Flotsam

Photo courtesy Amazon.
Author/Illustrator: DAVID WIESNER
Recommended Age group: 2 and up. You are limited only by your imagination!
Caldecott Award: 2007

I have been reading children’s books for the past three years. The main things I consider while picking out a book are message and language development. For people like me, books like Flotsam are eye openers. This is a wordless picture book and I REALLY noticed the pictures, the effort the author has put in to the pictures in order to convey the message and was simply astounded. The medium Wiesner uses is watercolor. Every seashell is meticulously drawn. The use of lines and the play of light are so wonderful that one can almost feel its texture. The colors are pleasing to young children making the children focus on the story without overly stimulating them. The placement of pictures also plays a major role in story telling in this wordless storybook.

Wiesner’s message through his books - magical things are happening all around us, anything can happen anywhere, do not limit your imagination/dreams and never loose hope on your dreams becoming true(Digression: Check out Wiesner’s 1992 Caldecott Medal book TUESDAY. It talks about the dream of frogs coming true. Any one, even frogs can dream and you never know it might just come true! Keep dreaming, it keeps you alive!).

Flotsam is a story in which a boy finds an underwater camera in a beach, washed ashore by the waves. The boy is not able to find the owners of the camera and decides to develop the pictures from the film in the camera. When he looks at the developed pictures, a whole new world is thrown wide open to him. From now on it is a fantasy journey not only for the boy but also to the readers. The older readers who know about the functioning of a ‘real world’ stare open eyed at the mechanical fishes swimming along side the real ones, a family of octopus sitting on a couch reading a book, puffed up puffer fish acting like a hot air balloon, gigantic sea turtles with a whole city on their shell and star fishes of colossal size – that make grey whales look tiny, housing an entire island on them. That’s not where the surprise ends, one has to read the book to find out what the final surprise!

It was so surprising how different the adult mind works when compared to a child’s mind. I am trying to make some sense of the pictures, and this is exactly how my brain went:
A key wound mechanical fish?!
What do I say if the children ask me to explain this?
May be I can say that this is a marine experiment and the biologists are observing patterns about this school of fish.
Whaaaat? A family of octopus sitting on a couch and reading books?
Aahhha! I see a moving container capsized behind the octopus and the couch must have fallen out of the container. The octopus just happened to sit on it.
What now? Puffer fish flying??? Okay I give up. There is no way in hell I can explain this….

And guess what questions I had to answer? ‘What is the boy’s name?’, ‘Ammaaaa, hermit crab eyes popping out of his head? That’s so silly[they put their index fingers on their fore heads and start doing a hermit crab routine. They even came with a voice for the hermit crab]’, ‘The boy has two shovels, one blue and one red. Can I have two shovels?’, ‘Can we put fish on our couch?’. They just surrendered to the story line and digested everything! Gosh, why did I even worry about flying fish and floating aliens? Teh open mindedness, amazes me.

There was a lot of language involved. By the time we finished reading this book, the boy had a name, ‘Geeg’ (please don’t ask me why, I did not name him). When he looks through a ring, his eyes become bigger(Errr.. in the book the boy is looking at a crab through a magnifying glass and Wiesner has painted it from the perspective of some one observing the boy. So you can see normal right eye and part of left eye through the magnifying lens). He is playing on the beach and is not being responsible, always listen to your mommy and daddy Geeg (I thought I was looking at myself and listening to myself)…and so Flotsam from a 2 year old and a 3.5 year old’s perspective goes on…..

Ahaha, I am not revealing the final knot. Go get a copy of Flotsam and discover it yourself. Hey, you, you and you get off the couch and get the book. Next post surprise quiz on Flotsam.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

One of Arthur C. Clarke's famous laws of prediction is --
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."


One of the great magics for me in my life is the medium of cinema. Cinema has the ability to create life, destroy it, re-imagine it and turn it topsy-turvy in seconds. Sometimes, I feel movies makes one a voyeur -- making us peek in characters, emotions, desires of imaginary, nevertheless real people. Sometimes, I wonder if the people in the cinema can look back at us, voyeurs in great groups, watching their every move.

It is about this great magic called the movie that this wonderful book called - The Invention of Hugo Cabret deals with.

The book is a combination of multi-page illustrations with some pages with written words. It is a massive book, a replacement for a pillow! But, one could easily complete the book in an hour; and keep coming back to it in order dig deep into the illustrations and the words.

The book starts with an introduction by Professor H. Alcofrisbas as he starts describing the story about the kid called Hugo Cabret, living in 1931, whose life changes forever during the course of this story. Hugo Cabret lives inside the railway station and makes sure all the clocks in the railway station are running properly. He is not the official time keeper; but, his uncle is. His uncle had disappeared some time back, but none of the railway official know about it. Although, the railway officer keeps dropping off the monthly cheques for the time keeper's job; Hugo Cabret does not know how to use them. So, they keep accumulating, while Hugo steals food from the various shops in the railway station to keep himself alive.

He has one goal in his life - He has some set of drawings in a treasured notebook and an automaton that does not work. But, he thinks his father had got it to work, just before he died in the fire accident. He gets the automaton and the drawings and starts working on getting the automaton to work. He feels that once he gets it to work, he would be able to read some cryptic message from his father.

One day, he gets caught by a grumpy old man who lives by selling toys near to the railway station. The old man snatches the notebook with drawings from him and keeps it to himself. The old man refuses to give it back. The old man's granddaughter, a girl who reads a lot of books, promises to retrieve it for Hugo Cabret.

The rest of the story is about how the girl and Hugo Cabret retreive the book and try to understand the mystery and the hidden message in the automaton. I would not reveal more than this. But, the rest of the story leads to the story of the Georges Milies, the creator of the first science fiction movie in the history of world cinema - A trip to the moon

It is great combination of fictionalizing based on a real person and a real movie and writing a story around it. It would be a great read and source of entertainment for kids above 10+ (or any one who can start reading English). I enjoyed it a lot. Why don't you try it too?

Mirette on the High Wire

Do you have fear of heights? I do. I am scared of peeping out from rooftops or balconies. More than the fear of heights; it is the fear of what would happen if I fall down that scares me a lot. I start imagining weird stuff. Even if I had to walk on the walls; I would think twice in my younger ages. So, it was with great wonder that I picked up the book - 'Mirette on the High Wire' by Emily Arnold McCully.

This is a nice picture book about a girl named Mirette. Her mother, widow Gateau, runs a boardinghouse in Paris - where all the actors, jugglers, acrobats and various other artists come from near and far to spend time with one another and eat the widows' wonderful food. Mirette helps her mother by doing various chores for her. One day, she notices one of the residents of the boarding house crossing the courtyard on air! She is highly enchanted by the stranger's skill of walking on high wire and decides to learn walking on the wire.

She pleads the stranger to teach her walking on the wire. The stranger turns out to be Bellini, the world famous exponent of high-wire walking. Bellini is so famous and good at walking on high wire that he had once crossed Niagara Falls on high wire and while crossing spent a few minutes to cook some boiled eggs on the wire; eat them; and then continue walking on the wire to the other side. A daredevil. Sadly now, he is retired and does not perform any more public stunts.

After much pleading, Mirette starts to learn high wire walking from the master himself. While learning and through other means, she finds out the reason why Bellini had stopped performing and retired. Bellini had suddenly developed fear of heights and is afraid! Even the greatest of stunts men and women are afraid and once it comes to their mind; it is very difficult to overcome it. Overcoming fear is probably more difficult than the task itself.

The rest of the story involves the details on how Mirette helps Bellini to overcome his fear.

Emily Arnold McCully has written and illustrated this wonderful picture book. The story is set in 19th Century and costumes, the dresses, the picturesque background buildings represent an old European city in vivid and bright colours. The various characters in the boarding house are depicted in interesting colours, hats and dresses - in order to illustrate the variety and differences among various artists. As one reviewer in Amazon pointed out; if you are looking for a picture book where the female character shows a lot spunk and is not depicted as being shy and cloy, do pick this book up.

Free Fall

Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes) says - I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each others dreams, we can be together all the time.

Calvin always lives in his dreams or his dreams and real life overlap so much that there is hardly any demarcation between them. Calvin lives in a surrealistic world. Who knows? May be most of our kids live in a surreal world where their real life and dream life merge and intermingle. May be, we were like that during our young days and slowly lost ourselves completely to the real world.

A young boy falls asleep reading a book and drifts slowly and silently into the book. The book draws him into a glorious world as it travels through wide and varied landscape. Each page of the book takes him through one adventure after another. As he glides through the wide fields, he meets some the members of his chess game. The bishop comes out to greet him; while the rook and the knight keep a safe distance watching him. The bishop leads him to a gigantic castle guarded by iron-clad knights. The castle is a maze of steps and circles that could lead to anywhere. He goes along to greet the knight only to realise that one of the knights have turned into beautiful sea-birds. The pillars of the castle turn into massive trees and walls of the castle turn into dragon's sharp back. and so on.. goes the dream!

Well, so goes on the wonderful picture book called Free Fall by David Weisner. Another great wordless book; as he demonstrates the amazing creativity and boundary less nature of dreams. David Weisner depicts the fluid nature of the dreams with one dream after another merging in his wonderful paintings. There is so much of activity going on in each page of the book that one needs to spend at least a few minutes going through the minute details. Every page is a potential for the kid to make up his own story. Every time we browse through the illustrations, I end up finding something interesting.

It is a great reminder for us about the tremendous power of creativity and dreams - something that we tend to forget during our mundane day to day work.

As Marcel Proust says - "If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

Dream on! and let your kids free to dream their own dreams!

Tuesday

Some of the wonderful moments that I have had with Sooraj is when we talk about dragons and other imaginary creatures that inhabit the stories that I concoct for him. I enjoy science fantasy, therefore, most of the stories that I make up for him includes some wild and imaginary beings.

There are very few children's books that are fantasy based - atleast I do not come across them very often. One such book that captured my attention is Tuesday - a great book by David Weisner, the king of wordless books.

Tuesday is an imaginary story that begins when three smug frogs lying on lily pads, one tuesday evening, suddenly find themselves afloat or flying. Soon, almost every frog on every lily pad is afloat. The lily pads look like small magic carpets specifically designed for the frogs to fly. Slowly and quietly, all the frogs fly up and decide to explore the neighbourhood sleepy town. As they frog explore the town, the book follows their adventurous journey. The illustrations are extremely life like and done in green, blue and purple water colours. They depict the silent Tuesday night in extremely vivid detail. At times, one could almost feel that one is travelling along with the frogs on those green magic carpets. As time passes on, the daylight breaks and the lily pads lose their flighty nature and fall down. The rather proud frogs can no longer stay afloat and start falling down to their huge dismay and return back to the marshes feeling rather forlorn.

And then, the next Tuesday evening breaks and the next flying adventure starts! This time it is some one else; read(is that the correct word to describe the book?) the book to find out who it is.

It is great book to spend with you kid. Keep turning the pages and let your kid make up the story as it goes along. Sooraj loved the story and we ended watching out in the dark sky for some flying frogs. Although, we did not find any; we are hopeful that we would find one soon. We did spot a flying dragon eye though!

If you have not watched a silent movie; do not worry - Tuesday is the book for you and your kid.

Kitten's First Full Moon - Books by Kevin Henkes

Picture Source: Amazon.com

Kevin Henkes is a terrific author with an array of wonderful books to his credit. We love the characters he creates, usually mice! My 4 yr old daughter, K, and I have read several of his books - Chrysanthemum, Jessica and our all-time favorite "Kitten's First Full Moon".

His picture books usually deal with problems that children face in the outside world - be it in schools, neighborhoods etc. His stories feature mice representing little children, and the illustrations are cartoonish -- basically, they talk and act like kids covered in fur, tail and ears. However, not all of his books deal with mice! There is one with a little kitten in it, and the kitten is irresistible and absolultely, positively, perfectly adorable!

"Kitten's First Full Moon" is a beautiful picture book that won the 2005 Caldecott Medal awarded by the Association for Library Service for the best Children's picture book every year.

We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Kitten's First Full Moon, which is a tender tale about a kitten who mistakes the full moon for a bowl of milk. Kitten embarks on a journey to lick the moon crossing fields, garden, but eventually returns without quite understanding why she couldn't get to lick it! Although she couldn't figure things out, she comes back home tired, wet and hungry only to find an actual bowl of milk waiting on the porch! Isn't that a cute story? I couldn't resist the tempation to pick from where Tharini left, the "kitten" theme. I still have that sweet aftertaste of a wonderful kitten story she left us with!

Coming back to "Kitten's First Full Moon", children will certainly empathize and chuckle at the kitten's antics as she tries to lick the moon that is faraway! In the process, gets stung by a bug on her tongue, falls down the stairs! The best part of the text is when the narrator repeats "Poor Kitten!" and "Still, there was the little bowl of milk, just waiting." This story is a sure winner in the hearts of little ones who can put themselves in the kitten's shoes(paws!) and imagine themselves on the adventure with little kitten. The author has made the Kitten's quest a funny and amusing story. Like all Kevin Henkes' stories, this one has a happy ending too! The narrative ends as "Lucky Kitten!"

Afer reading the book, my daughter and I continued our discussion about the kitten's imagination - we talked about what are the things we thought looked like something we knew, but in actuality turned out be something else. I had to confess to her my silly imaginations - when I was little I used to think waves in the ocean when they got really frothy as they hit the shore looked to me like milk. She came up with clouds reminding her of cotton candy, and she always wanted to lick them off just like the kitten! SO SWEET! Another very silly confession of mine to my daughter was, I told her, for some reason, when I was little I used to think planes were toothpastes flying high in the sky! She had such a good laugh over her Mom's stupid imaginations!:-)

But, please do read Kitten's First Full Moon, if you can get hold of the book because this book is lot of fun and will evoke lots of LOLs. The illustrations are black and white adding to the innocence and simplicity of this book.

Kevin Henkes stories usually end with a positive and upbeat note leaving the main character to feel good about who they are or what they do. We have read some of his other books - Chrysanthemum and Jessica. Chrysanthemum is about a little mouse(girl) who gets teased in kindergarten because she is named after a flower. The story offers an important message for little ones to not tease others and treat everyone respectfully.

The other book we've read is Jessica. I didn't really care much for Jessica although my daughter does enjoy the book for its illustrations and simple text. It's about a little girl named Ruthie who has no sibling or a pet chooses to have an imaginary friend named Jessica. It was not a relevant book for my daughter because she doesn't have an imaginary friend. At least so far, she has voiced her fears openly without any hesitation rather than choose to vent her fears through an imaginary friend. If you know of a child who has an imaginary friend, they should definitely read this book. It is yet another sensitive and tender story by Kevin Henkes