Carolyn's Tumblings

Mystic Horse

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:51:49 -0400

I’ve been stuck on this Paul Goble book lately, because it tells the story of an old, unwanted horse who turns out to be a divine gift, and is transformed by loving care into the swiftest and most beautiful of horses.

I’ve been stuck on it lately, because I care passionately about animal rescue, though at the moment I’m scarcely more than a reader of its stories. I’ve little money to give, certainly no land on which to foster something as large as a horse, and my own rescued pet is of the sort who makes it impossible to take on another. So, you know, I read, and care, and occasionally pester my congresspeople. And I appreciate a good story.

Goble’s story and pictures speak to how changing the life of a neglected animal can transform us. The story is based on a Pawnee Legend, so you’ll find it in most libraries with the unauthored - amongst the faery tales. I don’t claim that it’s meant to be read as a parable of animal rescue, but just as Goble gets the attitude of a young buffalo calf right, he gets the starving, neglected and dispirited animals, transformed and made beautiful.

Paul Goble brings his Mystic Horse from abject…

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:51:14 -0400

Paul Goble brings his Mystic Horse from abject…

… to glorious.Mystic Horse, by Paul Goble.

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:50:15 -0400

… to glorious.

Mystic Horse, by Paul Goble.

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:52:00 -0400

By Paul Goble

The 1979 Caldecott Medal winner, with good reason. The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses makes an impression. The title or a glimpse of one of the figures inside is enough to elicit “aah!”s of recognition from most children and young adults. The illustrations here are so bold and true that I’ve always wished I could have them, life-sized, on my walls, and live in them. It’s like they’re too beautiful to be shut up inside a book.

I hadn’t thought about this book for years, or honestly much about illustrated books at all, but in the summer ‘04 I found myself reading it now and then to children on a guest ranch. Often I’d read it before bedtime on the night that we slept out in the meadow with the kids. The frightening storm, which stampedes the girl’s wild horse friends and carries her far from her family, was something of a cathartic moment — as night gathered around us, as the coyotes made their music, many kids’ resolve to sleep outdoors could be shaken. Then the sun rises, the land is bright, and the horses are still by her. When we wake in the morning, the horses are grazing on the dewed grass in the big pasture, and we journey up the hill to breakfast, families, the journey home. From fear of nature to the confidence of being a little more at home there, the journey of The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, and of a few dozen very lucky children.

From Paul Goble’s The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses I love...

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:49:00 -0400

From Paul Goble’s The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

I love the botanically/zoologically correct illustrations, and how those distinctive western plants and animals, sometimes some rock or water, evoke an entire landscape and sense of place. You could give good exercise to a wildflower guide, a bird guide, a butterfly guide identifying each of the species so carefully portrayed.

Then there are the attitudes. Yes, colts stand just that way, even if the shape here is stylized. Older bison turn around to look at young ones. Yes. Doesn’t it strike you right?

"The tired horses slowed and then stopped and rested. Stars came out and the moon shone over hills..."

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:40:00 -0400

“The tired horses slowed and then stopped and rested. Stars came out and the moon shone over hills the girl had never seen before. She knew they were lost.”

- From Paul Goble’s The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

Once a Wolf

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:51:00 -0400

by Stephen R. Swinburne

I’ve been saving this amazing book for a while, and I think it’s a good Easter story, so it may as well be today. Once a Wolf is the story of the wolf’s history in North America and its reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park. It begins with European cultural ideas about wolves, moves through their expiation to the birth of the conservation movement, and on into the challenges of the reintroduction.

When my fifth-grader’s parents talked to us about the concern that their kids were becoming proficient in reading fiction but felt helpless in the face of nonfiction, this is one of the first books I thought of. It’s somewhere between the tiny, blurby text of an Eyewitness book and a nonfiction bound in chapter-book style (Say, Decade of the Wolf.). The text is clearly written and wraps itself around one or two pictures on each page, the perfect enticement to pull a shaky reader along. The text also provides a great starting point for further research, citing by name the experts who provide the facts, and even including its bibliography at the end of the work. A seriously excellent piece of nonfiction writing for elementary students old enough to handle seeing photos like those below.

Once a Wolf is not all cheery calendar shots of reintroduced...

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:50:56 -0400

Once a Wolf is not all cheery calendar shots of reintroduced wolves romping through the snow (though there’s plenty of wolfish eye-candy in the latter sections). One of the most amazing features of this book is the use of archival material, photos from the days when our government actively sponsored the removal of wolves.

"We have so much to learn, but the wolves are teaching us. They are teaching us that if we are..."

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:50:21 -0400

“We have so much to learn, but the wolves are teaching us. They are teaching us that if we are tolerant, we can live side by side with them. They are teaching us what Thoreau already knew: ‘In wildness is the preservation of the world.’ By restoring wolves, we restore ourselves.””

- Wolf Biologist Doug Smith, quoted quoting Thoreau in Once a Wolf.

Common Ground

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:10:00 -0400

by Molly Bang

Carolyn turns your kid into a tree-hugger, Part II.

Common Ground is based on “The Tragedy of the Commons,” a famous 1968 Science article. Molly Bang turns Garrett Hardin’s articulation of the dilemma of shared resources into a parable children can understand. My Environmental Studies professor probably could have assigned Molly Bang instead of the article. The tragedy of the commons is an influential guiding image for thinking about resource management (and evolutionary biology, and political philosophy…), and Bang’s book does an excellent job of providing that image.

Bang got her start illustrating folk tales before she turned to writing children’s stories of her own. There’s something folksy about the illustration, the bold colors and thick lines that somehow do not sacrifice particularity and detail. Quite the contrary: the ocean scene depicts a whole inventory of fishing methods, from dynamiting of coral reefs to bottom-trawling to long-lines and purse-seines. She knows her stuff.

There’s something deeply disturbing about the art, too, when you look closely. When the text says, “But soon there are fewer and fewer fish. This is not good for the fish, for the sea, or for the people,” the illustration of the empty ocean tells the tale. Look closely and you’ll see a scuba-diver with a pair of scissors, stealing a fish from someone else’s nets. Silly. And then look closely at the surface of the water. Two fishermen in cute tiny sailboats threaten each other with knives. Others point guns at one another.

I don’t know if it’s another mark of the folk-tale style, or just an interesting narrative strategy, but the text is incredibly simple compared to the illustrations, which is where the full implications of ecological and social crisis are drawn out. This is (obviously) heavy stuff. I might not ordinarily select for my first-graders a book where the world degenerates into a nightmarish and violent police-state… but I’m willing to give Bang considerable latitude because the weapons appear only in illustration. And, of course, violence in Common Ground is always a marker that shows that things have gotten really out of hand, as when the villagers are shoving and striking sheep and each other when it becomes apparent that no more animals can fit on the village commons.

But, you know, FYI, parental/viewer discretion, etc. Ecological problems have scary consequences for people as well as for trees and fauna. They can read it now or wait for college, but the problem will be there.

from Common Ground by Molly Bang.There is not enough water. ...

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:59:38 -0400

from Common Ground by Molly Bang.

There is not enough water. Bang’s vision is not just one of scarcity: above we see a sort of police state, where fish farms and vegetable patches and wells are guarded by figures with guns, their outlines a glowing, angry red instead of the flesh tones that predominated early in the book. Dear God. World Bank Vice-President Ismail Serageldin did say, “The next world war will be over water.”

"Long ago, a village was built around a commons. …All the villagers could bring their sheep to..."

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:59:26 -0400

“Long ago, a village was built around a commons. …All the villagers could bring their sheep to the commons to graze.”

- Common Ground by Molly Bang.

A River Ran Wild

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:55:59 -0500

Written and Illustrated by Lynne Cherry.

A River Ran Wild tells the story of a the Nashua River in New Hampshire, from its days running “wild through a land of towering forests,” to its settlement by Native Americans, visitation by traders, and settlement by Europeans, right up through industrialization and the river clean-up efforts of the 1960’s and 70’s. At each step, the illustrations luminously depict scenes that will feel familiar to anyone who’s spent time in New England, from the forests to farm fields to mill dams. (Luminously? Yes, luminously. Even the polluted water, full of dyes from the mills and rotting paper pulp, glows, as if the river is too beautiful to really die, even when the fish and wildlife are gone.)

It’s a fine child’s natural history of that area, and it’s refreshing to see a story where human environmental impact on the landscape can be restoration as well as degradation. The sense of place in this book, too, is something to love. This could be your local river. What’s its story?

In the many years that followed, the settlers’ village and...

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:55:41 -0500

In the many years that followed, the settlers’ village and others like it grew and the Nash-a-way became the Nashua.

Lynne Cherry’s A River Ran Wild

"Once again the river runs wild through a towering forest greenway. Red-tailed hawks and barred owls..."

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:55:00 -0500

“Once again the river runs wild through a towering forest greenway. Red-tailed hawks and barred owls live here.”

- A River Ran Wild by Lynne Cherry, bringing us up to the present-day.

Honschi

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:05:00 -0500

by Aline Glasgow; illustrated by Tony Chen

A really simple story about a chickadee who has a little trouble leaving the nest in the spring. She has several adventures before being reunited with her family in the wintertime. The real pleasure in this book is a pleasure of colors of the changing seasons, the carefully feathered birds frozen in different attitudes of flight, windblown flowers in all the colors of the rainbow.

Apologies for the emptiness of this Amazon link: this beautiful book has not been in print since the ’70s, to my knowledge. Hopefully they put my cover image up soon. Is it worth a penny-plus-shipping? Oh, I’d say so.

“Filled with sudden joy, she soared upwards.” -...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:04:00 -0500

“Filled with sudden joy, she soared upwards.”

- Honschi, by Aline Glasgow

Two photos today, because, as I say, the illustrations are the...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:03:42 -0500

Two photos today, because, as I say, the illustrations are the delight.

Fascinating thing: Aside from Honschi’s name, the text doesn’t say a thing about being set in Japan. Honschi is busy being a young chickadee; the land is busy doing what lands do, changing with the seasons. And it’s beautiful.

The Story of Ruby Bridges

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:02:19 -0500

By Robert Coles

I actually got this from the library in order to have something special for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which shows the extent to which I’ve been unfaithful to my project here. Perhaps part of the hesitancy is that I am not 100% in love with this book. I will get into my qualms soon enough, but for now, we’ll start with what’s to love.

Books on civil rights were not seasonal fare in my school or classroom, but rather part of the school culture itself. But I wanted something for MLK day,and I’ve lost track of the few picture-book biographies of King that I knew of… This book might have also been topical a few weeks ago, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton exchanged volleys over who had done more for the Civil Rights movement? Was it King’s dream, speeches, inspirational leadership, and protest movement, or did it take a president to get it done?

As an educator, you often find yourself looking for ways to inspire students to believe in themselves and in their ability to change the world. Silly and idealistic, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I be off prepping for a standardized test, or something? Anyway, it was a pretty profound experience to sit in a classroom full of first-graders as my co-teacher read them this story. School integration is not a point on a timeline, it’s a profound ideal that’s realized in our very classroom, and in this case, the civil-rights hero was a first-grader, too. Watching my adored, innocent students absorb both the grown-up size of that girl’s gentle courage and some understanding of the racial hatred that motivated that crowd of white protestors to stand outside, shouting in outrage at the simple act of a little girl walking into a school building. Our country was different, not so long ago.

The story - the real story - is powerful and needs to be told, and George Ford’s illustrations are tender, but it’s Roert Coles’ text that I’d quibble with. Hinge the entire plot on Ruby praying for those who stood up in anger against her? (Amusingly enough, Ruby has said in an interview that she doesn’t remember doing that…) Rather than the heavy-handed religious message, I’d have preferred to see the book end by look forward to today, to how this little girl (though not a president) helped change our world forever.

George Ford’s illustration for Robert Coles’ The...

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:00:07 -0500

George Ford’s illustration for Robert Coles’ The Story of Ruby Bridges.

The hatred in this crowd - it’s painful to read about, painful to look at, painful because I hate to have to tell students, “yes, Americans did this to other Americans,” but marks such a profound contrast with Ruby’s quiet strength that the message of non-violence couldn’t find more eloquent expression.