Balls!

Content

While Balls! does not relate directly to the New Zealand curriculum, the history and statistics about each ball could be used to supplement PE lessons or homework, while the “question-a-ball” sections introduce physics concepts with practical applications.  Balls! provides detailed factual information about the balls used in eight different sports, and mentions many others. Although the fame of sports stars may wane, most of the balls have been the same for generations already, so this resource will remain relevant for many years.

Author’s voice

Michael J. Rosen has published more than 20 books for children. He is passionate enough about the subject of balls, but even more evident in his writing is his enthusiasm for and knowledge of his young readers. Although this is a non-fiction work, the author’s jovial, child-friendly voice is evident throughout, from the awful humour of the ubiquitous ball puns to the details about his own childhood and pets in the ‘about the author’ information on the dust jacket.

Images

Balls! is illustrated in full colour, with every double-page spread including at least 3-10 images. These images include captioned photographs (including extreme close-ups of balls; balls by themselves, in use, and with sports stars), diagrams (e.g. of the dimensions of a football), and numerous cartoon-style illustrations by John Margeson. Images vary in size and shape depending on whether they are presented with their background or as cut-outs. Unskilled readers can still experience plenty of enjoyment from this book without reading the entirety of the text.

Design

Balls! is a typical size for a NF hardback, slightly shorter and wider than A4, convenient to slip into a schoolbag or share with friends around a table. Organised into eight main chapter-like divisions, each type of ball has 6-10 pages devoted to it, including sections under consistent headings relating to the composition of the ball itself, vocabulary used in its particular sport, and world records pertaining to the ball. Colour schemes tend to match the ball in question (e.g. the tennis ball ‘chapter’ uses a lot of fluorescent green, while basketball’s bullet points, borders, and subheadings are mostly orange), but for continuity the same fonts are used throughout the book.

Further information

The book concludes with three pages of recommended additional reading. While a small number of books (and / or book publishers) are recommended under each heading, the majority of the list comprises websites, divided into the same categories as the books’ contents page (at least three sites per ball). Each recommended resource has a sentence or two by Rosen explaining what’s good about it; for example he notes if a site has a particular section for kids.

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Rosen, M. J. (2006). Balls! (J. Margeson, Illus.). Plain City, OH: Darby Creek.

Hunter

Unlike most of her family, 14-year-old Jordan takes an interest in her Māori heritage. So when she and her younger brothers are stranded on an isolated beach with few necessities for survival, she doesn’t question the voice which addresses her by her Māori middle name, advising her of plant lore and how to live off the land. This is Hunter, a slave from an earlier era, gifted with visions. Until now, he has used his visions only to keep himself alive, by being useful to his captors – can he now use them to save the young white woman with whom he feels such a bond?

The two central characters are engaging, and their separate stories intertwine plausibly enough. In spite of this, I found this book disappointing, considering it had won the national Book of the Year award. I found several main premises extremely unlikely and poorly explained: Why could the children not fly home as planned? Why was the moa Hunter was tracking still alive? I usually enjoy reading fiction with Māori content, but this story felt inauthentic, as though the Pākeha author (whom I greatly esteem) was not at ease with her material. Where Māori vocabulary was included, it was translated, often (to my mind) unnecesarily and inelegantly (e.g. “Lightning was the moko of Rangi… the tattoo on the face of the sky god” p. 25). In addition, insubstantial minor characters and poor editing leaves me describing Hunter using Jordan’s over-used teenage vocable: “stink”.

Cowley, J. (2005). Hunter. Auckland, NZ: Puffin.

Fade

13-year-old Paul wants to be a writer. The reader also sees Paul twenty-five years later, when this ambition has been fulfilled, and beyond his death. Through three different narrating voices the reader is presented with questions regarding the nature of fiction and imagination, and the power of both. 

Paul narrates, frankly and realistically, his teenage concerns and development over the course of one summer: his large Catholic family, industrial action at his father’s factory, and the joy and the shame of his sexual awakening. In addition, he describes his initiation to a secret ability that affects one in every generation of his family: he learns to fade -to make himself invisible at will.

In spite of this one element of fantasy, the story seems completely realistic. For many teenagers, to fade would be the realisation of a fantasy: with so much they want to know but are embarrassed to ask, if only they could observe their world –especially girls!– without being seen! His ability should likewise be a great asset to a writer, yet Paul repeatedly finds that fading instead exposes him to things that he would prefer not to have known. By the end of the book the fade seems to have become an independent character, a manifestation of the worst impulses of the human condition.

 

Cormier, R. (1990). Fade. London, England: Collins.

contains explicit sexuality and violence

Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter

In Matt’s Forest, two rival robber clans dispute their territory among gray dwarfs, rumphobs, murktrolls, and wild harpies. Some of these creatures are more dangerous than others; and geographical features such as Greedy Falls and Hell’s Gap likewise pose threats to a child in this environment.

All the same, Ronia grows up in the forest and learns its ways while practising not being frightened. These skills are needed when a matter of principle forces her to move out of the robbers’ fort and into a cave in the forest to be with her sworn brother, Birk, who is the son of the rival chieftain. While this is a great adventure for children of their age, the characters must deal not only with the elements and the forest’s other inhabitants, but with human concerns such as homesickness and short tempers. 

With the development of characters and relationships conveyed chiefly by their words and actions rather than direct description, the reader becomes well-acquainted with Ronia, her tempestuous father, wise old Noddle-Pete, and her unflappable mother. As Ronia’s bond with Birk is strengthened each time one saves the other’s life, the reader confronts the themes of forbidden love and failure to meet parents’ expectations, and the conflicts arising from these circumstances.

Lindgren, A. (1985). Ronia, the robber’s daughter (P. Crampton, trans.). New York, NY: Puffin.

Where Is the Green Sheep?

This book’s simple ‘plot’ is conveyed by its title. Each page introduces a new sheep, with a new adjective, which is paired with the sheep on the next page either by opposite[1] or by association[2]. After every rhymed couplet, the question is reiterated[3]. In the end, of course, the tension is resolved as “our green sheep” is found, and contentment prevails.

The appeal of this sturdy, almost-square hardback will endure throughout early childhood. Once familiar, it lends itself to independent ‘reading,’ as few pages have more than six words, most of which are repeated frequently and predictably throughout the text. The unrepeated vocabulary is provided by the illustrations, which are clearly linked to their captions.

Each sheep is exuberantly illustrated, having fun (for example the rain sheep is unmistakably singing in the rain, as it dances around a lamppost twirling a rainbow-coloured umbrella). Older children will find careful observation of the illustrations rewarding, as many details visually connect the sheep pairs. Just before the end of the book, more than twenty of the flock are depicted in one illustration, engaged in a further variety of unlabelled pursuits. There is plenty of thought and discussion to be generated by the words and the pictures, making this an ideal book to be enjoyed either shared or alone.

Fox, M. (2004). Where is the green sheep? (J. Horacek, illus.). Melbourne, Australia: Penguin.

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[1] e.g. “Here is the near sheep. And here is the far sheep.”

[2] e.g. “Here is the moon sheep. And here is the star sheep.”

[3] “(but) where is the green sheep?”

You’re never too old for Slinky Malinki!

… so said my foxy flatmate, when a prospective new boyfriend, on seeing her bedroom for the first time, queried why an undergrad English student had picture books on her bookshelf. Being at that time (though not for very much longer) unfamiliar with Lynley Dodd, the boyfriend thought he might be about to get lucky. As, of course, he was: my flatmate proceeded to read him children’s stories for the next hour.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when some well-meaning adult (usually a parent, teacher, or librarian) will say “you’re too big for picture books now. Why don’t you choose a real book this time?” From that point on, picture books are shunned for recreational reading.

Like my flatmate, I consider this to be a great loss. Picture books have so much to offer, it’s such a shame that they are used almost exclusively to people whose age is in single digits. Accordingly, I periodically throw a “Picture Book Appreciation Day”, where I make a lot of fudge, ransack the public and National libraries, encourage all my guests to bring their own, and we sit around and read to each other and talk about our favourites (and consume vast quantities of sugar). The biggest problem with hosting these events is deciding which images to include on the invitations!

I could give so many reasons why grown ups can appreciate and benefit from picture books, but to me the majority seem so obvious as to be not worth mentioning, so I’ll just close with this one: picture books, being shorter, are more memorable, so therefore easier to quote verbatim. Hardly a day goes by without me feeling the need to enrich conversation by making a picture book allusion. Here are some of the ones I’ve used since starting this blog:

“… and they said, ‘good question!’ / But nobody had a good suggestion.”

“”You should have looked in the matchbox first.”

“The cat from Norway got stuck in the doorway.”

“Unless someone like you / cares a whole awful lot / then nothing is going to get better / it’s not!”

“Hey! Upside down critter! Who are you, and what do you eat?”

“This block of chocolate is mine and all for me!”

“Never try to milk a chicken. It hardly ever works.”

Judge a book by its cover!

I wrote the following a few years ago for a website I used to have which promoted CYA literature. I was reminded of it when I read Lyndsey’s first post about how she chooses something to read.

…I think the theory goes that there is much, much more to a book than what the cover tells you. Imagine how many great stories you might miss out on just because the cover had a stink picture, or because the book was in bad shape! Often the books that are in the worst condition, with the cover falling off, pages falling out, creases and dog-ears and scuffs and dirt all over them, contain the best stories. They got into such poor condition because somebody loved that book so much they took it with them everywhere! It was bound to get a little damaged along the way…

Despite this, I am increasingly aware that if you’re trying to choose one book from among many you haven’t read, the cover is all you’ve got to go on. I know it’s unconventional, but I do it myself and advise you to do the same: go ahead and judge a book by its cover! After all, until you’ve read it, what on earth else are you supposed to judge it by?

But judge wisely. Make use of all the information the cover can give you, not just the picture. (I would agree strongly with an adage that said “don’t judge a book by the picture on its cover”!) If I’m thinking about a book I’ve never heard of before, I’d be processing the following things, in order from least to most important:

Title is of little use to you if you haven’t heard of the book before. Sometimes a title will be especially intriguing and descriptive (e.g. How Hedley Hopkins did a dare, robbed a grave, made a new friend who might not have really been there at all and while he was at it committed a terrible sin which everyone was doing even though he didn’t know it), more often it will merely name a principal character (e.g. Alex; The Hobbit) which is of no use to the first-time reader.

Image The image includes any pictures or graphics, as well as the way the cover itself looks- e.g. does it use holographics, bright colours, particular font/s and so on. Again, there is little this can tell you about whether the story this cover contains will be one that appeals to you. Having said that, it is the book’s image that is traditionally most likely to entice someone to pick the book up and take a closer look, which is I think what the silly proverb is advising you to do.

Reviewer’s Comments Sometimes they are helpful, sometimes they aren’t. I hate it when a cover has only reviewer’s comments and no blurb. And when covers have more than two or three sentences of reviews, I start thinking that the authors must be a bit full of themselves. 

The one time when a review on the cover will have a major influence on me wanting to read the book is when the review is attributed to another author whose name I instantly recognise whose writing I have enjoyed. It makes sense to me that, if I love the writing of Diana Wynne Jones (which I do), then she knows something about what I like to read, so if she’s recommending a book, it’s almost certainly worth me looking it up! 

Blurb is a crucial part of a book’s cover, and more often than not it is the most information you can get about a book before you read it, unless you are lucky enough to have had someone recommend it to you personally or review it for you. If the blurb tells you about the plot and / or characters of the story, and they don’t interest you at all, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t like the book. 

Publisher is a factor I’ve only recently noticed, even though I’ve been ‘judging’ books this way for years. Depending on the publishing house, books produced by the same publisher tend to have a similar look. So, when I’m browsing through rows and rows of books at a book fair the ones most likely to catch my attention are the ones that look familiar, because the spine is a similar colour or has a familiar logo or the cover is set out in the same way or whatever as another good book. And, as a general rule, publishers publish the same kinds of books. Puffin and Apple are good examples of publisher’s symbols to look out for for books for 8-15 year olds. 

Author is, in my opinion, the best way to judge a book you haven’t read. Generally speaking , if a person wrote one book you loved, you’ll find the rest of their work worth a read. Make an effort to remember the names of the authors of books you read, so that you’ll know what to look for (or what to avoid!) in the future. 

I’m certainly not saying not to read anything if you haven’t heard of anything else by that author. (When you think about it, if that was your policy, you’d never read anything!) But recognising an author’s appeal for you is an excellent place to start. 

If you can’t judge a book by the information on its cover, you’ll end up reading a lot of books that you won’t enjoy. Which would be a sad thing, when there are so many good books to read!

A real good plain sensible name

I guess I’m not the first blogger to have written three posts in succession, and then done nothing further for a week. In my case it’s not that I ran out of motivation, couldn’t think of a topic, or lost confidence in the project. Oh no not I- I was trying to think of a good title for my next post.

Having a meaningful subject header is a bit of an obsession of mine. If you email me something without a subject, I’ll type in what I think the subject should have been next to the RE: when I reply. If I might want to refer back to your subject-less email, I’ll forward it to myself with a subject, so that I can find it again later.

If I’m initiating a topic, my preference has always been to use a song lyric in the subject line. Mostly I’ve used pop songs (e.g. “nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do”), but musicals are also good sources of topical lines (e.g. “I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine”), and sometimes I resort to children’s songs (e.g. “I never knew just what it was, and I guess I never will”).

When it comes to this blog, I feel it might be time to extend myself. My first and third posts used lyrics in the title, my second and fourth use quotes from children’s literature (as that is to be the main topic of the blog). I’m aiming to use a quotation from each story I review as the title of that review, but we’ll see how that goes. It took me several nights’ tossing and turning to think where I could find something that said what I wanted to say about names, and when inspiration struck it was in a book that is very familiar to me. I could see myself wasting hours ransacking my library trying to find a particular thought expressed somewhere in the realms of Narnia, or Tortall, or Solla Sollew.

It’s taken me about ten minutes to write that last paragraph. Why? Because most of my brain is occupied trying to find a thematic link between the three song lyrics I quoted above. Moving right along…

Just because she doesn’t do what everybody else does

Well, now I’ve perved at the blogs of twenty others on my course, and I’m gaining confidence. Many have commented that, like me, they’re new to this blogging thing. Together we can learn from each other.

The word “uncategorized” is annoying me. Partly because I don’t want American spelling on my blog, but it’s on everyone’s blog, and I can’t figure out what it means! Tags make sense to me (I credit LibraryThing with getting me into my library career path in the first place), but I haven’t gotten my head around these darn categories yet.

On the topic of things that annoy me, I don’t like it that every time I press ‘enter’, a new paragraph is started. Maybe I just want to start a new line sometimes, all right?

Anyway, I had to choose a theme for the look of my blog. The only clear preference I had was for my menus to be on the right. That left me plenty of options. While browsing, I jotted down the names I was considering using. I was amused to find that my entire list was either food (choco, liquorice, fruit shake) or characters  from children’s books (Coraline, Regulus). So, trying to act like a grown-up making informed choices based on sound premises, I went back and chose a different theme (brand new day), and I liked it.

Unfortunately, someone else on my course has already shared their blog, and she’s using this same theme. I can’t bring myself to change mine now, I wonder if I should bribe her to change hers? Maybe with a choco-liquorice fruit shake?

Let’s have a little talk about tweetle beetles

What do you know about tweetle beetles? Well…

When tweetle beetles fight, it’s called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle, it’s a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

AND when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle. AND…

When beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle, they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle. AND…

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles, they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle. AND…

At this point the narrator is interrupted. This entire extract (including the post’s title) is from Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss. Is this sufficient explanation for the title of my blog? Perhaps not.

My profile picture shows a tweetle beetle with a paddle (but no puddle). If you look closely, you may discern that it is a photograph, not a drawing.

Before I finished primary school, I  learned that I could read this text aloud fluently with ease, and many others (both my peers and those older than me) could not.  At about age 15 I declared I would like to get a tweetle beetle tattoo. I was told not to, because I would change my mind. When I turned 30, I decided half my life was long enough to demonstrate that my mind was made up.

I talk fast, and I have a lot to say. Dr. Seuss is a genius. That’s why I called my blog “tweetle beetle babble”.