We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen

Two turtles. One hat. In Jon Klassen’s world, that’s a recipe for disaster. In this book, two turtles find a hat in the middle of the desert. Both turtles want the hat. Does one of them want it more than the other? In its deceptive simplicity, this book does a lot of things well when considered as a book for beginning readers. The text is large and clear, set in New Century Schoolbook, a standard serif font. As such, letters like “a” and “g” do not look like the ones children learn to write, but they do look like ones children will consistently encounter in print materials, including many beginning reader books. Most of the sentences are short, and the author eschews contractions. Nearly all of the words are simple one- or two-syllable words (the only three-syllable word is “together”), and repetition is used to great effect in the dialogue between the two turtles. Text is uniformly placed on an off-white background, either at the top of an illustrated page, or on a page facing an illustration.

The palpable longing that one turtle feels for the hat is deftly portrayed in Klassen’s illustrations, rendered in his signature palette of sepia and earth tones relieved only by the orange of the sunset. Also prominent in the artwork is some gentle humor: the hat is much too big for either turtle, but both are convinced that it looks good on them. Klassen’s art is bound to garner some attention from those who enjoy speculating on the Caldecott, but it brings up an interesting question for Geisel consideration. At one point in the middle of the book, and more extensively at the book’s conclusion, the storytelling relies entirely on wordless two-page spreads. According to the Geisel criteria, “The book must also contain illustrations, which function as keys or clues to the text,” and “The illustrations must demonstrate the story being told.” In the case of this book, the illustrations take over the storytelling at the end of the book. Does that run contrary to the Geisel criteria?

I would argue that this book does fall within the criteria, and it exemplifies many of the elements that the committee is charged with recognizing: short, simple sentences, gradual introduction of new vocabulary reinforced by plenty of repetition, and intriguing subject matter that will motivate children to read. What do you think? If you were on the committee, would this be one of your top picks?

Duck, Duck, Porcupine by Salina Yoon

Today’s guest blogger is Kahla Gubanich. Kahla is a children’s and maker librarian at Carroll County Public Library in Maryland. 

Image from Duck, Duck, Porcupine
by Salina Yoon

In Duck, Duck, Porcupine by Salina Yoon, we are introduced to Little Duck, Big Duck, and Porcupine. The book contains three stories. In the first, the trio’s perfect picnic is nearly ruined by rain. In the second story, Big Duck has forgotten something very important, but all ends well when Big Duck remembers just in time to celebrate Porcupine’s birthday. Finally, the friends decide to go camping.

The simple sentences keep up a staccato beat throughout the book, and the words in the chapter titles are usually repeated several times within each story. Sentences are all fully contained on a single page and within the speech bubble. The content is not overly complicated and will likely be relatable to the reader: we have a soggy picnic that results in some great puddle jumping, a nearly-forgotten birthday that ends with a party, and exhaustive preparations for a camping trip that conclude satisfactorily with a crackling fire and some roasted marshmallows. In short, Duck, Duck, Porcupine has every initial appearance of a book for very early readers.

Image from Duck, Duck, Porcupine by Salina Yoon

The font choice generally echoes this conclusion. The text inside the characters’ speech bubbles is large and bold, suitable for beginning readers. For the most part, fonts outside the bubbles remain readable and even convey additional information to the reader. For example, as Little Duck grows bolder and begins to splash in the puddles with increasing gusto, the onomatopoeia text grows larger, showing the reader that the noise is louder. The font used for Big Duck’s extensive camping list has a handwritten quality, but remains large on the page.

There is one unfortunate exception to this: when Big Duck forgets Porcupine’s birthday, the reader’s only clues to the mysterious event come in the form of the tiny text on the gift tag, and on the birthday card in which Little Duck’s wing partially obscures the first letters. If the reader is unable to decode these clues, they remains just as in the dark as Big Duck about why the day is important and the story ultimately falls flat. A more experienced reader will decipher the partially-hidden words, but the very basic text and plot do not otherwise seem to target more experienced readers.

Image from Duck, Duck, Porcupine by Salina Yoon

The illustrations are bright and uncluttered, with saturated colors and bold outlines and a clean, whimsical style that will appeal to fans of Elephant & Piggie. In many instances the illustrations clearly reflect the text. When Big Duck refers to a string around her finger, the illustration clearly depicts her holding up one wing with a string tied around it. Yet the relationship between text and illustration varies, at times becoming an obstacle to the reading. Early in the book the characters head off-page to fetch the picnic basket and blanket one page before these items appear in the illustrations. Once the items do show up, the words are unfortunately not repeated.

On occasion, the illustrations and dialog even fail to align. Once the friends have assembled their picnic, Porcupine says, “Let’s go!” Yet the characters are all standing still, and the following image depicts them seated, apparently in the same spot. While relatively minor, these misalignments all create space for the reader to get lost within the text. These trickier interplays of text and image, combined with the well-hidden clues and more experienced visual literacy required to follow the plots, make Duck, Duck, Porcupine a seemingly simple book that requires a deceptively sophisticated reader.

What do you think? Have you read this book with a child? How did they navigate the text and illustrations?

The Mixed-Up Truck by Stephen Savage

Images from us.macmillan.com

Today's post comes to us from Katya Schapiro, Senior Children's Librarian at the Bay Ridge Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. She served on the 2016 Geisel Award committee, and has just joined the Quicklists Consulting Committee.

Steven Savage, author and illustrator of last year's Geisel Honor winning Supertruck, is back with another anthropomorphized tale of trucks. The Mixed-Up Truck is a hard-working but somewhat clueless cement mixer who, shades of Amelia Bedelia, just can’t quite get a handle on the correct execution of his job responsibilities. His efforts to “Mix up some powdery white cement” result in some tasty mishaps and not a little embarrassment, and it takes several tries until he and his fellow trucks can make a building.

Ah, vehicles. The superheroes of the toddler world. The draft animals of the city kid’s dreams. Those big, strong, active machines, with their distinctive noises, easily identified specialties, and 'community helper' vibe, are eternally and justifiably popular with young readers. In The Mixed-Up Truck, Savage employs many of the techniques that made Supertruck such a successful title for beginning readers, including large font text, short sentences and phrases, and a repetitive and episodic storytelling style.

Savage's signature digital art, which features bright colors, geometric cityscapes, and uncluttered (though rarely white) space is engaging, 'individually distinct,' and relaxing to readers in need of narrative clarity and visual rest. The characters themselves (the trucks) are cute and friendly looking, while still being easy to identify. Factory and construction site signage (“Danger,” “Sugar”) provide additional clues to the storytelling, allowing the savvy reader to get a jump on the plot reveals. Perhaps in honor of the 'powder' theme, nearly all of the illustrations are shaded in a stippled, powdery airbrush style.

The themes of The Mixed-Up Truck are those of perseverance in the face of initial failure, of getting up and trying again, and of using reading skills to succeed—perfect analogues for the struggles of a beginning reader. The repetitive unfolding of the story introduces new words slowly and builds reader confidence.

So far, so good. But I have some concerns as well. Throughout the book, the line breaks are built in every four or five words, rather than corresponding to sentences or even always to phrases. This works reasonably intuitively in sentences such as “All the other trucks/were hard at work,” or “The dump truck/was dumping,” but can get a little harder to follow in more complex sentences, such as “You got mixed up again,” said the/trucks,” or “The cement mixer mixed up/ the white powder, added a/little water, and presto!”

The juxtaposition of text and supportive illustration is also uneven, with some spreads reflecting and enhancing the text, and some offering very little information, or only supporting part of the page’s text. The plot, while building satisfactorily, relies on the assumption of knowledge that may or may not be in place (concrete is mixed from powder, sugar and flour make cake and icing), and might stretch the conceptual abilities of a reader who is already pushing their reading skills.

The Mixed-Up Truck is a great addition to Savage's vehicular adventure books, and truly shines when it shows the beauty of industrial buildings and the NYC skyline. While it's not perfectly calibrated as a beginning reader, I have no doubt that many readers young and old will appreciate its idiosyncratic storyline and powdery jokes.

Up by Joe Cepeda

Our guest blogger today is Susan Kusel, a librarian, children's book buyer and selector at an independent bookstore, and the owner of a children's book consulting company. She has served on the Maryland Blue Crab Young Reader Award committee, the Cybils Easy Readers and Early Chapter Book Awards committee, the 2015 Caldecott Medal selection committee, and she is currently a member of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee. She blogs at Wizards Wireless. 

Photo from HolidayHouse.com

The book cover begs a second look. It invites us to open this book to find out what on earth is happening in this delightfully upside down world.  

The gusts of wind propel each page turn, starting with the cover, moving through the endpapers and into the body of the book. The stage is set and we know that we are in for a blustery day.

This is truly a book for an early reader. The font is black, clear and easy to read. All the text (except for one sentence) is against plain, white backgrounds.

There are twelve unique words in the book, and each one is short, no longer than one syllable or five letters.  No sentence is longer than four words. Words and phrases are repeated. Clear visual clues are present when new words are introduced.

The illustrations and the story carry us along from start to finish, because we have no idea what will happen to this euphoric child floating through the air with his magic pinwheel. Despite the simple text, we are compelled to find out what happens next.

It remains to be seen if the Geisel committee will consider this book distinguished. But if you have very early readers in your life, I hope you take a look at this book and enjoy the ride.

Navigating the Challenging World of Reading Levels

Today's guest contributor, Danielle Jones, is a youth and teen public librarian in Portland, OR. Find her on Twitter @DanielleBookery.

The Geisel Award honors the best books that children use to build their independent reading skills. One of most rewarding and hardest jobs is matching the right book, at the right time, to those readers.
There are a variety of reading level assessments available for educators to use, and teachers will often use one system to guide their students. The leveling systems used can vary from school to school or even classroom to classroom. This can be a challenge for librarians that are working in tandem with classroom teachers to keep up with what book falls where in this varying playing field of levels, especially as most books aren’t marked with all the variations. Often, caregivers and children come into the library seeking books that fall into a certain level range. This can be difficult because some teachers can be very specific about what level they want the student to be focusing on.

Some of the most common assessment systems used are:
• Guided Reading - This system uses letters A-Z to mark different reading levels.
• DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) - Reading levels are marked A1 through 80.
• Lexile - A scale that measures readability in a numeric range from 200-1690.

So when it comes to doing reader’s advisory and matching the right book to a reader’s ability it can be a challenge whether we know what reading level they are at or not. If a child is coming in knowing exactly where they are on one of these reading levels, one tool that helps me get started, and helps put that level in context is Scholastic’s Book Wizard site.

Screenshot from Scholastic.com/BookWizard

This gives you a variety of options to search for titles using different assessment levels, and can help put a level in context to see some familiar titles that fall in that specific range.

Bookmark created by Danielle Jones. 

Most times though, children don’t come into the library with the assessment level in mind. They just want a book to read. The five finger test has been a handy tool to determine if the book is a good match with a child's reading level.  It is something that is easy to teach other library staff to use, and also it is easy for them to teach to parents and caregivers. I have seen it be empowering to young readers who use it on their own when sorting through a stack of books to find something that will be a good fit for them.

It can be good to dissuade them from using the back cover for the test, as it can often have quotes from people that aren’t writing for the reader of the book, but for those making the choices for the child, whether it is a librarian, teacher, parent, or caregiver. Also, never underestimate the power of a child’s motivation for the subject or content of a book. If a book is falling in the the 3-4 finger category, but it is something that the child is really interested in, it can push a child to struggle through some of the more difficult words.

Looking to share the five finger test with your staff and patrons? Feel free to download the bookmark and print as many copies as you need. Thanks to Danielle for creating such a wonderful resource!  

Can I Tell You A Secret? by Anna Kang

Today's guest blogger is Robbin Friedman. Robbin is a children's librarian at the Chappaqua Library. She chairs ALSC's School Age Programs and Service committee, serves on the Carnegie Medal/Notable Children's Videos committee, and writes reviews and other what-have-you for School Library Journal.

Geisel Award-winning duo Anna Kang and Christopher Weyant (You Are (Not) Small) team up for another dialogic charmer. An anxious frog peers out from the cover, wide-eyed and eager to share a secret. With a series of lines suggesting a conversation with the reader, Monty the frog divulges that (gulp) he’s afraid of water and cannot swim. As he talks his predicament through with the audience, the frog tries one, twice, three times to reveal the secret to his parents. The confessional opener followed by the suspense of Monty’s situation decidedly fulfill the award criteria of a “page-turning dynamic”and readers will find reassurance in his parents’ supportive response.

More challenging than Kang and Weyant’s previous two books, Secret suits a somewhat more sophisticated audience, both in vocabulary and structure. The story switches several times between Monty’s address to the reader and exchanges between the frog and his parents; this requires readers to follow the shifts and recognize asides, even when both forms of dialogue occur on the same page. The vocabulary also steps up in complexity from the repetitious debates of the creators’ earlier books, featuring humdingers such as "fantastic" and "exhausting." Even with less repetition of new words, Kang keeps a close eye on most of her more unwieldy vocab and offers subtle support in the text. Eliciting a promise from the reader early in the text pays off later when Monty’s parents employ the word to reassure him. And the author builds to some of her other new verbiage, surrounding likely challenges with context: "Are you sure? POSITIVE?/You wouldn’t lie to me, right?"

Monty’s ingratiating face dominates most pages, surrounded by ample white space, and Weyant includes just enough background imagery to situate the story around Monty’s pond-side cottage. Charming details will engage readers of all levels, though some of the illustrations may not fully support the text for newer readers. Will readers connect dodging raindrops with "hard work?" Or consider clinging to an irate heron "exhausting?"

Kids will surely cheer Monty’s triumphant entrance to the pond and they will happily return to the book for additional rounds. But beginning readers hoping for a repeat of the duo’s Geisel winner will either need to press their thinking caps on a little harder, or screw up the courage to ask for help.

The Thank You Book by Mo Willems

Picture from Pigeonpresents.com

This year’s committee has quite a task before them. They will consider the final book in the Elephant & Piggie series, The Thank You Book. We’ve previously discussed the legacy of this series, which has earned recognition for seven different titles during the decade that the award has been around. But of course, the committee must do its best to judge the book solely on its own merits, disregarding the successes of the series. 

The criteria says:

“The committee in its deliberations is to consider only the books eligible for the award” and further clarifies that “the phrase only the books eligible for the award specifies that the committee is to consider only eligible books, not an author’s body of work or previous accolades.”

How does a committee begin to do this? Penny Peck, chair of the 2014 Geisel Award Committee says "There was no surprise that we had at least one Elephant & Piggie book to consider our Geisel year, but none of our committee members took it for granted - either assuming one of the series would be on our list or dismissing it because of past wins for the series.” Of course, we know that the outcome of their deliberations was an honor for A Big Guy Took My Ball!

The committee accomplishes this by adhering closely to the criteria in their suggestions, nominations, and in their January discussion. 

So how does The Thank You Book fare when examined through the lens of the criteria? 

Last we checked, Mo hasn’t taken up permanent residence in Paris, and we can also pretty easily deduce that this meets the other geographic, page count, and target age criteria. (Yes, even though adults have been eagerly anticipating this final book, it isn’t just for us. It does still serve PrK-2 sensibilities.) On to the more subjective criteria:

Does it "contain illustrations, which function as keys or clues to the text?" Look at that white space. That amazing, glorious, actually white, white space. We know how important that white space is for the eyes of our beginning readers, for giving them a visual rest. I suspect that The Thank You Book will have as much or more white space as any other book under consideration this year. Mo’s illustrations fill that white space with just the right amount of Gerald, Piggie, and friends. The illustrations have a cartoon style, complete with color coded thought and dialogue balloons that provide the reader with guidance as to which character is thinking or speaking. These thought or dialogue balloons also provide clues as to the tone of the speech, deepening in hue and developing sharp edges when Piggie is frustrated, and becoming smaller when Gerald is quiet. And there’s the broad range of emotion conveyed by the depictions of Piggie and Gerald, with their depiction providing clues to their confidence, contrition, enthusiasm, skepticism, joy, frustration, and contentment. While initial illustrations do not provide clues to decoding “lucky” or “Thank-o-rama”, once Piggie is engaged in her quest the character names like “Squirrels” or “Pelican” appear on the same page or spread as that character’s depiction. 

Is it "distinguished?" Distinguished is further defined in the manual as:

·         Marked by distinction: noted for significant achievement;

·         Marked by excellence in quality;

·         Marked by conspicuous excellence or eminence;

·         Individually distinct;

·         Providing a stimulating and successful reading experience for the beginning reader containing the kind of plot, sensibility, and rhythm that can carry a child along from start to finish.

The terms “individually distinct” and “conspicuous” are always interesting to consider when evaluating a title in a series, particularly in years when an author has more than one title eligible, as has often been the case for Elephant & Piggie. But even when a series title is the only one in its year, it is the challenge of each committee to identify how this entry to the series demonstrates individual distinction, rather than just the excellence in quality that we have come to expect from this series. Could this be a factor in why the Elephant & Piggie series has not taken the Geisel gold since 2009, despite its very consistent showing at the top? 

Observing a child reader is key to truly knowing if it provides that “stimulating and successful reading experience” that is a mark of distinction in the genre. Is the subject matter intriguing enough to motivate the child to read? Does the plot advance from one page to the next and create a "page-turning" dynamic?" We can see on page 11 as Piggie leaps out-of-frame that we should turn the page, but is the dramatic tension between Gerald’s insistence that she will forget someone and her refutation of that assertion enough to carry a first-time reader through the multiple vignettes of Piggie thanking her many friends?

There will undoubtedly be many fans watching for this title during the Geisel announcement this year. If you were on the committee, would it have a place on your ballot?