Agate: What good is a moose? by Joy Morgan Dey, illustrated by Nikki Johnson

Lake Superior Port Cities; April 2007; 32 pp; $17.95 HC

978-0942235739

Core Audience: Children 4-8; Anyone who has ever felt outshined

Strengths: Luminous artwork; great message

If you have been reading pixiestix for awhile you are probably aware of my feelings about marginal books that are either self-published, or that are produced by small presses that don’t quite get how to put the total package together. I receive hundreds of unsolicited pitches every year for these kinds of books, and when you combine that with the thousands of mainstream books that flow across my desk in a given year, it really takes something to make me sit up.

And this, my friends, is that something.

Meet Agate, the hero of this wonderful and unexpected picture book from a pair of artists and a small regional press from Duluth, MN. Agate is in a metaphysical quandary. “What good is a moose?” he asks when he compares himself to all of his other “birthstone” friends, like Garnet the Crocodile, Emerald the Lion, and Sapphire the Hippo.

He has a big case of the inferiors, and any child who has ever felt dull will recognize themselves here. At the back of the book, there is a nice appendix that talks about birthstone gems. The writing and rhymes here are very sweet, but what really makes this book is the incredible watercolor illustration presented on a sparkling white ground.

These are just quick scans. For the full effect, get a copy and check out how eye-popping they really are. I particularly like the way Nikki Johnson has let the natural flow of the paint create the rich texture of the animals in motion.

This book really has it all: clean uncluttered design, a nice story, a good message, a eye-catching cover, fresh art, and the element of surprise. This proves the point that a small press with no background in kid’s books really can do a great job. Amazing books can come from anywhere, which why it is SO important that people setting off to make a picture book (or indeed any book) for the first time really understand what it takes, and know the market.

Apparently the author and illustrator brought the project to the press. Bravo to Lake Superior Port Cities for recognizing that Agate really is a gem of the highest order.

Rating: 9.0

Buy this book from your local independent bookstore

Okay, this wins my award for best sideline of the year.

Developed by a mother of three, this is the ultimate in monster defense. The spray itself is made of English Roman Chamomile, High Altitude French Lavender and Italian Mandarin essential oils, but its psychological mojo comes from the empowering feeling kids get by running around their room at bedtime, spraying it anywhere and everywhere monsters lurk. Then, once all the meanies are vanquished, all that lovely calming fragrance will help youngsters sleep sweetly.

Extra bonus: parents of stinky children everywhere will rejoice at the added nasal benefits.

At $10.00 per bottle retail, it seems a small price to pay for a smooth bedtime. It’s unclear if she offers wholesale terms, but there is a volume discount. Order directly from the mom in question.

I have found my candidate!

I have loved him from afar for years and years. I can’t believe that in this moment of national crisis I didn’t think of him sooner.

This arrived in my box today:

Undecided Voters Flock to New Candidate

Barn Party Announces Duck as Presidential Nominee

NEW YORK (January 30, 2008): In a mass migration from established party politics, undecided voters are flocking to a new political party that promises change—real change. The Barn Party offers Americans an agenda of domestic goals supported by children’s booksellers and librarians, first and second graders, and the cracked corn industry. Leading the party’s charge for more reading aloud, recess and protecting the family farm, is Duck, an Avian-American who is making a splash among independent voters across the country.

Duck, a farmyard hero, has declared his entry as the Barn Party’s presidential candidate for the election of 2008. Previously holding elected offices as Farmer and Governor, Duck is seeking the Presidency to present a new face of the United States to the global community. “This election will be a quack heard round the world,” said the Barn Party campaign chairman, Paul Crichton of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.

Duck’s authorized biographer, children’s author Doreen Cronin, says, “Duck’s time has come. He worked hard on the farm, and even harder as Governor. Hard work brings change, and Duck is a choice for change.”

Amen.

It’s not as if we don’t have the lamest duck in the office now. And the barn is a fairly egalitarian place, as far as I can tell. Maybe we’d all be better off in the long run. I hope I get a pin or placard for BEA.

Cluck, cluck, cluck.

Find out more: www.duckforpresident.com

Often I hear parents lamenting, discussing, debating, or downright ranting about tolerable “kid’s music” or the lack thereof. Given the massive industry that is churning out an avalanche of crap entertainment for kids, you’d think that there would be a better and more coherent source for helping parents sort out the good stuff. A Rolling Stone for kids, of sorts. Perhaps we could call it Rolling Pebble?

I digress.

Before getting into publishing, I was in the toy business, and I spent nearly seven years working in a variety of different positions in one of the best independent toy businesses in the US–Henry Bear’s Park–headquartered in Cambridge, MA. Day in and day out I logged thousands of hours in those stores, and just about every minute of those thousands of hours was filled with kids music. Some good, and some–well–let’s not go there.

My criteria for great music for kids is pretty simple: it must stand up to repeated playing, over and over and over, without making the adult listener a) want to commit suicide because it’s so mind-numbingly saccharine, or b) bash their head into the wall because they can’t get the songs out ’cause they’re too damn catchy. Raffi, who I think is one of the most genius songrwriters for kids ever, falls into this latter category and so isn’t recommended below. Let me say for the record, however, that the song Baby Beluga is one of the most perfect kids songs ever written. Seriously. Kids love it, and it’s a blast to sing it to them.

Anyway, here is an essential dozen list of CDs I can confidently recommend, plus some extra stuff. They are great, everyone will enjoy them, and there’s quite a genre range so you can pick your poison. Many of the CDs are from series with additional offerings so you can go out and explore. I’m sure you have your own favorites that aren’t listed here, and if they pass the 1,000 play test, feel free to chime in below. Although I always support buying local if possible, I am including the Amazon links to my suggestions, because there you can listen to samples of every track. Enjoy!

One last note: There is nothing wrong with playing “real” music for kids. In fact, I think it’s a critical part of their cultural education. Why play a CD of kids singing reggae when you can just play great reggae? Like reading, kids will grow up loving music if they’re raised with lots of it around. Share what you love.

***

These first two are from a great series by a company called Music for Little People, and they are compilations of original music, so no saccharine kiddie pap. They have a bunch of Genre CD’s also, “A Child’s Celebration of” Show Tunes, (singer)Song(writer), Dance Music, Classical, Silly Songs, Jazz, etc. These two are a good start but every CD in the series is awesome.

A Child’s Celebration of Folk

Music for Little People

ASIN: B000002M7Z

Favorite track: Garden Song by David Mallett

A Child’s Celebration of Song

Music for Little People

ASIN: B000002M5Q

Favorite Track: St. Judy’s Comet by Paul Simon

*

I love Dan Zanes. He used to be in the Boston indie rock band the Del Fuegos, but he has seriously hit the big time with his CDs for kids. His theory as a musical pro with kids of his own was play good music that everyone will love. He’s right on, and he gets plenty of great musicians to go along like Cheryl Crow etc. It sounds just like an old fashioned hootenanny would sound if a rocker got it together. His song choices range far outside of traditional kid’s songs and his enthusiasm is infectious. (Even his hair is excited.) If he ever happens to be touring near you, it’s worth it to go, if only to see the legions of adoring five year olds in the mosh pit. Any of Dan’s CD’s are good (I particularly *heart* his sea shanty CD with kids singing about “beer and tabbaccy” below) but these two are a nice introduction:

Rocket Ship Beach

Festival Five Records

ASIN: B000051ZNR

Favorite Track: Brown Girl in the Ring

Sea Music

Festival Five Records

ASIN: B000QMU214

Favorite Track: All for Me Grog

*

On a completely different vibe is Tony Bennett’s kid’s album. So smooth and hip you could play it at a cocktail party, and your guests might not even notice that he’s singing duets with the likes of Kermit the Frog and Rosie O’Donnell.

The Playground

Sony

ASIN: B00000C285

Favorite Track: (It’s Only) A Paper Moon

*

Many people don’t know that Woody Guthrie wrote a large body of songs for his kids, and they are all really charming. His son Arlo has recorded many of them on this excellent CD which also includes some of the original recordings by Woody.

This Land is Your Land

Rounder

ASIN: B0000003H1

Favorite Track: Howdi Do

*

There are a ton of lullaby CDs out there, and they are not created equal. I am a total sucker for this album, both because it is so great musically, but also because all the songs were recorded and in some cases written by famous male musicians for their children. The album has a subtle old style country bluegrass feel, but it’s not at all hokey—okay—the song Little Hands IS hokey, but you can play around it.

Daddy’s Sing Goodnight: A Father’s Collection of Sleepytime Songs

Sugarhill

ASIN: B000000F3B

Favorite Track: Nolabye by Jerry Douglas

*

Ah, the Putumayo Kids Present CDs. These comps of World Music by genre are completely awesome. There are many, many of these, all equally wonderful from all over the world, including Africa and Asia, so they can just pick what you like by genre. Bonus: because these are compilations, you can discover whole new areas of music by picking up the full titles by the artists on these albums you particularly like. These are a few of my personal favs:

World Playground

Putumayo

ASIN: B00000JT4P

Favorite Track: Bongo Bong by Manu Chao

Dreamland

Putumayo

ASIN: B00008XESC

Favorite Track: Durme Durme (Brazil) – Fortuna

French Playground

Putumayo

ASIN: B000B5UNH4

Favorite Track: Chatouiller Le Ciel Avec Toi - Alain Schneider

Reggae Playground

Putumayo

ASIN: B000CC4W7I

Favorite Track: Here Comes The Sun - The Burning Souls

*

And last but not least, this one speaks for itself all year round:

A Charlie Brown Christmas

CBS

ASIN: B000ICLSMY

Favorite Track: Linus & Lucy

An alternative for our Non-Christian Brethren:

A Boy Named Charlie Brown

CBS

ASIN: B000000XDH

*

BONUS: As I look back on this list I realize it’s weighted more heavily to the folk end of things than rock. There are plenty of great original rock albums that are awesome for kids just as they are. Here’s a few suggestions, but any upbeat album with clean language will do the trick:

The Beatles: 1 (the singles)

The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Jim Noir: Tower of Love

The Jackson 5: The Ultimate Collection

Various: Motown’s Greatest Hits

Wilco: Sky Blue Sky

Harry Nilsson: Greatest Hits

Various: Pure 80’s

(This last album does include some innuendo, but it’s very fun overall. You might want to skip over Centerfold by J. Giles and avoid the inevitable explanation scene you will have to deal with eventually. But hits are hits for a reason and greatest hits collections are usually awesome for kids.)

For those of us non-adopters who prefer our books the old fashioned way, the Italian design company Nobody&Co has made it so that we don’t even need to leave our comfy seat for our next read. This bibliochair chair holds nearly 16 1/2 linear feet of books, and comes in six different finishes and cushion covers so it’s basically a sit-alone library. My only concern? Where do you put your arms to rest?

Oh well, fashion hurts. Your reading corner never looked so mod.

Tricky pixie!

Walt Disney’s Cinderella by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Mary Blair

Disney Press; August 2007; 64 pp; $16.99 HC

978-1423104216

Core Audience: Children 4-8; Design lovers of all ages

Strengths: AMAZING original concept art from Mary Blair

Culturally, we are in a new golden age of design right now, with a distinct blurring of the lines between commercial and fine art. It’s everywhere you look: Target’s Design for All project is pulling in designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves, Todd Oldham is busting a move for La-Z-Boy, the geniuses at Pixar are re-inventing animation, and even the most humble toilet brush is not immune to its own version of an extreme makeover.

It makes sense then that contemporary artists are looking back to the last golden age of US design, the mid-century. Ground-breaking artists, who until now were largely unsung, are finally getting their props and it’s about time. The vaults are being thrown open, and we’re all reaping the benefits.

One of my all time favorite of these artists is Mary Blair. Incredibly versatile, winsome, and magical, Blair’s use of color and form rivals the great modernists. (I’m not kidding, here.)

During a career than spanned more than half a century, Blair did fine art, illustration, commercial design, murals, and children’s books, but she is best known as one of Walt Disney’s favorite house artists. She did the concept art for more than a dozen Walt Disney projects including The Three Caballeros, Song of the South, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, as well as the design for the ubiquitous It’s a Small World attraction which she created at Walt’s behest for the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Here’s a tiny little taste of some of her work to wet your whistle:

Blair’s work has an irrepressible optimism paired with a sophisticated sense of composition and color that I just love. It’s the pure embodiment of that great Charles Mingus quote: “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

***

It used to be that you had to hunt and peck to find examples of her original work for Disney. Most of it was residing in WDAS’s Animation Research Library collection. Now you can have a little bit of this magic on your very own bookshelf!

Disney Press has taken the original concept art for Cinderella (1950) and worked it into a new book with great text by Cynthia Rylant. It has been released with very little fanfare into a market crowded with Cinderellas, but this book is really amazing, and deserves a closer look.*

In his book Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation, Amid Amidi makes the argument that the male-dominated, hard-edged animation department at Disney didn’t quite know what to do with Blair’s dreamy, color-block style, and that’s why she didn’t receive more external recognition during her time there. (She finally did recieve a posthumous nod with a “Disney Legends” award in 1991.) However, anyone who knows the movie will recognize the impact Blair’s art had on the final product. The drama, color, scale, and composition are all hers.

Nearly sixty years later, Blair’s art has lost none of it’s power. Walt Disney loved her work because like him, he felt she was able to tap directly into childhood. Disney Animator Marc Davis recalled, “She brought modern art to Walt in a way that no one else did. He was so excited about her work.”

A whole new generation of readers and design enthusiasts will feel exactly the same.

Rated: 9.5

Order this book from your local independent bookstore

_________

BONUS: Check out this very cool Mary Blair 1950’s B&W commercial for Meadow Gold Ice Cream.

Many thanks to Fred Cline for making it available. Fred knew Mary and her husband Lee, who encouraged him to study design and animation, and he is doing a great job of carrying the torch.

ALSO: If you are excited by Mary Blair’s work and want to learn more, check out this great retrospective: The Art and Flair of Mary Blair (978-0786853915; Disney Editions; $40.00 HC)

SUPER DOUBLE-BONUS IF YOU LIVE IN SAN FRAN: The Museum of Cartoon Art has an exhibition up by the same name running until March 2008. Lucky!

*Book images: Copyright 2007 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Hello Bookhounds.

Looking for a good recommendation?

Each year ABC produces a 20 page, full color consumer catalog packed with 240 of our picks for the top children’s books of the year.

The catalog alchemy begins with bookseller recommendations, and then is rounded out with an exhaustive review of critical picks, award winners, and small press gems that sometimes escape attention.

400,000 of this catalog are printed and distributed to consumers through ABC member stores in the fourth quarter, but as a member of the pixie stix faithful, you can print out a low-res version here, as well as a copy of the booklist by publisher.

If you like the list, you’ll *heart* your local independent children’s bookstore even more! Please consider buying these books locally, because investing in a relationship with your local independent children’s bookseller will pay off many times over in great recommendations in the years to come. Find your local independent bookstore at BookSense.

Of course, with nearly 18,000 children’s titles published every year, there are always many more worthy titles than we can include, so as a EXTRA BONUS here’s the pixie stix 2007 fav’s list, which includes the catalog titles and so much more.

Enjoy!!

Pink by Nan Gregory, illustrated by Luc Melanson

Groundwood; July 2007; 32 pp; $17.95 HC

978-0888997814

Core Audience: Girls ages 3-10; Anyone who hasn’t gotten the fabulous thing they most wanted but didn’t need

Strengths: Heartbreakingly honest writing; a fresh approach to the subject of PINK

Once in awhile a book comes along that just melts your heart—and not because it is full of puppies, or children in flower costumes, or rhymes about bellybuttons. Rather, it stops you in your tracks because it cuts right to the heart of childhood pain. This is one of those books, especially if you grew up in a family where resources were sometimes outpaced by desire.

Vivi loves pink. She wants nothing more than to own something perfectly, gloriously pink, just like the popular girls. It is all she can think about.

Vivi’s parents love her very much and try to pinkify her life any way they can, but theirs is a family with more creativity than money, and they can’t afford to indulge the material desire that “The Pinks” represent. They try to get Vivi to appreciate all the free pink in the world, but Vivi won’t be derailed. When Vivi tries to express her intense desire, her mother tells her that there is enough pink to go around, and her father praises the “pink in her cheeks.” Vivi feels they don’t understand her.

One day as she is passing the local toy store, she sees the most perfect expression of her desire: a pink bride doll. Vivi doesn’t have enough in her piggy bank to buy it, so she decides to work around the neighborhood for a few months to earn the money. She works hard, and is close to her goal, but when she brags about the doll to “The Pinks” in a fit of playground hubris, she finds her dream has slipped away.

The subtle messages about family love in this book are many. Readers will appreciate Vivi’s parent’s efforts on her behalf, and will prefer the magical creativity of her family even if Vivi doesn’t always. The lovely artwork perfectly depicts the melancholy longing of Vivi’s world, as well as the warmth of her family.

This story is a great jumping off point for discussions of peer pressure, the difference between “want” and “need”, and how difficult it is to envy others who may have more than you. In the end Vivi doesn’t get the object of her desire, but we see her family supporting her as she works through it.

There has been a spate of books for the pink hedonists lately, (Fancy Nancy, Pinkilicious), and as anyone who is living with a Disney-Princess loving two year-old will tell you, they have their place. But it is very nice (and much rarer) to see a book that holds the other side with such sensitivity and grace. This sleeper, which comes from a small Canadian Press, is one of my favorite books of the year.

Delicious.

Rated: 9.0

Order this book from your local independent bookstore

Hello faithful readers.

As if I wasn’t taking on enough with a new baby this year, we’ve gone and moved from the picture postcard quaintness of New England…

to the picture postcard sunsets of Miami….

Sorry I’ve been lax with my postings, but I’ve had my hands full.

We’re almost set-up, so we’ll resume with our regularly scheduled program shortly.

Yours truly,

pixiestix