Reading Ahead

Is It a Classic?

Read­ing Ahead 5

by Vic­ki Palmquist When I was in my twen­ties, I worked at an archi­tec­ture firm. Sev­er­al of the archi­tects were fas­ci­nat­ed by my deep con­nec­tion to children’s books. One day, one of them asked me, “Which books, being pub­lished now, will become clas­sics?” That ques­tion has stuck with me, hold­ing up a sign­post every now and then.… more

Museum Feast

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His­to­ri­um
curat­ed by Richard Wilkin­son and Jo Nel­son
Big Pic­ture Press, 2015 by Vic­ki Palmquist In a large, folio-sized book, the cura­tors of His­to­ri­um present a print­­ed-page trip through a muse­um, grouped by cul­tures and described in detail so you can under­stand what you are see­ing with­out being rushed along by the crowd. Much like those rentable muse­um audio tapes or the plac­ards on the wall, it’s an enhanced expe­ri­ence of the arti­facts.… more

Laughter and Grief

Read­ing Ahead 4

by Vic­ki Palmquist There are books we remem­ber all of our lives, even if we can’t remem­ber the details. Some­times we can’t even remem­ber the sto­ry, but we remem­ber the char­ac­ters and how they made us feel. We recall being trans­port­ed into the pages of the book, see­ing what the char­ac­ters see, hear­ing what they hear, and under­stand­ing the time and spaces and breath­ing in and out of the char­ac­ters.… more

The Classics, Galdone-Style

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by Vic­ki Palmquist Are you look­ing for a show­er or baby gift that will be appre­ci­at­ed for a long time? A good birth­day present for a young child? The Folk Tale Clas­sics Trea­sury, inter­pret­ed and illus­trat­ed by Paul Gal­done (HMH Books for Young Read­ers, 2013), is a good place for par­ents to start with retellings of west­ern Euro­pean folk tales.… more

Fashion Forward and Backward

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by Vic­ki Palmquist (A) If your kids are plugged in to Project Run­way or
(B) if you come from a tra­di­tion of sewing clothes in your fam­i­ly or
© if you’ve ever been asked about where jeans come from …  this is the right book for your 5- to 8‑year-old. Where Did My Clothes Come From? by Chris But­ter­worth, with illus­tra­tions by Lucia Gag­giot­ti (Can­dlewick Press, 2015) is a nifty book with words and draw­ings that com­bine to give sat­is­fy­ing answers.… more

There’s Nothing to Dooooooooo

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by Vic­ki Palmquist By this point in the sum­mer when I was young, the charm of being out of school had worn off, I’d played every game on my grandma’s shelves, and I’d had a few fights with my friends in the neigh­bor­hood, so I’d retreat­ed to read­ing as many books as I could, con­sum­ing sto­ries like Ms.… more

Give me a good mystery

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Sum­mer­time is syn­ony­mous with read­ing for me. My grand­moth­er kept a light blue blan­ket by the back door so I could spread it out under the elm tree and dis­solve into sto­ries. Some­times a lemon­ade, some­times a piece of water­mel­on … but always a book. Some­times a friend would sit next to me absorbed in a sto­ry of their own but most often it was just me, the birds, the sounds of sum­mer, and a hard­cov­er book.… more

“I’m not ready for school!”

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I minored in the­atre in col­lege, where I crossed the street from Augs­burg to attend Arthur Bal­let’s leg­endary his­to­ry of the­atre class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta. Lessons learned in that class came rush­ing back as I savored Mike Wohnout­ka’s Dad’s First Day because it struck me how well this book would play as the­atre of the absurd.… more

Epic felt

Read­ing Ahead 2

Three small board books … encom­pass­ing the first three Star Wars movies and a year-long craft project. As I read each book, all 12 words, one word and one pho­to on each two-page spread, it slow­ly dawned on me just how inge­nious they are. In those 12 care­ful­ly cho­sen words and scenes from the movie, Jack and Hol­man Wang, twin broth­ers and admirable artistes, man­age to evoke the entire saga of the first three movies.… more

Outer Space Ambassador

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by Vic­ki Palmquist Every once in a while I come across a book that wakes up that breath­less, eager, sense-of-won­der-at-every­thing-new feel­ing I had about read­ing as a child. I admit it, after 3,000 or so books the plots and char­ac­ters and res­o­lu­tions can feel sim­i­lar to some­thing I’ve read before. Well, I joy­ful­ly read a book that hit all the right notes and trans­port­ed me back to a bed­time read­ing expe­ri­ence where I couldn’t turn off the light, fell asleep, and then woke up in the morn­ing to fin­ish the book before my feet hit the floor.… more

When a Prince Needs a Mechanic

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by Vic­ki Palmquist With a deft sto­ry and oth­er­world­ly art, Deb­o­rah Under­wood and Meg Hunt bring us Inter­stel­lar Cin­derel­la, a fresh and wel­come take on the famil­iar fairy tale with a bit of Andro­cles and the Lion and The Jet­sons thrown into the mix. In this ver­sion, Cin­derel­la loves fix­ing any­thing mechan­i­cal. She has her own set of spe­cial tools, all care­ful­ly drawn and named on the end­pa­pers for the kids who love iden­ti­fy­ing things.… more

We Didn’t Always Know the Way

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by Vic­ki Palmquist A step-by-step, slight­ly tongue-in-cheek but most­ly sin­cere, guide to read­ing a book, How to Read a Sto­ry by Kate Mess­ner, illus­trat­ed by Mark Siegel (Chron­i­cle Books), will have you and your young read­ers feel­ing all warm and cozy and smart. With advice in Step 2 to Find a Read­ing Bud­dy, we are cau­tioned “And make sure you both like the book.”… more

That’s Some Egg

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by Vic­ki Palmquist In Under the Egg, Theodo­ra Ten­pen­ny begins her sto­ry when her beloved grand­fa­ther, Jack, is hit by a taxi … and dies. Out­side their 200-year-old Man­hat­tan town­home, Jack whis­pers to Theo to “look under the egg.” Deal­ing with her grief, but des­per­ate because she and her head-in-the-clouds moth­er have no income, Theo tries to fig­ure out what her grand­fa­ther meant.… more

Hands-on History for Spatial Learners

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When I was in ele­men­tary school, I was nev­er more excit­ed than when the teacher told us we could make a dio­ra­ma or a minia­ture scene of a pio­neer set­tle­ment. The con­cept, plan­ning, and build­ing were thrilling for me. Even though my fin­ished work sel­dom approached the daz­zling dis­play I could see in my head, I learned a great deal about his­to­ry, engi­neer­ing, sci­ence, and card­board from my for­ays into build­ing a small world in three dimen­sions.… more

Reading Ahead: Levitate Your Brother!

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by Vic­ki Palmquist We recent­ly host­ed a Har­ry Pot­ter par­ty for adults for which every­one was asked to per­form a mag­ic trick. Some peo­ple fierce­ly addressed the chal­lenge. Some peo­ple pan­icked. Some peo­ple bought a trick off the inter­net. I turned to Joshua Jay’s Big Mag­ic for Lit­tle Hands (Work­man Pub­lish­ing Co). Cit­ing all the ben­e­fits of learn­ing to per­form mag­ic, the author reveals that he was­n’t a read­er until he need­ed to know about mag­ic.… more

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