Nonsense!

The Curious Story of Edward Gorey

Versify 

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

(pub. 3.24.2020) 

 40 pages

A True Tale with

A Cherry On Top   

A uthor: Lori Mortensen
       and illustrator: Chloe Bristol

C haracter:  Edward Gorey

O verview:

 

"Known for, among other things, wearing a large fur coat wherever he went, storyteller Edward Gorey was respected for both his brilliance and his eccentricity. As a child, he taught himself to read and skipped several grades before landing at Harvard (after a brief stint in the army). Then he built a name for himself as a popular book illustrator. After that, he went on to publish well over one hundred of his own books, stories that mingled sweetness and innocence, danger and darkness, all mixed with his own brand of silliness"

T antalizing taste:

"When publishers turned him down, Edward launched his own company, Fantod Press.

No one had ever seen books like Edward's before.

He wrote strange stories with curious titles like 

    The Unstrung  Harp,

    The Abandoned Sock,

    The Wuggly Ump,

    The Galoshes of Remorse,

    and The Gashlycrumb Tinies ...

Instead of drawing colorful, happy-go-lucky pictures, Edward used pen and ink to draw seas of sketchy black lines, as if the stories were set in a time and place long ago."

And something more:  The Author's Note explains that as a  child prodigy, Edward "began drawing by the age of one and a half and taught himself to read by the age of three. Since his books have a dark side, people think he must have had a tragic childhood too. But Gorey admitted his was as happy as anyone's and included playing neighborhood games of kick the can and Monopoly, going to the movies, and reading all kinds of books from comics to horror. His favorites included The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, books by A.A. Milne, and Agatha Christie mysteries."

Away With Words

The Daring Story
of Isabella Bird

Peachtree Publishers
(pub. 3.1.2019) 
36 pages

A True Tale with
A Cherry On Top   

A uthor: Lori Mortensen
 and illustrator: Kristy Caldwell 
 
C haracter: Isabella Bird

O verview from the jacket flap: 

     "Isabella Bird ... had to explore.
     That was easier said than done in nineteenth-century England.  But somehow Isabella persisted, and with each journey, she breathed in new ways to see and describe everything around her.
     Question by question, word by word, Isabella bloomed.
     First, out in the English countryside.
     Then, off to America and Canada.
     And eventually, around the world, to Africa, Asia, Australia, and more.
     Always more - more places, more questions, more words - and all those experiences became books, in which she described the land she traveled, the people she met, and the dangers she experienced, to a fascinated audience who could only dream of such travels and adventures.
     And finally, Isabella returned home to England, where she became the first female member of the Royal Geographic Society an was presented to Queen Victoria.
     But to wild-vine Isabella, the world was home."
    

T antalizing taste:  

     "Each voyage tested her mettle. Each place revealed something new.
     In the Sandwich Islands, Isabella traded her skirt for bloomerlike full Turkish trousers and clambered up Kilauea, a towering, lava-spewing volcano. Up until then, she'd always worn a skirt and ridden sidesaddle - the ladylike way to ride. But concessions had to be made to climb a volcano."

And something more: The Author's Note in AWAY WITH WORDS explained that "Isabella Bird grew up during the Victorian Age. Although her parents taught her French, literature, history, art, scriptures, Latin, and botany at home, society offered little opportunity for her or any other women of the era. The longer Isabella remained at home, the more depressed she became and the worse her symptoms grew. Once she sailed away from England, her spirit soared."

Come See the Earth Turn

The Story of Leon Foucault
 
This post is part of Nonfiction Monday
hosted today by L.L. Owens
 

Tricycle Press (pub. 9.14.10)
 32 pages  
 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: LORI MORTENSEN

              and Illustrator: RAUL ALLEN

C haracter: Leon Foucault, 

    a French scientist in the 1800s

O verview from book flap:

     "A sickly child, a poor student, and a medical school dropout, Leon Foucault seemed an unlikely candidate for greatness.  But his ingenious experiment - simple, beautiful, and stunningly original - changed how we see the world.

     Scientists knew that the earth turned on its axis.  But how could they prove it?  Countless experiments had been tried ... and had failed.  Then... Leon Foucault ... offered the proof everyone had been looking for.

     Discover the improbably story of the man behind the famous Foucault's Pendulum."

T antalizing taste: 
      "Even though Leon's slowpoke ways got him in trouble at school, working slowly and precisely at home allowed him to make things exactly the way he wanted them to be.

     Soon, family and friends marveled over the quiet boy's clever inventions and magnificent contraptions."

   

and something more:   In our fast-paced era, the terrific picture book biography, Come See the Earth Turn, honors a person, Leon Foucault, who took his time and, consequently, proved that the earth turned. And, for a child who also feels he or she is "a tortoise among jackrabbits" at school, Leon Foucault's success will be cheered. As a scientist, he succeeded where others with degrees in physics and mathematics had failed.
     I enjoyed reading that the author, Lori Mortensen, as a girl, was surrounded by experiments conducted by her father, a research scientist. I too have chemist parents who were often devising solutions and inventions around our house.  Hurrah for innovators!