spiders and paradise

Harlem Grown by Tony Hillery and illustrated by Jessie Hartland (Nonfiction Picture Book)

I love this true story of Mr. Tony’s idea to transform a haunted garden into an educational and nurturing paradise with the assistance of kids who have a lot of energy and love to give. I marvel at how well the story is told through simple text that isn't too wordy and enjoy all the steps that went into making the abandoned lot a garden. The illustrations are equally simple yet detailed and a lot of fun. Included at the end of the story is a small note with more details about the Harlem Grown Garden, including how the garden has blossomed into twelve sites across Harlem.

Cloth Lullaby by Amy Novesky and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Nonfiction Picture Book)

This is a book that requires your undivided attention. The language is dense and thought-provoking: “If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and she repairs it.” The illustrations are absorbing and complex. And Louise’s devotion to her mother and the all-consuming grief she feels when she loses her mother are both beautifully woven throughout the illustrations and story of her life. 

Tea Tag Chicken

This friendly tea tag chicken is made out of all tea papers, mostly tags but also a tiny bit of tea box.  I can't even begin to list all the teas that went into making her.  Let's just say a lot of black, green, citrus, and mint teas, which are my favorite teas.  Once I seal her, I'll post her in my Etsy Shop.  

I used a 12X12 wooden canvas so the tags cover the sides too!

historical fiction with the promise of an old journal

The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen (Adult Fiction)

The Victory Garden offers so many things - a small glimpse into the lives of the land girls during WWI, Emily’s journey of love and loss with an Australian pilot, and her finding a place to belong thanks to a lot of help from new friends and an old journal.  Historical fiction with the promise of an old journal is one of my favorite things.  

I really enjoyed the friendships in this book.  Thanks to her gig as a land girl, Emily makes new and lasting friendships with other land girls and also, rather surprisingly, Lady Charlton, who owns a large estate that Emily initially works as a land girl.  She feels such a strong connection to both Lady Charlton and her estate she decides to return when her life dramatically changes and she fears she doesn’t have a home to return to.  

I was surprised by the ending, which is always delightful, even when the surprise isn’t delightful.  At the end of the book something unexpected happens with her parents, and I was initially a little cross about it. But after I thought about it for a few days, I decided it was the kind of surprise I could live with.  I appreciated the author sneaking in a few surprises like this and was impressed with how well she grew her characters.  Though every character is affected by the war in some way and there is a lot of heartache in these pages, Victory Garden ends on a hopeful note, and Emily discovers a lot about herself and where she belongs.  

stellar board book

 Here is a tiny review to start your week.  This board book is too wonderful not to share!

Who Takes Care of You by Hannah Eliot and illustrated by Jade Orlando (Board Book)

This beautifully illustrates how our families are all unique and the most important thing is that they are comprised of the people we love and who care about us. The illustrations are simple and colorful, and the rhyming text is easy to read and understand.

Ode to Bluebird Resort

Another day, another poem.  Thanks to Courtship of Winds for publishing my poem, Ode to Bluebird Resort.

I have spent years writing this poem (apparently it's tough to articulate the unique beauty of trailer parks).  Each time I paused to read it aloud, I never could make it all the way through because I would always start laughing like a maniac.  

Is this poem about the trailers in the trailer park I grew up in?  To some extent, yes.  But it's a lot more than that.  Mostly it's a soup of memories told through anthropomorphized trailers. 

I'm not sure a poem expresses who I am more than this poem.  I hope it gives you a hearty chuckle too, and you think about trailer parks in a new light.  Perhaps it's exactly how you feel about trailers or a beloved trailer park.  If that's the case, and we aren't already friends, then we should be. 

The Robin

 

Thanks to Plainsongs for publishing my poem, The Robin.  

Several years back I went to a writing conference and a special part of the conference included a one-on-one critiquing session with an editor.  I submitted a few poems for this critiquing session, including The Robin.  The editor had a few fairly helpful things to say about the other poems and I happily accepted them.  When he got to The Robin he just said, "I don't know what to do with this.  I think you need to rewrite it or forget about it."  

I was shocked.  It was, sadly, my first conference (and my only one mostly because I haven't had the time to do another).  He didn't have a kind word to say about any of my poems and then he told me to throw one away.  I honestly do not know if this is normal at all writing conferences or if it was just this conference.  I feel like I'm pretty open to tough critiques.  I had some tough critiques in college from both classmates and professors, and I also gave some tough critiques.  But we were taught to balance it with positivity if possible.  Perhaps that's the difference and the university I attended was a little on the Kumbaya side of the line.

After I came home from the conference I waited a few days before sitting down with the poems.  I put away my negative feelings and looked at the poems with a new perspective.  I loved them all.  I looked at them again and again.  And though there were small changes, and the few critiques he gave were helpful, I loved The Robin the most.  I opened up the poem to edit it probably 200 times for a couple of years, and I loved it every time.  But because he was an editor, I questioned whether I loved the memory of the poem or the poem itself.  I also wondered how well I was conveying the memory.  And I questioned the line breaks and the funky beginning.  I questioned each word.  And I questioned the feelings the poem gave me.

Eventually, like all my poems I submit, I realized that all it takes is for the poem to matter to one person.  To give one reader the same feeling I get when I read a poem I love.  And as long as I think I've polished it to the best of my ability, why wouldn't I share it?  So I did.  And I hope others continue sharing their poems too.  Reading a poem that resonates with me is one of my great joys in life.

The Robin is a little bit more than a poem for me.  It's about battling my insecurities and inner critic and taking chances.  If we don't, how will we ever connect with each other and be a part of each other's worlds?

He's friendly!

I have been working on this piece for more time than I care to admit.  This was my first time trying out hardboard.  I'm not sure I'll use it again.  I'm really partial to my wood panels/canvases and I had a lot of trouble getting the color/texture of the wall just right.  It could be that painting a wall is just really hard. There were days when I woke up and very politely asked the wall to look like a wall or a sort of wall.  Nope! It took a lot more texturing/layering than I originally planned.  And then to bring it into a bit of light on one side of the piece was almost more than I could bear.  

Whenever I pause on a piece I'm working on, I take a progress picture.  This helps me figure out if I need to backtrack before going forward again.  I also spend a lot of time looking at the piece, turning away, and looking at it again with a "new" perspective.  I'm not sure how many people have seen Big Bang Theory, but I feel a lot like Sheldon when he was trying to figure out what was wrong with an equation.

Unlike Sheldon, I was trying to figure out why the wall didn't look like a wall.    

But my idea eventually came through, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out.  You may be asking how the heck did this piece come to be.  Well it started with a book by Maja Säfström, who is one of my favorite artists.  Her drawing of a sea scorpion was my first experience with a sea scorpion.  Her sea scorpion is so friendly!

I feel pretty confident this is why I had a bizarre dream about a sea scorpion, which eventually evolved into this piece.  In my dream my sea scorpion was humongous and colorful. It looked a little bit like a cartoon.  So I had to play around/do some research/dig through my papers to find a good balance.  

I eventually settled on a few pages of an old pattern book that was falling apart and picked out my favorite colors/designs.  Though my sea scorpion is not as wildly imaginative as Maja Säfström's sea scorpion, he is still friendly looking, and I'm proud his friendliness is evident.  I'm not sure I really want to see an unfriendly sea scorpion, whether it's real or not.

who has the deadly derrière?

Did you know sea cucumbers’ butts are also hotels? Or that herring have an excellent sense of hearing and can hear higher frequencies just like dogs do? This book is full of strange and wonderful animal facts that will blow you away. Pun totally intended!!

I love bathroom humor so I was thrilled to stumble across this book. It is hilarious, yes, but it went above and beyond my expectations. I thought there would be some funny animal booty facts and I would have a nice laugh and move on. But that's not what happened!

Battle of the Butts is bizarre, hilarious, and superbly written. It is filled with hilarious alliteration – for example, which animal has both a hardy hiney and a deadly derrière? The alliterations may get old for some, but not for me! I laughed every single time I read a new one. There were also so many amazing facts, I couldn’t keep up with all of them.

In addition to the wonderful, alliterative language and bizarre facts, readers can also rate each booty and pick a winner at the end. The clear winner for me is the bombardier beetle and its amazing ability to set off butt bombs, even after it’s been eaten. The book says scientists can hear the explosions of the bombs going off inside frogs' bellies!

Bee and her Ghostie Aunts

 Beholding Bee (Juvenile Fiction)

Bee is a resilient, lovable, and incredibly capable twelve-year-old. She is also treated cruelly due to a beauty mark on her face. Bee has lived in the back of a truck her whole life, spends her days helping run the hot dog stand at the carnival she belongs to, and has never attended school. 

After losing her parents when she’s four, Pauline, a carnival worker, steps in to take care of her. Pauline, who is just twelve years older than Bee, does her best to parent Bee, but Ellis, the owner of the carnival they work for, does everything he can to make their lives miserable. When Pauline is sent to work at another circus, Bee does a super courageous thing and runs away. She takes her dog, Peabody, and pig, Cordelia with her and they find refuge with two eccentric ladies who may or may not be the ghosts of her ancestors. They settle into the house her mom grew up in, a house that was abandoned by her grandfather several years back. Slowly, with the help of a few new friends, her mysterious “aunts,” and her pets, Bee begins to heal and address her trauma. 

I really love Bee’s character. There are several bittersweet moments where it’s clear that Bee knows how to take care of others and also her own physical needs, but she simply cannot give herself the love of family she so desperately deserves and needs. One sweet example of this is when she arrives at her aunts' house on the first day and she gives water to her animals first. There are many details like this sprinkled throughout the story. She is constantly encouraging her aunts to eat and even learns how to make chicken soup to help them grow stronger. But Bee is still very much a kid who is dealing with a lot of trauma. Her aunts encourage her to go to school, but the experience is absolutely horrible thanks to one child whose own trauma may or may not be the reason she’s a bully. Bee endured all kinds of shocking treatment from carnival attendees (which is why she's insecure about her beauty mark), but this bully at school really gets to her. While thinking up revenge for one of the bully’s attacks, Bee stumbles upon something that actually brings her a little peace. 

I was completely immersed in Bee’s journey. I thought the characters were wonderful. Her new friends are supportive but also in need of Bee’s support. Her aunts are too magnificent for words. They offer support but encourage self-reliance. Though filled with many ups and downs, the story is engrossing with short chapters that read like poetry. And while all the loose ends didn’t get neatly tied up by the end of the story, I left the book feeling like I could rest easy and know that Bee was going to be just fine.

True or False: Kahoot! is the answer to family fun at your library

I'm sure it's common knowledge that my library has an official Kahoot! committee, and that I've been a proud member since we created it in the late spring on 2020.    

Our Kahoot committee creates Kahoot trivia for programming and our library's social media.  We create, play, and share games.  And we also use the games to highlight our library's collection and other programs.

My job is pretty awesome. 😄

A group of us from our official Kahoot committee wrote a little piece about how my library uses Kahoots and how easy it is for other libraries to do the same.  Though I wouldn't be surprised if lots of other libraries have Kahoot committees too!

You can find our Kahoot post on the ALSC blog.  I am super proud of it and had a blast writing it with my coworkers.