One Small Fowl And Feathered Friends Are Lead Astray

Our senses and sensibilities really do make the days of our lives more enjoyable while still being key to our basic survival.  At times they seem to go above and beyond the real truth when it comes to alerting us to danger.  For a moment imagine you are groping about in a basement suddenly gone dark when the power is lost.  Something brushes against the bare skin of your arm.  You yelp believing it to be a spider of gigantic proportions, only to discover when the lights come back on it was only a piece of fuzz.

The combination of our hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling and mental perceptions can take us down the path leading to the imaginary realm.  Brave Chicken Little (Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), August 7, 2014) retold and illustrated by Robert Byrd takes the familiar broadening and deepening the story line.  This story, his vision of a classic, rekindles our love of folklore and its capacity to entertain and expand our thinking.

One fine day Mrs. Chicken Licken decided to bake a cake.
But there was nothing to make it with, so she sent Chicken Little off to the market to buy honey and flour and milk.
"Do not dillydally," she said.  "Come straight home."

As life would have it, dillydallying is going to be the least of Chicken Little's worries.  An acorn falls from a tree landing squarely on his head.  That had to hurt.  The little guy harboring this new pain is certain the sky is falling.  He hurries down the road to report this news to the king.

Rushing with all due haste he first meets Henny Penny who willingly agrees to go with him.  In short order Ducky Lucky and Turkey Lurkey are coming along to offer additional assistance.  When the sky is falling the ruler of the land needs to know.

Piggy Wiggy, Rabbit Babbit and Natty Ratty, fellow friends, are sure the greater number carrying this message will give it more meaning. The total has now swelled to seven.  As they wind their way toward the palace two moles, Roly and Poly Moley, and one frog, Froggy Woggy, join their ranks.

Meeting a too cheerful and hungry Foxy Loxy, offering help and an invitation to dine at his home, the parade is lead in a different direction.  Can you picture the surprise on all their faces (and a shiver of fear) as they are introduced to Mrs. Foxy Loxy and seven little foxes eagerly waiting their next meal?  Before they can even predict what will happen next, they are locked in a dimly lit basement.

One small window high above them next to the ceiling is their only hope.  Junk, apples and foolishness multiplied boost bravery.  As to the falling sky, not another word was ever heard about it.


A cumulative tale with repeating refrains enriches the storytelling experience.  When you add in the two word rhyming names of the nineteen animal characters you will have your listeners chanting along with you over and over again as the narrative continues.  Robert Byrd's use of dialogue with narration keeps the action moving along seamlessly; the tension increasing until the sleepy resolution. Here is another sample passage.

So down the road ran Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Ducky Lucky, Turkey Lurkey, Piggy Wiggy, Rabbit Babbit, Natty Ratty, Froggy Woggy, and Roly and Poly Moley.
And whom should they meet but---Foxy Loxy.
"Hello, hello," he sang out.  "Good day and cheers! Where are you off to, my scrumptious little dears?"
"The sky is falling," said Chicken Little. "And we are going to tell the king."


The first thing you notice when you open the matching dust jacket and book case of Brave Chicken Little is the exquisite detail on the illustration spanning across the back to the front.  Every bit of flora and fauna native to this area is shown; butterflies, bees, caterpillars, dragonflies, flowers, ferns and other bugs.  On the left the six remaining friends not on the front are following the twists and turns of a path through the woods.  Watching from behind a tree with a crafty grin on his face is Foxy Loxy.

A pattern of a tiny single acorn, gold and brown, is placed on a teal background for the opening and closing endpapers.  The story opens with an illustration on the title page; the window of Chicken Little's home is featured as his mother speaks to him.  Robert Byrd's color palette and his delicate fine lines have a softness, old-style feel, to them.  Having his characters clothed in apparel reminiscent of the old English countryside contributes to the classic quality of this tale.

Byrd chooses to alter his picture sizes, extending some edge to edge on two pages or a single page.  At times his images will be loosely framed or a rectangle framed in pristine white.  Light and shadow are skillfully integrated into each illustration.  The quality of paper, a matte-finish, increases the timeless aspect of his work on this story.

One of my many favorite illustrations is of Chicken Little leading six of his friends down the road lined with stone-bordered fields.  Carrots, cabbages and heads of lettuce are laid out in rows, small white butterflies, caterpillars and worms move in and above the dirt.  Hills and trees extend into the distance, a pale blue sky filled with puffy clouds.  On the right a frog and two moles greet the group hurriedly making their way to the king.


I am confident every book shelf, classroom, library, professional and personal, will want a copy of Brave Chicken Little retold and illustrated by Robert Byrd.  Foxes, friends, a king, a cake and courage make this a new classic.  I think it's time to give new meaning to the words Chicken Little.

For further information about Robert Byrd and his books please follow the link attached to his name.  This link takes you to a portion of his site highlighting more pages from the book as a slide show.

Taken

There's something particularly unsettling about having to go somewhere you don't want to go, even when you have a choice.  When in the course of events all you imagined comes true, it's almost overwhelmingly wonderful to return home; to be among those things familiar and comforting. A house, your house, no matter the size, and the natural landscape surrounding it provide sanctuary.

Take away choice.  Take away the knowledge of where you are going.  Take away the only land you have ever known.  Africa Is My Home:  A Child of the Amistad (Candlewick Press) written by Monica Edinger with illustrations by Robert Byrd follows a nine-year-old girl captured and placed on this slave ship.  Her accounting will linger in your mind and heart.

No one comes home.
That is what they told me.
No one.

I was born in Mendeland, West Africa, one of the greenest places on earth.

At a very young age, a child is pawned by her father to work for another family in exchange for food.  Soon thereafter, she finds herself part of a human chain, tied together by iron, marching for days toward something frightening. She has never seen an ocean.

For seven harrowing weeks, she and others live below deck in darkness.  Brought to shore in the middle of the night, in silence, she and three children are purchased the following day in Cuba.  They have never seen people wear layers of clothing.  They have never seen a horse.  It must have been terrifying for her, for all of them, to comprehend all this newness.

The four children are placed on a ship with other adult males, a ship called the Amistad. Lead by a man called Cinque the captives escape from their chains to overthrow the white men in charge of the ship.  They demand the ship set sail back to Africa.

Deceived the slaves aboard the Amistad are again captured and placed in custody.  For more than eighteen months trial after trail does not settle the fate of the Africans until it finally reaches the Supreme Court of the United States.  Freedom is finally granted to all but still they cannot go home.

Surviving the cultural differences, the changes in seasons, living with more than one family and the uncertainty of your future, this girl, the other children and men waited another eight months to sail home to Africa with a group of missionaries.  By the time she is sixteen the course of her life will alter again, taking her on another ocean voyage.  Will she ever return to her beloved homeland?

In an author's note Monica Edinger addresses her years of painstaking research and the decision to write this true story as a first person fictionalized account.  There is an intimacy in her word choices, bringing readers into the strong emotional experiences of Margru.  Vivid descriptions of place and people, good and bad, transport Margru's life from the past into the present; readers will feel her presence, hear her voice.  Placed among the narrative three times are poetic pieces of her dreams; of her mother, father and the elders.  Each ends with

I dreamed of home.

Here are a couple of passages from the book.

We walked for days and days, passing people going about their lives as we had only days before: girls with calabashes full of water on their heads, women washing in rivers, men working in fields, and boys climbing trees.  Everyone and everything made me think of home.  Of my mother, my sisters and brothers, even my father.  I cried myself to sleep thinking of them. 

Our lawyers felt Kagne, Teme, and I should not be prosecuted as we had nothing to do with the rebellion, and so, on the first day of the trial, we were brought to the courtroom without the men. 
"Are they hanging Cinque and the others while we are here?" I whispered to Teme.  All three of us cried and cried.  Mr. Tappan tried to comfort us, but it was to no avail.


Rendered in ink and watercolor the illustrations of Robert Byrd give readers a genuine sense of the life of Margru beginning with the matching jacket and cover.  He features her memories and dreams of home with her voyage and the challenges and changes it wrought in her world.  The blue of ocean on the front is a solid background on the opening and closing endpapers.  Travel across the Atlantic alters this person's life more than most of us can understand.

Full color pictures accentuate the narrative, beginning with a map of Africa on the first page framed in a pattern native to the area.  The text on the opposite page is framed with the lush green landscape of Mendeland; three children walking among the bushes and trees.  At times Byrd chooses to use an illustration spreading across two pages, above or below the text.

Many of the full page visuals extend to the page edge.  Single page illustrations edged in a thin black line usually have a single element breaking that frame, giving it motion and emotion.  Throughout the book, smaller pictures are inserted for emphasis.  It is this variety in size and perspective which elevates and compliments the text.  Reproductions of primary documents act as excellent bridges between the past and present.

One of the most poignant scenes is of Margru standing alone on the deck of the ship taking her home to Africa.  The small figure looking across the water, sun shining its path on the surface, is uplifting and hopeful.  Your heart will soar, cheering at her return to her homeland.


Africa is My Home:  A Child of the Amistad written by Monica Edinger with illustrations by Robert Byrd is captivating from cover to cover.  The character of Margru, her fears, her courage and the fulfillment of her dreams, is a story that needed to be told.  I encourage you to read this title and add it to your bookshelves.  In addition to the author's note a page of selected sources is included.  Update: Monica Edinger has several posts on her blog with additional resources.  The links are here, here and here.  Follow this link to an interview of Monica Edinger at Book Q & As with Deborah Kalb.

A Founding Father That Broke The Mold

Good biographical literature not only leaves the reader with a greater appreciation for the person's life but also for the biographer.  An author's commitment to presenting the truth, spending countless years on research, is akin to being on a treasure hunt; how fortunate for readers is their willingness to share their discovered riches. Their mastery in recreating a life is evident when readers are transported back to a place, a time and into the presence of person no longer living.

One of the titles listed in the 2012 Nerdy Book Club Award Nominees, Horn Book Fanfare 2012, and Kirkus Best Children's Books of 2012 is by author/illustrator Robert Byrd.  Robert Byrd's book, Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, brings depth and width to this man's life.  Within forty pages we learn how truly accomplished Benjamin Franklin was then and how those achievements are a part of our everyday lives now. 

A boy about ten years old was swimming in a pond in early colonial Massachusetts.  He was a strong swimmer, and after a while he floated on his back, looking up at the sky.

This is how readers are introduced to Benjamin Franklin.  We discover on this day he used kite flying(no storm clouds were present) to pull him across the water as his friends cheered from the shore. We discover he came from poor beginnings and remained a champion for the working class his entire life.  We discover no American was more well known in the world than he was during his lifetime.

Throughout the remainder of the book, as is this Introduction, two pages are devoted to a particular aspect of Franklin's life. Those sections are titled:

• Ben's Beginnings
• School Days
• Apprentice Printer, Publisher, and Runaway
• Philadelphia
• B. Franklin Printer
• Poor Richard Saunders
• Man Is A Social Being
• The Scientific Amusements
• The Natural Philosopher
• Coaxing Sparks From The Sky
• The Wonderful Effects Of Points
• Franklin On The Frontier
• No Taxation Without Representation
• Independence And War
• The American In Paris
• Franklin And The Constitution and
• Liberty And Justice For All

We see the city of Boston into which Benjamin Franklin was born, the last of fourteen children, on January 17, 1706 vividly described as a hub of activity.  If you're wondering why his family was so large, it's because all the members were needed to work and...only half the children born during this time period survived.

We read of Ben's aptitude for learning noticed by his parents early in his life but by the age of ten he was working in his father's soap and candle shop.  We read of his father sending him as an apprentice to his older brother, James, a printer, to curb his yearning for a life at sea.  We read it was here his love of books, writing and reading flourished much to the chagrin of his brother; they battled constantly.

We understand why Ben wrote articles for his brother's paper posing as a woman, Silence Dogood, which became very popular.  We understand when his ruse was discovered he had to run away, making his new home in Philadelphia.  We find it hard to, but we do understand on his first day there he walked by Deborah Read, his future wife, though neither of them had any knowledge of the other.  

We learn Philadelphia would remain Benjamin Franklin's home until his death at the age of eighty-four.  We learn of his struggle to build a thriving printing business; going to England to obtain a printing press and being asked to stay to open a swimming school.  We learn how he was able to make a fortune printing his Almanack for twenty-five years.  

We are amazed by the many firsts attached to the name of Franklin; key founder of the first hospital in America, introduced home delivery of mail for a penny a letter, the scientific method, what we know as the Franklin Stove, and the odometer.  We are amazed he practiced cold air baths sitting naked in a cold room reading to maintain his health.  We are amazed his discovery that every positive electrical charge has a matching negative charge is the foundation of electrical science today.  

We admire his skills as a negotiator with the Native Americans, French and English before, during and after the Revolution earning him respect.  We admire his assistance in writing the Declaration of Independence but also being the only founding father to sign that, the peace treaty with England and the Constitution.  We admire despite being confined to his bed during the last months of his life, Benjamin Franklin wrote many letters; the last one to...Thomas Jefferson. 

Robert Byrd writes with the heart of a storyteller weaving his discoveries of Benjamin Franklin's life into a narrative that flows like fiction.  Quotes from Franklin's work appear frequently within the body of the text or as insets within a page. His skill at including exactly what his intended audience may want or need to know about the man is flawless.  As an example, he begins the two page discussion about Franklin's interest in electricity with a general, two-paragraph overview of lightning. He concludes the second paragraph saying:

Even in Franklin's day, religious figures in America and Europe ranted that the ravages of lightning were punishment from God for sinful behavior.  But it was at this time that curious men were just beginning to understand the fundamentals of electricity.  Benjamin Franklin was one of these curious men.


Rendered in ink-line, watercolor and colored ink all the illustrations reach out and pull you into the narrative beginning with the eye-catching jacket and cover.  The back pictures a harbor scene in the same oval shape found on the front.  Above the scene is one of Benjamin Franklin's quotes,

"If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth reading,
Or do things worth the writing."

Open and closing endpapers picture lines of famous sayings in an old style typeface.  Each of the two-page sections features a large painting placed in varied positions, sometimes crossing the gutter.  Depending on the topic, smaller visuals will be placed to complete the composition maintaining the two-column layout.  All of the illustrations are labeled with captions or explanations.

A creme colored background highlights all the text and images reminiscent of old newsprint.  Byrd elected to use a brightly, colored realistic palette conveying a keen sense of time, place and people.
Tiny, exquisite details add to the excellence.


Electric Ben:  The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin written and illustrated by Robert Byrd is an unforgettable, entertaining and informative discourse on a life well-lived.  You may think you know Ben Franklin but when you finish this book you'll realize there was so much more to this remarkable man.  Thank you Robert Byrd for a title that rises to the top.

At the book's end is an author's note about Robert Byrd's writing and illustrating of this title, a timeline and bibliography.  If you follow the link to Byrd's website embedded in his name above he has included seven two-page spreads (beautiful)  from the book as well as the front and back jacket and cover.