Christmas roundup

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Welcome back!  It's been a good week off, complete with travel, feasting, family, and fevers (all are well again), and though we took a break from blogging, of course we didn't take a break from reading.  A number of new good books have entered our lives, and I thought I'd mention a few tonight.

As promised, you sent us Inga Moore's A House in the Woods.  The girls are big fans, and so am I -- such sweetness, without being cloying, and such depth to her pictures!  It was accompanied by a picture book about Anna Hibiscus, whose chapter books we've extolled here and here.  In Anna Hibiscus' Song, Anna Hibiscus finds herself extremely happy one day, and wants to figure out what to do with her happiness.  She asks the various members of her family what they do when they're happy, and gets a variety of responses: they are very quiet, they work, they dance, they whisper.   Even in this short book, you're introduced to her warm presiding grandparents, her piles of hard-working, laughing aunties and uncles, and her cousins with all their glorious names -- Benz, Chocolate, Angel -- as well as her black African father and white Canadian mother.  At the end, Anna Hibiscus realizes that her own greatest happiness lies in singing.  It's a joyful, loving book.

I bought Isabel two books about classical music which you wrote about a while ago: Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin! and The Philharmonic Gets Dressed.  Huge hits, both of them -- we've pretty much been reading them nonstop since Christmas morning.  There is something so fabulously child-logical about The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, in particular: all the tiny details of coats and homes and transportation, all the terrific illustrations of lower and upper halves of musicians struggling into complicated underwear or examining the hole in a sock.  For Isabel, who likes to narrate her daily experience anyway, this book is a perfect fit.  When we read about the musicians drying off, she talks about her own towel.  On the next page, she responds to the different types of underwear the musicians put on: "And I wear a diaper."

Just before Christmas, our lovely cousin Ona sent each girl a book with an accompanying stuffed animal, and these two are great hits as well.  For Eleanor: Kevin Henkes's Chrysanthemum.  This is another mouse-girl/adjusting to school book from Henkes, though Chrysanthemum is far less of a scene-stealer than Lilly and her purple plastic purse.  She's just a sweet kid with a sweet family, who has always loved her name, until she enters school and a group of mean girls begin to tease her about it (it's too long, she's named after a flower, etc.).  Chrysanthemum wilts, despite the tender, nerdy comfort of her parents (her dad is shown in a lab coat and glasses, reading "The Inner Mouse, Vol. 1: Childhood Anxiety").  It's only the intervention of the magical, extremely pregnant music teacher, Mrs. Delphinium Twinkle, that makes everything right again.  I kind of like Chrysanthemum's retiring nature here -- she feels like a normal kid responding to bullying, rather than a particularly precocious one.

For Isabel, Ona sent The Gingerbread Girl, written and illustrated by Lisa Campbell Ernst.  It begins with a brief recap of the story of the Gingerbread Boy running off and being eaten by a fox when he tried to escape the people chasing and trying to eat him.  This is helpful if you're reading to kids, like mine, who don't know the original tale.  Ernst ends the first page: "This is the story of his younger, wiser sister."   The lonely old man and woman decide to make a gingerbread girl this time around because she'll be sweeter and better-behaved than the original Gingerbread Boy.  Of course, she isn't, and takes off running as soon as the oven door is cracked open.  Her story is much like the original: she runs past lots of people and animals who want to eat her, and follow along.  My favorite is the calf who turns from its mother's udder to moo, "Mama, I want a cookie to go with my milk!"  There's a lot of singing: the Gingerbread Girl tosses out rhymes to each group she passes, ending each with her refrain:

I'll run and I'll run

With a leap and a twirl.

You can't catch me,

I'm the Gingerbread GIRL!

She meets the fox who ate her brother, climbs on his back to cross the river -- and then lassos his mouth with a licorice whip from her hairdo and rides him back to shore, where she leads everyone who's been wanting to eat her back to her parents' place and bakes them all gingerbread to eat (presumably non-sentient).

There's a lesson of female empowerment here, in the Gingerbread Girl's rejection of her parents' expectations and, especially, of the fox's.  I have to admit, while I like the book a lot, and the girls adore it, I find the scene with the fox a little creepy in a sexual predator way:

"Ooooh, the water is so deep, move to my back!" he insisted, thinking this cute cookie was even dumber than her brother.  Anyone could tell by looking at her that she was an airhead.  The Gingerbread Girl did as she was told.  "That's a good little girl," the fox said with a snicker.  "Oh my, the water is deep, now move to my head!"

On the next page, after she lassos him "with the expertise of a ranch hand," the Gingerbread Girl whispers into the fox's ear: "You're right....I am good."  It's an interesting use of language, and makes me wonder about the message it's sending in terms of possible future threats.  The Gingerbread Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Finally, I'll mention the chapter book my father-in-law bought for Eleanor, which I'm sure I'll blog about at greater length once we've finished it: Thomas and the Dragon Queen, by Shutta Crum.  So far (we're about halfway), it's an appealing medieval-ish fantasy.  Thomas is a twelve-year old from a leather-worker's family who aspires to be a knight.  Improbably, in a kingdom besieged at its borders and in need of fighting men, he becomes one, and is deputized by the king to ride off in search of the very nice Princess Eleanor (you can see one reason we like this book), who has been kidnapped by the ancient dragon queen, Bridgoltha.  What will happen?  Tune in soon....

Love, Annie

More music (Bug-Gup!)

Dear Aunt Debbie,

Jim Dale seems to do a pretty good job with Peter and the Wolf.  I'm still stuck on my Bernstein, though -- there's a kind of warmth behind his voice that I find very appealing.  He sounds like he's enjoying himself, and is happy that you know the piece as well as he does.  He's quite encouraging.

One more book with music: Tubby the Tuba, by Paul Tripp, illustrated by Henry Cole.  I remember the Tubby the Tuba cartoon from my childhood mostly for Tubby's melancholy voice, and I'm pretty sure the CD recording included with this book is the same one.  I'm sure at least that it's not the new recording made by Meredith Viera advertised on the official Tubby website.

The illustrations are new -- nice and cartoony, and a little bit updated.  Tubby wears shorts and a t-shirt in rehearsal, and the orchestra's usual conductor shows up in jeans and Birkenstocks with socks.  Never fear -- when Signor Pizzicato, the guest conductor, arrives, everyone is in a tuxedo.

It's interesting to look back at Tubby the Tuba from an adult perspective.  It's so clearly a story about being an outsider and then figuring out a way to belong: Tubby wants to play the melodies that everyone in the orchestra gets to play, but he keeps squashing the poor little tune, and is relegated to going "oompah, oompah."  Yes, he's the fat kid no one wants to play with, and the violins are mean to him.   Wandering off at night, he meets up with a frog singing by a pond.  The frog's salutation may be my favorite part:

Bug-Gup! Bug-Gup!  Lovely evening!

Bug-Gup! I said, bee-oo-ti-ful evening.  Hello!

Bug-Gup! Hello! Bug-Gup! Hello!

The frog teaches Tubby a frog/tuba melody, and the next day, Tubby impresses Signor Pizzicato and the rest of the orchestra with it.  Everyone wants to play his tune.  Maybe it's a little didactic, but when you include the recording, it's a lot of fun.

Along with Peter and Tubby, my girls have Danse Macabre on repeat these days, and do a terrific dance where they pretend to be witches and are frightened away by sunrise at the end.  I don't think anyone has yet turned that into a children's book, but I expect Neil Gaiman will get there sooner or later.

Love, Annie

Books that come with music

Dear Aunt Debbie,

We will have to check out some of those coloring books.  I'm starting my Christmas list now....

I said recently that I'd identify the book that Michael was reading to Eleanor in this picture.  The book itself is new to us, but the story and music behind it have become a staple in our house over the last several months.

Peter and the Wolf came into our lives when my mom told Eleanor (who is now taking ballet classes) about once dancing the part of the wolf in a performance.  The pictures of my mom being caught around the waist by Peter's rope hung for years in Grandma and Grandpa's hallway, and I always found them fascinating.  Eleanor was intrigued, and pretty soon after that, we checked out the Disney cartoon version on YouTube.  The second we put it on, Isabel was hooked.  Amazed by the wolf, entranced by the music.  They were both a little scared, too, mostly by the wolf's slavering jaws, but it's Disney, so there's a happy ending.

Isabel's interest prompted us to buy the Leonard Bernstein version of the music.  Isabel became truly obsessed.  We listened to Peter and the Wolf at least three times a day for most of the summer.  At the beginning of the recording, Bernstein presents the instruments playing each character in the story as a sort of quiz: "And what's that old bassoon doing? Right, it's Peter's grandfather.  You really know this piece, don't you?"  Oh yes, Leonard Bernstein, we do.

For Isabel's birthday, my parents found a gorgeous illustrated version of the story, which comes with a CD: Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, illustrated by Peter Malone.  The story is largely the classic one: Peter goes wandering out of his house into the fields, though his grandfather tells him not to.  The duck wanders out too, and play-fights with the bird; the cat appears and tries to eat the bird; Peter's grandfather sends him back inside.  Then the wolf appears.  The wolf chases everybody, eats the duck, and is ultimately captured by Peter, with the help of the bird.  Hunters come and march the wolf off, and the whole thing ends with a parade.

I love the illustrations in this version: they have a very Russian feel to them, and remind me of Vladimir Vagin's gorgeous drawings in The King's Equal.  The text has been sanitized a little: the wolf eats the duck here, but at the end he convinces the hunters that he'll be good, and they agree to let him go (!), and then he feels bad, so he coughs the duck up.  Not like any wolf I've ever heard of, but okay.  The grandfather is also a little nicer: in the Bernstein version, he's grumpy to the end, complaining at the parade about what might have happened if Peter hadn't caught the wolf.  Here, he marches along proud of Peter.

I'm a big fan of Leonard Bernstein's voice, and after so many times through it, far prefer his creepy ending, with the duck's quacking still audible from inside the wolf's belly, as well as his slight upper-crust accent, to the narration on the book's CD.  Still, the music is wonderful -- by turns playful, dramatic, and narrative.  It bears listening to five thousand times.

Love, Annie

Back to the beat

Dear Annie,

Doonesbury: what a great idea.

I know I did an about-face in my last post: from jazz and rhythm for toddlers to war for pre-teens.  Sorry about that (to use a Vietnam War-coined phrase).  So now that I've scanned a few pictures from music books into my computer, I'll lurch back to little ones and music.

You hit the two of the best books on rhythm, so I want to move on to more classical fare.  Starting with the delightfully illustrated
Zin! Zin! a Violin by Lloyd Moss. It introduces ten instruments, one page at a time, starting with the trombone:

With mournful moan and silken tone,

Itself along comes ONE TROMBONE.

Gliding, sliding, high notes go low;

ONE TROMBONE is playing SOLO.

I can imagine your household, with your talent for accents and singing.  Next, the trumpet, giving the enthusiastic feel of Marjorie Priceman's pictures:

It goes on through cello, harp, clarinet and more.  Then they file onto a stage, and play:

The STRINGS all soar, the REEDS implore,

The BRASSES roar with notes galore.

It's music that we all adore.

It's what we go to concerts for.

A happy line of hand-holding cats, dog, and a mouse boogie across the bottom of the page.

And speaking of concerts, I'm ending with my favorite book for young concert-goers:
 
The Philharmonic Gets Dressed
by Karla Kuskin.  It fits into the tradition of Ramona wondering about Mike Mulligan going to the bathroom.  In this one, we follow the getting-ready rituals of many of the 105 members of an orchestra:

First they get washed.  There are ninety-two men and thirteen women.  Many take showers.  A few take baths.  Two men and three women run bubblebaths, and one man reads in the tub while the cat watches. One woman sits in the bubbles and sings.

They dry off, put on underwear (boxers and briefs for the men, and an array of early '80s underwear for the women), each step with Marc Simont's  illustrations of six or more people, each doing things slightly differently:

There are ties and overcoats and saying goodbye and getting transportation to the concert hall.  The book ends with "the man with the black and white wavy hair" (we've been following him too) stepping onto the podium, raising his baton, and starting the music.

What I love about this book is that it takes seriously all those little steps which can dominate parts of the day for small children, and which adults tend not to mention much (see Miss Binney, in Ramona quote referenced above).  And it turns a somewhat confusing crowd of grown-ups into people who put on their pants (mostly) one leg at a time.

Love,
Deborah