Six Books to Help the Sunshine Break through!

​This painting stopped me in my tracks.

I passed it in the BYU-Idaho Center while dropping off my daughter at freshman orientation. Not only is Ovanes Berberian's brushwork confident and fresh, the atmosphere of this piece made me feel so hopeful. A reminder, really, that the Light is always there,
just sometimes obscured by the clouds, or the opposite side of the planet. As if the sun (the Son) is letting us experience a bit of storm before dispelling the gloom, so we can juxtapose the two. Otherwise, how could we appreciate the clarity of sunshine and pearly hues
of rosiness without the contrast of dour gray?

As Eve said to Adam, "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient." (Moses 5:11)

So here are six titles to help disperse the doldrums of winter--
books my kids and I relished while celebrating our very first Jolabokaflod this January...

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1) ​Twelve Kinds of Ice
Written by​ Ellen Bryan Obed 
Illustrations by Barbara McClintcok
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When I was a little girl, I dreamt of making a skating rink in my own backyard.
My parents were busy, and surely tired of my endless daydreams and hair-brained schemes.
Of course, I never did build a temporary mini pond. Ha! As if...

BUT...here in Maine, I have friends who actually DO build temporary skating rinks in their yards, and whose kids can practice on their own personal ice rink daily--how WILD is that?! So cool. Literally. 
​So go, go, gadget legs, Toby Boey, on your own homemade rink! 

This tiny gem of a book, which fits so nicely into a child's hands, is timeless in its execution
of place and wonder, and realizes that dream, if only through a picture book. The story is about one
family's tradition to create an ice rink in their front yard
every year. The narrator anticipates the stages and types of ice that indicate the temperatures drawing low enough to pour their annual rink. 

Bryan Gardens!

 The Bryan family ice rink had: outdoor music, lights, stands, schedules for the neighborhood children's use, assigned rink managers, a homemade locker room, an annual ice show with choreographed performances, a clown for comedic relief, and everything...but a roof.
But it did have a sky, and to the Bryan family, "that was the best roof of all."

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2) The Tree and the River
written and illustrated by Caldecott Honor Recipient
Aaron Becker

My maternal grandfather was a dairy and produce farmer in the Moapa Valley of Overton, Nevada. I remember exploring through the rolling desert ravine down behind his dairy barns. My sisters and cousins and I would climb onto the skeletons of "ancient plows." Really, we were scrambling over a graveyard of out-dated farming equipment. But it was a wondrous world to behold for kids with endless summer days. Jagged jaws of the harrower (you're thinking you hoped we all had our tetanus shots, right?), old carts that moved up and down like a see-saw on wheels when we walked across their platforms. Seeing these rusty dinosaurs of machinery made our minds open up and consider who used these tools, how long they'd been there, and how many decades it would take the wind, rain, and sun to break the structures back down into their smallest elemental units of disintegration?

That childhood wonder about human-made civilization is the essence of this new picture book by Aaron Becker. Here he is with another mind-blowing masterpiece--a wordless story depicting the vast changes one little parcel of land can undergo through the ravages of time. And though a bit sober in scope, this book gives so much hope, and makes our minds think on the purpose of this life--to come together, to learn from each other and our mistakes,
and to start again with new seeds of hope.

Look carefully at the progression, retrogression, and healing of the
​same landscape in each illustration...

​3)How Old Is a Whale?
Animal Life Spans from the Mayfly
to the Immortal Jellyfish
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Written by Lily Murray,
Illustrated by Jesse Hodgson

​What with the impeccable ubiquity of documentaries like David Attenborough's Planet Earth, one would think almost every adult and school child would know the average life span of most all the species on this green earth. Not so! At least for me...(that may not explain much. Ha!)

How Old Is a Whale is such a delight, revealing that the Greenland shark can swim in the icy depths of the Arctic for up to 400 years! All while navigating their squat-shaped snouts through the dark waters with wormlike parasites dangling from their eyes! Blech! And whoa!
Talk about aggravating--give them some hands to pluck those leach suckers off! Gross...) Poor sharks. At least they outlive their parasites, one at a time? Maybe? Do they get a break between parasites? Please?

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But that's not the half of it--you'll have to check this book out yourself, to read how the
immortal jellyfish, the species the size of our pinky nails, reaches what should be
"the end" of its life, only to begin all over again! WHA???!

And one daughter's and my favorite tidbit of knowledge from this book, was that a
fledgling albatross (wingspan of 7') stays aloft in the sea air for the
entirety of its first three years of life--without ever touching down on land (HOW?!) after it leaves its parents' nest. (That's a lot of time in the dorm room of the skies without coming back for
Christmas or spring break.) Poor mom and dad albatross...

​Though these facts are surprising, what's even most unbelievable, and REFRESHING
to me, is that the illustrator, Jesse Hodgson, did not use A.I. to create her sensitively-evocative artwork. These vibrant drawings were done in good old-fashioned
colored pencil. So beautiful.

This book is a treasure to hunt down at your library so the little people in your life can run their hands over the satisfyingly-chubby raised print of the embossed lettering of the
title on the front cover. JOY! 



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4) Lost and Found:
Adèle & Simon in China
Written and Illustrated by Barbara McClintock

Because I found out just this week that the illustrious
Barbara McClintock is a self-taught artist (so impressive!),
I thought we should celebrate her charming, most Victorian-looking pen and ink illustrations with another one of her books from the Adèle & Simon series.

​What makes this one title unusual for the series,
is that Adèle treats us to her own artwork here in one of her letters to Mama:

Learning that the accomplished and life-long illustrator learned to draw by
checking out books from the library and copying out their pictures,
makes her drawings (like the one below) all the more meaningful and appreciated.
Thank you, Barbara, for enriching so many children's lives
with your rich world-view!

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5) Manhattan:
Mapping the Story of an Island
Written and Illustrated by Jennifer Thermes

​Because we're on the subject of books that blow you away, AND share astounding facts about animals, peoples, and traditions of the past, did you happen to know that before Gray's Papaya was serving foot-long hot dogs and piña coladas on Broadway and 72nd Street in NYC, there were once Lenape clans people and 60 million beavers(!) living on and around the waterways on Manhattan? And that the inhabitants of the first Dutch settlement on the bottom tip of the island brought in eleven slaves to dig out all of the canals and ditches that would drain the land? Those poor eleven souls forced to do all the work, and receive none of the thanks until some historian unearthed the story several hundred years later. 

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Well, Jennifer does her best to uncover the whole history of NYC. I remember I first fell in love with Ms. Thermes' simple, soft illustrations when my young adult children were toddlers. We pored over the book When I Was Built. Living in a cozy 1920's two-bedroom bungalow in SLC, Utah; we had one bathroom for six of us. We loved our old home (knob and tube wiring with plaster and lath walls). The book When I Was Built made my kids and me pause and wonder, as we watched a crew dig out our half-basement (dirt floor) crawl-space (which the neighborhood kids were certain was an indoor cemetery with buried skeletons!) to add two more bedrooms, another bathroom, a laundry, a family room, and much-needed storage space before adding two more members to our expanding family.

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That little book, made me ponder over the people who constructed
our home back in 1927, and what their lives were like.

This newer book of Ms. Thermes' has much the same vibe--a sense of looking back and trying to appreciate who and what went before, and the evolution of land, life, and...

...a sense of changing home.


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Just the sheer amount of research that went into this book must have been staggering;
it's reassuring to know there are illustrators and authors like this one who spend the time to make books of deep value--gifts of time and understanding for generations to come.
I hope it stays in print for years...

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6) A First for Everything
Written and Illustrated by Dan Santat

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This book. Where to begin? Have you read it yet? If not, it's one for discussion with your family. I left it out for grazing on the kitchen counter a few weeks ago...and again, it was one which every member of the family took up and read on their own over the course of a few days.

The format's the irresistible graphic novel, so most kids and teens will devour it. But adults, you buckle your seat belts too, and pull down that lap tray, because--
we are flying to Europe, baby! 

Dan Santat takes us on his coming-of-age journey from frightened, grumpy, child, to adventurous, daring young man who's willing to try new things. There's a lot to unpack with this book, including Dan's first exposure to European girls his same tender age of 13--smoking cigarettes, and social drinking (an entire chaperoned crowd vomiting en masse in Switzerland from a yeasty, foul-smelling beer-tasting tour). The life principles learned here speak volumes for themselves. No  lecturing necessary! (This is the type of novel parents appreciate--when protagonists experience the unsavory things we don't want our kids to have to go through, but still get the valuable take-away, right?

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​In turn, we cringe, laugh, and thrill with Dan as he stands atop the Eiffel Tower,
experiences new culture first-hand by rooming with the natives, overcomes embarrassingly
awkward school memories from his past, makes friends by finally relaxing in his own skin, and we see him know the thrill, excitement, and agony of first puppy love.

If you crave traveling, and happen to be homebound this winter--wanderlusting for an adventure...this book is for you.

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​So if you've made it this far in the book review, and don't ever comment, why not shock me by leaving a recommendation for my nightstand!

What delicious titles can you tip-off to me,
and which of your favorites will whisk the rest of us away to someplace like the Swiss Alps, the Chinese countryside, or Manhattan Island back to when the Lenape hunted, fished, and foraged . 

Don't be afraid. Comment below. I don't bite. Besides, I double-dog dare you. (Just don't take up the challenge while licking a lamp post in
single digit weather.)

Cozy reading to you, gentle friend!
Sincerely,
Emily

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