All Aboard!

Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday

hosted today by Wendie's Wanderings

 

Tundra Books
(pub. 8.10.10) 32 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Monica Kulling
    Illustrator: Bill Slavin

     
C haracter: Elijah McCoy

 
O verview from jacket flap: 

      "The year was 1860, and Elijah McCoy, the son of slaves, dreamed of becoming a mechanical engineer.  He studied in Scotland, where he learned everything there was to know about engines - how to design them and how to build them. But when he came home to look for work at the Michigan Central Railroad, the only job Elijah could get was shoveling coal into a train's firebox! What Elijah lacked in opportunity, he more than made up for in ingenuity."

T antalizing taste: 

       "The engine huffed and puffed.  Smoke billowed form its stack. The wheels clacked. The train chugged along for half an hour.  Chug! Chug! Chug!
        Everyone wondered when the train would stop. But it didn't. It chugged along for another half hour.  And another.
        Elijah McCoy's oil cup worked!"   

and something more:   I was drawn to this picture book biography, All Aboard!, about a boy who "had come to Canada on the Underground Railroad" and then eventually became an inventor for the railroads. His  parents "saved every penny they could to send Elijah to school.  At sixteen, he crossed the ocean to study in Scotland. Elijah had a dream: he wanted to work with machines.  He wanted to become a mechanical engineer. And he did.  And, as the note at the back states, "He was an inventing marvel.  During his lifetime, he filed 57 patents ...  Most of his inventions had to do with engines, but several did not. Elijah invented a portable ironing board, a lawn sprinkler, and even a better rubber heel for shoes."  And the expression, the "real McCoy" is based on him!  "Other inventors copied Elijah McCoy's oil cup [for train engines], but their drip cups didn't work as well."  I love learning about the derivation of expressions.

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Keep Your Eye On The Kid

The Early Years of Buster Keaton

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday
hosted today by Geo Librarian

 

Flash Point Roaring Book Press (Macmillan)
(pub. 4.1.2008) 
32 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor and illustrator: Catherine Brighton

  

C haracter: Buster Keaton

 
O verview from the jacket flap: 

       "Nobody could take a fall like Buster Keaton ... When he was three, he joined his parents' stage act. Buster's father would throw him across the stage and shout, 'Keep your eye on the kid!'  Years later, the tumbling skills he learned as a child would make him one of the America's most beloved silent-film stars.
     Told from Buster's point of view, this beautifully illustrated biography evokes the streets and stages of early twentieth-century America and brings the remarkable childhood of a timeless comedian to life."

T antalizing taste: 

       "I was a backstage baby.  I sat on frogs' knees and I talked to wooden dummies while Dad and Mom did their act. They were called The Keatons, and I was Joe Keaton, like my dad.
     Then, one morning when I was fooling around, I took a tumble.  Harry Houdini picked me up and gave me my new name. 'Gee, that was some buster the kid took!'  You had to know how to take a fall in our business."

and something more:  Catherine Brighton's wonderful illustrations, particularly the cover of the picture book biography, Keep Your Eye On The Kid, remind me of Maurice Sendak's illustrations in The Night Kitchen.  And when I googled that impression, I found that many other reviewers have had the same thought. This style seems particularly fitting as Buster began his career essentially travelling through the air as part of his family's stage act. And then he became part of an imaginary world -- the world of films where gags portrayed people falling off roofs.  in a 1914 interview with the Detroit News, Buster Keaton talked about his work as essentially a stunt actor.  He said that the secret was to land limp, like a cat.  That comment reminded me of our cat who fell out of our 3rd floor San Francisco apartment and miraculously survived with only a broken toe (which healed in its bright pink cast she wore for a few weeks).  Maybe there's a lesson in that -- try to land limp (and keep smiling) when we feel we're getting tossed around.

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An Eye for Color

The Story of Josef Albers

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday

hosted today by Books Together

 

Henry Holt & Company (MacMillan)
(pub. 9.1.09) 
40 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Natasha Wing
    Art: Julia Breckenreid

     
C haracter: Josef Albers

 
O verview from jacket flap: 

      "As a child in Germany at the turn of the century, Josef Albers loved to watch his handyman father paint doors as if they were an artist's beautiful canvases. When Josef became an artist himself, it was the forms and colors in the world around him that inspired him most. He reduced an image to its simplest shapes: Buildings became blocks of color.
      Then Josef made an incredible discovery: He could alter the entire mood of a painting jut by changing the way he combined the colors! Color could make one shape jump out at the viewer while another shape seemed to hide in the background..."

T antalizing taste: 

       "For twenty-seven years, Josef created images of squares - more than a thousand of them! For him, there was no end to what he could learn about color.
     'I'm not paying homage to a square,' said Josef. 'It's only the dish I serve my craziness about color in.'
     Today, his squares hang in art galleries around the world, showing that color alone - as simple as it is - can be an exciting form of art."   

and something more:   I thought it was fitting to focus on a biography of an artist for today's Nonfiction Monday roundup at Books Together which includes a focus on "art and museums in children's books." As a docent for school groups at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I often include Albers' paintings in my tours when we talk about the impact of color.  I now plan to tell students the wonderful background provided in this terrific picture book biography, An Eye for Color - The Story of Josef Albers.  Although I love minimalist and abstract paintings, it can tricky to explain them and answer the question, "Why is THIS painting in a museum?  I could do that!"  I love the story of Albers becoming transfixed by the adobe buildings in Mexico: "Their flat roofs and smooth, sun-dried mud surfaces were both simple and bold.  Over and over again, Josef painted nothing but rectangles. Long rectangles. Tall rectangles. Rectangles within rectangles - all in different combinations of colors." And, of course, it's delightful learning that the author, Natasha Wing, actually lived next door to Josef Albers in Orange, Connecticut!

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Pablo Neruda

Poet of the People

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday
hosted today by Chapter Book of the Day

 

Henry Holt and Company (Macmillan)
(pub. 3.29.2011) 
32 pages

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Monica Brown

              and illustrator: Julie Paschkis

  

C haracter: Pablo Neruda

 
O verview from the jacket flap: 

       "Once there was a little boy named Neftali, who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly... Neftali discovered the magic between the pages of books. When he was sixteen, he began publishing his poems as Pablo Neruda.

        Pablo wrote poems about the things he loved - things made by his artist friends, things found at the marketplace, and things he saw in nature.  He wrote about the people of Chile and their stories of struggle. Because above all things and above all words, Pablo Neruda loved people."

T antalizing taste: 

       "From the moment he could talk, Neftali surrounded himself with words that whirled and swirled, just like the river that ran near his home in Chile ...
       He always wrote in green ink - the color of the ferns in the forest and the grass beneath his feet."

and something more:  The ribbons of English and Spanish words in the beautiful illustrations by Julie Paschkis are so evocative of poetry in this terrific picture book biography, Pablo Neruda Poet of the People, by Monica Brown. They remind me of teaching Pablo Neruda's poems to my 7th grade students -- they particularly enjoyed composing their own odes (with much creativity and variety) after studying the rich language in Neruda's odes, such as "Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market" or "Ode to an Artichoke." When my son was volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Chile, he visited Pablo Neruda's home in Santiago and was amazed by its color and creativity (befitting for such an amazing poet).

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