How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz

In my initial reactions to the Newbery medal and ALA Youth Media Award winners, I said I was waiting for a copy of How I Learned Geography and asked, "Did I read right, though? A family flees war and finds poverty?" Lesson learned: Don't judge a book solely upon any three sentence blurb found on Amazon.

Yes, this autobiographical book is about Uri Shulevitz as a young boy of four or five fleeing Warsaw, Poland after the Warsaw blitz in 1939. Yes, the book is about how they fled east, settling in the city of Turkestan in the Soviet Union, what is now Kazakhstan, living in one room with barely enough to eat. But there's more. It's also the book of how a father's spur of the moment decision and the author's childhood imagination helped him escape nevertheless.

That wasn't clearly stated in that bit I rushed to read on Amazon.

All of the details listed above are from the Author's Note at the end. The story itself is much simpler. One day Father went to the bazaar to buy food, but didn't return until late. When he arrived, he announced, "I bought a map." No bread. No food. Only a gigantic map that, when displayed, filled an entire wall. After the boy gets over his initial disappointment and frustration, he learns...well, the book is called How I Learned Geography, isn't it?

The boy travels the world via the map. He studies the fascinating names and creates a rhyming verse out of them, sort of a magic chant that transports him around the world. He travels to deserts, beaches, and mountains. He sees palm trees, fruit trees, and birds of all colors. He visits a rain forest and a temple and a large metropolitan city. All through the map.

Yes, the story starts with war and poverty, but ultimately the story is about the power of a boy's imagination, and how it allows him to escape his difficult life, if just for a while. "And so I spent enchanted hours," he says, "far, far from our hunger and misery."

A River of Words by Jen Bryant

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams is a hard book to classify. Is it a poetry book with additional background information about the poet for older readers? Is it a story book for younger readers featuring an introduction to poetry? Or should we just give it to the art teachers?

In a word, yes.

The endpapers feature some famous Williams poems. There's The Red Wheelbarrow we've all come to know and love and This is Just to Say, recently featured in a picture book of the same name. Older readers, once familiar with the poems, may enjoy learning about the author, and no doubt will appreciate the simpler text after tackling poetry in class.

Younger readers will enjoy learning about the young man who enjoyed playing outside and staying outside. They'll like the boy who raced everywhere, always in a hurry, but would slow down to enjoy the sound and rhythm of the poetry read aloud by his teacher, while images played across his imagination. How that boy decided he could write poetry too, all about ordinary things in his life. (And why can't you?) How that boy, now a young man, became a doctor, but no matter what, continued writing poetry.

Art teachers will find plenty (and pardon my artistic ignorance if it is glaringly obvious). There are watercolor illustrations of Williams throughout his life. There are also collages, many of them featuring words and lines from poems, and many containing objects from the poet's life at the time. There are pages from medical books, notebook paper, the spine of an art textbook, newspapers, pages from a spelling book, and a report card all included in the pictures. Art teachers, are there some potential lessons there?

Jen Bryant's book and Melissa Sweet's illustrations fit in many categories, but instead of trying to find all the proper classifications, it's nice to have this simple one: Caldecott Books.

The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson

After The House in the Night won the Caldecott Medal, and having just finished a student-selected mock Caldecott with my fourth graders, I read the book aloud to my class. Their response? Shifty sideways glances. A few unintelligible mumbles. Mostly just awkward silence. Finally one brave girl slowly raised her hand and said, "Well, it was kinda boring."

Fair enough, I thought. This is the bunch that overwhelmingly favored A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever and Beware of the Frog in our mock election. Plenty of humor, bold pictures, and enough text to keep the ten year old mind interested. One student described The House in the Night as a lullaby (a great observation), gold is the only color, and it has fewer then ten words per page.

To be fair, they appreciated it more after we discussed how the pictures were created using scratchboard. Some students pointed out that the bird in the girl's book seemed to grow larger each page until the outline of the bird was incorporated into the other illustrations, then got smaller until it was back in its book. Some saw it, some didn't, but good art does that to the observer, doesn't it?

Our art teacher, however, had a different opinion. I showed her the book, and she refused to return it. (It's not even my copy! I got it at the public library.) I saw it the next day, open and upright on a table in the art room, as sixth graders studied the pictures before beginning their own scratchboard projects. They were captivated by the detail and accuracy of the etchings.

The House in the Night had found a home in the art room. That shows the Caldecott worthiness of Beth Krommes' illustrations. It also will be at home in the bedroom, just before lights out, as little ones curl up on a parent’s lap to share the girl’s teddy bear, her story, her goodnight kiss, and her good night’s sleep. And that proves the kid worthiness of Susan Marie Swanson's story.

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee

James and Eamon are heading to Nature Camp. Woo-Hoo!!! Nature Camp!!! And they get to stay with Bill and Pam, Eamon's grandparents, who live on the beach.

Except the story never makes it to Nature Camp. We see the boys riding in Bill's jeep on the way to camp. We see them returning from camp in Bill's backseat with pith helmets, binoculars, and pine cone pets. But readers never see Nature Camp. How can this be the best week ever?

There's evidence that Jamon (as Bill calls James and Eamon since they do everything together) has been to Nature Camp. There's feather necklaces, birdhouses, bird masks, and explorer's flags. And the boys complain. "I think it should be called Sit-Around Camp," says James. "Yeah, or Sweat-a-Lot Camp," says Eamon.

But there's more than evidence. There's actual, photographic proof of their week at Nature Camp. Readers will just have to look carefully for it.

If you just read the text, you get one story. If you just look at the pictures and speech bubbles, you get another. When you put them together you get "He was very sad when his mother drove away" next to a picture of James, smiling broadly, waving, and yelling, "BYE!" Sometimes the text alone seems downright educational. "James and Eamon learned a lot of new vocabulary words while Bill drove." Nature words? Transportation terms? Next to the picture of Bill's jeep and the driver's side speech bubble that reads, "@#%&!" you understand the full meaning.

A Couple of Boys [certainly do] Have the Best Week Ever. Not only at camp, but also with Eamon's grandparents. From the sound of Bill and Pam's snores on Friday evening and the hugs all around on Saturday morning, it's pretty evident they had a great week too.

And what do you have to lose? The book costs a quarter! Just see the cover. (In case you can't read the small print, it reads, "you wish."