. In the future the earth is very over-crowded and dirty.  Noah and his family (who even retain the Biblical names Ham, Shem, and Japhet) run the only park left, which is a green sanctuary for the earth’s last birds, animals, trees, and flowers.  As Earth heats up and the air worsens the plants struggle to grow and one day Noah finds a bird that is dying.  He takes this as a sign that they must build a spaceship and find a new place to live.  The cross view of the space ark is marvelous, showing how they all fit in.  Two by two they board the space-ark and flee the new truly horrifying looking dark planet. 40 days and 40 nights pass before they find  a new place, which looks like a beautiful Eden.  They vow to care for this new planet.  I happen to like Clark’s illustration style and found this a very heart-warming story.

 

Day 3: When Santa Turned Green

When Santa Turned Green by Victoria Perla, illustrated by Mirna Kantarevic.  This is a strange little story that seems like it shouldn’t work-an environmental message using Santa as the vehicle? Yes. And it’s charming.  Way up at the North Pole Santa is met with a disturbing sight late one autumn- a drop of water, dripping from his roof. Turns out icicles are melting! Santa does some investigating and sees melting ice caps. He heads down south and learns all about global warming.  One thing I like about this book is that I think it does a really good job explaining in a simple way how human actions have resulted in greenhouse gas build up and, consequently, how people can help diminish it. Maybe this isn’t the most cheerful Christmas story, but we really like it.  Global warming is depressing, but Santa has faith in children that they can make changes and help protect the earth.  It was a gift to us in 2009-which we know because in the back of the book it has a place to list your own environmental resolutions. So when my son was 4 he contributed “recycling every day” and a couple years later he added “turning off lights” (a goal he has yet to achieve, btw). It’s fun to look back at that each year when we read this.