fractured fairy tale resource

Twice Upon a Time: a guide to fractured, altered and retold folk and fairy tales by Bomhold and Elder has recently been added to the professional collection at the Central Library. It proved very useful to my coworker in putting together a bulk loan for a teacher doing a unit on fractured fairy tales.

This reference guide is organized by story; each entry contains a 1-2 pg synopsis of the tale, followed by an annotated list of other versions of the story. Includes: Beauty and the Beast, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Brave Little Tailor, The Bremen Town Musicians, Cinderella, The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, The Emperor's New Clothes, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Little Red Hen, The Pancake, The Princess and the Pea, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, The Shoemaker and the Elves, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Stone Soup, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, Tortoise and the Hare, The Turnip, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Ugly Duckling and The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids.

Newbery Medal

The 2009 Newbery committee chose 4 honor books in addition to the winner. I decided I would try to read them all.

After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson - the story kept me engaged throughout. Three girlfriends growing up together (ages 12 - 14). However, as one of my colleagues pointed out, the Tupac references will probably make this seem like historical fiction to today's 12-14 year olds.

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle - the poems are primarily written from the point of view of a young girl who grows up and grows old during the struggle for independence. The story ends with a treaty between Spain and the United States (and the deal that granted the U.S. the land that is today Guantanamo). The main character, Rosa, learns to be a traditional healer and spends wartime treating wounded fighters from all sides. Suspense carries through much of the book. I enjoyed it; it does include references to brutality against slaves early on. This book gets extra points for a cool cover design.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean - I started the Newbery winner the day it arrived and after the first 50 pages thought, "This is not likely to be a book that kids will complain about being assigned to read" (all due respect to previous Newbery winners). The Jungle Book gave Gaiman inspiration to write this story about a young orphan being raised by a graveyard full of ghosts. *Spoiler alert* - the first several pages of the book are about the brutal murder of the boy's family, but after that it is mostly a lovely story of a boy growing up with lots of loving support (one graveyard resident comments early on that, "it takes a graveyard"), with touches of "Harry vs. Voldemort" toward the end. Not my favorite kind of book, but a good story all around.

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small - the first sentence gave me the impression that I would not like this book: "There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road." The following chapters - detailed description of the life of a tree (2), child abuse (6), shooting a dog (10) - caused me to put the book aside. Then there is the jacket copy: "For everyone who loves Sounder, Shiloh, and The Yearling..." - to me, this sounds the same as advertisting a cartoon feature about animals with the tagline, "For everyone who loves Bambi..." It is hard enough to be cheery with the bleak economic outlook and more winter to look forward to. On to escapist literature!

Savvy by Ingrid Law - the first page of this book had me hooked. It begins: "When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he's caused it...it was plain that Fish could live nowhere near or nearby or next to or close to or on or around any largist bodies of water. Water had a way of triggering my brother and making ordinary, everyday weather take a frightening turn for the worse." Almost-thirteen-year-old Mississippi is waiting for her birthday to see what her savvy will be (a savvy is a gift of some kind that every member of her family receives on his or her 13th birthday) when tragedy strikes her family. I am only on page 64, but the action has pulled me along and I am enjoying the writing style. A little bit of X-Men mixed with, at this point, family drama. So far, quite good.

Death of a Grandparent

Tomie dePaola's Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs (orignally published in 1973, reissued in 2000) tells how four-year-old Tommy deals with the death of his great-grandmother with help from his family. A patron request this morning prompted me to look for other picture books about the death of a grandparent. How one chooses to speak with a child about death is of course very personal. Here are five books that could be helpful in talking to a child about the death of a grandparent.

Come Back, Grandma by Sue Limb, picture by Claudio Munoz
Bessie's grandmother is always there for her when she needs someone to play with and Bessie misses her very much after she dies. When Bessie grows up, she has a little girl of her own who reminds her very much of her grandma.

The Grandad Tree by Trish Cooke, illustrated by Sharon Wilson
The changing nature of their apple tree, as it grows and goes through the seasons, reminds Leigh and Vin of their grandfather, who is gone but lives on in their memories.

Grandma's Gone to Live in the Stars by Max Haynes
In the moments after grandmother has passed away, her spirit is at peace as she says goodbye to her sleeping family and her home.

One More Wednesday by Malika Doray
When a little rabbit's grandmother dies, he remembers good times with her and asks his mother about death. He thinks about the fun they had together every Wednesday, and it is almost like they have another Wednesday together.

The Two of Them by Aliki
"The day she was born, her grandfather made her a ring of silver and a polished stone, because he loved her already. Someday it would fit her finger." This book tells the story of a grandfather and his granddaughter from her birth to his death. "She knew that one day he would die. But when he did, she was not ready, and she hurt inside and out." She picks the blossoms from her grandfather's apple tree and thinks about how the tree changes again and again with the seasons and remembers her grandfather.

Lost & Found

I pulled this book off our new picture book shelf and made my story time around it. Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers is the story of a boy who meets a penguin and tries to help him find his way home. The boy tells stories to the penguin the whole way to the South Pole. He leaves him there on an iceberg, but as the boy rows back home, he realizes that the penguin wasn't lost - he was lonely. The pictures are charming; the kids particularly liked the final illustration, which shows the boy and the penguin in their rowboat with a pod of whales (some argued that they were sharks) swimming along underneath them.

I picked three other stories to go along with it: Small Bear Lost by the always-child-friendly Martin Waddell, The Stray Dog by Marc Simont, and another new-ish book, Below by Nina Crews. My colleague recommended this last book, which her 3-year old daughter requests often. It is illustrated with photographs of Jack, the boy, and Guy - an action figure who explores the mysterious area under the stairs. This was a big hit with the story time group - they particularly enjoyed the drawings of what Jack imagines might be under the stairs.

Two other titles good stories within this theme are The Pocket Dogs by Margaret Wild and Lucky Socks by Carrie Weston.