Seasons Of Fun

Little more than a stone's throw from the cottage there is a dock on the river.  In the summer an otter can be seen scampering up the launch from the water and running along the grassy easement.  The dock, retaining wall, rocks and fence are items in this creature's playground.  As agile as an Olympic gymnast it moves to its own music providing entertainment for all who watch.

For months year after year this otter will arrive day after day.  In Otters Love to Play (Candlewick Press, March 22, 2016) written by Jonathan London with illustrations by Meilo So readers come to understand the lively nature of an otter family through the seasons.  They find time to play every single day.

Is that a beaver lodge?

No!

Otters have been known to occupy abandoned lodges adding an aboveground entrance. In the spring from one to six pups (babies) are born.  After the birth the mother usually chases the father away.  

Within two months the little otters are allowed to leave the den, releasing all their energy in play.  Their play helps them to survive enhancing their hunting skills.  As spring blends into summer the babies learn to swim.  Did you know they can, as adults, swim up to seven miles per hour?

Before autumn arrives their mother teaches them to find and catch their own food.  Their whiskers help them detect their next meal.  Winter weather does not deter otters from enjoying the out-of-doors.  As it does in the other seasons play assists in their ability to endure, increasing their fur's attributes.

Despite their smaller stature otters have few natural enemies.  If necessary the adult females will scare and chase away potential threats.   When spring comes the yearlings are ready to romp.

Jonathan London was written two separate texts for this book.  In a larger font an easier, more conversational narrative tells us about the otter family.  Placed usually, but not always, at the bottom of most pages in a smaller font and different style specific details deepen our knowledge.  London's word choices and sentences while informing us also convey a real sense of the energetic lifestyle of otters.  Here are some sample passages.

When otters aren't busy frolicking or hunting, they scent-mark the area near home to warn intruders away.

The otters jump into a pile of fallen leaves, and one of them pops up with a pebble!  He rolls on his back and juggles the pebble between his two front paws.

Rendered in watercolor the illustrations, beginning with the matching dust jacket and book case, convey a very real sense of play.  There is fluidity to the brush strokes and finer lines.  The image on the front of the jacket and case extends over the spine to the left and back.  The otters on the river bank are enjoying a good wrestle.  Under the water the other two swim with ease for pleasure or in pursuit of a meal.  The green used in the grasses, leaves and reeds along the shore provides the plain background color for the opening and closing endpapers.

On the title page the three otter pups frame the text in playful poses.  With the exception of four pages Meilo So has painted illustrations spanning two pages.  Each of them is a careful, realistic portrait transporting readers to the otters' world.  

She gives us panoramic views of the river and takes us inside the den for a closer perspective.  We may zoom in to watch the mother drop her pups in the river or step back to see all of them playing around a dock.  (The technique of hundreds of tiny dots swirling around the otters as they swim around the dock is fabulous.)  We are aware of the nearly constant motion in which the otters go about their days. 

Many of these illustrations are worthy of framing but one of my favorites is when So brings us close to two otters playing tug-of-war.  One is on the bank and the other is sitting on a nearby rock sticking up out of the water.  Between them is a slender stick or sturdy reed which they hold in their mouths.  The otter on the rock is using its paws to maintain its hold.  Graceful pink flowers and grasses frame the otters on the right and left.  In the background, on the opposite river bank, are rows of trees.  Meilo So has painted them with less detail to indicate their distance from the otters.  

The enthusiasm in which otters embrace their day to day existence is superbly displayed in text and images in Otters Love to Play written by Jonathan London with illustrations by Meilo So.  After having watched otters in the wild for many summers in northern Michigan, this book fills numerous gaps in my comprehension of why they do what they do.  When you know the extra details about an animal's life it enriches your experiences with them.  I highly recommend this book for your personal and professional shelves.  At the close of the title an index is included as well as a reference to the importance of the two different font sizes and styles.  It is stated:

Don't forget to look at both kinds of words: this kind and this kind.

An About Otters page gives us additional facts to ponder.

To discover more about Jonathan London and Meilo So, please follow the links attached to their names to access their websites.  At two publisher sites you can view two different interior images.  They are Candlewick Press and Walker.  This link to papertigers.org provides you with more information about Meilo So. 


Remember to check out the other titles selected by bloggers participating in the 2016 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at educator Alyson Beecher's blog, Kid Lit Frenzy.  

To water, To life Al agua, A la vida

Back in October teacher librarian extraordinaire, John Schumacher, and blogger at Watch. Connect. Read. began compiling a 2014 Best Books Lists.   To have all these selections in one spot is invaluable in directing the reading lives of your students, colleagues, friends and you.  It gives you a chance to compare what you have read and what you might need or want to read.  When the New York Public Library released their Children's Books: 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2014 earlier this week, one title in particular, already on my pile, caught my attention.

Having spent my life in a state whose motto is Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice, If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you, water, streams, rivers and lakes, is an inescapable part of my immediate world.  Water Rolls, Water Rises El agua rueda, el agua sube (Children's Book Press, an imprint of Lee & Low Books Inc., October 1, 2014) written by Pat Mora with illustrations by Meilo So and translations by Adriana Dominguez and Pat Mora is a respectful tribute in free verse, in both English and Spanish, to all forms of water.  It reminds us how this essential element connects people all across the planet.

Water rolls
onto the shore
under the sun, under the moon. 

El agua rueda
hacia la orilla
bajo el sol, bajo la luna.

As I walked along the sands of Lake Michigan this morning, even though it was dead calm, it was easy to identify with the words in this first verse.  The play of the wind on the waves along any shore anywhere is a continual constant.  If you have not witnessed these same waves crash upon the shore or climb skyward in a wild wind, it is a sight you need to see. Who has not felt the fingers of fog?  Who has not felt this water cloak days and nights?

Water shapes walls of rock as it wanders or is directed through walls made by man.  Deeply dug wells hold it.  Slight shallow streams guide it.  Loud storms release it.  It is a sculptor, a quencher of thirst, and a composer.

Water gathers in natural containers.  Water provides a home for nature's residents.  Water makes music as it moves.  Silent, speaking softly or roaring water seeks and finds our attention.

More than seventy per cent of Earth's surface is covered in water.  In all its forms the sensory experience of water is priceless.  It sustains life.


As each of the fourteen lyrical lines is read, we are fully aware of the beauty water creates.  Reading them aloud in English and Spanish (thankful my Dad gently pushed me to get a minor in Spanish); we recognize the care Pat Mora gave to her word choices.  She begins slowly with words like

rolls, rises and weaves.

She gives water as fog human qualities readily identified by readers; a hand brushing cat's fur.  If you close your eyes, listening to her use of language, visuals of wild water, quiet water, nurturing water, dancing water and water like a mirror easily come to mind.  Mora excels in her use of alliteration and onomatopoeia.  Here is another sample verse.

In the murmur of marsh wind,
water slumbers on moss,
whispers soft songs far under frog fee.

En el viento susurrante de los pantanos,
el agua duerme sobre el musgo,
murmura suaves canciones bajo patitas de ranas.


With the first two images on the front and back of the dust jacket and book case, Meilo So with sweeping lines evokes the sheer magnificence of water's natural displays.  Within a few page turns younger readers will continue to be fascinated by the variety of landscapes water inhabits.  Older readers will begin to feel as though they are being taken on a world tour as familiar sights appear in the illustrations.

This is exactly what So has done; each picture takes its inspiration from sixteen places around our globe as disclosed in the back matter.  Point of view is modified to generate reverence in the reader or to represent the significance of water in our daily lives.  For the first verse we see waves making their way toward a beach as seagulls fly overhead.  Several groups of people are engaged in activities or simply enjoying the view.  For the other verse I showcased we are closer to the water.  Geese are flying low, ducks are swimming and a frog sits on a lily pad.  Two children are poling a skiff through the reeds.

Her choice of color, its boldness or softness, is dictated by the words of Mora.  Each two-page illustration throughout, rendered in mixed media, will elicit an emotional response in the reader.  It's as if her visuals are a gift to water.

One of my favorites is of the women and children dipping their buckets into a well for water.  We are the water looking up at them as they look down.  The majority of the lower section of the pages is of splashing water with pails tipped to gather what they can.  It's a stunning depiction.


This bilingual ode of gratitude to water, Water Rolls, Water Rises, El agua rueda, el agua sube written by Pat Mora with illustrations by Meilo So and translations by Adriana Dominguez and Pat Mora is elegant and eloquent.  It most certainly will leave readers more appreciative of this invaluable resource but will also promote thoughtful discussions and research.  This is a book not to be missed.  A short author's note is included at the end.

For further information about Pat Mora and Meilo So and their other work visit their websites by following the links embedded in their names.  Pat Mora has a discussion guide which can be used in other subject areas as well as language arts.  This link will take you to a series of video interviews of Pat Mora at Reading Rockets.  Author Julie Danielson and blogger at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast highlights this title at Kirkus and her blog.

Living, Breathing Art

What makes a legend a legend?  They are an interesting branch of the folklore tree. They are a mirror of the people, place and customs from which they originate.  By definition they are part of an earlier oral tradition, handed down over the generations, based upon a combination of known and unverified historical fact.

It is true that one of the most famous painters in Chinese history is Wu Daozi.  It is true he lived during the T'ang dynasty.  Brush of the Gods (Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books) written by Lenore Look with illustrations by Meilo So imagines what his life and more importantly, his death, might have been.

Wu Daozi looked at the brush in his hand and felt the soft hairs.  They tickled.

Wu is seated with other students learning the fine and honored art of calligraphy.  There is a precise way to make the ink with pebbles, another stone and water.  Holding the brush centered with their nose, careful strokes are made to create numbers.

As the other students copy the lines made on a tortoise shell by their teacher, a monk, Wu's brush seems to have a life of its own.  His brush does not make the necessary characters. His brush makes objects, flora and fauna native to his country.

Wu can't stop painting; his creations are getting bigger and better.  Walls in buildings and surrounding his city are his preferred surface.  His hands move quickly; perhaps the images are forming with such speed in his mind they are spilling out through his brush.  Over time his skills increase even more; to the point one day the inexplicable happens.

His painting of a butterfly is so intricate, so lifelike, as he watches, it takes wing and leaves.  Thinking his mind must be playing tricks, he paints another.  It too flies up and away.

Nothing he makes with his brush stays, everything comes to life.  People no longer give coins or food for his work.  The walls are bare.  The crowds who used to come and watch have left except...for the children on the streets.

They gather and their numbers grow.  Time marches on; those children bring their children to watch Wu Daozi paint.  What comes forth from his brush not only looks real but is real.

Such unearthly skill does not go unnoticed by even those in the highest ranks of society.  Wu is commissioned to paint a masterpiece by the emperor himself.  Years and years and years pass as Wu Daozi works to complete his finest piece, a piece which will reveal the the best mystery of all.


In an author's note as part of the verso, Lenore Look informs readers of her sources for information on which to base this book.  Her command of language beautifully brings his youth, his growth as a painter and the legends to life.  It's as if the soul of Wu Daozi's work has found its way into her words.  The story is told with a rhythmic flow of narrative mixed with possible conversations.  Here are a couple of passages.

With one eye wide open, the other in a dream, he painted so much that he knew not whether the sun was up or down or whether he was standing or sitting.  

Tattered and shoeless, they formed a hedge around their friend.

Using watercolor, ink, gouache, and colored pencil Meilo So 's fine lines, delicate details and blend of colorful hues with blacks and grays take readers back in time.  Her initial illustration spread across the front and back jacket and cover portrays the marvelous magic people felt when looking at the art of Wu Daozi.  It was compelling, captivating and full of life...more than they ever knew.  It's interesting to note the color difference in the opening and closing endpapers; the first, a golden hue of morning, the second, the tranquil blue of twilight.

With the first page, a picture of Wu Daozi holding a brush staring out at the reader, we are as compelled and captivated by the work of So as those in Chinese history were by the frescoes and scrolls of Daozi.  Her pictures are fluid moving around the text creating a single impression, a stunning blend of the two.  Breathtaking two page spreads capture the brilliance of this master's work and the time period in which he lived.  One of my favorite illustrations is of Wu painting the first butterfly which flies away.  It is a beautiful example of Meilo So's adept use of varied mediums.


Brush of the Gods written by Lenore Look with illustrations by Meilo So is a stellar portrayal of an artist and his art.  It's one of those books which bridges the gap between then and now, bringing the best of one culture into many more.  It's about a little boy who allowed his heart to direct his brush leaving riches for the world to enjoy.  This title has already garnered four starred reviews.  I am hoping that even more honors will follow.


To read more about Lenore Look follow the link embedded in her name above.  Debbie Alvarez hosted a visit by Lenore Look at her school this year.  Follow a link to her blog, The Styling Librarian, and John Schumacher's blog, Watch. Connect. Read., to gain more insight about this visit.  Colby Sharp interviews Lenore Look here.  Julie Danielson, features the book at Kirkus and interviews Meilo So on her blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (and more artwork here). For a pronunciation of Meilo So's name follow this link.  For additional information about the work of Meilo So follow the link to her website embedded in her name.  If you would like to see more images from this title follow this link to the publisher site.