Watermark Teacher Feature – March 14, 2007

In this issue:

BOOK NEWS
Great week for paperbacks
Fresh titles

UPCOMING EVENTS
Lois Ruby in April
Anna Quindlen is coming in May
Khaled Hosseini is coming in June

BOOK REVIEWS
* “Wolf! Wolf!” by John Rocco
* “Charlotte in Giverny” and “Charlotte in Paris” by Joan McPhail Knight

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It’s such a great week for new paperbacks:

* Jeanne Birdsall’s outstanding summer story “The Penderwicks” arrived with all
its charms intact: I adore this gem of a book, and I want every middle-school
girl in the world to have a copy! It received a 2005 National Book Award and on
is on next year’s William Allen White List. Read a review

* Christopher Paolini’s “Eldest” also winged into view. It’s the sequel to the
recently filmed “Eragon,” and it returns to Paolini’s very Tolkien-like land of
Alagaesia, which is just crawling with elves, dwarves, dragons, fantastic maps,
and beautiful, ludicrous, made-up words. It’s a fantasy-reader’s dream come
true.

* David Levithan’s “Are We There Yet?” rounds out the catch: it’s a humorous and
heartfelt teen novel about two brothers tricked (by their parents!) into taking
a vacation together to Italy. Among the pizzas and piazzas, the two
night-and-day siblings begin to reconnect after years of hating each other’s
guts. It’s great stuff for older teen readers. Read a review


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FRESH TITLES

“Magic Tree House #37: Dragon of the Red Dawn” by Mary Pope Osborne (Random House, 0375837272, $11.99) Adventurous brother-and-sister team of Jack and Annie are summoned from their home in present-day Frog Creek, Pennsylvania to medieval Camelot. Their Merlin-assigned mission takes them to Japan in the 1600s, where they see the city that will one day become Tokyo, encounter fierce samurai
warriors, and come face to face with a fabled dragon. As always, Osborne’s story
celebrates the power of research and encourages young readers to delve deeply
into the knowledge and excitement of books. (Ages 4 to 8)


“The Liberation of Gabriel King” by K. L. Going (Puffin, 0142407666, $6.99) New in paperback, this is one of the strongest middle-reader novels of recent memory: in rural Georgia in 1976, sixth-grader Gabe is afraid of bugs, blenders, swamps, basements, and more. His best friend Frita, daughter of a local black minister, vows to spend the summer liberating Gabe from his fears through good, old-fashioned bug handling and confrontation. Along the way, the two learn about the racial divisions in their small town and receive the support of their brave, civil rights-minded parents. The book’s story and characters are excellent, and its carefully handled themes make it a powerful run-up to Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
(Ages 9 to 12) Read a review


“The Red Thread: A Novel in Three Incarnations” by Roderick Townley
(Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, 1416908943, $17.99) This new young-adult novel
from a Kansas City-area author follows sixteen-year-old Dana as she pieces
together her dreams with historical evidence to reconstruct an ancient crime
that has echoed through the centuries. The hunt takes her from New Hampshire to
London and back through time as she explores past lives and races to discover
who it was among her circle of friends and relatives who did the deed--and what
they might be capable of in this lifetime. It’s a suspenseful teen mystery with
many nods to British and early American history. (Ages 12 and up)

Read a review of Townley’s middle-reader book The Great Good Thing


“The Nature of Jade” by Deb Caletti (Simon & Schuster, 1416910050, $16.99)
Suffering from panic attacks, eighteen-year-old Jade finds solace watching
elephants at the zoo, and before long, she notices the frequent reappearances of
a cute young guy with a baby. Over time, she and the guy, Sebastian, become
friends, then more than just friends, as Jade learns about his difficult past
and his still-unfolding future as a single father. Jade is pulled into his
world, feeling safer than she ever has before, but she soon learns that there
are no guarantees in the world of love, and as she becomes an adult, she must
make the hard choice between what feels right and what is really best for her.
This is teen romance with all the complications. (For older teens)

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UPCOMING WATERMARK EVENTS


Lois Ruby coming Saturday, April 14

Youth author and former Wichita resident Lois Ruby will host writing workshops
for teens and adults at the main branch of the Wichita Public Library. Ruby is
the author of “Steal Away Home” and the new “Shanghai Shadows.” Interested folks
should contact the library by telephone at (316) 261-8500. (To order her books,
call Watermark at (316) 682-1181 or send an e-mail to
lisa.johnson@watermarkbooks.com).


Looking ahead: Anna Quindlen coming Thursday, May 3

Novelist and “Newsweek” columnist Anna Quindlen will visit Wichita on Thursday,
May 3 for a 7:00 p.m. Watermark reading and signing at the WSU Metroplex (We’ll
announce ticket details soon.) In the meantime, pencil the date into your
calendars, ring the friends in your phone tree, and plan an outing for your
student group or book club. Quindlen is touring to support her latest novel, the
bestselling two-sister story “Rise and Shine,” which follows a popular
television host who falls from grace after September 11 and turns to her
estranged sibling to help her pick up the pieces of her life. Call us at (316)
682-1181 to pre-order.


Looking ahead: Khaled Hosseini coming Wednesday, June 27

Watermark will host novelist Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner,”
at the WSU Metroplex at 7:00 p.m. He'll read from and sign copies of his new
novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” due out May 22. Call us at (316) 682-1181 to
pre-order copies of the book. The event will be co-sponsored by the Wichita
Public Library and the Friends of the Library. More details to come.


For a full listing of Watermark events, including book clubs and art openings,
visit the Events page of our Web site at: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/events.html

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REVIEWS

Remember the Aesop-related picture book in the last Teacher Feature? Well, I
found another one--plus, an outstanding series that combines art history,
language lessons, and great visuals.


“Wolf! Wolf!” by John Rocco (Hyperion, 1423100123, $15.99)

This beautifully illustrated picture book retells Aesop’s fable of the Boy Who
Cried Wolf from the wolf’s point of view-- with several added twists.
Now a senior citizen too old to go chasing after rabbits, Wolf is resigned to
tending his dandelion-choked garden, where he tries to grow tasty vegetables
like peas and onions. But when he hears a shepherd boy calling his name, Wolf
decides to go over the mountain to investigate. Maybe someone is inviting him to
dinner? And he would like to meet a new friend.

What he finds, though, is a group of villagers angry to have been tricked by a
young prank-pulling shepherd who should have been watching the village’s
goats--their plump, tasty-looking goats. Wolf goes back home, only to have his
arthritic lupine bones called back twice more by the same mischievous boy. So
Wolf comes up with a trick of his own: he explains to the shepherd boy that
after all his fun and games, the villagers will only trust him again if he
really does end up missing a goat, and Wolf can sure help him with that.
Anticipating a meal of double-goat dumplings, he convinces the boy to give him
one of his herd. The story’s final twist comes after the promised goat shows up
the next morning in Wolf’s garden: the new arrival chews away all the
dandelions, making the garden a tidy spot where Wolf can finally grow a decent
crop. Overjoyed, Wolf forsakes dumplings altogether for his real favorite treat:
farm-fresh onions!

Rocco sets this clever story in the Chinese countryside and fills his pages with
landscapes that feature bamboo and cherry blossoms. His softly colored
illustrations are very well drawn and make excellent use of unusual perspectives
and quirky moments of visual humor. In many ways, the look of “Wolf! Wolf!”
recalls the work of Kansas City illustrator Brad Sneed, and Rocco shows a
similar knack for creating animal characters with fully human expressions. This
is the first book he’s both written and drawn, and it promises even more good
things to come.

(Recommended for ages 4 to 8)

For more fractured fables, read a review of Who’s Got Game? by Toni Morrison &
Slade Morrison.

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“Charlotte in Giverny” and “Charlotte in Paris” by Joan McPhail Knight, illus.
by Melissa Sweet (Chronicle Books, 0811858030, $6.99, paperback and 0811837661,
$16.95, hardcover)

Joan McPhail Knight has created excellent and enjoyable teaching tools with her
series of Charlotte books, which take the form of journals written by a young
American girl in the 1890s. The books contain astonishing visuals that will
snare young readers’ attentions, and the stories they tell combine history with
art and basic French lessons.

The first book, “Charlotte in Giverny,” introduces young Charlotte Glidden as
she moves to France with her artist parents. They’re relocating to an artist
colony in the northwestern country town of Giverny, where her father will study
the new French method of painting outdoors and using quick Impressionist
brushstrokes to capture light. Once in Giverny, Charlotte meets famous
inhabitants like Claude Monet and begins learning new words for everything from
her hat (un chapeau) to her neighbor’s little dog (le petit chien).

Charlotte’s lessons and daily adventures are displayed collage-fashion through
dozens of reproduced Impressionist paintings, photographs of found objects, and
Melissa Sweet’s incomparably charming watercolor illustrations.
The vibrant hues of the pictures jump from the page and suitably echo rustic
French style, and information on each painting included is listed at the back of
the book, along with brief artist biographies.

In the second book, “Charlotte in Paris,” the Glidden family decamps to the City
of Lights for the winter, where they meet even more artistic luminaries (like
American Impressionist Mary Cassatt) and take in nineteenth-century fashions and
entertainments. There are carriage rides and masked balls, monkeys in tuxedoes,
and Charlotte’s father catches the craze for making quick painted sketches in
parks and avenues of the city. McPhail’s text abounds with tactile descriptions
of clothes and food, and Sweet’s pictures once again capture the lushness of the
surroundings.

The story continues in a third book, “Charlotte in New York,” as Charlotte’s
family travels to the Empire City in search of more art and more fine sights.
Each book could stand on its own, but together they provide a richly visual tour
of the fin de siecle art world while showing how painting reflected the spirit
of the time. Their lavish illustrations and journal format make the books feel
like treasured art objects themselves, and each one delivers a story, an art
history lesson, and a beginner’s lesson in French vocabulary--all at once!

(Recommended for ages 8 to 12)

Read a review of the third book Charlotte in New York

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Past reviews and archived issues of Teacher Feature can be read on-line on the
Watermark Web site at: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/teach.html

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Spring is just six days away.

Mark David Bradshaw
 


 

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