Book Reviews: Local Ties and Children's Choices

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Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

by Joyce Sidman & Rick Allen

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • ISBN: 978-0-547-90650-8 • $17.99 Hardcover

It looks like a children’s picture book, but reads like a delightful book of poems – and Winter Bees is both. The wit and whimsy of Duluthian Rick Allen’s illustrations (with hidden foxes) pairs well with the verses by Joyce Sidman, a Newberry Award-winning author from Wayzata, Minnesota.

Every poem is followed by an informative paragraph about winter. Trust me, even if you’ve always lived here, you’ll learn things.

Each reading reveals something new in the text and the pictures – so don’t even think about taking a long winter’s nap without this bedtime read first.

My Puppy Gave to Me

by Cheryl Dannenbring • illus. by Cynthia Kremsner

Pelican Publishing Company • ISBN: 978-1-4556-1943-6 • $16.99 Hardcover

Puppies and Christmas – OMG, what’s not to like? Duluth author Cheryl Dannenbring does not disappoint in her revised version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and Cynthia Kremsner’s illustrations sweetly portray the mischievous puppy.

Most of these “gifts” come rumpled, broken, slobbered or shredded, but the joy is consistent.

If you’re looking for a new Christmas favorite, especially for the littlest ones, this should be a present that you give your home.

The Best Part of a Sauna

by Sheryl Peterson • illus. by Kelly Dupre

Raven Productions Inc. • ISBN: 978-0-9883508-0-9 • $17.95 Hardcover

When two northern Minnesota women join a northern publisher to create a sauna – that’s sow-na – book, you know it will have the right stuff.

Colorfully illustrated by Kelly Dupre of Grand Marais, this winner of the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award will be most fun for children who take saunas.

With the whole point of the sauna being family and togetherness, this book creates the right atmosphere for reading together on a cold winter’s night.

Rhoda’s Rock Hunt

by Molly Beth Griffin • illus. by Jennifer A. Bell

Minnesota Historical Society Press • ISBN: 978-0-87351-950-2 • $16.95 Hardcover

What a fun vacation through the woods to the Big Lake. Rhoda, like most of us, loves picking rocks. She takes full advantage of an Up North camping trip with her aunt and uncle to satisfy her urge to search, sort and stow the best rocks. But all of us rock pickers know what happens when our desire to keep outweighs – quite literally – our ability to carry.

Young children will love the woods and water illustrations, the fast-paced text and Rhoda herself, with whom all of us lake-loving rock pickers can identify.

Plant a Pocket of Prairie

by Phyllis Root • illus. by Betsy Bowen

University of Minnesota Press • ISBN: 978-0-8166-7980-5 • $14.95 Hardcover

You might call this a book about how the other half lives – the half of Minnesota stretching wide open on the prairies.

While the topic may range a bit south of us, the illustrations come from home, this being the latest children’s book by Betsy Bowen of Grand Marais. The open style Betsy chose here reflects prairie life.

Here you will find a far different style than Betsy’s darker woodcut work on last year’s The Troll with No Heart in His Body, also by the University of Minnesota Press and a collaboration with Lise Lunge-Larsen’s retelling of troll tales from Norway (another book well worth the reading).

Plant a Pocket of Prairie makes a perfect introduction to another regional landscape, and will encourage, I think, our Up North children to learn more about their own northwoods back yards.

Babies of the Wild

by Carl R. Sams & Jean Stoick

Carl R. Sams II Photography Inc. • ISBN: 978-0-9827625-5-4 • $14.95 Hardcover

This is one of three small volumes by these author-photographers that children can hold easily. They are a great way to teach children about how to observe nature. The work of this book certainly reflects the wildlife of our northern shores as it did in their best-known series started with A Stranger in the Woods (remember the snowman and the fawn?).

Babies of the Wild, like the companion For the Love of Birds, relies on images with text appearing only as a sprinkling of tidbits about the animals and to identify species.

But the photos will intrigue all readers, young and old, while the playful antics of a foal tugging a mare’s tail or a swan mom tenderly snuggling her cygnet make Babies an especially charming book.

Another volume, Loons in the Mist, follows the photographers’ summer with loons. It informs about the birds and teaches about how to give them tranquil space while enjoying their company.

One Gorilla

by Joy Dey • illus. by Nikki Johnson

SWAK Publishing Inc. • ISBN: 978-0-9853228-2-3 • $17.95 Hardcover

Duluthians Joy Dey and Nikki Johnson team up for a third time with a book that delivers riveting watercolors and a text that reverberates with screeches and howls. It brings readers into the heart of the jungle and into the heart of bullying – how it happens and how to stop it.

This relevant book, though perhaps not for the very young, is imbued with hidden gems of text and an ending message of kindness. After all, it only takes One Gorilla – and two children’s book creators – to spark the best in us. Holy coconuts!

The books reviewed here, unless otherwise indicated, should be available through local booksellers by using the ISBN number. See more reviews at www.LakeSuperior.com.