*Pink and Say (1994)

 Pink and Say is painful. It is written "To the memory of Pinkus Aylee." Patricia Polacco begins with a note: "Sheldon had been injured in a fierce battle and was left for dead in a muddy, blood-soaked pasture somewhere in Georgia. He was a mere lad of fifteen. . . . He was rescued from this field by another lad who had also been separated from his company." And then, Polacco begins the harrowing tale of two young soldiers in the civil war. It is a gut-wrenching story told with compassion. Sheldon Russell Curtis survives a confederate prison. A White boy, he returns home, recovers, and lives a long life. Pinkus Aylee, a Black boy, saw no future--he was hanged.

Carl's Christmas (1990)

 Carl is one of the greatest dogs ever. Alexandra Day proves this to be true in Carl's Christmas (1990), another of her wonderful wordless picture books. Carl and baby are on the town Christmas Eve and no one seems to think this is odd. I smiled when the Irish terrier Paddy was on the sidewalk outside a shop as Carl and baby emerge with a Christmas basket. Like Paddy, Carl and baby donate to help the needy. Carl and baby race home to wait for Santa, and sure enough, he shows up! It's another marvelous book from the Carl series. 

Making Friends (1987)

 Mr. Rogers lived in a world of possibility, didn't he? In Making Friends (1987), he begins with an author's note: " One of life's greatest joys is the comfortable give-and-take of a good friendship. It is a wonderful feeling not only to have a good friend but to know how to be a good friend yourself." With photographs by Jim Judkis (His name is not on the cover.), Fred Rogers explains the basics of interpersonal interaction. It's a book for the young and for the old who will read it aloud to others. Sometimes, it's refreshing to look at life in a straight-forward, how-to way like this. If only reality were so simple. 

The Very Busy Spider (1984)

What is the message in Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider?  (1984)  Is this a retelling of the Aesop's fable The Ants and the Grasshopper? The very busy spider doesn't respond to multiple invitations to play because she's too busy building her web. Carle displays his vibrant animals as, one by one, they ask spider to eat grass, run in the meadow, jump on the rocks, and so on. Readers watch spider's web emerge thread by thread throughout the book. In the end, the rooster crows, "'Want to catch a pesty fly?'" The fly appears on every page, buzzing around every creature. After celebrating the beauty of birds and animals, there is no respect for the fly. The spider catches the fly. Carle spares us the reality of what happens to the fly next. The spider never does get time off because she's so exhausted at the end of her day. She's probably quite lonely as well. 

The Farmer in the Dell (2009)

 This thin classic from Scholastic, The Farmer in the Dell (2009), represents the key to language for some children because it combines music and words. The music is on the last page. The words show children how sentences are made by using a sentence frame: "the _____ take a ______." Children practice short-term memory skills by filling in the sentence frame differently based on what came before. The song is anchored by sound play in the chorus with "Hi-ho, the Derry-o." Steve Simpson's illustration add action. This book for reading,  singing, and dancing.

*The Junkyard Wonders (2010)

 Patricia Polacco is my new favorite author. In The Junkyard Wonders she celebrates the children in Room 206, the children in Mrs. Peterson's class. They are excluded from the mainstream classrooms for a variety of reasons. The rest of the school laughs at these children. But Mrs. Peterson encourages them to work together, pooling their talents to accomplish goals. "Gibbie had tics and shouted for no reason sometimes, but his father was a professor of engineering and Gibbie loved to build things--boy, was he smart." This class is nicknamed the junkyard. Ironically, this class takes a field trip to a junkyard to scavenge for odds and ends that could be used to build things. (Two children in The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages does the same and are similarly ridiculed.) Polacco ends with an author's note describing the career successes of several students in this story. Her postscript adds punch to an already powerful story. 

*My Grandmother's Clock (2002)

 Geraldine McCaughrean's My Grandmother's Clock (2002) is a timeless treasure. Here's the first line: "IN MY GRANDMOTHER'S house there is a grandfather clock, but it does not go. The hands on its big face never move." The clock is never repaired because there are so many other ways to measure time. Grandmother teaches us to pay attention to natural notions of time. McCaughrean's text is poetic. Grandmother says, "I can judge the age of the morning by the shadows shortening under the magnolia tree. By the time the shadows are long again, the day is nearly fully grown." Ahhh, doesn't this just invite us to take off our watches, turn off our laptops, and put down our cell phones? The large size of this book gives Stephen Lambert lots of room to fill with soft pictures of a gentle way of life. Moments become days become seasons become centuries. "Well, the stars tell us that Time's just too big to fit inside any watch or clock--even the one in the hall."