Books by Murray McCain & Illus by John Alcorn

This book is outrageously colorful. A toy shop we were in near Philiadelphia had five copies of this on top of the bookshelves to announce the book area and believe you mean, it was rather powerful! 

This book is a joyous celebration of all things books! 

Glancing through this I was amazed how completely the illustrator nailed that weird 1960s-70s Monty Python vibe. Then I checked the publication date and realized it WAS published in the 1960's. Hence the vintage feel. 

This book celebrates all the things we love about books.

Look at that dust jacket

Most books are just right for holding.

Look at the font variations and the coloring. 

A list of things books can be about.

These illustrations! The insane pink eyed lion! 

Books can be for coloring (or is that colouring?) or singing. 

Then we get into the words in the books. Here are some hard words

Some happy words. 

I think every person would have a different list of happy words. But I love reading other peoples! 

Funny words! 

All the different potential fonts

We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins

This is a favorite in our house! 

A story about learning self-control, trying new things, and about how difficult it is to make friends if you are always eating potential friends. 

Little Penelope Rex is nervous about her first day at school. 

What if her classmates had more teeth than she had?! 

Her father packed her a filling and nutritional meal of three hundred tuna sandwiches and one apple juice. 

To Penelope's great shock, her classmates were CHILDREN.

You might not be able to see, but there is the cutest little double decker reading area over there in the top right hand corner. I covet one of those for my library. 

Penelope did what T-Rexes do and ate those children up.

Mrs. Noodleman wasn't standing for that nonsense. 

Everyone is covered in dinosaur spit which is not a particularly auspicious beginning. 

I adore the skinny little girl at the front there shaking her fist at Penelope. She is who I want to be when I grow up.

Penelope tries to make friends, but somehow, her efforts don't seem to inspire friendship in her classmates. 

She shares her friend difficulties with her father

"Penelope Rex," her father asked, "did you eat your classmates?"

"Well...maybe sort of just a little bit."

Penelope's father shares wisdom with her--

"Children are just like us on the inside. Just tastier." 

The next day, Penelope tried. But William Omoto was irresistibly delicious looking.  

Giving up on human, Penelope tries to make friends with Walter the classroom pet.

Walter tries to eat Penelope, giving her a taste of her own treatment. 

Penelope learns compassion through her own brush with someone trying to eat her.

She stopped eating her classmates....

(Even when Cece Woodman spilled BBQ sauce all over herlself)

And if she is ever tempted to forget, she can just look at Walter licking his lips and remember. 

Out of the Woods by Rebecca Bond

A story about a wildfire in Northern Ontario. 

A story about creatures, both human and animals, coming together in their common fear.

Lovely illustrations!

Antonio Willie Giroux (a great name if ever there was one) lived with his mother who ran a boarding house on the edge of a lake in rural Ontario. 

It was a pretty great life for a kid--so much to see, so many people to dote on him and teach him how to do things. 

The second floor was full of sportsmen come to do some hunting and fishing. 

The top floor was filled with the French Canadians working in the nearby timber harvesting outfits. Willie loved spending time up there listening to words in French, English, and several different Native American languages. 

One summer day, smoke came out of the woods and threatened their lives. 

As the fire edged closer, people crowded into the lake for safety. 

And as it got even closer, wild animals fled from the woods into the lake with the humans. 

And they all stood together, uncommon companions, watching the fire rage by them. Somehow in their common fear, predators did not attack prey, but somehow understood that this situation was beyond the realm of their conventional relationship. 

By some miracle, the hotel did not burn down. So they crept back after the fire, remembering the moment they stood shoulder to haunch with the wild things of the forest. 

The Gift by Kristine L. Franklin & Illus Barbara Lavallee

Barbara Lavallee is an Alaskan artist that my mother fell in love with when I was a kid. We had prints of hers on our wall, trivets with her art, the mugs with her art were set in a separate place so my brothers and father wouldn't fill them with coffee and take them to some far flung part of the farm and leave them on fenceposts, under a tractor seat, or in the milkhouse. 

As a hangover from my childhood, anything Barbara Lavallee has illustrated has instantly become a bit special. I found this book on a library shelf in Anchorage last summer and had to check it out. With a 50 book limit* on our library card, we had to make some hard decisions about what we were and were not taking home with us, but this made the cut. 

(This may seem like a gigantic limit, but it had to supply four kids, as well as myself, so it actually was a little hard. Books had to be put back on the shelf and left behind, always a sad, sad thing.)

I was already in favor of the illustrator, but the story itself was well worth it as well--traditional native fishing villiage, elder wisdom, and amazement at nature. 

Jimmy Joe loved to fish, just like all the rest of his family. 

So Jimmy Joe heads over to "help" the fish woman catch some fish. They get everything ready to head out to fish. 

My cousin worked in a gift shop in Anchorage one summer and hated Barbara Lavallee due to the dividing line down the middle of the faces. Having been raised on these prints and illustrations, I never thought about it before. But there it is. In every face. 

Fish Woman has promised Jimmy Joe a salmon fishing expedition. Salmon in their richness and bounty hold a special place in the lives and imaginations of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest/Alaska. Jimmy Joe is determined to catch the best, the biggest, and the most. 

Catching the fish and putting it on ice.

When he catches a fish and sees all its sparkling majesty snuffed out, Jimmy Joe is torn. He knows his mother wanted fish to eat, but how can he take this beautiful thing from the sea? 

Then!--the magic! The wolves of the sea appear. 

Deigning to show themselves is a gift from the sea. The wise Fish Woman and Jimmy Joe both recognize the honor. 

And suddenly, Jimmy Joe knows what to do with the magnificent fish he caught--return it as a gift to the orcas. 

This is a little confusing since he was hesitant to catch the fish and use it to feed his own family, but I guess being the meal of an orca is a bit more fascinating to a little boy than being the meal of a mere human. 

And he heads home--salmonless, but with an amazement and wonder of the sea. 

I like the practicality of this book--Jimmy Joe, while lamenting the necessity of killing such an amazing creature, also understands enough of nature to know the salmon can't escape being someone's meal. 

I love the Fish Woman helping him come to that realization. I like Jimmy Joe being allowed to spend time with (and wanting to spend time with) this elderly person who has so much wisdom and understanding to share with him.