Picture Book Spotlight: Jumpy Jack & Googily

Jumpy_jack1
Jumpy Jack and Googily by Meg Rosoff and Sophie Blackall. Henry Holt & Co.

What a charmer this picture book is. Scores very high on the
giggle-meter with my gang. Jumpy Jack is a snail of the most nervous
sort. As lovably neurotic anthropomorphizations go, Jack’s right up
there with Piglet, friend of Pooh. Fortunately, Jumpy Jack has his best
friend Googily to put his mind to rest when the monster-worries creep
in. Jack fears monsters are lurking at every turn—monsters with big
round eyes and sharp teeth and lolling tongues and possibly even creepy
bowler hats. Googily—he’s the amiable fellow in blue you see there—is a
little puzzled by Jack’s boogieman complex, but he’s always happy to
help soothe his pal’s fears by taking a peek into the corners Jack’s
sure are hiding fearsome monsters.

In the end, we find that Googily has a fear of his own—and
apparently with better reason than Jumpy Jack! The surprise ending
elicited belly laughs from my seven- and two-year-olds.

I really love this sweet and simple picture book. It’s fresh and
funny, and the art is enchanting, and the text holds up well to
numerous re-readings, which is a quality I very much watch for in a
young picture book. If I’m going to have to read it aloud five times a
day, it’s got to be readable.

But beyond that, I appreciate the way the plot plays with the idea
that people can create monsters in their minds, terrifying specters
composed of stereotypes, while being oblivious to the fact that the
generalizations they are throwing around so carelessly might very well
include real people they know and love.

Snippets

We have two ripe strawberries on our potted strawberry plant. It’s
November. San Diego is a strange place to live after you’ve put in a
couple of decades on the East Coast.

Wonderboy had an OT evaluation at the Children’s Hospital last
month. I finally got the written report yesterday. It’s full of errors!
I’ll have to write a list of corrections and ask for an updated report,
because I don’t want inaccuracies in his file. Highly annoying.

But his IEP meeting earlier this week went wonderfully well. I think
the school district finally has a read on who we are, this family of
mine (especially the obnoxious, mouthy mama), and they’re meeting us
where we are, now. Hooray. And oh how I love Wonderboy’s speech
therapist. She really is a gem. And I’m not just saying that because
yesterday she raved about the progress we’d made at home during the
week and told me I should be a speech pathologist myself.

My second-favorite moment from the meeting: when, after listening to
rest of the IEP team group-wrangle their statements into educationese
for the Official Paperwork, I was asked to contribute the "parent
goals" and I figured I’d save time by just uttering it in the IEP
jargon to begin with. Moment of silence around the table, then they all
burst out laughing. Me, grinning: "Did I nail it?" School district lady
in charge of entering everything into the computer: "Say it again, just
like that, so I can type it in." Heh.

Favorite moment from the meeting: leaving, with my little boy’s hand
in mine, and his eager voice saying, "We go home now? Go play with my
tisters?"

Oh how I love that child.

On Monday, I sat down with a giant pile of picture books to read for
the Cybils. Rose and Bean joined me, and we wound up sitting there for
hours, reading book after book after book. Passing them around: Ooh,
you’re going to love this one! (They know me well: they were right
every time.) I’m going to have to write posts about some of them
because there are some must-share gems in the stack. Next time you make
a library run, look for Chester’s Back! by Melanie Watt. Even if you don’t have little kids. We were crying laughing, even the thirteen-year-old. Especially the thirteen-year-old. The Lucky Star and One Hen just plain made me cry. And Dinosaur vs. Bedtime? Rilla’s new Favorite Book Ever. Bet I read it six times yesterday alone. Roar!

Lilypie Expecting a baby Ticker

Books We’ve Read: Grace for President

Gracepresident Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Hyperion.

We pulled this from our Cybils
to-be-read stack yesterday because of the title, and I wish I’d read it
a little sooner so I could have shared it with you in time for you to
hit the library before Election Day. Grace for President is an
appealing story about young Grace’s presidential race—in which votes
are counted Electoral College-style. The book offers a simple and
easy-to-understand look at the Electoral College in action.

The race begins when Grace learns, to her astonishment, that there
has never been a "girl president." Her classmates snicker when she
declares that she shall be the first, but her teacher takes her
seriously and suggests a campaign for class president. Two classes,
actually: her opponent is a charismatic boy from the room next door.

Their campaign is lively and, paralleling real life, somewhat
all-consuming for a time. As voting day approaches, it becomes clear
that the boys have an edge on the electoral map, and Grace’s rival,
Thomas, seems assured of victory…but could it be that the young man
representing Wyoming is a swing state?

All three of my big girls enjoyed the book—Jane and Rose for its
look at how the Electoral College works, Beanie for the fun story and
the charming art, especially the surprise addition to Mount Rushmore at
the end.

You Know Your Blog Has Been Quiet When…

…you start getting worried letters from kindhearted readers who want to make sure you aren’t back in the hospital
or something. No worries; we are all well; I’ve just not been feeling
very talky. Am spending a lot of time working in the yard—our
mini-butterfly garden is really coming along, particularly the hundred
billion weed seeds which were apparently lying dormant in that dry, dry
soil until we oblingly began to water them. Now Beanie and Rose and I
are out there every day, ruthlessly yanking up wee baby weedlings by
the dozen. Ah, the blissful peace of gardening…

And I’ve had lots of Wonderboy stuff to occupy me: preparing for his
IEP meeting tomorrow (yes, on Election Day, because I am a glutton for
punishment, I guess), working some new PT exercises into his daily
routine, reading Mother Goose on demand a hundred times a day…have I
mentioned that he is awfully fond of the two Rosemary Wells/Iona Opie
Mother Goose collections? As in, he wants them read and/or sung cover
to cover approximately once every hour? Rilla, of course, approves
wholeheartedly—except she wants it known that they are HER Mudda Doose
books, and hers alone, contradictory evidence in the form of
inside-front-cover inscriptions to Jane and Rose notwithstanding.

Speaking of reading, I’ve been kept quite busy, of course, with my ever-growing stack of Cybils
picture book nominees. I think we have about 35 of them checked out
from the library right now, and at least 20 more have arrived via post
as review copies from publishers. I don’t know where I’m going to put
them all. We are plumb out of shelf space. But reading them is fun, for
sure. Ask Beanie. She’s way ahead of me. I’ve read about a dozen
nominees so far, and I think she is upwards of thirty.

I am posting mini-reviews at Twitter,
by the way, if you’d like a peek. More like mini-summaries, I guess I
should say: these are my plot notes to help me keep the 175 nominees
straight. I am finding I quite enjoy the challenge of boiling a summary
down to 140 characters. You know brevity really IS a challenge for me,
ahem.

Speaking of Twitter, you can always look for me there if you’re worried because of bloggity silence…the link above goes to bonnyglencybils, but my main Twitter profile is just plain bonnyglen. I often post short (duh, it’s Twitter) notes during the day about what’s going on around the house.
I really love being able to look back, later, at these microglimpses of
our days. They are like candid snapshots, the kind no one knows are
being taken, the kind you linger over in the photo album because they
are so filled with rich detail of what was really happening. Not that
my tweets are necessarily "filled with rich detail," detail being
exactly what is hard to squeeze into a 140-character box, but I’m just
going to assume you know what I mean. And sometimes a tweet does capture a detail you wouldn’t have been likely to record in any other medium.