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Sept. 7, 2007
Good values for our children
Books should be enjoyable, but they should also have a moral.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Three veteran children's book authors have new releases out this
fall, and the final tally for the Tundra Books publications is two
hits and a miss.
Although Irene N. Watts writes for the double-digit crowd, she's
included here as one of the recommended reads for the younger set.
When the Bough Breaks is a prequel to her previous
book, Flower. It is excellent – interesting, heartwarming
and has all the right lessons. There are parts that will creep readers
out a bit ... but in a good way.
Set during the Great Depression, When the Bough Breaks focuses
on Millie, whose parents were Home Children (between 1869 and the
1930s, more than 100,000 orphaned children were sent from Britain
to the colonies) and whose stories were told in Flower. Millie
has a younger brother and, near the beginning of the story, we find
out that another sibling is on the way. She is very excited by the
news. Sadly, though, some discomfiting predictions – made by
a scary lady named Elsie Bates, who reads tea leaves – come
true and Millie must cope with the not-always pleasant surprises
that life proffers. Keeping the family together through various
difficulties is a lot for 12-year-old Millie to handle, but she
manages, with her family and her friends.
Where When the Bough Breaks venerates family, Cary Fagan's
new book, for kids four to seven years old, does the opposite. With
beautiful illustrations by Dusan Petricic, Fagan's My New
Shirt is presented as a photo scrapbook, with snapshots
matching the text.
The story is quite funny at first. Young David gets the same gift
from his grandmother every year: a shirt. "Not a T-shirt with
a picture of Anti-Gravity Man or a stegosaurus on it. Instead, it
is a bright white shirt with buttons. A stiff shirt with
an even stiffer collar. It is the sort of shirt that your
parents want you to wear buttoned up because it makes you look like
a 'little gentleman.' The sort of shirt that makes you squirm and
pull and shift and twitch." At one point, David has a nightmarish
day dream about these shirts and, when he's roused out of it by
his mother's scream, he finds that he has thrown the shirt from
his bubbie out the window. His dog grabs it and runs off and the
chase is hilarious. Even more amusing is that, stained from the
unexpected journey, Bubbie manages to clean the shirt, returning
it to white, stiff-collared perfection. What isn't so amusing about
this story is that David zones out once more and again tosses the
shirt out the window unwittingly. No one goes after the dog this
time, there's only laughter and Bubbie says, "How about ...
next year I get you something different for your birthday."
What kind of moral is that? You don't like a gift, so you ungratefully
toss it away in front of the giver, and they somehow feel guilty
enough to buy you something else? People often complain that the
world has become too materialistic and maybe it has, when such an
attitude becomes cute. Perhaps parents who buy this book will sit
down with their kids and discuss the different ways in which David
could have reacted more appropriately.
Happily, Richard Ungar doesn't disappoint in his new picture book,
Even Higher, in which he adapts a story by I.L. Peretz.
Ungar's vibrant, rich drawings are an ideal complement to the mystical
tale that explores the mystery of where the rabbi of Nemirov disappears
to every year on the day before Rosh Hashanah. The task of discovery
falls on Reuven, who is chosen by his friends to follow the rabbi
and find out whether he really ascends to heaven to ask forgiveness
for the townspeople's sins. The moral of helping others is entertainingly
told and, geared for kids ages seven to 10, it's the perfect family
read for this time of year.
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