Girl Power – Peaceful Reader

Girl Power picture books

Groovy Girl read all these picture books the first two days we had the bag home from the library. Me, well, it has taken me over two weeks to read all of them and I had to renew them once in order to write about a few of them.

1. The Queen of France by Tim Wadham, ill. by Kady Macdonald Denton (2011); Rose wakes up and “feels royal” so she plays dress up and goes to look for her mother dressed regally. Using her imagination her parents play along as Rose changes from the queen to Rose and back again. A seemingly simple tale of love and acceptance, Rose demonstrates one can be a girl with many sides. Denton draws Rose with a Ramona-like haircut in amazing watercolor illustrations. Click here for an interview with Tim Wadham. Hooray for first time author Wadham, a fellow librarian, with this picture book.

2. Not All Princesses Dress In Pink by the mother/daughter writers Jane Yolen & Heidi E.Y. Stemple; ill. by Anne-Sophie Languestin (2010); Similar message in this one with quirky digital illustrations. Each page shares how princesses can play soccer, baseball, wrestle with a dog, dance in the rain, break their nails while planting a garden of pumpkins (of course), and my favorite, escape a stony tower using all their cool girl power, using a ladder like monkey bars. I like Denton’s illustrations better but the message of this one is equally strong: whatever you choose to be you can still wear your sparkly crown!

Happy Sunday and wear your crown with pride!

Fanny would make a great gift!

Fanny and Annabelle
by Holly Hobbie
(2009)

We loved Fanny after our friend, V introduced us to the book awhile back. With all the hoopla on expensive and more-is-better, Fanny was like a breath of fresh air. This next one makes us love Holly Hobbie even more as she makes Fanny a writer girl, willing to tell her own story. The story unfolds:

Saturday was drizzly and dreary, so Fanny decided it was an excellent day to make her very own picture book.

At the top of the first page she wrote Annabelle’s Adventure. Annabelle was Fanny’s favorite doll. Fanny had made her, after all. She didn’t know what the adventure was yet. She only knew Annabelle was going to have one.

“Here goes,” she said.

The illustrations are a mix of Holly Hobbie’s and Fanny’s as they discover an adventure just waiting around the corner from Ted’s Deli and like most, very unexpected. This has just enough moral dilemna without being too didactic~just a pinch of honesty thrown in to the mix as Fanny finds an envelope with money in it on the sidewalk and must debate just what to do with her find. Fanny is a well-drawn and likeable character and her mother is filled with soft, good sense advice.
We enjoy Fancy Nancy’s escapades but Fanny just seems more our style. Thank you Holly Hobbie! Groovy Girl and I highly recommended both books for a young lady on your gift list at this special time of year.

This copy is from our very own public library.
Great review by Energizer Bunny’s Mommy.
Read my review of sorts of Fanny.

Me and the Pumpkin Queen

by Marlane Kennedy

(2007)

181 pages

What a perfect chapter book for any season but especially fall and spring when pumpkins would be a focal point. Mildred’s dream is to grow the perfect giant pumpkin to win the Pumpkin Show. She’s been infatuated with this idea ever since her mama passed and her daddy has regaled her with stories of how much she loved walking past the giant pumpkins at the harvest festival.

What makes this a perfect chapter book for elementary students?

1. Easy characters: 11-year-old Mildred, her father, the veterinarian; her Aunt Arlene, a bit bossy but loves Mildred; her best friend, Jacob;and Grover Fernhart, the gruff neighbor who relctantly tells Mildred how to grow a giant pumpkin. At one point, Mildred is forced to take a trip to visit other relatives and meets her cousin, Amanda. Amanda is described as girly but she turns out to have some surprises up her sleeve, making her a perfect companion for Mildred.

2. Grief plays a small role in this story. Mildred is not torn up with grief, she loves her father and their life. She talks to her mother and wishes she were still around but Mildred is happy. She does show frustration as her attempts to grow a giant pumpkin fail but she continues to try. She doesn’t give up.

3. Growing up/maturing is talked about as Aunt Arlene takes Mildred shopping and buys several new bras for her. It is touched on just briefly but not in great detail.

The opening:

I don’t think I’m abnormally obsessive. I mean, Daddy hasn’t taken me to the doctor or anything to find out for sure, so I prefer to describe myself as focused. A lot of kids my age are focused. Like Arnie Bradford. He is focused on basketball. Every time we drive past his house on our way to town, he is his driveway shooting baskets. Even in the middle of winter. Then there is Gloria Mathis. She is all the time blathering about this teenage actor she is in love with. She cuts his picture out of magazines and plasters them all over her school notebooks. But truth be told they are focused on the usual kinds of things that kids all over the place are focused on. Like there are probably hundreds of thousands of fifth graders into basketball and popular actors. It just so happens that my thoughts are consumed with something out of the ordinary. Daddy isn’t worried about me at all. Aunt Arlene sure is. (1-2)

It has an easy-going rhythm and the chapters are short, making it a quick read-aloud. Howard Dill’s Giant Pumpkin Seeds are just what Grover recommends to Mildred and they really exist. Students could have a great time researching and growing their own. Mildred, playing on the computer at her father’s office, is on bigpumpkins.com-which also really exists although you have to become a member to explore. Find author information here at Marlane’s website.
Book Trailers for Readers has a cute video about this book.

My Rating:

(how do we like the rating system my techy son created for me?)

Restoring Harmony

by Joelle Anthony

(2010)

Never has a book made me want to pull up my American roots and transplant myself in Canada. Restoring Harmony did! Anthony, a Canadian, has done an amazing job of highlighting the U.S.’s decline against the more agrarian and successful Canadian landscape. This is a dystopian novel for a middle grade audience and a glimpse into a future that I can imagine much more readily than the worlds created in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games or Michael Grant’s Gone series, both more shocking and scary societys.

Synopsis:

Molly McClure lives with her family on a secluded Canadian island where they grow their own food, rely on solar panels for energy, and horse-drawn wagons and boats for transportation. It’s a simple life with a happy family where Molly begins her days playing fiddle on the front porch. Through a cyberspeak conversation (skype-like) Molly’s mom, who happens to be pregnant, has reasons to believe her own mother may have died. Molly’s dad and siblings hold a meeting in the barn and elect her to be the one to travel to Oregon and bring her grandfather back to the safety of the island. Along her travels she meets a cast of very interesting and likable characters, including a handsome ruffian nicknamed Spill.

My thoughts:

Reading the inside jacket cover of this book inticed me so much I read it within days of opening the envelope it came in. I loved how the title and the cover illustration matched so well. I was drawn to Molly’s character and the way she handles her adventurous trip to the states after the Collapse of 2031. I love having a book in my hand that keeps me reading and commenting (out loud) as I progress. While the U.S. of 2041 is not in great shape (I loved how train travel was slow and erratic but really the only means to get anywhere) it still has vestiges of community. It shows, without being overly didactic, how important simple skills might be: like tending your own garden.

Molly’s ability to adapt, improvise and think made her a true heroine of the future and in this way she did remind me of the great Katniss (The Hunger Games). I loved how it dealt with real problems of today-oil is gone, the infrastructure is crumbling and big cities are in greater trouble than small communities. Even though there are easy solutions within the story structure I think Anthony raises very real issues born from our own self-centered, enviormentally -abusive ways. Our dependence on crude oil will eventually get the better of us. I hope Anthony has a sequel in the works so I can read more about Molly and her extended family.

Rating:
5/5 stars
highly recommended
for middle grade and above

Other reviews to enjoy:
Jen of Devourer of Books
S. Krishna’s Books
Tina’sBookReviews
Jessica at Shut Up! I’m reading
***I won this book in a giveaway hosted by Joelle Anthony at The Debutante Ball. Thank you, Joelle, for personally signing and sending my copy! I’m glad to have my own copy because I think I’ll reread this one, even though I’m not a rereader.

My Life in Pink and Green by Lisa Greenwald

This book resonates with the idea that young people will be the ones to change the world!!

Lucy, a twelve-year-old, helps out at the family pharmacy. Her mother and grandmother are constantly at each other over bills and whether or not the pharmacy and their family home are going to survive. Lucy’s mom loves causes and the grandmother loves the pharmacy but neither one can see anyway to save it. Lucy, on the other hand, is brimming with fabulous ideas. She knows her products and one afternoon she helps an older student with a really bad hair plan gone wrong. Soon others are coming to Lucy for advise and beauty tips. Through an afterschool Earth Club she locates a Going Green Grant from the mayor. All she has to do is figure out a way to tweak the pharmacy’s business to fit it into a green plan. Lucy’s older sister, Claudia, a first-year college student at Northwestern, helps her fill out the grant information. This is such a great idea for a story with so many important themes running through (green businesses, eco-friendly products, as well as what can happen when bills are a struggle, girl power) to make the book timely and relevant. Lucy’s friend Sunny is a great addition as a multi-cultural character who suffers from her very first boy crush-Lucy gives her wonderful advise here as well. Lucy is all about being yourself and she passes this message out very well.

That said it wasn’t my favorite read so far this year. I loved Lucy-she was a great character but her mom and grandmother fell short for me. They were slightly wooden and spent way, way too much time in the back room of the pharmacy. There were also the little inconsistencies like when I’m broke I can’t go out for pizza (they do) and even though they are broke, Claudia, the older sister, heads to a third-world country to help out on a Spring Break trip. Usually college trips are only partially funded by the university and it seemed an odd choice because of their financial crisis. It would have made more sense for me if they would have just made mention that Claudia wanted to come home to help but couldn’t because of flight prices or homework. It was far-reaching for me to keep hearing allusions to expensive things when in the next chapter their power goes out because the bill hasn’t been paid.

My thoughts are that a younger audience is not going to pay any attention to that-they are going to see Lucy as an energetic, smart character, with great life tips and not worry about these minute inconsistencies. Even though I saw this listed as a YA title on Titlewave and in my local library I really think a younger girl audience would read it.

Highly Recommended

Middle Grade Fiction

4/5 peaceful stars

YA Books Central-good review-a 10-year-olds review!!!

Laura Mercier’s website-Lucy idolizes her and hopes to be as successful as her one day!!

This one I picked up at the public library, counting for J. Kaye’s

2010 Support Your Local Library Challenge