More 2017 Books Reviewed: Quilt Books and Children's Books

Today I am listing books I reviewed in 2017 for quilters and children. To read any of the reviews use the Search bar found on the right column of my blog and enter the book title.

Children's Books

I love Moondance Press's book series created to introduce classic literature and poetry to young children.

Read-Aloud Classics are written for preschoolers. A classic books is presented in a way appropriate to the interests of the child.

Around the World in 80 Days: A Young Child's Introduction to the Classics
by Charles Nurnberg, Joe Rhatigan, Rosemary Woods (Illustrations)

Read-Aloud Classics: Peter Pan
J.M. Barrie, Victoria Tentler-Krylov (Illustrated by), Charles Nurnberg, Joe Rhatigan

Read-Aloud Classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain, Glenn Harrington (Illustrated by), Charles Nurnberg

Poetry for Kids are written for an older age group, grages 3 to 8. Each volume includes poems, a biography, and notes for parents and teachers.

Poetry for Kids: Walt Whitman (Poetry for Kids)
by Walt Whitman, Karen Karbiener (Editor), Kate Evans (Illustrations)

Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost
Robert Frost, Jay Parini (Edited by), Michael Paraskevas (Illustrated by)
Series: Poetry for Kids

Quilt Books

Some marvelous books came out this year! My review ebooks are temporary, and I ended up purchasing several of these books for my permanent collection.

Add caption

I received the Mandela Coloring book from Dover publications to review. I'm back coloring again!

So for Christmas my husband bought me new colored pencils and two more coloring books.

Quilters will be familiar with the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. I received a coloring book based on the block patterns along with a butterfly coloring book. Here is one of the pages I colored.

Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost

I love the concept behind the Poetry for Kids books, beautifully illustrated selections for children ages 8 to 13, Grades 3 to 8.  Robert Frost is one of America's most beloved poets of the last century, whose poems were inspired by everyday sights and life of the country in New England.

Included are Frost's best known poems “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Each volume includes information for parents and teachers, including commentary, definitions of key words for each poem, and an introduction to Frost's life.

Robert Lee Frost won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, and was named Poet laureate of Vermont.

I have not read Frost extensively and most of the poems were new to me. I appreciated the simplicity of his images, the concrete portrayal of his world, from which he drew lessons and truths. Such as in this poem:

Snow Dust

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I rued.

Or these lines from Choose Something Like a Star: "So when at times the mob is swayed/To carry praise or blame too far,/We may choose something lie a star/To stay our minds on and be staid."

The 35 were poems chosen by Jay Parini, author of Why Poetry Matters and a biography on Frost. Illustrator Michael Paraskevas's work has appeared in most major magazines, he has written and illustrated 24 children's books, and has created animated series for television.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost 
by Robert Frost, edited by Jay Parini, illustrated by Michael Paraskevas
Moondance Press
ISBN: 9781633222205, 1633222209
Hardcover $14.95

Poetry for Kids: Carl Sandburg

The beauty of poetic language and imagery can spur the imagination of young children. It is the mystery of poetry that it can inspire and elicit emotion independent of intellectual 'understanding'. We don't have to know how a poems works, or its every reference, to be moved. A poem is not a riddle to solve. A poem 'is'.

The MoonDance Press Poetry for Kids series provides a wonderful resource for introducing children to the magic of  America's great poets.

The latest book in the Poetry for Kids series is Carl Sandburg. Thirty-five age-appropriate poems for children age 8 to 13, selected by Kathryn Benzel, are accompanied by colorful original illustrations by Robert Crawford.

The Introduction is a brief biography of Carl Sandburg. He was born in 1878 to immigrant parents in Galesburg, Illinois. Typical of his generation and class, after he left school after 8th grade to work at menial jobs. He moved to Chicago before hopping a boxcar at age 19 to see America. 

Sandburg's poems are 'of the people,' from the prairie to the city factories, embracing his experience of American life from Reconstruction to the Depression, through two world wars to the invention of television and transcontinental flight. 

The poems are divided thematically: poems about people and poems about places.

Poems about people include interactions with the natural and human-made world. 

A boy studies nature in Young Bullfrogs, while I Am the People, the Mob extols workers and creators, the common people who make the world go.

Jazz Fantasia celebrates the free-form quintessential American music while Buffalo Bill recalls a boy's idolization of the Old West.

Poems about places begins with Sandburg's most famous poem, Fog, and includes Limited about the 'crack train' of the nation carrying passengers who don't look beyond their next stop. 

River Roads, Valley Song, and Between Two Hills--poems about the country--are balanced by Street Window, The Skyscraper Loves Night, and a selection from 'Smoke and Steel.'

The illustrations by Robert Crawford are beautiful: A man and his dog under the flowering fuchsia canopy of a crab-apple tree at dusk; a bright Jack-o-lantern at night; a girl on a pier under a purple sky reflected upon the lake.

Included are helps for parents or young readers: Explanations for Understanding offers definitions and historical information, and "What Carl Was Thinking" has a brief description of the poem's meaning or origin.

Poetry for Kids Emily Dickinson was published in October 2016.

These are wonderful books for the classroom, for family reading, or to gift to older children.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Poetry for Kids Carl Sandburg
Kathryn Benzel
Moon Dance Press
$14.95 hardcover
Publication April 3, 2017
ISBN: 9781633221512, 1633221512

Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson

I was intrigued by the Poetry for Kids premier title Emily Dickinson. Edited by Susan Snively and with colorwashed illustrations by Christine Davenier, the volume presents 35 of Dickinson's poems. The poems are grouped seasonally, starting with summer and ending with spring.

Poems include easily accessible favorites such as "A narrow fellow in the grass," "A bird came down the walk," and "I never saw a moor", the whimsical, and those celebrating nature.

Some selections surprised me. "He fumbles at your spirit" talks about "prepares your brittle substance/For the etheral blow" and "Deals with one imperial thunderbolt/That scalps your naked soul." It is the line 'scalps your naked soul' that makes the poem so forceful and wrenching. The commentary reads, "The poet captures the noisy music of a thunderstorm, as if trapped inside a huge piano. The sounds heightens the drama, until the thunderbolt delivers its mighty blow."

Poems dealing with darker feelings, like "There's a certain slant of light", and mortaility and death, including "Because I could not stop for death" and "Safe in their alabaster chambers," are poems that seem very serious for small children to tackle. In the publisher's note, Charles Nurnberg states that "the emotion and mood of poetry, even when it is almost too hard to understand, is so essentilal to undertanding the world around us." Thinking about this, I realize that learning about life through these beautiful poems allows children to gain understanding about difficult things they will encounter through personal experience and through the everpresent media.

Each poem includes word definitions and a brief commentary "What Emily Was Thinking." The forward includes a synopsis of the poet's life and publishing history.

The book is for children grades 3 through 7.

Upcoming titles will include Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I saw it just
Begins to live
That day.
by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Poetry for Kids series
Moon Dance Press
$14.95 hard cover
ISBN: 9781633221178