Books For Fun Enjoy ‘Lucy’s Summer’ Along With Your Summer, And Check Out These Other New Books
‘Lucy’s Summer” by Donald Hall - Summer brings to mind long, lazy days by the water with good books. Children certainly deserve their own fine summer reading. Here is one of the best this summer.
Hall, a prize-winning poet and Caldecottaward winning author (“Ox Cart Man”), follows “Lucy’s Christmas” with another wonderful story about his mother’s life as a child early this century.
The summer of 1910 begins when Lucy’s mother starts a hat-making business. The front parlor is turned into a millinery shop, full of wondrous feathers, ribbons, silk flowers and netting.
The business adds excitement to the lives of Lucy and her little sister Caroline, but the story is also full of wonderful and realistic details about everyday family life on a farm in New Hampshire.
The girls help their mother can food for the next winter: peas, strawberry jam, piccalilli, green beans and pickled beets. There are weeks of parching hot weather, then a scary thunderstorm. A traveling photographer takes the girls’ picture, then Mama trades hats for a picture frame.
The most thrilling event comes at the end of summer, when Lucy’s mother travels to Boston for hat supplies - and takes Lucy with her. Children will relish the details contained in Lucy’s trip to the penny toy counter at Woolworth’s.
Michael McCurdy’s colored scratchboard illustrations add detail and depth to this fine slice of the past.
(Browndeer Press/Harcourt Brace, ages 4 and up, 32 pages, $14.95)
“One Hot Summer Day” by Nina Crews - Summer in the city is portrayed in a refreshing manner in this picture book for very young children. Crews has combined a simple text with stylish photo-collages to follow one hot day in the life of a small girl.
The child tries to fry an egg on the sidewalk, is told by her mother to play games inside, and eats two grape popsicles “in a row.” Finally, a thunderstorm brings relief. (Greenwillow Books, ages 2-6, 32 pages, $15.)
“Splash” by Ann Jonas and “Sail Away” by Donald Crews - Greenwillow has made its summer book list a family affair with these two fine picture books by a husband and wife who are also the parents of Nina Crews (see above).
“Splash” is great fun to read aloud. It’s a counting book based on the happenings in a backyard pond. “I have one turtle, two catfish, three frogs, and four goldfish. I feed them every day. How many are in my pond?”
On subsequent pages the action becomes fast and funny. Turtles and frogs jump in; one frog climbs out; the dog and cat fall in, the dog and cat climb out. On each page the question is repeated: “How many are in my pond?” It’s good addition and subtraction practice keeping track. Big bright illustrations add to the read-aloud appeal.
Those familiar with Donald Crews’ books “Freight Train” and “Truck” (both Caldecott Honor Books) will welcome this new story about a sailing trip, done in his familiar style. The text is succinct, and uses real sailing terms; and the pictures are bold and full of movement.
On some pages the words become part of the illustrations. The wind catches the sails with a (literally) huge “WHOOSH!” The end of the book becomes a bit scary as a dark sky and angry seas threaten the sailors. All ends happily as the sea calms and the small boat heads home in the dark. (Both: Greenwillow Books, 32 pages, ages 2-6, $15.)
“The Sleeping Porch” by Karen Ackerman - Back before air conditioning, folks who endured sultry summers used another form of heat relief, a screened porch that made the most of evening breezes.
This nicely written book by a Caldecottwinning author (“The Song and Dance Man”) tells the story of a big family who lives in a cramped apartment in the city. “‘I feel like I’m living in a Cracker Jack box!’ Mom would groan … ‘Won’t we ever have a house?’ Dad would laugh and say, ‘I should’ve been born a Rock-afella!”’
Finally the family’s dream is realized when the parents buy an old house that “was bigger than any of us could believe.” It did need some fixing up, a point that became clear the night of the first rainstorm. Water poured through the roof into every room in the house - too much to stop with buckets and duct tape. There was no dry place to sleep, except the sleeping porch, just as Mom had in her childhood home on hot nights.
They camped on the floor and watched the fireflies, and stars, turning a disaster into a magical family experience. Long after the roof got fixed, the sleeping porch held an important role in the life of the family. Good characterizations, and evocative pastel illustrations by Elizabeth Sayles make this a memorable summer story. (Morrow, ages 5-8, 36 pages, $15.)
“Tales Alive! Ten Multicultural Folktales With Activities” as retold by Susan Milord - Activity books can help make the long summer days more fun. Here’s an interesting one from a top-notch publisher of children’s activity books.
Milord retells folk stories from 11 countries and follows them with related activities and crafts for a ranges of ages. For example, a “chain tale” from India is the story of a poor boy who trades item after item, eventually ending up with the drum he wished for. It’s followed by an exercise in beginnings and ending of stories; the start of a chain rhyme for children to finish; a recipe for Indian stove-top bread, and instructions for making a drum.
A hunting story from Canada comes with a lesson in writing family stories, instructions for making an Inuit game, snow goggles and soap sculptures. Illustrations by Michael A. Donato are richly colored and imaginative. (Williamson Publishing, all ages, 127 pages, $15.95.)
MEMO: Children’s book reviews by Tacoma writer Rebecca Young appear monthly in The Spokesman-Review.