Eastman, P.D. Are You
My Mother? 1960. Random House, 1993.
A small baby bird gets lost after
falling out of his nest, and he has to look for his mother. Once he finds quite
a lot of things which are not his
mother (including a dog, a cow, and a gigantic Snorting Power Shovel), he gets
back home in time for a warm hug from Mom and a yummy worm dinner.
This is one of the Beginner Books
series, so if your child is learning to read, this would be a good bet. P.D.
Eastman’s pictures are spectacular, though, so this would be a great choice to
read aloud to toddlers, as would his other books.
Bond, Michael. A Bear
Called Paddington. 1958. HarperCollins, 2014.
This is the first of the Paddington
series; each of the chapters-work-as-short-stories variety like P.L. Travers’
Mary Poppins books. Paddington is a small bear adopted into a rather bland
London family, and he gets usually himself into a variety of strange and sticky
situations. Literally sticky situations, since he loves marmalade. However,
things always work out in the end.
I would guess this is written for
seven-year-olds just starting to read “big chapter books” on their own. They
work well at introducing that indescribable quirky British sense of humor,
which is their chief merit. If anthropomorphized animals are not a family’s cup
of tea, then they should skip these books.
Barrett, Judi. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Illustrated
by Ron Barrett.1978. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1982.
A grandfather tells his
grandchildren a tall tale about the small town of Chewandswallow, which had no
grocery stores, because the town got all its food from the sky, because they
didn’t have normal weather. Eventually, something went wrong, and terrible
storms forced the evacuation of Chewandswallow, because it wasn’t safe to live
there any longer, what with the tomato tornadoes and five-ton pancakes.
Food connects people of all ages,
and everyone has their favorite food they wish it would rain (like milkshakes
or gumdrops, according to the Barney song.)
The pictures add a wonderful dimension to this tale, which I would estimate as
appropriate to first introduce anywhere from four to seven, depending on if it
were read aloud or not. The imaginative concept appeals to a child’s mindset
very well, and it could be used to learn about the different food groups, as
well as the idea of tall tales and their history.
Rawls, Wilson. Where
the Red Fern Grows. Doubleday, 1961.
Billy Coleman lives near Tahlequah,
Oklahoma, and he diligently saves up for for two years in order to buy a pair
of coonhound puppies, which he names Old Dan and Little Ann. His grandpa helps
him teach the dogs to hunt raccoons, becoming one of the Ozarks’ most
accomplished hunters. After Dan dies following a mountain lion attack, loyal
Ann dies from a broken heart, and the Colemans move out of the mountains at
Mama’s request, settling in Tulsa.
The chief heartbreaker of all
dog-story-tearjerkers, this ought to be required reading for Oklahoma children
due to the local setting. Loyalty is the chief virtue expressed in these pages,
though there are many virtues scattered throughout. I was five when I first
heard this story, which was plenty old enough to understand it. Wilson Rawls
wrote his books for “people,” and hated the idea that publishers marketed them
as children’s literature. Therefore everyone ought to read it, as an example of
true love and the power of patient hard work.
Wallace, Bill. Upchuck
and the Rotten Willy. Aladdin Paperbacks, 1998.
Chuck, a young orange kitten, has
just lost his friend Louie, who got smushed by a car on the highway. And then
an enormous monster of a Rottweiler moves in down the road. And then his best
friend Tom moves away. And then, to
top it all off, his Person Katie
moves to somewhere far away and cagelike called “College.” What’s a lonesome,
scared cat to do?
This is a terrific first-person
narrative starting around age seven, illustrating well the emotions of life as
only Bill Wallace can. It deals with loneliness, abandonment, the changing of
life-seasons, in addition to offering some humorous insight on dating and
emphasizing the power of friendship, especially the friendship found in
overlooked corners.
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Shiloh. Atheneum, 1991.
Eleven-year-old Marty Preston lives
in the extremely rural town of Friendly, West Virginia, where he comes across
the new beagle of infamous-dog-mistreater Judd Travers. Marty and his little
sisters nurse the dog, now called Shiloh, back to health, trying to decide if
it’s ethical to steal Shiloh in order to prevent certain future cruelty by
Judd.
This novel is appropriate for readers around
nine, because they would likely have a deep bond with their pets by then, and
the beginnings of an understanding of empathy and the complexity of this world
we live in. The first-person tone draws the reader in, and if he or she is of a
writerly turn of mind, they can study how that first-person POV can be used to
describe the rural setting, poverty, and ethical dilemmas within. Real life is
often very gray, and this novel explains that while keeping a kid-appropriate tone.
Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie
Woodlawn. 1935.
Caddie Woodlawn and her brothers
grew up in Wisconsin after their parents moved to Boston, and this novel tells
about some of their adventures growing up. It doesn’t really have a plot, but
it’s the kind of book that doesn’t really need one.
This is included because it is
clearly historical fiction, as the author makes note of in the introduction,
and that is a good genre to be introduced to. She is retelling the childhood of
her grandmother, based on the stories that she
heard as a child. If Laura Ingalls Wilder is seen as too girlish for boys
to think they’d enjoy, this might be a good alternative. Girls could appreciate
Caddie’s indecision between wanting to be a tomboy at times, and a lady at
other times.
Sachar, Louis. Holes. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1998.
After being accused of stealing a
pair of sneakers, Stanley Yelnats gets sent to a juvenile detention facility in
the Texas desert, where he gets to know his coworkers as they dig holes “to
build character.” Interspersed with the
mystery that follows is a history of the outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow, a former
schoolteacher who turned rogue after her romance with a black man was
discovered.
The braided nature of these
interweaving stories is a very interesting stylistic technique to take notice
of, and given the complexity of the issues raised (mainly juvenile delinquency,
the justice system and interracial relationships) I would say a reader should
be around eleven or twelve before tackling this one. Those subjects are handled
in an age-appropriate way, but given the general meanness of the characters to
survive, some thick skin must have already been developed.
Pyle, Howard. The
Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. 1883.
A retelling, perhaps the first aimed
at children, of the legendary antiheroic character of Robin Hood, from his
first coming to Sherwood Forest to his death by treacherous arrow. Little John,
Friar Tuck, Maid Marian and the Sherriff of Nottingham are all here, as well,
as is King Richard the Lion-Hearted.
What kid doesn’t like adventure?
Pyle’s book abounds with it, though the reading difficulty might present
problems unless the reader was an especially-determined nine-year-old. This
would be a good candidate to read aloud for younger children, giving a chance
to practice comprehension skills by asking them to summarize the action at
various points throughout each chapter.
Neville, Emily. It’s
Like This, Cat. Illustrated by Emil Weiss. 1963.
This Newbery Award winner tells how
a 14-year-old named Dave deals with problems of early teenagerdom, including
hero worship, fights with his father and first love. His cat, who was given to
him by a family friend named Kate, serves as a sounding board in figuring out
all these problems.
This
would be appropriate for readers about eleven, I would estimate, because
parents aren’t perfect, and they have as many flaws as anyone. There are scenes
of smoking, if I remember right, some interest is taken of the opposite sex,
and the characters wander around New York City entirely unsupervised a vast
majority of the time. Knowing some history of what was going to happen later in
this decade, this novel gives a better picture of the day-to-day life of those
growing up in this era, and reminds readers that human nature is much the same
everywhere. The first-person narration is used well to highlight the urban
setting, providing literary-minded readers a glimpse (especially in contrast
with Shiloh) of how the basic tools
of writing can be used in interesting ways.
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