GETTING THERE
By Marla Stewart Konrad, Tundra, 24 pages, $14.99, ages 3 to 6
MOM AND ME
By Marla Stewart Konrad, Tundra, 24 pages, $14.99, ages 3 to 6
These books, the first two in a projected series, have been produced by Tundra Books in collaboration with World Vision Canada. Via photographs and early-reader-appropriate text, this duo will transport small children, lap-sitters as well as those just beginning to decode their first printed words, to unnamed corners of world, into countries and homes filled with children whose lives are both like theirs and not like theirs.
In the show-stopping photograph on the opening page of Getting There , two small boys sit astride a white yak. Is this Mongolia? We don't know, but what we come to discover as we turn the pages is that there are myriad ways in which children around the world move from place to place: by horseback or camel across a vast sandy expanse; by biking, singly or in pairs, wearing the hijab or not. Paddling a boat or riding a reindeer are ways that some children get to school, and wheels are always a help, no matter the vehicle.
Moms around the world carry their babies in their arms and on their backs and, as Mom and Me makes very clear, they are always proud of their babies. Sleeping, feeding and bathing babies, children helping their moms carry water or feed the family pig are the subject matter of numerous, well-chosen coloured photographs which offer many opportunities for “mom and me” perusals and conversations about the whole wide world.
FOLLOW THAT MAP: A First Book of Mapping Skills
By Scot Ritchie, Kids Can, 32 pages, $16.95, ages 4 to 7
Five children, a cat and a dog are central characters of this funny (the cartoon characters look after that) and useful book about maps and mapping for beginners. The children are playing in Sally's garden when Pedro notices that Sally's dog, Max, and her cat, Ollie, are nowhere to be found. The search for the missing pets is the hook upon which this exploration is hung.
The search for the missing pets takes the children through the garden, into their neighbourhood, on to the park, into the city, off to the country, and beyond the confines of reality to a desert island, then Playland with its magic mountain and Ferris wheel. The search for Max and Ollie also takes the children into outer space and a frolic in spacesuits among the planets.
Along the way, the children learn about paths, trails and roads, about legends, scale bars and the compass rose that points N,W, S and E, and about weather maps and treasure maps where X marks the spot. Instructions for mapping your bedroom, an eminently doable activity, or so it appears, are appended.
THE CUCKOO'S HAIKU, And Other Birding Poems
By Michael J. Rosen, illustrated by Stan Fellows, Candlewick, 64 pages, $20, ages 8 to 12
“First feeders at dawn/ paired like red quotation marks/ last feeders at dusk.” The Northern Cardinal warrants this haiku, which sits on a page daubed with watercolour, mostly shades of red, and on which a male and a female cardinal sit side by side on a branch. A larger-than-life male occupies the opposite page, a blaze of red with a black beard and a red berry in its orange beak. Flowing script, copperplate asides to the predominant text, the haiku, tells us that the bird's song is “what cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer.”
The Northern Cardinal appears in the section of this book devoted to spring birds, along with, among others, the Eastern Bluebird and the Canada Goose. The latter's haiku, not to mention its noble aspect at least in Stan Fellows's watercolours, might inspire respect if not affection for this all-too-ubiquitous creature: “the pond's still airstrip/ far-off trumpets grow louder –/ one splash! two ... hushed ... glides ...” Other seasons mean other avian and poetic beauties, the Barred Owl, the Great Blue Heron, the Wild Turkey.
