Jan Brett

When I was in grade school, I was fascinated with the exotic and fantastical. My grandmother indulged me with beautifully illustrated books of fairy tales and Scandinavian  themed books like the Flicka, Ricka and Dicka series by Maj Lindman.

Jan Brett’s books remind me of the ones that entertained me as a child. She illustrates old classics like The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore . She finds several places to add pugs in her illustrations. That is well appreciated in my family.

 

A page from The Night Before Christmas (sans pugs):

She illustrates nursery tales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears:

And folk tales like the Ukrainian one retold in The Mitten:

And classic fairy tales like The Beauty and the Beast:

 

Jan Brett also writes and illustrates her own stories.  Most of Yulupa’s first grade teachers read The Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends to their classes in December. Some classes made edible gingerbread houses and others used different materials to make the Gingerbread Baby a house.

In Mrs. Hopkins' class, December is Jan Brett month. At the Pen Pals and Picture Books blog, January is Jan Brett month. They will be featuring their favorite Jan Brett books all month. According to the two bloggers at Pen Pals and Picture books, there is a hedgehog in every Jan Brett book. I can’t swear to that but I have seen plenty of hedgehogs. A couple of my grandchildren are very interested in animals, especially dogs. Jan Brett wrote a book called The First Dog about an Ice Age boy who befriends a wolf who saves his life. In another of her books, Comet’s Nine Lives, Comet leaves the lighthouse on Nantucket Island. He visits a garden, a bookstore, a boat and a party but what he really wants is a home.  

 

In her books, Jan Brett takes children to visit the North Pole, Bavaria, Africa, Scandinavia, the Ice Age and Nantucket Island. Her subjects range from Christmas stories to animal tales to fairy and folk tales and even to trolls (very Scandinavian).  Her richly detailed and beautifully illustrated books can take your child on many adventures. Her books are suitable for preschool-third grade.

The Houdini Box

While browsing through children’s books at Copperfield’s, looking for books for “a book on every bed”, I came across a book for older elementary kids called Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. It is the story of two children,  Ben and Rose, separated in time by fifty years. Ben’s story is told in prose and Rose’s story is told in pictures. Their stories eventually intertwine. It was such an unique way of telling a story, I had to do some research on the author.

 

I found that he had received the Caldecott Medal for picture books in 2008 for a book that was 550 pages long. The Invention of Hugo Cabaret is about 12 year old Hugo who is an orphan clock keeper who lives in the walls of a Paris train station. Before his death, his father showed him a discarded automaton: a human-like figure seated at a desk, pen in hand, ready to write. Hugo’s father, a clockmaker, was trying to repair the robot. After his death, Hugo becomes obsessed with trying to get it to work. The story is told in prose and pictures which do not just illustrate the story but actually tell a good part of the story. The movie, Hugo, which is in current release is based on this book.

Meanwhile, on another trip to Copperfield’s, I find a book Brian Selznick wrote in 1991 called The Houdini Box. I have a son-in-law who has a a bit of an obsession with magic and I imagined him as the boy in this story. The boy’s name is Victor. He is ten and wants to be a magician too. He has read about Houdini’s magic tricks and he tries them at home but he cannot summon the magic to make them work. He locks himself in his grandmother’s train trunk but cannot escape no matter how many times he tries.

One day Victor is in the train station on the way to a weekend in the country when he spots Houdini and his wife. He runs up to Houdini and tells him he wants to be a magician and  asks him how to do the tricks he has been trying at home. Houdini promises to write him a letter with the answers. Victor waits for a reply and finally he gets a letter that says “A thousand secrets await you, come to my home” on a date that seemed impossibly in the future. Victor was impatient, so he went to Houdini’s home that evening, which happened to be Halloween. When he got there Mrs. Houdini thought he was trick or treating, but he showed her the letter. She disappeared and came back with a box and told him that Houdini had died that day. Victor took the box home and tried to open it. He noticed that the initials on the bottom of the box said E.W.; it was not Houdini’s box after all. So Victor put the box away and vowed to never think about Houdini again.

Years passed, he got married and had a son named Harry (a coincidence, I am sure). One day Victor and Harry were playing ball in a lot near the cemetery. Victor pitched the ball to Harry and Harry hit it into the cemetery. Father and son went to retrieve the ball. Perhaps by magic,  it had landed on Harry Houdini’s grave. Victor read the writing on the monument. It said HOUDINI and under that it said Ehrich Weiss: E.W. Before he was Houdini, the magician had been Ehrich Weiss. That night, after his wife and son had gone to bed Victor found the box. The lock had rusted and was easy to open. He locked himself in his grandmother’s trunk and escaped in under 20 seconds.

Legend has it that there actually was a Houdini Box. It was supposed to appear on the 100th anniversary of Houdini’s birth which was in 1974. At the end of the book is a brief biography of Harry Houdini, a magic trick and a little about the process of writing the book. Mr. Selznick also includes a list of books written about Houdini for children.

This book is appropriate for a child from 6-11 who is fascinated by magic.

Schools of Hope In the News

Santa Rosa Police Chief, Tom Schwedhelm, wrote a Close to Home  column in Sunday’s Press Democrat about being a Schools of Hope Volunteer. This is the second school year that he has been helping a child gain the literacy skills needed  to “read to learn”. More  volunteer orientations will be held next week. Go to United Way/Schools of Hope for more information. 

Best Children’s Books of 2011

Melissa Taylor from the blog Imagination Soup has posted her Top 20 Children’s Books of 2011. There are recommended books from infant to readers 10 and older.  A few of the ones appropriate for younger elementary readers are

   

You can find the rest of her list at

Melissa Taylor's best children's books of 2011

“A Book on Every Bed”

Last year Amy Dickinson, of Ask Amy fame, started a literacy campaign in her column called “A Book on Every Bed”. Along with the Family Reading Partnership she wanted to put one million books at the foot of one million beds for one million children on Christmas (or Chanukah) morning. Seven of those beds belonged to our seven grandchildren. They were delighted with our choices and we plan to provide the books again this year and every year in the future. If you missed the Ask Amy column in today’s Press Democrat, you can read it here.

Looking for Something to Do?

The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is hosting two events on Thursday, Dec 8. The first one is the Lawrence Hall of Science: “Wizards Lab”, a free event from 4 to 5:30 PM. Children can participate in hands-on science projects. Reservations are required. Call 707-546-4069 or e-mail anya@cmosc.org . The second event is intended for ages 10 and older. Science Buzz Cafe host “What Your Mother Never Told Me About the Universe” from 7-8:30 PM. There is a suggested donation of $4. Prof. Lynn Cominsky from Sonoma State University will explore “far out questions” on Astronomy and Astrophysics. Both events will be at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, 1835 West Steele Lane in Santa Rosa.

Looking for Gifts?

While I was looking through toy stores this afternoon on my annual quest to find a boat load of gifts, I came across a couple of interesting games and a digital bookmark. All three of these items are less than nine dollars.
Let’s look at the bookmark first.

 

The Mark-My-Time Bookmark can be used like a regular timer or it can keep track of accumulated reading time up to 99 hours and 59 minutes. The really cool thing about it is that it can do both. Most teachers ask that your child read at home for 20 minutes each day. The timer can be set for 20 minutes and a buzzer will go off after the time is up. But it can also add that 20 minutes to the reading times from the previous days. This website has videos that show how to program the bookmark and to change the battery: bookmark.

The first game is one our family has played called Scrabble Slam.

The game cards have a letter on the front and on the back. Either side can be used. The game starts with a four letter word such as GAME. The remaining cards are distributed to the players. For older children and adults, the game can be played like the card game of War. For younger children, we follow these rules: in turn,  each player takes a card from his hand to change the word into another four letter word. If a player does not have a letter that will make a word (according to Scrabble rules), that player passes to the next one. The first player to use all his or her cards wins.

My daughter found the second game, Rory’s  Story Cubes.

There are nine cubes and each of its six sides has a different picture. There are many ways to play. One of the suggested ways is to roll all nine cubes, look at all the face up images and begin your story with “Once upon a time…” . The trick is to weave all nine images into your story. Last week a first grader of my acquaintance, had to write a story about a gingerbread man with a beginning, middle and end. He was having trouble coming up with ideas. These Story Cubes might have helped.