All Blog Entries

The Bayou Tourterelle is sanctuary for a pair of adolescent raccoons, various endangered birds including the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, rattle snakes, a boy named Chap, his mother, and the Sugar Man–all in Kathi Appelt’s “The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp” (Atheneum 2013).

Well, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker hasn’t been seen in years, but Chap’s recently- deceased granddaddy Audie saw it some years back and says he took a Polaroid shot of it. But even that has been lost. He also took a Polaroid shot of the huge furry Sugar Man (cousin to Bigfoot), but Sugar Man hasn’t been seen in a generation or two. Who is to believe that either exists?

Chap and his mama fry sugar pies at the Paradise Café, but that’s subject to change when villain Sonny Boy Beaucoup and his alligator-wrestling sidekick Jaeger Stitch enter. They want to raze the bayou and build a Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park. Oh, that just can’t happen.

The raccoons J’Miah and Bingo live in a rusted out ’48 DeSoto hidden in the swamp. Their parents gone, they fend for themselves climbing trees and foraging for crayfish until they discover those fried sugar pies cooling at the Paradise Café—pies made from the muscovado swamp sugar cane. Dee-licious.

The swamp-side stand of sugarcane is guarded by a mass of slithering rattlesnakes, but Chap knows that to harvest it he has to lull those rattlers to sleep with a particular lullaby.

Not only are Sonny Boy and Stitch ready to break ground for the theme park in the swamp (unless Chap and his mama can come up with a “boatload of cash”), but a herd of feral hogs is headed to the bayou and surely they’ll destroy all the swampy flora—not to mention the fauna—to get that sugar cane.

As true blue swamp scouts, J’Miah and Bingo must find and wake the Sugar Man, who has been sleeping for 60 years. Only he can save the swamp.

Kathi Appelt writes with droll wit and sly humor. Her warm and gentle Texas drawl especially shines through when she ‘breaks down the fourth wall’ with such pleas as “Say it sisters and brothers—lives were at stake” or “Is there anything worse than…[the horrible thing going on in the story]? We think not.”

Her cast of characters drives a great eco-yarn. You’re pretty sure who is going to win out, but the journey is a whole whopping lot of fun. Boy, would I love to read this aloud to a class of third graders.

Patricia Hruby Powell will be begin reviewing young adult books December 15.

War looks imminent and tensions are mounting. In 1812, at what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana, James’ family runs the trading post. Anikwa, a Miami Indian, helps reinforce his family’s reed house. The twelve year old friends fight to survive a tough winter in “Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War” (Frances Foster 2013) by Helen Frost.

The Miami Indians weave mats of cattail reeds, which they stuff with moss for the walls of their homes. The poems in Anikwa’s voice are shaped like diamonds and triangles to replicate the traditional Indian weaving work. Will his people fight alongside the Americans? Or with the British who claim they will allow the Indians to remain on their homeland?

James, the European American, speaks in long parallel lines like the stripes of the American flag. His family’s values align with the Indians who are stewards of the earth. But there are those settlers who prefer to dominate the earth. Will James’ family abandon the trading post—and their Miami friends–and seek refuge in the American military fort?

A third thread interspersed in this story of a challenged friendship is the story of salt beginning with its geological origin. Animals need salt to survive. Humans use it, also, to flavor and preserve food. In the saddest part of the story—during war—the poem depicts tears, “leaving salt streaks on our faces.”

James and Anikwa understand only a few words of each other’s language. Misunderstandings abound yet they forge a friendship. James has much to learn from Anikwa about woodland survival. He sees that in the Miami culture, as in all Native American cultures, generosity is valued. A strong character gives. This is what the Miami do. Give.

Frost clearly aligns with Native American culture, which is just one reason I love this book. Anikwa speaks lyrically and simply, and always about nature. “The geese form into arrows pointing south…”

Frost builds each of her novels with shape poems. The diamond-shaped poems of “Diamond Willow,” each holds a “scar” of bold type. Reading these “scars” offers a deeper message to Willow’s story. In nature they are knots in the willow wood where a branch has fallen away.

In “Crossing Stones” the poems of some characters are round like stones. Poems of other characters meander back and forth across the page like the creek bed that houses the stones.

In “Keesha’s House” (Printz Honor book) seven teen characters, each with serious problems, tell their stories in sonnets and sestinas, yet their voices sound natural.

Frost uses complex forms, which she always describes in the endnotes and that the avid reader can analyze. But always, the story sings out beyond the form. Add to that magic—Frost’s books are all quick reads, with much white space on the page.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. See more at www.talesforallages.com/

“Temple Grandin: How The Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World” (Houghton 2012) by Sy Montgomery is a book for anyone who is weird or knows someone who is odd. That’s all of us, right?

Montgomery assures us that being different does not mean being less. In describing Temple’s relationship to the world, she describes the world of many autistic people. While reading you wonder if many of us are not “on the spectrum.” Loud sounds can feel like torture. Childhood clothes (like a stiff petticoat) felt like “needles stabbing her skin.” Smelling someone else’s perfume was hideous and distracted you from the task at hand, such as school. Sound familiar?

As a toddler, Temple did not laugh or smile. She couldn’t understand what people said. She didn’t speak until she was five. Her father wanted to institutionalize her, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. Little was known about autism in the 50’s when Temple was growing up. But her mother found tutors and a nanny who understood that “Temple needed images more than words to understand” the world.

Temple thinks in pictures. Many of us do. But Temple retains the pictures in her mind in rich detail and with great accuracy. Instead of being “retarded,” as her father thought, Temple is brilliant. She just processes information differently than that which is considered normal.

Her mother enrolled Temple in a small rural school. Eventually her schoolmates took her oddities in stride. Temple learned that what was torturous to her (loud school bell) didn’t bother others. Her classmates were interviewed for this book, offering another dimension to her story.

Temple did more than overcome a disability. Temple writes in the Foreword that many kids are quirky or nerdy and “The ones who become successful in life are those who figure out how to use their unique abilities and passions in work they can pursue with other people.”

Temple’s major success involves treatment of farm animals. Half of the cattle in the U.S. “are handled in systems I have designed for meat-packing plants,” she says.

Her ability to observe details includes Temple’s seeing through the eyes of cattle. She understands what they fear. From her teen years spent on her aunt’s ranch, she learned that cows walk in large circles. Therefore she developed a spiral walkway for the cows to get to the dipping tank. They walk down a stable platform for their bath, rather than being wrestled and dumped into deep water.

In order for a steer to be vaccinated, ranch hands, for their own safety, press the animal between two panels. Temple saw the steers calm down. Temple let herself be squeezed in the chute and found that the even pressure calmed her. She built her own squeeze machine and took it to college with her.

Temple acknowledges that nature is cruel. We owe cattle respect. She devised a way that steers aren’t afraid and they don’t feel pain. So we can eat our hamburgers with a little less guilt.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. See more at www.talesforallages.com/

In “Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin” (Knopf 2013), Liesl Shurtliff retells the story that the Brothers Grimm collected in Germany and first published in 1812. In Shurtliff’s story Rump is not an imp, but a smallish boy.

Why in the past did they think he was an imp? Rump mistakenly steps on a pixie nest and they retaliate by biting his face, arms, legs, and yes, his rump. The painful bites swell and disfigure the boy, so he probably looked like an imp. Temporarily.

But back to the beginning. After whispering the name of her newborn in his ear, his mother dies. He can only remember “Rump.” In his world, his name is his destiny. The naming of babies is so important that people name nothing else. They live in the Village at the base of the Mountain in the Kingdom. The animals don’t even have names, but Rump identifies his goat as Milk and his donkey as Nothing. His mother came from Yonder or maybe Beyond. With a name like Rump, of course he’s teased relentlessly.

The Mountain was once full of gold and it is the villagers’ unfortunate task to mine what little remains and pay it as a tax to the greedy Miller who in turn hands it over to the gold-loving King. As is true in the Grimm version, the Miller tells the King that his daughter can spin straw into gold. Great. The greedy king takes the miller’s daughter as his bride. Now what? They need Rump who can spin straw to gold. What a heartless clever Miller!

In this romp with Rump, Shurtliff offers some sly turns of wisdom. The sludge-slurping trolls are known to eat human flesh. Not true, but the trolls keep humans at bay by letting them think this because, one says, “Humans take one look at any living creature and think only how they can use it.”

There’s more fun to be had. Gnomes pop out of holes in the road, take messages, and deliver them to individuals throughout the Kingdom. What a great way to send and receive messages.

As for the pixies, usually Rump is just swatting them away like we might swat at insects. But unlike most insects, pixies have garish colored hair and spectacular wings. The pixies are attracted to Rump because they love gold and they sense that Rump has a way with straw (in that he can spin it into gold) long before Rump knows of his talents.

Rump must discover his full name—and with it, his destiny. Afterall, You are what you’re named. Rump? No, there must be more to this guileless self-deprecating boy. And why ever would he want the new queen’s firstborn? Shurtliff explains it all in her clever retelling of “Rumpelstiltskin.”

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. See more at www.talesforallages.com/

The paperboy stutters. He has difficulty uttering his own name, which begins with V— a sound difficult to make. The paperboy is known as Little Man. Not until the very end does the author, Vince Vawter, disclose the paperboy’s name—Victor Volmer—in the book “Paperboy” (Delacorte 2012).

In 1959 Memphis, 11 year old Little Man has taken over the paper route of his best friend who is vacationing with cousins. Needing a tool to cut the cord of bundled papers, Little Man takes his knife to the junkman/knife sharpener, Ara T, in spite of being warned to steer clear of him. Ara T, an adult bully, will not return the boy’s knife unless he says his own name. Little Man can’t do it.

Little Man assigns new names to those difficult to say. His best friend Art becomes Rat. The protagonist uses a technique called Gentle Air, breathing an s-s-s sound in order to voice difficult-to-say words—of which there are many. The reader is shown the challenge a stuttering kid must overcome in order to speak, to read aloud in class, and how those efforts result in being teased and taunted.

His paper route customers provide relationships, which lead to Little Man’s maturity. A learned merchant marine, Mr. Spiro, calls the boy Messenger when he shows up to collect the weekly paper fee. Spiro offers pithy dollops of wisdom such as Voltaire’s: “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Spiro gives Messenger one part of a torn and quartered dollar bill each week, with one word written on each piece. Along with the protagonist we wait to solve the mystery of the four words.

Another client is the beautiful whisky-drinking Mrs. Worthington. Our boy is infatuated and concerned about her relationship with an abusive husband. We are drawn to find out the outcome.

His closest ally is Mam, his (white) family’s (black) maid. Together, Mam and Little Man confront the dangerous Ara T, risking their lives in a seedy part of Memphis where we learn about the self-governing justice system in this African American community.

Thank heavens Little Man excels at pitching a baseball. This gives him much needed confidence and an arena in which he is highly respected.

I loved the details shown of childhood as when Vawter writes, “I ran from lamppost to lamppost without stopping like I was running the bases.” The lampposts might tag him out. (I’d have been running from tree to tree as an Indian avoiding the cavalry).

Just as the paperboy carefully chooses words according to their starting sound—such as saying story rather than book with it’s difficult b sound—Vawter carefully chooses his words. We understand when he says, “…the D sound stuck tight in my throat like a tennis ball in a chain-link fence.”

Vawter knows his setting as only one who has lived it—details such as which streets had less traffic on Saturdays. This beautiful story is clearly personal to its author, yet universal for his readers.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, storyteller, occasional librarian, and children’s book author. See more at www.talesforallages.com/