Blueberries for Sal

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey


Pic Source : Amazon



This is a very simple and cute story of a little girl Sal, who goes up the hills with her mother to collect blueberries. The mother carries her large tin pail with her to put the berries in, because she wants to can them for the winter. Little Sal also carries her small tin pail. As the mother collects the berries, so does Sal. Some she puts in her tin pail and some she gobbles up !! Here is a very catchy phrase used. "Little Sal picked three berries and dropped them in her little tin pail...kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk !". The words used to describe that sound of blueberries hitting the tin pail amused me as well as my son. We smiled every time we said those words aloud from the book :-).


As Mother sees that her pail is also getting emptied by Sal, she asks her to go by herself and eat some berries. Sal finds a nice clump of bushes having lot of blueberries and settles herself comfortably.


Meanwhile on the other side of the hill, a mama bear and a baby bear are also on a similar blueberry hunting expedition ! The mama bear tells the little one to eat lot of berries to stock up for the winter.


As the little bear and little Sal, wander away from their mothers they happen to land behind the other one's mother ! Mama bear thinks it is her little one trudging behind her, when she hears the"kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk" sound :-). Surprised she turns around and when she sees little Sal, she backs away. At this point I would like to point out the beautiful way in which the author has expressed mama bear's reaction on seeing Sal- She took one good look and backed away. She was old enough to be shy of people, even a very small person like Little Sal. The word "shy" got me thinking...I felt that the author has purposefully used this word rather than "scared" or" afraid", to get across significant messages to our children. Likewise when Mother finds that it is the little bear and not Sal behind her, she turns and walks away because she was old enough to be shy of bears, even very small bears like Little bear !!!


As Mama bear and Mother go around the hill looking for their respective wards they find them with that unmistakable hustling sound and the "kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk" sound :-).


Happily the two pairs go back home, having had their fill of blueberries !


This is a feel good and charming story for little kids. We got this book from our library. One observation that I made while looking at the illustrations was that the pictures of Mother, her kitchen, canning jars made me feel that it depicted the western countries of may be early fifties.(My image of that comes from watching TV !). So to satisfy my curiosity I checked the first publishing date..it is mentioned as 1948 !!!


The illustrations are completely in black and white.It is beautiful. Robert McCloskey has both written and illustrated this book. There are also more books written and/or illustrated by him. Most of them are either Caldecott Award or Caldecott Honor book.

MOMMY&ME LISTAMANIA (for the 0‐3 age group)

Hi all,

As I was snooping around for a new bunch of books for my daughter who recently turned 3, I thought it would be nice to put together a list of the books that have grown on us in the past 3 years, the books that are mostly strewn on the couch, bedside table or floor rather than being snug on the bookshelf :) So, TA-DA... presenting our new MOMMY&ME LISTAMANIA (for the 0-3 age group).

I hope this will come in handy before your quick trip to the bookstore or library!

Thanks,
Meera

Ben's Trumpet

When I was a child I used to love drums, mridangam and any type of percussion instrument. I used to play imaginary drums. I guess most of us in our young age would have played some imaginary instrument. It is probably imaginary now; but, while playing it - it would have been the world for us. We would have probably heard the slight nuances and variations in the sounds and rhythm.
Ben's Trumpet is a story of a kid who loves the trumpet. He lives near a Jazz club called Zig Zag Club and listens to the music every night. He plays his imaginary trumpet along with the other musicians in the club. Many days he falls asleep listening and playing his trumpet.


Everyday morning, on his way to the school he peeps inside the club and watches the various musicians practice. He notices all the musicians, but considers the trumpeter as the cat's meow(I learnt that this phrase means 'something that is outstanding').


He plays his wonderful trumpet to his whole family and every where he goes. One day the trumpeter from Zig Zag club watches him and commends him on his wonderful music. A few days later on his way back from the school, a few children bully him and make fun of his imaginary trumpet. He is downcast and walks home dejected.


He continues to keep a vigil outside the club; but no longer plays his trumpet. The musicians come out for a break and the trumpeter of the club notices him downcast. He invites him inside the club, gives him a real trumpet and says - 'and we'll see what we can do'.


The book is written and illustrated by Rachel Isadore and initially published in 1979. Illustrations are in deco style using ink (and/or pencil drawings). The illustrations are impressive and indicate the mood of the story. The images are electric and the words are minimum in every page. The depictions of the various musicians, while playing their instruments, are very realistic and captures the intensity. The illustration of the drummer has a lot of movement and captures the speed and the rhythm of playing the drums. An illustration of the trumpeter from Zig Zig club walking by depicts the coolness and swagger of the person.


A very simple and heartwarming story with some impressive illustrations. Just One More Book has a wonderful podcast on Ben's Trumpet. Their discussion captures the essence of this book more than this blogpost entry.



Update: Made a few changes to the text. Did not notice that there were quite a few typos in my original post.

Little Blue and Little Yellow

Title:Little Blue and Little Yellow
Author: Leo Lionni
Age group: 3-8 years

Creative, imaginative, colorful and fun - all pressed out of a simple storyline.

Imagine a parallel universe where colors are the human equivalents. Or rather, the characters in this book are all primary colors! Little Blue lives with papa Blue and mama Blue. This is illustrated by three blue blobs - small, medium and large. Extrapolate this for the entire story and you have a vibrantly colored book that will be hard for any child to resist. I guess I can safely conclude now that the illustrations are intuitive but still very uncommon.

Moving on, Little Blue's good friend and playmate is little Yellow, who lives across the street with his papa and mama. They play with each other and with their other friends, blobs in a multitude of colors. One day little Blue, unable to find his buddy around, goes searching for him. Ecstatic on finding him a little later, they hug each other and blend into a blob of green! After frolicking, they (now a single smear of Green ) go back home only to be unrecognized by both the Yellow and the Blue families. They both begin to cry, the green blob now diffusing into two separate pools of Blue and Yellow drops. Little Blue and little Yellow are back in their individual forms and they go back to their parents who have no trouble recognizing them. When the joyous families hug each other, their fusion results in more Green patches and the parents realize what must have happened. All is well that ends well.

As quite obvious, the book teaches colors. However it goes a little further in that territory and initiates the concept of blending colors to give birth to new colors. As also obvious, it is a short and sweet story about two good friends.

I picked up this book as I found the concept of using colors as characters interesting. What turned out to be more interesting is how my daughter seemed to accept the very same concept that appealed to me, quite nonchalantly. Do I say how amazing it is when a child's innocence and imagination is more lofty in front of a stereotypical grown up who is groping for something unconventional? I should confess, we both have our own reasons for racing for this book whenever we make the call to read together!

Looking For A Moose

Looking for a Moose
by Phyllis Root (Author),
Randy Cecil (Illustrator)

Have you ever seen a moose--
a long-leggy moose--
a branchy-antler, dinner-diving, bulgy-nose moose?

That's how the book starts, with a small band of kids embarking on a search for moose.

The rhythm, the meter, the build-up and the illustrations have made this book my favorite, and judging by her twinkle when asking me to read it to her, my baby's as well.

It is a very simple book. A bunch of kids and a little dog go looking for moose. They look in the woods first without much success, which makes them declare

We look and we look, but it's just no use.
We don't see any long-leggy moose.

They look in the swamp, on the mountains, everywhere and eventually they find "a moose and a moose and a moose", "so many moose"!

What I liked about this book:

• the illustrator cleverly hides moose in each page that the band of moose-hunting children in the book miss (but the dog spots easily, apparently); older kids will have a blast "discovering" the hidden moose on each page
• each page moves along with each category of moose they list at the beginning: long-leggy, branchy-antler, dinner-diving, bulgy-nose moose
• moreover, it doubles as a counting book of sorts as there are a certain number of hidden moose of each category: one long-leggy moose, two dinner-diving moose, three branchy-antler moose...
• there are enough repetitions of the common theme and words that it almost works like Eric Carle's classic Brown Bear book to develop prediction skills in toddlers around 2-3 years, even if they don't understand all the words and the illustrations

My 2-yr old loves the sing-song rhythm it carried, and with each read she would point to the kids in the page and talk about their boots and hats (words on the page) and so on.

Older kids (recommended for ages 4-8) would like descriptions like brambly-ambly, scrubby-shrubby bush and so on.

That's not my...

Publisher: Usborne
Recommended for: 0-3

If you have ever wondered what books you could possibly read to your infant, wonder no more! Your search ends in this series of touchy-feely books by Usborne Publications.

picture courtesy: Usborne.com

I stumbled upon them by accident, when I was browsing through the board book collection at our local library. My son was around 8 months old at that time and he was just starting to show an interest in different textures. During our reading sessions, he seemed to prefer interactive books, which invited him to participate, over regular ones, which required him to sit tight and listen.

That's not my... series fueled both those interests. All the books in this series are titled similar - the subject changes each time. Eg: That's not my lion; That's not my truck and so on. Each book has 7-8 'board pages', which are hardy enough for tiny explorers. Two things are consistent throughout the book. First, the title line which repeats itself on every page, except the last one. Second, a tiny mouse that peeks from around some corner, which we presume is the one talking.
Take the That's not my bunny as an example. The bunny on each page looks different, and something is 'wrong' with it - either its tail is too fluffy, or its ears are too hairy.To emphasize the fluffy tail, the place where the tail should be, is covered in a fluffy material. On the last page, the mouse finds its perfect bunny, whose [some feature] is so [right].

The heart of these books is neither in the text nor in the illustration, but in the different materials used to exemplify what the text claims. Sandpaper for "rough", velvet for "soft", sponge for "squashy" are just some of the creative inserts that make this series of books shine from the rest.

At 8 months, my son couldn't get enough of these, because:

• Two short lines per page, so before he got impatient, it was time to turn the page
• Repetitive text which he found comforting at that age.
• Different texture, color and picture on each page.
• Most imporantly, this was a book that encouraged him to touch, rather than not.

Last word: I am yet to come across a more interactive and engrossing set of books than this series for infants.

Rating: 5 bindis (I would rate it 6 bindis if I could! )