illustrations – Page 2 – Peaceful Reader

The Night Fairy

2010

117 pages

This elementary fantasy is a wonderful easy read for everyone who loves fairies, like we do at our house. My 8-year-old Groovy Girl makes fairy water every other day (or so it seems) with markers, lots of water, and tiny jars. The result is sparkly, multi-colored water (think pinks, oranges, sea green) by putting a small (picture the mess in my upstairs bathroom sink) amount of water into the teeny, tiny jars (mini marmalade jars), then sticking a marker tip into the water, and watch the color flow into the water. Magically, the marker is not permanetely damaged through this creative process. She sets these jars on her windowsill, for fairy purposes. I haven’t figured out why or what fairies do with this water…it just is what it is.

The Night Fairy is an adventure starring Flory, a young night fairy who at three monthes old has her brand-new, beautiful wings snapped off by a blundering bat, swooping through the night. She’s left in a sweet, gray-haired human’s backyard and has to learn how to survive without flying. Luckily, this human loves animals and is constantly putting treats out for the birds. Flory befriends a squirrel, Skuggle, who is always hungry and the two learn to help each other.

Flory was no longer alone. She felt that she had made a friend, though she wasn’t quite sure what friendship was. Skuggle was not the best of friends, because he would have eaten her if he could; also, he never talked anything but food. flory wasn’t the best of friends, either. She knew that if she had been able to fly, she wouldn’t have bothered with Skuggle. She was using him. All the same, after she struck her bargain with Skuggle, she was less lonely. (32)

She finds other animals along the way; both friends and foes, even helping a hummingbird escape a spider. She uses her mind and her limited use of magic to defend herself and find out more about the world around her. This imaginative little book is filled with great adventures that many fairy-loving young humans will love. The end of the story paves the way for, hopefully, more escapades with Flory. Flory would probably love to live in my daughter’s room with all the fairy water there for her.

Laura Amy Schlitz won the 2008 John Newbery award for her book Good Masters, Sweet Ladies!

The Night Fairy website.
Planet Esme’s review.
Green Bean Teen Queen predicts it as a Newberry Dark Horse winner.

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.

Emberley/Emberley/Emberley

Can you imagine coming from such talented folk…three Emberley’s-father, daughter and granddaughter are the authors/illustrators/songwriters of There was an old monster (2009). The song is linked with the title-click and listen!!

My peaceful girl picked this out of our library stack for reading last night and she loved the rhythm of it and wanted to read it again and again. I think it is a perfect lead in for Halloween books and kids will totally love the accompanying song! There are so many different versions of There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, (Simms Taback is number one, for me, though! There was an old monster adds its own unique quirkiness!

Enjoy-it will make you smile and snap your fingers!

I attempted several times to access Ed Emberley’s website and couldn’t. I was asked to download flashplayer, did it and still couldn’t get to his site-?
I’m sure it is cool and I feel a little left out!
Peaceful Girl likes to match things up (are you surprised?) and she paired this book up with my copy of The Flim-Flam Fairies by the very funny song man Alan Katz!! This book tries to get kids to put other substances under their pillows instead of teeth!! Kids will love this book but I probably won’t be reading it for storytime!! Click here for Alan Katz’s website.
The illustrations are very, very funny-especially the last one-Click here for Michael Slack’s site.
Click here to see the cookbook I have to order for my library!!

Don't leave picture books behind, pleeease!

We are not reading as many picture books (small sob) now that J. is a member of that vast group of children who love chapter books, even though they are not really able to read them. She gets tired of reading after about 2 pages and hands the book back to me w/ a “you read the rest.” But the other night we took a small break from our chapter book to read a few picture books from the library.
We love Valeri Gorbachev’s new book, Turtle’s Penguin Day (2008) about a young turtle who falls in love with penguins after his father reads him a bedtime book about…yes, penguins! The little turtle dreams about penguins and wakes the next morning wanting to be nothing other than a penguin. He waddles to school w/ an old black tuxedo jacket on…looking very much penguin-like. I myself have parented several children who have spent their days morphing into cats, dogs, and wolves. They have insisted on drinking water from bowls on the floor and even food from plates on the floor-yum. Watching Little Turtle “become” a turtle struck a very funny chord for us. The teacher uses Little Turtle’s penguin fascination as a “teaching moment” and the whole class spends the day doing penguin-like things, like “during music time, they all danced a waddling penguin dance.” Lots of fun. J. said she liked all the details in his artwork and she helped me read it. I love all of Gorbachev’s books as much as Kevin Henkes’ books for teaching certain ideas to children. Not too didactic because of the cool animal characters. The end includes a page of interesting penguin facts. five cool stars.
Click here to find a list of Gorbachev’s other titles.

Gary Kelley's illustrations

I went to a book signing for our local artist, Gary Kelley tonight! He was discussing the illustrations he created for Doreen Rappaport’s new biography, Eleanor, Quiet no more; the life of Eleanor Roosevelt. I took my budding artist, J. and both of us loved listening to him talk about creating the art work for this beautiful project. The illustrations are amazing and unique and match so well with Ms. Rappaport’s text. I loved hearing him talk about how he researched from a variety of books, looking at old photographs to capture her face from different angles. He showed photographs he took of a house Eleanor lived in at the beginning of her marriage and how he turned those into his chalk drawings. He enjoyed researching this project because her life encompassed such great history and she grew in her ability to speak out. Kelley admitted to being a Democrat (which I knew as he was at several local Obama events last summer) and the only reason he brought this up is comparing some of his images (like Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial)-to Obama speaking there this year. Kelley is a very talented artist and yet very down-to-earth-he was wearing blue suede sneakers!

J. asked him a question during the Q/A part of the evening. I was impressed she stuck her little hand up right away and asked what he painted with and if he had a place to paint at home? A: While he does paint, the drawings were done in chalk (a special chalk-I can’t remember the exact name) and he has a studio downtown on Main St. Now we know!

I want to know who at the publishing company decided to present Rappaport’s biographies without a title on the front…this is pure genius I think! Not only does it make his drawing of Eleanor stand out so dramatically but it also makes you want to pick it up right away and start exploring-for the title, of course, but in the meantime you’ll probably fall in love with the story and the illustrations inside and march right up and buy it. I bought a copy at the signing and J. stood in line to have it autographed…she was first in line and I hope she will always remember these exciting book adventures.