What Miss Mitchell Saw

Beach Lane Books
(Simon & Schuster)

(pub. 9.3.2019) 
40 pages

A True Tale with

A Cherry On Top   

A uthor: Hayley Barrett
     and illustrator: 
             Diana Sudyka

 
C haracter: Maria Mitchell

O verview: 
     "Every evening, year by year, Miss Mitchell stood on her rooftop with her telescope and swept the sky.
       And then one night she saw something no one had ever seen before..."

T antalizing taste: 
     "She made fast friends with stars that shone as if punched into the black with a whalebone needle.
      She knew the stars by name. POLARIS    RIGEL    SPICA
      She observed planets that glowed as steadily as whale oil lamps.
      She knew the plants by name.  MERCURY    VENUS    SATURN
      She marveled at the celestial phenomena that arched overhead like a whale's sparkling splash. 
      She knew the phenomena by name too. ECLIPSE    AURORA BOREALIS      METEOR "
     
And something more: In A Note from the Author, Hayley Barrett says "I live in Massachusetts, so I've been able to visit Nantucket, Maria Mitchell's island birthplace. Wild roses still scent the breeze, the dunes are still dappled with gulls, and ... the Mitchell House ... still feels like a  happy home. The house is a museum now... Every August 1, in celebration of Maria Mitchell's birthday, her royal medal [from the king of Denmark for the discovery of a new comet with a telescope] is put on display there for all to admire."
    And a good activity for these nights -- stargazing!

Our House is on Fire

Greta Thunberg's Call
to Save the Planet

Beach Lane Books
(Simon & Schuster)
(pub. 9.24.2019) 
40 pages

A True Tale with

A Cherry On Top   

A uthor and illustrator:  Jeanette Winter

 
C haracter: Greta Thunberg

O verview: 

"Our climate is changing.

Our planet is warming.

Will we do something to stop it before it's too late?

One brave girl is demanding this - and she is inspiring the world."

T antalizing taste: 
     "Greta is a quiet girl who led a quiet life in the city of Stockholm. Her dog Roxy was her friend.
     'All my life I've been invisible...
     ... the invisible girl in the back who doesn't say anything.'
     In school she felt alone.
   
     Then one day Greta's teacher talked to the class about the climate, about how our planet is getting warmer, about how the polar ice is melting, about how animals' lives are threatened.
    And ours, too.
    That's when Greta's life changed.
    She read for hours and watched film after film about our warming world ...
    Greta became sad thinking about the climate all the time.
    She barely ate or spoke.
    
    'These pictures are stuck in my mind.'
    
    The sad days went on for a long time, each day more unhappy than the next.    
    There might not be a world to live in when she grows up.  
    What use is school without a future?
    What can I do, she wondered.

    Greta decided to go on strike from school - for the climate...

     The quiet girl was invited to speak to important people at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was necessary to speak.

     'I don't want you to be hopeful.
     I want you to panic.
     I want you to feel the fear I feel every day ...
     I want you to act as if the house was on fire.
     Because it is.'"
     

And something more: The back matter explains that "Greta Thunberg was fifteen years old when she first skipped school one Friday to strike for climate change in front of the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm. Her lone call to action on August 20, 2018, sparked a children's movement that led to Friday school strikes in many countries and culminated in a worldwide Friday march on March 15, 2019." 

    The author and illustrator Jeanette Winters writes: "When I heard her speeches, I felt Greta was speaking for me. And I'm eighty years old."

Just Like Rube Goldberg

The Incredible True Story
of the Man
Behind the Machines

Beach Lane Books
(Simon and Schuster)
(pub. 3.12.2019) 
48 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor:  Sarah Aronson

 and illustrator: Robert Neubecker
 
C haracter: Rube Goldberg

O verview: 
     "Rube Goldberg was a real cartoonist who got really, really, really famous by inventing a WHOLE lot of crazy, brilliant, impractical, funny stuff.   

     None of which ever got made. 

     Does that make any sense? It will after you read this book." 

T antalizing taste: 
     "Rube got a job as a cartoonist at a big-time paper: the New York Evening Mail. 
     He had made it!  
     Right off the bat, Rube became a celebrity. Readers couldn't wait to see what he had to say about all kinds of things.
     Like sports.
     And politics.
     And the silliness of everyday life.
     But maybe more than anything else, everyone loved reading Rube's alter ego, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts.
     The eccentric professor invented one intricate machine after another, and none of them were straightforward. In fact, they were the opposite of straightforward and often disregarded the law of physics 
     Although this was the age when new machines were being invented to make life easier, Rube's screwball contraptions purposefully solved problems in the most surreal and ridiculous ways."

And something more: The back flap of this wonderfully fun and creative book (from the way it's written to the way it's illustrated) explains that "Sarah Aronson became a writer the complicated way! After (A) working for an exercise guru, (B) becoming a physical therapist, and (C) having two kids, running a school, and selling books, she (D) took a dare and dove headfirst into writing all kinds of books for kids and teens." 

Sarah kindly shared with me her experiences writing this book:

 "Writing Just Like Rube Goldberg was just like a Rube Goldberg machine! There were many false starts. There were twists and turns--especially with diving back into research. There were edits and more edits. Writing Just Like Rube Goldberg made me pay attention--to the world. To irony. To what he had to say. I found a bit of myself in the story--Just like Rube, my dream has also been challenged. I have overcome all kinds of no's. I believe in the power of play.

Ever since I saw my first contraption, (the breakfast machine in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), I have loved Rube Goldberg machines. They spark my imagination like nothing else! And now I love watching what kids can do creatively when they are allowed to get complicated!"

Quoting Rube Goldberg from the back of the book: "You have to have courage to be a creator." 

The World Is Not a Rectangle

A Portrait of
Architect Zaha Hadid

Beach Lane Books
(Simon and Schuster)

(pub. 8.22.2017)
56 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor and illustrator: Jeanette Winter

C haracter: Zaha Hadid

O verview from the jacket flap: 

     "A young girl in Iraq saw the wild beauty of the rivers and marshes and dunes and ancient ruins in her country and dreamed of designing wild and beautiful cities of her own.
     Her name was Zaha Hadid.
     When she grew up, she became one of the most irreverent, controversial, and celebrated architects in the world.
     This is her story."

T antalizing taste: 
      

     "Zaha's designs don't look like other designs.
      Her buildings swoosh and zoom and flow and fly.
     'The world is not a rectangle.'
     No one wants to build her unusual designs. They say they can't be built, but Zaha knows they can.
     So she enters competition after competition, hoping to win, hoping someone will be brave enough to build them.
     ...  Hadid means iron in Arabic, and Zaha is strong as iron.  She keeps on working - one plan after another.
    'I made a conscious decision not to stop.' 
     Zaha remembers the grasses in the marshes swaying and sees tall buildings dancing like grass...
     Zaha remembers the wind in the dunes and feels it blowing over and around and through her desert building"

 

and something more: Jeannette Winter's Author's Note explains her inspiration for creating this wonderful book, The World Is Not A Rectangle: "When I first saw photos of Zaha Hadid's architectural designs in 2010, the buildings seemed to fly. My spirit also took flight - to a place in my imagination that only landscape had taken me before. I had to find out more about her." And, of course, I wanted to learn more also after reading her book. This article from The Guardian shows and describes ten of her wildly creative designs that lifted Jeannette Winter's spirit.

The Tree Lady

The True Story of How
One Tree-Loving Woman
Changed A City Forever

This post joins other
Nonfiction Monday
kidlit blogs hosted today
by Apples With Many Seeds

and joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Beach Lane Books
(pub. 9.17.2013) 32  pages 

A True Tale with 
A Cherry On Top

A uthor: H. Joseph Hopkins
           and Illustrator: Jill McElmurry

    

C haracter:  Kate Sessions

O verview from the jacket flap: 

       "Meet Kate Sessions, a young woman with a grand passion for trees. She has guts. She has vigor. And she has a vision - a green, leafy vision that will one day transform a city."

       "Kate received many honors during her lifetime, but the one that pleased her most was being called the Mother of Balboa Park" in San Diego. [Author's Note]

T antalizing taste: 

"Kate felt the trees were her friends. She loved the way they reached toward the sky and how their branches stretched wide to catch the light. Trees seemed to Kate like giant umbrellas that sheltered her and the animals, birds, and plants that lived in the forest.

Not everyone feels at home in the woods.

But Kate did."

and something more: I was drawn to this picture book biography because I have many fond memories of visiting Balboa Park in San Diego, and I can't imagine it without its wonderful trees. Not only was Kate Sessions a true scientist (the first woman to graduate from the University of California with a degree in science), but a forward thinker. As the Author's Note of The Tree Lady explains: "In 1892 Kate made a deal with the city leaders to use land in City Park [a dry, dusty barren place] for a plant nursery. In exchange, she promised to plant one hundred trees in the park every year and give the city three hundred more trees for planting in other places."  I like that the book describes her as "a tree hunter. She wrote letters to gardeners all over the world and asked them to send her seeds that could grow in a desert." Thank goodness Kate was such a good tree hunter and tree advocate.

Biblioburro

A True Story from Columbia
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday
hosted today by Apples With Many Seeds

 

Beach Lane Books (Simon & Schuster) 

(pub. 6.8.2010)

32 pages
 
A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor and illustrator: JEANETTE WINTER

C haracter: Luis Soriana who lives in La Gloria, Columbia

 
O verview from book flap: 

      "Join Luis and his trusty burros, Alfa and Beto, as they travel far and wide to bring treasured books to eager children in the remote villages of rural Columbia.

     Based on the inspiring life of a real man and his devoted burro team, here is a book to remind us of the immense power stories have to connect us all."

T antalizing taste:
      "And far away in the hills, candles and lanterns burn as the children read borrowed books deep into their night, too."

and something more:   Jeanette Winter's picture book biography, Biblioburro, with her characteristically simple (in the best sense) text and colorful illustrations, truly captures the power of books to connect to people.  A New York Times article (Oct 19, 2008), written by Simon Romero states that the Biblioburro "idea came to [Luis Soriana] after he witnessed as a young teacher the transformative power of reading among his pupils, who were born into conflict even more intense than when he was a child."      
     The article concludes with the anecdote of an 18 year old young woman who "leafed through a copy of  'Margarita,' the classic book of poetry by Rubén Darío of Nicaragua, and began to read aloud. 

She went beyond where the heavens are

and to the moon said, au revoir.

How naughty to have flown so far

without the permission of Papa.

'That is so beautiful, Maestro,” [the young woman] said to the teacher. 'When are you coming back?'"