Find of the Week: The Book of Modern Airplanes

Our local Goodwill Thrift Store continues to yield an astonishing number of good kid's books. This week, this sixty year old son of a WWII seaman discovered Harold H. Booth's Book of Modern Airplanes. Published in 1940, this little treasure features hand-tinted pictures of each of the fighter planes in use by the U.S., France, Britain, AND Germany in that year. And in great condition; even the unvarnished paper hardcover is clean and intact. My next-door-neighbor grandsons and I will enjoy this one.

Story of Rosy Dock

No, Rosy Dock is not someone you should know; apparently it's a pest, a non-native species of flower introduced more than a hundred years ago into Australia, where it's exuberance is threatening native species. (Can you say "scotsbroom" and "evergreen blackberries"?)
As an environmental message book, Jeannie Baker's prose is awkward at best; but the book is worth reading for the illustrations-amazing collage that draws you in to take a closer look at a beautiful, but troubled land.
Greenwillow B.ooks, 1995

Matthew's Dragon

Forgettable.
I'm having trouble figuring out how the labored prose of this picture book could come from the same gifted mind that gave us the award-winning The Dark is Rising fantasy series.
Susan Cooper, illustrated by Jos. A. Smith. 1991

The Midnight Horse

So how can you put down a book that begins..."It was raining bullfrogs." You can't. And before long you meet a villain with "eyes as wet and baggy as live oysters!"
Does anyone write melodrama and tall tales better than Sid Fleischman? I doubt it. Winner of the Newbery Medal for The Whipping Boy, Sid and his son Paul are the only father/son pair to each win the coveted award.
Peter Sis's illustrations lend an appropriately eerie tone to The Midnight Horse.
(Note: The concluding chapter is inaptly titled "Black Magic". 84 pages. 1990.

NOW will you read to your kids 20 minutes?

"Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."
C. S. Lewis (who else?) Quoted in Innocence and Experience: Essays and Conversations on Children's Literature, p. 437.

The Whole Story

What would it take to get kids to read the children's classics? This series might do it. Printed on glossy paper with durable stitched bindings, The Whole Story series should grab and hold the attention of many who would otherwise pass on these books. Each includes the unabridged text, "with striking illustrations and extended captions that provide background information modern readers could otherwise access only through a broad range of supplemental research." The series includes Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle Book, Around the World in Eighty Days, and others. Some titles are still in print; all are worth watching for and paying good money for, used.

Alejandro's Gift

Two things about what at first glance might appear to be just another run-of-the-mill picture book: Having spent the first fifteen years of my adult life in the Arizona desert, I am stunned by the authenticity of Sylvia Long's illustrations. She did extensive research for this book, and it shows-right down to the curly "hairs" on the agave.
The other amazing (and encouraging) thing about this book is that author Richard Albert wrote it for his great-grandchildren when he was 83 years old!
Smithsonian says Alejandro's Gift is "a book enthralling beyond words." That's a little much... but just a little!
Alejandro's Gift keeps on giving.

The Comeback Dog

Do you still have some of your old Weekly Reader Book Club titles? I do, and wish I had kept them all. How many tens of millions of kids do you suppose have fed their growing appetite for reading with these prolific, durable books? With some happy exceptions, most are not great literature, but many are still good stories, and they are widely available at thrift stores.

Jane Resh Thomas's The Comeback Dog is a good case in point: a short, very serviceable boy and dog story, published in 1981. Virtues of thrift, responsibility and quality workmanship are affirmed without preaching. And where else these days is a kid going to hear the phrase "going like sixty!"?

The Afternoon Treehouse

This is, very simply, a fabulous picture book. Multiple award-winning illustrator Robert Ingpen has given us a beautiful, detailed look at a mysterious treehouse. (And left the door open for a sequel?) This "Notable Australian Children's Book" is a treat for guys (and girls?) of all ages, and has earned a spot on our "100 Best Picture Books of all Time" list. Lothian Books, 1996.

Bored-Nothing To Do!

One of Peter Spier's fifty picture books, this is a rollicking ride through a "boring" day in the life of two brothers. The fact that none of the characters are named is a plus, as every parent and child will see themselves in the story. Known for wordless books--his Noah's Ark deservedly won the Caldecott Medal thirty years ago--this book would probably have been stronger without the spare, sometimes awkward text. The title alone is enough words, and the message is priceless.

No child should miss Peter Spier.