Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin.
By Tad Hills. Schwartz & Wade. $10.99.
Everything Goes: Henry Goes
Skating. By B.B. Bourne. Illustrations by Simon Abbott. Harper. $16.99.
Mr. Noah and His Family. By
Jane Werner. Illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. Golden Books. $3.99.
The Cow Went Over the Mountain.
By Jeanette Krinsley. Illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky. Golden Books. $3.99.
Seed by Seed: The Legend and
Legacy of John “Appleseed” Chapman. By Esmé Raji Codell. Illustrations by Lynne Rae Perkins.
Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Those charmers, Duck
and Goose, have another of their adorable adventures – a seasonal one – in the
lap-size board book, Duck & Goose
Find a Pumpkin. Originally published
in 2009, Tad Hills’ easy-to-read, delightfully illustrated book has all the
usual characteristics of Hills’ simple stories about these two friends:
super-cute illustrations, a plot based on a misunderstanding, and an eventual
happy solution. It starts when Duck and
Goose see their friend Thistle carrying a pumpkin and decide to get one
themselves. But they do not know where
to look, so of course they go, amusingly, to all the wrong places: a log, a
leaf pile, an apple tree and so forth.
Their expressions are priceless, and their bewilderment invites young
children to exclaim “no, not there!” as Duck and Goose search in yet another
incorrect spot. Eventually, Thistle
returns and suggests they look in the pumpkin patch, where of course they find
what they want – and praise themselves for knowing just where to search. Simple, silly and heartwarming, Duck & Goose Find a Pumpkin is a
delightful tale for autumn, or anytime.
Henry Goes Skating is a winter story based on the Everything Goes books by Brian Biggs,
but without Biggs himself involved. This
(+++) book is in the “I Can Read!” series, at the beginning “My First” level
for kids just starting to learn to read – around ages 4-6. Large print, simple sentences, and
illustrations in Biggs’ style are combined into a story of a snowy day in which
Henry and his family decide to go skating, with their trip somewhat delayed
when a bus gets stuck on ice and has to be towed. They make it to the park, where they see
police officers on horses – which, Henry notices, can go on ice and snow better
than buses and other vehicles can. Henry
watches a Zamboni smooth the ice, then he and his parents skate together, and
then everyone goes home to make a snowman.
This is a fine book for kindergartners and pre-kindergartners on a cold
day, whether or not there is snow and ice.
Two (+++) reprints of
Little Golden Books are timeless rather than seasonal: families that like these
short, nostalgic works will enjoy them anytime.
Mr. Noah and His Family, which
dates to 1948, is about a little girl playing with a Noah’s Ark toy, which
contains pairs of animals that look similar but differ in significant ways: one
camel is blue and one is brown; one pig is pink and one is
red-and-white-checked; one giraffe has real giraffe colors and one is green,
black and red; one skunk is larger and one is smaller; and so on. There is no story – just pleasantly drawn pages
of pictures of the toy animals being unpacked from the ark, played with and put
back aboard. There is a story in The Cow Went
Over the Mountain, originally published in 1963. Little Cow gets her mother’s permission to go
to a nearby mountain where “the grass is munchier,” and along the way picks up
other animals looking for something better: a frog seeking crunchier bugs, a
duck looking for sploshier water, a pig hoping for slushier mud, and a bear wanting
gooier honey. Of course, when they
arrive, they find that things are not really munchier, crunchier, splashier,
slushier or gooier after all, until cow notices another mountain and says things are better there. So they all head in
that direction – which turns out to take them back to their original mountain,
where everything is just fine. “The
grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” would be an obvious
moral, but there is no moralizing here – the story is told straightforwardly
and amusingly, with no attempt to make it into more than a pleasant tale.
Seed by Seed, though, is
built around a moral; and it is much more than a simple story. Esmé
Raji Codell skillfully tells of the life of Johnny Appleseed – the true tale,
although much embellished by legend, of John Chapman, who spent decades
planting apple seeds throughout the West as the United States grew in the early
19th century. Sensitively
rendered watercolor-and-gouache illustrations by Lynne Rae Perkins expertly
transport children back in time, page by page, from a current urban environment
to an age when “you could not hear the engines of airplanes in the sky, or the
sounds of phones ringing. Maybe you
could catch the creaking of a wagon wheel, straining against the ruts in the
road, or the fall of an axe against wood.”
The beautifully rendered time travel then leads seamlessly into the
Johnny Appleseed story, which Codell and Perkins tell with attention not only
to fact but also to elements that may or may not be true. Chapman (1774-1845) is known for what he
planted, but Codell’s tale says the apple seeds are only part of it: “He lived
by example.” Seed by Seed portrays Chapman as a very early environmentalist and a
pacifist, living by a belief that we should use and share what we have, respect
nature, make peace, and take small steps toward a destination. This is a romanticized view of Chapman and
one that fits 21st-century sensibilities well, but it is not, after
all, particularly off-base: Chapman did lead a life outdoors, in harmony with
nature, and was sensitive to animals and equally at home with European settlers
and Native Americans. What is downplayed
here is the religious basis of Chapman’s life, although Codell does write that
“he claimed that spirits and angels told him to be a messenger of peace,” and
that he was a follower of philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Codell portrays Chapman both as larger than
life and as a man of his time, and Perkins’ illustrations reinforce that
approach not only in the way they show people and animals but also through
lovely pseudo-maps and pictures of flowers and herbs associated with the Johnny
Appleseed story. The moralizing does
become a touch heavy, as in the “what seed will you plant?” conclusion after
the tale returns to the present day; but the apple-pie recipe at the end lends
a delicious touch that everyone will enjoy.
Seed by Seed is a (++++) book
for its beautifully matched combination of words and pictures and for the
timelessness of its story – one that is heartfelt and uplifting in any season,
in any year.
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