by Nancy Pearl
Trouble begins when the rain starts falling and things only right themselves when the sun—finally!—comes out, in David Shannon’s The Rain Came Down.
William Steig’s Pete’s a Pizza gave me some chuckles and a way to entertain children on the next rainy day.You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Pete’s dad, too.
Karen Hesse and Jon J Muth combine text and illustrations in Come On, Rain!, about a little girl who’s looking forward to an end of the seemingly endless dry spell and heat of summer.
David Wiesner’s Hurricane describes the adventures of two brothers when a hurricane blows in and knocks down an elm tree near their house.
It’s winter and there’s snow—what fun for these children, who don’t seem to mind the cold: The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and Olivier Dunrea’s It’s Snowing! (I just love the exclamation point there—it’s so indicative of the joy found in this book about a mother and her baby sharing the delights of his first snowfall.) That same joy can be found in Raymond Briggs’s wordless classic, The Snowman, a book no child (or adult) will want to miss; The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming (a rollicking cumulative tale that’s great for a snowy story hour); Snow by Uri Shulevitz, celebrating the joy a boy and his dog find in a snowfall in the city; Winter Friends by Mary Quattlebaum (a collection of poems about wintertime); and Manya Stojic’s Snow, which is all about how different animals prepare for the coming of winter.
In Lucille’s Snowsuit by Kathryn Lasky, poor Lucille has so much trouble getting into her snowsuit that she almost misses out on playing in the snow with her older brother and sister (you can find out more about Lucille and her other exploits in Starring Lucille and Lucille Camps In).
If you’ve ever wondered what snowmen do when all the kids go home to dinner and sleep, you’ll find the answer in Caralyn Buehner’s Snowmen at Night; and of course no list of wonderful weather books could omit the heroics of Katy, who works throughout a huge blizzard to help out her small town, in Virginia Lee Burton’s Katy and the Big Snow.
YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND
As these picture books show, friends come in all shapes and sizes, and the best of friends stick together through thick and thin, through good times and bad. Just look at these: Arnold Lobel’s signature characters Frog and Toad are two of my favorites in all of fiction; their relationship really defines the characteristics of friendship: tolerance for the other’s quirks, a little bit of sacrifice, perhaps, and a deep concern for the other’s happiness. They’re found in Frog and Toad Are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, and Days with Frog and Toad.
Kids who enjoy the Frog and Toad stories will also enjoy Kate McMullan’s tales about the lovely friendship between Pearl (a bunny) and Wagner (a mouse), including Pearl and Wagner: Two Good Friends and Pearl and Wagner: Three Secrets, and the stories of a friendship between two hippopotami, in George and Martha and George and Martha One Fine Day by James Marshall.
Annabelle Bernadette Clementine Dodd only comes to really appreciate her grown-up friend Bea after a potentially dreadful mishap in The Friend, written and illustrated by the wife and husband team of Sarah Stewart and David Small.
Rabbit is a terrible trial to his best friend, Mouse, but despite that, their friendship knows no bounds, in My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann.
Al, a janitor, and his best friend, a dog named Eddie, learn a valuable lesson together in Hey, Al by Arthur Yorinks, with remarkably detailed and clever illustrations by Richard Egielski.
Other friendship books include Andy and the Lion by James Daugherty; Holly Keller’s Farfallina and Marcel (a caterpillar and a gosling); You’re Not My Best Friend Anymore by Charlotte Pomerantz; Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco; Charlotte Zolotow’s My Friend John; Mr. George Baker by Amy Hest; Metropolitan Cow by Tim Egan (can a cow overcome his parents’ disapproval and remain friends with the pig next door?); and Christopher Raschka’s Yo? Yes! and Ring! Yo?
PART II
MIDDLE-GRADE READERS
AGES 8-12
ADVENTURE AHOY!
The four classic adventure novels that no one, child or adult, should go through life without reading are, of course, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Treasure Island—filled as they are with pirates, treasure, heroes, and lots of derring-do—and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You can see their benign but telling influence on the contemporary adventures described here.
Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, which takes place in a world similar to, but subtly different from our own, is a rousing tale of pirates, lighter-than-air ships that sail through the sky, mysterious creatures that may or may not be dangerous, and a resourceful and ambitious cabin boy named Matt, who wants to live up to his memories of his father. It’s followed up by Skybreaker, an equally enjoyable tale.
Pirates also play a major part of Michele Torrey’s exciting Voyage of Plunder. Set in the early 1700s, this is the swashbuckling story of Daniel Markham, who, after his father’s murder aboard their merchant ship, has no choice but to join the Tempest Galley and work for its captain, the pirate Josiah Black.Torrey is also the author of Voyage of Ice, a gripping story of a young man’s adventures on a whaling boat circa 1850, and To the Edge of the World, in which the orphaned and penniless Mateo becomes a cabin boy on Ferdinand Magellan’s great voyage of discovery.
Interestingly, Hugh Montgomery’s The Voyage of the Arctic Tern is told in verse, which brings to mind the epic tales of old like The Iliad and The Odyssey, but it has a certain charm and definite page-turning qualities all its own. Bruno, the captain of the Arctic Tern, is doomed to a life of wandering, and his attempts to free himself from this curse bring him into conflict with both kings and buccaneers.
John Masefield, if he’s known these days at all, is remembered as a poet, but he wrote at least one terrific book for young people. Jim Davis, the eponymous hero, gets involved (against his will) with smugglers during the Napoleonic era in Devon, England—an adventure that he will barely survive. Or will he?
In The Ring of the Slave Prince, Bjarne Reuter’s hero pursues his dreams of treasure across the high seas of the pirate-ridden Caribbean.
Fifteen-year-old Gabe Rogers finds himself stranded in the Canadian wilderness of the Northwest Territories along with his classmate, Raymond Providence, in Far North by Will Hobbs.This is a good choice as a companion read for anyone who loved Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet.
Other heart-pounding adventures can be found in Zizou Corder’s Lion Boy (followed by Lion Boy: The Chase and Lion Boy: The Truth); The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke; both The Convicts and The Cannibals by Iain Lawrence (lots of swashbuckling derring-do in these tales of Tom Tin, sentenced to be deported from England in the 1830s to serve a long prison term in Australia for a crime he didn’t commit); and Joan Aiken’s multivolumed series The Wolves Chronicles, beginning with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which is also an alternative history, positing the existence of a King James III of England. (I’ve actually never met a girl who didn’t love this book.) Be sure to have kids read as far into the series as (or just begin with) Cold Shoulder Road, with its Edward Gorey cover illustration.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Before children’s literature became dominated by the fantasy genre, this category—what we used to call, somewhat quaintly, “family stories”—was exceedingly popular with eight- to twelve-year-olds. And much as I love fantasy and science fiction, I am always heartened when a kid tells me that he wants to read something with ordinary, non-magic people in it. Well, here are some great titles with which to begin:
Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two are all about Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver Melendy. (The big question here is how to pronounce their names: I’ve always divided up the word into three syllables—Mel-en-dy—with the accent on the first, but several devoted fans of these books accent the second syllable. Whatever works for you.) The four brothers and sisters are different enough that chil
dren tend to gravitate toward (and like best) the child who’s most like them. My favorite was always Randy. And be sure to check out Enright’s other books, including Gone-Away Lake (and Return to Gone-Away), Tatsinda (a fantasy), Thimble Summer, and The Sea Is All Around.
Eleanor Estes’s The Moffats, The Middle Moffat, and Rufus M., are all about Sylvie, Joey, Janey, and Rufus, growing up in a yellow house on New Dollar Street in Cranbury, Connecticut, in the years leading up to World War I.
Sydney Taylor’s autobiographical stories of life in a Jewish family just before World War I include All-of-a-Kind Family, More All-of-a-Kind Family, All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown, and All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown. Each of the five daughters, Ella, Henny, Sarah, Gertie, and Charlotte, gets to star in a chapter or two, and, as with the Elizabeth Enright books, each reader will pick her own favorite, although I think that Sarah (who I suspect is based on Taylor herself) plays the most prominent role.
I love Maud Hart Lovelace’s series of autobiographical books about Betsy Ray, her family, and her friends (and all the women I know who read these books as children still adore them as much as I do). Published in the 1940s and set in a fictionalized Mankato, Minnesota (here called Deep Valley), in the first two decades of the twentieth century, we first meet Betsy and her friends when they’re just beginning school and follow their everyday adventures through adolescence, love, and marriage.While the first titles in the series are just right for young readers starting on their first chapter books, the later ones, when Betsy and her friends are in high school, are perfect for ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-old girls. The books include (in order) Betsy-Tacy, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Betsy and the Great World, and Betsy’s Wedding. There are also three related titles, Winona’s Pony Cart, Emily of Deep Valley, and Carney’s House Party (which offers a terrific peek at Vassar College in the early twentieth century). Just writing these titles here makes me want to go and reread all of them.
When I first went to work as a children’s librarian at the Detroit Public Library, I was surprised to find that the only Lovelace book in the library was Emily of Deep Valley. I investigated further and discovered that the librarians reviewing these books way back in the 1940s deemed them “too sentimental” to purchase for the collection. I’m not convinced that sentimentality is bad for children, at least in the small dosage found here. For many years the Lovelace books languished, out of print, but HarperCollins has made them all available once again for a new generation of readers. Thank goodness, because I finally got to replace my ratty old copies with new editions.
Carol Ryrie Brink is best known for her Newbery Award-winning Caddie Woodlawn, but you won’t want to overlook two of her other books. Family Grandstand details the everyday adventures of Susan, George, and Dumpling Ridgeway, who live in a house with a tower overlooking the football stadium in a midwestern college town along with their professor father and their mystery-writing mother, and Family Sabbatical, when the Ridgeways spend a year in France and, among other events, Dumpling loses her beloved doll in a dankly ancient prison.
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall is similar in tone to Brink’s books and also features an awfully nice family and the joys of the quotidian life. It was awarded the 2005 National Book Award.
Other superb family stories include Jordan Sonnenblick’s Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, in which Steven’s younger brother is diagnosed with leukemia and the whole family’s world is turned upside down;Tim Kennemore’s Circle of Doom (a wacky, good-natured tale that’s a hoot to read); Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson; the series of books about the Casson family, including Saffy’s Angel, Permanent Rose, and Indigo’s Star by Hilary McKay; The Steps by Rachel Cohn (stepsiblings try to coexist in Sydney, Australia); and Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Becoming Naomi León.
ANIMAL TALES
These are books with an enduring appeal—not only for immediate rereading, but also to pass on from one generation to the next.
Sheila Burnford’s The Incredible Journey is the story of how two dogs—a bull terrier and a Labrador retriever—and a Siamese cat travel on their own through the Canadian wilderness to reach their home. I’m happy to tell you in advance that, thankfully, it ends happily.
New folks are coming to live in the big house, and Georgie the Rabbit and his friends and family wait with hope (will they be garden-planters?) and trepidation (are they the sort to put out poison to kill the wild critters?) to see just what kind of folks they are, in Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson. The same characters reappear in The Tough Winter. Other imaginative and entertaining animal stories by Lawson include Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin By His Good Mouse Amos; Captain Kidd’s Cat; and Mr. Revere and I (written by Paul Revere’s horse, who played a very important part in broadcasting the news that the British were on their way). A good accompaniment to this latter book is Christopher Bing’s illustrated version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
If you’re an orphan pig who wants to herd sheep, you can’t do better than be adopted by a kindly farmer and his very experienced sheepdog. Such is the situation in Babe:The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith, which concludes with Babe’s big win at a herding competition. For fans of Babe, another enjoyable selection is King-Smith’s The Golden Goose, which recounts what happens when the animal of the title appears on Farmer Skint’s farm. The Skint family’s luck starts to change from bad to good, but it’s hard to keep their treasure a secret. In fact, all of King-Smith’s animal stories are well loved by children, including The Fox Busters and Martin’s Mice. (Hint: Martin is a wimpy cat who keeps the mice he catches as pets, rather than eat them.)
One of the first books that Miss Frances Whitehead, the children’s librarian at my neighborhood library, gave to me to read was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, the unforgettable story of the adventures of Mr.Toad of Toad Hall, Ratty, Badge, and Mole. If you’ve never read this as an adult and only barely remember it from when you read it as a child (or maybe you missed it altogether), add it to your own must-read list as well.
Freddy Auratus spent his early life in a pet shop, along with his golden hamster brothers and sisters, but he has plans to make something of himself and his life—how he succeeds (knowing how to use a computer comes in very handy), and the adventures he has (along with Enrico and Caruso, two guinea pigs, and Sir William, a cat) are described with gusto in Dietlof Reiche’s I, Freddy, Freddy in Peril, Freddy to the Rescue, and The Haunting of Freddy.
Did you ever wonder what happened to the prince-who-was-turned-into-a-frog-by-a-wicked-witch during his time as an amphibian? Donna Jo Napoli’s The Prince of the Pond explores his life post-princehood from the point of view of the frog he marries.
Tasha Tudor’s Corgiville Fair is a delightful book set in the imaginary village of Corgiville, which is “west of New Hampshire and east of Vermont,” and populated by, among other denizens, cats, Welsh corgis, goats, and boggarts. (Boggarts? What are they doing there?!) Happily, the same cast of characters reappears in Corgiville Christmas and The Great Corgiville Kidnapping.
Other quality animal tales for this age group include Whittington by Alan Armstrong; Erin Hunter’s Warriors series, starting with Into the Wild, about a group of feral cats fighting enemy clans; Freddy the Detective and its twenty-five sequels by Walter R. Brooks; Randall Jarrell’s The Animal Family; The Cricket in Times Square (and the other tales of Chester Cricket) by George Selden; Kathryn Lasky’s series about Soren the barn owl, beginning with The Capture; and of course, E. B. White’s best-beloved Charlotte’s Web.
AUTHOR! AUTHOR!
There are some writers that you can pretty much rely on to come up with excellent novels for middle-grade readers. Along with the author’s name, I’ve included the book (or two) that I feel best represents a hig
h point in his or her work—but listen, find an author here you like and then try all of his or her books:Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, which include The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King
Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins and Dear Mr. Henshaw
Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone and sequels
Roald Dahl’s The Twits
Doris Gates’s Blue Willow
Deborah and James Howe’s Bunnicula
Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, Charmed Life, and Dark Lord of Derkholm
E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Madeleine L’Engle’s Meet the Austins
Lois Lowry’s The Giver
A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner
Daniel Pinkwater’s Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars
Jon Scieszka’s Knights of the Kitchen Table and sequels
Kate Seredy’s The Good Master
