Playing by the book

Reviews of kids' books and the crazy, fun stuff they inspire us to do

Book news from the blogosphere

Posted on | August 29, 2010 | 6 Comments

The shortlists for the awards as part of the upcoming Book Blogger Appreciation Week have been announced and I’m utterly thrilled to say I’ve made it onto the Kidlit shortlist, along with Teach Mentor Texts and There’s a Book. If you’re looking for some links to explore this (bank holiday) weekend, do have a look at the complete list of finalists. I’m sure you’ll find something to enjoy!

In other news, the call for Cybil judges has gone out. The Cybils are the Children and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards and if you’d like to take part please consider offering your time and enthusiasm as a judge!

In case you’d like some more reading, the August Carnival of Children’s Literature is now live, over at Stories Are Light. There are so many great posts there this month! For once I’m glad of the rain here – the perfect excuse for another cup of tea and a browse round some of the wonderful book shelves in the blogosphere.

Category: Awards, Blogging about books

Fantastic Fiction for Kids – Adventure!

Posted on | August 26, 2010 | 7 Comments

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This week’s contributor is Megan Blandford, a fellow book blogger who likes to spend her time writing, reading, travelling and photographing. Megan lives in Melbourne with her husband and their beautiful, energetic toddler. Megan blogs at Writing Out Loud about all manner of things that pop into her head, and indulges her love of children’s literature at Kids Book Review. Megan’s chosen topic for this week’s Fantastic Fiction for Kids is adventure! If you’re ready to explore and have some fun with an occasional Australian twist then I’ll hand you straight over to Megan:

Some stories are told to communicate a lesson, others are just for fun and silliness… but there’s nothing like a good old tale of adventure to capture a child’s imagination. Here are some of my daughter’s (okay, MY!) favourite adventure stories:

Wendy by Gus Gordon


An adventurous chicken leaves the farm to pursue a career with the circus, performing as Wendy the Flying Chicken. She becomes famous for her stunt jumps, being written about in the newspaper and interviewed on television. Wendy has everything she ever dreamed of, but she still wants more, so she carefully devises the biggest stunt of her career. But when she crashes, she thinks of life back home on the farm, with her family. It’s back to the quiet life for Wendy… although her schemes aren’t finished just yet. A funny, beautifully written and superbly illustrated story.
Leaf by Stephen Michael King


A little boy escapes his mother and her looming promise to cut his hair, heading outside for an adventure. When a bird drops a seed in his unkempt hair and a leaf sprouts, the boy is thrilled and searches for a way to water it and make it grow and grow. His boisterous canine companion bears the brunt of all the misadventure. This is a unique story without text, allowing King’s wonderful illustrations to shine and tell their own version of events. It will make you laugh hysterically.
Where on Earth is the Moon? by Ruth Martin, illustrated by Olivier Latyk


Luna is obsessed with the moon and loves to watch it shine down on her. But she’s curious about where it goes during the day. She decides to stay up and watch where it disappears to but, falling asleep each time, she is instead taken on adventures in her dreams. Luna heads higher than the mountains, further than the clouds, beyond the ocean and eventually finds the answer. This is a stunning, beautifully descriptive adventure of the imagination.
Rufus the Numbat by David Miller


Rufus doesn’t even know he’s on an adventure when he heads from the city back to his home in the bush. But the people he’s encountered sure do. He causes all sorts of chaos and mishap, from sending a cyclist flying to getting under the feet of a dragon at the grand parade. The greatest appeal of this story is the amazing paper sculpture illustrations and the unusual contrast between the slow, methodical text and frantic visual scenes.
Vivi Finds Bean by Vanessa Holle


Vivi is so keen to meet her godmother, Bean, that she heads on a quest from Germany all the way over to Sydney to find her. Travelling on whales, turtles and kangaroos, she makes her way across the seas and the great big land of Australia to stay with her beloved Bean. This story is told in funny rhyme and the words flow right across the pages in their own mini adventure.

Songs about adventuring!

  • Adventure Quest by The Jellydots
  • All the Little Children by Kesang Marstrand – about all the adventures the yet-to-fall-asleep child could have with the singer
  • Going on an Adventure from Two of a Kind
  • Fun and Adventure by Todd McHatton



    • Activities which might go well with these books:

  • Make your own passport to take with you on your own adventuring – over at Suite 101 there’s a really fun idea for filling your passport with homemade stamps of the places you visit during the holidays eg stamps for the zoo or a museum
  • Even if it’s not nearly spring where you are, you can germinate seeds inside and watch for the first leaf – here’s an example from Parenting Times on how you could do this.
  • Although this project is probably for older kids (or simply parents after the kids have gone to bed!), I can’t resist including how to make an orrery out of lego



    • Megan’s selection has certainly provided me with a few more books to add to my wish list – Thank you Megan!


    If any of you have more suggestions for great picture books on the theme of adventure, please let us know about them via the comments, and do please visit Megan over at Writing Out Loud and say hello!

    Category: Adventure, David Miller, Fantastic Fiction for Kids, Gus Gordon, Olivier Latyk, Ruth Martin, Stephen Michael King, Vanessa Holle

    Nonfiction Monday Roundup

    Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 22 Comments

    Today I’m very happy to be hosting Nonfiction Monday! If you’ve recently reviewed a great nonfiction book for kids please leave a comment below and I’ll add you to this post as the day develops.

    I’ve recently reviewed several books that have blurred the boundary between fiction and non fiction – Satoshi Kitamura’s Stone Age Boy, Donna Jo Napoli’s Mama Miti and Margarita Engle’s Summer Birds. Kitamura’s book is nominally fiction, but we learned as much about the stone age from it as from any of the books we found in the nonfiction section of the library. Mama Miti and Summer Birds, on the other hand, do have Dewey classification labels on their spines, but the storytelling (each a biography of an inspirational woman) and illustration is of a calibre that you more often find in great (fictional) picture books. We loved all of them and they inspired a good deal of crazy play!

  • Sherry from Semicolon has reviewed Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz by Beverly Gherman. It’s a beautifully produced juvenile biography, “a great tribute to a talented man”.


  • Sandhya reviewed We Are All Born Free, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures both at Saffron Tree, and also at A View From My Side. Sandhya comments on how this Indian edition differs from the International edition – the foreword and afterword places the declaration specifically in its Indian context.


  • Jojoebi from A Bit of This and a Bit of That offers us 4 astral reviews, Zoo in the Sky and Moonshot, The Planet Gods: Myths and Facts about the Solar System and 11 Planets: A New View of the Solar System, and then brings us back to earth with a review of Africa is Not a Country.


  • Back out to space and Beyond: A Solar System Voyage by Michael Benson is reviewed by Jennie at Biblio File. The photographic illustrations sound amazing.


  • Jeff from NC Teacher Stuff joins us this week with a review of Stand Straight, Ella Kate – a picture book about giantess Ella Kate Ewing.


  • Abby (the) Librarian has a review of Candy Bomber: The Story of the Berlin Airlift’s “Chocolate Pilot” by Michael O. Tunnel. It sounds like a book bound to capture the imagination of anyone who likes their sweets!


  • Another nonfiction book about an aspect of the Second World War is reviewed by Alex at The Children’s War – V is for Victory: America Remembers World War II by Kathleen Krull.


  • For a review of Enrique Esparza and the Battle of the Alamo by Susan Taylor Brown and Jeni Reeves, head on over to jama rattigan’s alphabet soup. I really love the look of the oil painting illustrations in this book.


  • Roberta at Wrapped in Foil has a review of a book by British author/illustrator Simon Basher called Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction – funnily enough I was looking at this in a bookshop just last week and thought it might be one to return to when my kids are a little older.


  • A review of Cleopatra Rules! can be found at Bookish Blather. Angela describes it as an “excellent biography of the much-maligned and misunderstood ruler of Egypt”.


  • At All About the Books with Janet Squires there’s a review of Graphing Habitats, written by Sarah Medina, which is “designed to explain, explore and illustrate how a variety of graphs can be utilized to organize information”.


  • Shirley at SimplyScience reviews Survival at 40 Below – a fascinating sounding book about animals found in the Arctic National Park


  • Reviews of 2 garden related books are offered by Amanda at A Patchwork of Books – Up We Grow and The Good Garden. I particularly like the sound of Up We Grow about life over a year on a farm.


  • Jennifer at Jean Little Library not only reviews Who Was Amelia Earhart? but also laments the state of her library’s biography collection! Jennifer – I definitely recommend Mama Miti and Summer Birds if you don’t already have them and by some twist of good fortune find the money to buy some more biographies!


  • We’re having very humid weather at the moment in this part of the UK and so Lori Calabrese’s review of Seymour Simon’s Tropical Rainforests was a great read for me this afternoon!


  • Mandy from ACPL Mock Sibert has written a great post about the blurring of boundaries between fiction and nonfiction books, particularly in light of judging books for awards where it matters whether or not a book is deemed to be (non)fiction.


  • To mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina MsMac reviews Two Bobbies by Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery over at Check It Out. In other news that will be of interest to Nonfiction Monday readers, MsMac is the organizer for the Nonfiction Picture Book category in the upcoming Cybils. If you are passionate about Nonfiction Picture Books, please contact her about being on either the round one or round two.


  • Robin at The Booknosher reviews a wonderful sounding (sorry about the pun…) book called We Shall Overcome: A Song that Changed the World. I defy you to read her review and not end up humming the song to yourself :-)


  • Over at Apples With Many Seeds Tammy reviews Do! by Gita Wolf, Ramesh Hengadi and Shantaram Dhadpe, a handmade book from Tara Books full of illustrations based on traditional Warli tribal art from Western India.


  • Cindy and Lynn at Bookends have a review of All Aboard: Elijah McCoy’s Steam Engine by Monica Kulling and Bill Slavin, a biography to add to your back-to-school shopping list!


  • As part of her Boys of Summer baseball biography series, Margo from The Fourth Musketeer has a review today of Henry Aaron’s Dream, by Matt Tavares. It focuses on the childhood and early career of baseball legend Hank Aaron, all presented in a beautifully illustrated oversized picture book.


  • Over in Charlotte’s Library you can find a great review of Explore Rocks and Minerals, by Cynthia Light Brown and Nick Brown. I love the sound of the 20 projects that are included in the book.


  • Sarah at In Need of Chocolate has reviewed A Tree Is Growing by Arthur Dorros and Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Catcus by Barbara Bash. Regular readers of Playing by the book will know that nearly all posts of mine include some music for the kids to enjoy and Sarah has given me the perfect opportunity to suggest you all listen (and dance) to I Like Cacti by Randy Kaplan.

    • I also want to shout out about the UK’s first National Non-Fiction Day, to be held on November 4th . This is intended to be “an annual celebration, initiated by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups in partnership with Scholastic Children’s Books. It aims to celebrate all that is brilliant about non fiction and show that it’s not just fiction that can be read and enjoyed for pleasure.”

    Finally, a brief mention of the interview swap you can sign up for as part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. If you’d like to interview (and be interviewed) by another book blogger during BBAW (September 13-17 2010) you still have time to sign up – click here to find out more!

    Category: Nonfiction Monday
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