ALL STAR! by Jane Yolen... great book about Honus Wagner

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6656790-all-star" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="All Star!: Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275817159m/6656790.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6656790-all-star">All Star!: Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5989.Jane_Yolen">Jane Yolen</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/301254783">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
In luminous artwork that plays so beautifully with shadows, illustrator Jim Burke manipulates perspective in interesting ways, such as one page that provoked my husband to look over and joke..."He's so big, what team was he on?  The Giants!"  Truly Wagner was a giant, and one of my favorite writers, Jane Yolen, gently reveals so many reasons for his status.
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<br/>If you love picture books, read it.
<br/>If you love picture book art, enjoy it.
<br/>If you love American history... sports... baseball... inspiring stories... Get it!
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5888239-june-pecchia">View all my reviews</a>

I will never outgrow picture books! Use the library to enjoy the gestalt.

Following is a post I made a year ago to a Shelfari group "Children's Book Repository" about a year ago.  I no longer use Shelfari; my friend/neighbor/pro-librarian has switched to Goodreads.com and so have I.  Try a site like Goodreads to keep track of your personal literary development!

Am I member #2? Where are all the chidlren's book lovers? I bet it's mostly adults who buy them and hoard them.

I will never outgrow picture books. As a former elementary school teacher of students with reading levels from K-12, and many second language learners, I have a good number of picture books on my shelf at home. I left full-time public school teaching when being treated for breast cancer in 2005. Tried to return a couple of times after the most drastic treatments were done, but just could not fit back into the groove. One of the things I had to leave behind was the majority of my classroom library of over a thousand books. I kept only those I was certain I'd paid for myself.

Now I really use the public library. The reason I recently posted two books by Cynthia Rylant (I could easily post every book she's written) is because when a concept hits me, I check out a wide swath of books that I can see at once. Cynthia Rylant was my most recent mass check-out. This interest was sparked when I recalled one of my all-time favorites: The Snail's Spell, written by Joanne Ryder and illustrated by Lynn Cherry. I thought of this book because of the way it asks the reader to become the snail. I am thinking of trying to write some chidlren's books of my own in a related vein. ANYWAY... illustrator Lynn Cherry has done several books for Cynthia Rylant... and off went my ADD brain. Glad I got the books all together at once... love the gestalt.

Easter Sunday... a book for children

By chance, I checked out a children's Easter book from the library recently. This morning, Easter morning, The Easter Cave, by Carol Wedeven, was stacked on the kitchen table with a  bunch of books I found on the theme of "The House That Jack Built."  That theme came to me about a month ago as a possible construct for a poem I'm creating in my mind.  I thought of Jack's theme as ‘one thing piled atop another’, as well as a ‘chicken or egg?’ question poser.  Via quick research, particularly looking for the English view – since it dates back to sixteenth century England – I found this, to my surprise: The phrase 'This is the house that Jack built' is often used as a derisory term in describing a badly constructed building! http://www.rhymes.org.uk/this_is_the_house_that_jack_built.htm

That interpretation has been rattling around in my head ever since, and lead me to check out the aforementioned bunch of books on the theme. 

So, I happened upon The Easter Cave on the kitchen table this morning.   The title surprised me… why, I tried to remember, would I check out a children’s book about Easter?  One whose author I don’t recognize?  One that has quite sentimental and prosaic art on the cover?  What possessed me?   Well, since it was Easter morning, I decided to give it a look. 

It opens with a Biblical citation about Joseph of Arimathea giving his tomb to Jesus … Matthew 27: 57-60. 

But over the next two pages, I saw the pattern of “The House That Jack Built” emerge.  Tacky, I thought, especially if this phrase evokes “a badly constructed building”.   And to take such a sacred moment and turn it all singsong?  Hmmm.

But as I read on, it grew on me.  Carol Wedeven has chosen her words and rhymes thoughtfully. And although I’m not very fond of the art, I do like the way each text box has an oval inset at the top that frames a detail image from the larger art on the opposite page.  O.K. It’s not a landmark book, to be sure, but I’d say if I had children I’d include this in the Easter books I’d share with them.  The repetition and rhyme really make the story stick in the brain.  I wouldn’t own a copy probably, but I’d get it from the library once a year, to help them learn this essential story from Christian culture.

The last page is another Biblical citation, Luke 24:6:

“He is not here; He has risen!”

This finally helped me reconcile the association with a badly constructed building… certainly that tomb was not built well enough entomb Jesus!

News | SDSU | Baby Talk

News | SDSU | Baby Talk

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