Celebrating Melanie Watt

I'm celebrating Melanie Watt's August 20, 1975 birthday for Celebrate the Author this month. That makes this fellow Canadian just a year younger than me. I'm so envious of her... :-)

I saw Watt speak at a conference last year and she's cute as a button, just like her picture book characters!

I put off reading the latest Scaredy Squirrel book so that I could celebrate in August. :)

I love Scaredy - I have a lot of him in me, although not as much as when I was younger. I really6 could've used these books when I was a kid!

In this book, we discover that Scaredy basically never sleeps, since he's afraid of all the things that could attack him at night. That goes a long way to explaining his nervous disposition! I heart Melanie Watt's cute, cartoony illustrations.As a person who has trouble sleeping, I liked the double-page spread on the side effects of sleeplessness - the "energy loss" Scaredy looks a lot like me, including the barely-open eyes. And she manages to make Scaredy's imagined version of fairies and unicorns look both adorable and malevolent. Watt's Scaredy books as well as her two about Chester the cat are great for little kids, big kids, and adults - enough older humour as well as lots of adorable pictures and zaniness.

So, happy birthday to a lovely Canadian children's book author and I hope she gives us lots more laughs!

Celebrating Maurice Sendak

For Celebrate the Author this month, I'm celebrating Maurice Sendak, who certainly deserves it! He was born June 10, 1928. I get many compilments on my "Where the Wild Things Are" t-shirt. And I had the pleasure of re-reading WTWTA it to my 3-year-old niece this month, and it was lovely - she was captivated. Best children's book ever. And I have such fond memories of singing the songs from Really Rosie when I was a kid - I wanted to put it on as a play!

Maurice Sendak = awesome.

But I had to pick a book I hadn't read of Sendak's, which was a challenge. I found Brundibar - a picture book version of "a Czech opera for children that was performed fifty-five times by the children of Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp." I didn't know that until just now, when I looked it up, although the Jews in the pictures are wearing prominent yellow stars on their coats and there are Nazi-looking uniforms in the town, so I knew it had something to do with that period.

Here's the story: "When Aninku and Pepicek discover one morning that their mother is sick, they rush to town for milk to make her better. Their attempt to earn money by singing is thwarted by a bullying, bellowing hurdy-gurdy grinder, Brundibar, who tyrannizes the town square and chases all other street musicians away. Befriended by three intelligent talking animals and three hundred helpful schoolkids, brother and sister sing for the money to buy the milk, defeat the bully, and triumphantly return home."

It's a bit of a weird picture book, I have to say, but I was pleased by the triumphant ending. The artwork is classic Sendak - the kids look like his kids and the baker in town is straight out of In the Night Kitchen. It would be a good read aloud for 7 or 8 year-0lds, especially the part about bullying. And it would definitely be good to pair with units on Anne Frank for older elementary school kids.