Who is Steven Spielberg? by Stephanie Spinner

Stephanie Spinner's book Who is Steven Spielberg? is a biography of the director aimed at second and third grade readers. The book, which features black and white illustrations by Daniel Mather, follows Spielberg's life from his birth in 1946 (In Cincinnati! Who knew?), to the release of his film Lincoln in late 2012. The structure of the book focuses largely on the inspiration for and production of many of Spielberg's most famous movies, intercut with glimpses into his personal life and sidebars about subjects tangentially related to Spielberg and his films (topics of these sidebars include a glossary of filmmaking terms, an overview of the rise of Nazi Germany, and a history of the Academy Awards).

I'm not sure that I would call this a "warts and all" depiction of Spielberg, but that may be due to the fact that, according to most people who have worked with him, Spielberg is a genuinely friendly person. The book does detail some aspects of Spielberg's life that teachers may not want students to emulate: he didn't get into film school due to bad grades, and dropped out of college when he got his first offer to direct a tv show. Additionally, Spielberg's origin in the film industry isn't exactly model behavior: he made contacts at Universal Studios by sneaking past security, setting up shop in an abandoned office and lying about his identify so that he could be close to the filmmaking process.

That being said, the book also does a great detail to extoll the virtues of following one's dreams (many of Spielberg's movies can be traced back to his childhood passions and interests) and never giving up in the face of adversity (it sounds like the production of Jaws, considered to be the world's first blockbuster, was a train wreck from day one). I think this book would make for very engaging reading for any young student who is curious about how the movies they love get made. There is a glimpse into nearly all aspects of the film industry in this story, from writing, to producing, to directing. Even the business aspect of the industry is briefly described as, in 1994, Spielberg cofounded DreamWorks studios.

Much of the early portion of this book is spent looking at the various films and figures that inspired Spielberg to want to make movies, and I could see this book, in turn, opening up a whole world of inspiration for a new generation of young readers and artists, and I would not hesitate to include this book in my classroom.

Octopuses by Jenny Markert

Octopuses by Jenny Markert is an informational text for early childhood readers. This text, part of a series of animal texts called New Nature Books, uses photographs, captions and concise writing to talk about different aspects of the lives of octopuses (not, as I had always been taught, octopi).

The information and photographs are interesting enough in their own right, but I feel that the true strength of this book lies in it's structure. The book is built like a 30 page textbook, complete with a glossary, index, and table of contents. It is my opinion that this would make an excellent introduction to each of those elements and how to use them. Each chapter is titled with a question (such as "Where do octopuses live?" and "Are octopuses dangerous?") making it easy for students to find the information that they would like to know in the table of contents. Even the page numbers are enlarged for ease of use, since it is possible that students have never had to pay attention to page numbers in the past.

As for the actual content, this text does a great job of providing information in a way that is detailed, organized and written plainly enough for a second grader to follow. It covers a wide range of topics and species of octopus, including their life cycles and survival techniques. Some might feel that the book does personify octopuses (again, that word just does not feel right) by talking about how their colors change with their mood: red for angry, pale for frightened, but many scientists would argue that this is accurate, that octopuses actually do have what we would recognize as rudimentary emotions (for more on this argument, I recommend checking out the book The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery).

All in all, I would say that this is a fine informational text and a excellent introduction to informational texts as a concept.

Additional Resources

While Octopuses is an excellent informational text, it may be  possible that there are students who are used to reading narrative texts and are therefore likely to get distracted by and lost in the text-book structure of the text. For these students, I might recommend first introducing them to An Octopus is Amazing by Patricia Lauber with illustrations by Holly Keller. This book introduces a lot of the same information as Octupuses, but it does so in a more straightforward way, more reminiscent of the storybooks that students might be used to at this age. The information in An Octopus is Amazing is less detailed than the information in Octopuses, there is no table of contents, and rather than photographs, it is illustrated in a style that reminded me of Gregory the Terrible Eater for some reason. All of this will serve to help students absorb basic information without being overwhelmed by data or unfamiliar text structures. Once a student has read through this book and developed a basesline knowledge of Octopuses, they can use the index and table of contents of the other text to supplement the areas of information that they would like to know more about.

Also, I would recommend showing students the National Geographic video found here. While al of the information in both of these texts is sure to enlighten and engage, words and still images can't capture the beautiful strangeness of an octopus changing his color while he hunts prey or avoids predators. This video is sure to capture the attention of every student in the room.

Anne Hutchinson's Way by Jeannine Atkins and Michael Dooling

The book Anne Hutchinson's Way, written by Jeannine Atkins and beautifully illustrated by Michael Dooling tells the story of Anne Hutchinson, a puritan who was sent to the American colonies with her family in 1634. This book focuses on her life in the Massachusetts's Bay Colony, and ends with her and her family being exiled from the colony due to her outspoken disagreements with the local minister. Though this is a bleak story, it is one that I imagine young readers will enjoy. Atkins' simple descriptive sentences and Dooling's gorgeously detailed painted illustrations bring the minutiae of colonial life into sharp focus, helping transport readers to an America that may seem very foreign to them.

Subject-wise, I feel that this is a story that will remain with young readers long after they read it. At it's core, this is a story about following your conscience even in the face of threats of violence or punishment. The ending serves as a reminder that, in real life, not all conflicts have fairy tale endings (though I will admit that this final exile is not presented in such an oppressively bleak fashion as to throw the readers into early fits of nihilism; Anne still has her family and still has a home). I feel that this book works well as both a character study and a window into a specific era of American history.

Additonal Resource: Great Americans- Anne Hutchinson by Kiely Miller

This early childhood nonfiction resource from Weekly Reader Publishing is an excellent supplement to the story told by Atkins and Dooling. Great Americans: Anne Hutchinson is a textbook designed to be read by early elementary readers and provides them with more detailed information about Anne Hutchinson and the world she lived in. The book is filled with image of historical paintings and maps of relevant locations. In addition to educating young readers about colonial America, this book would make an excellent introduction to the research skills that students will need later in life such as navigating a table of context or glossary, comparing text information to relevant images, using a map to contextualize historical information. I would highly recommend this text to young readers.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman with illustrations by Dave McKean

As you might (or more likely, might not) be able to guess from it's title, Neil Gaiman's young adult novel The Graveyard Book is a kind of reimagining of the basic premise of Rudyard Kipling's two volume novel The Jungle Book. For those not familiar with the story, Kipling's book tells the story of Mowgli, a human child who is left alone in a jungle after his family is killed and has a series of adventures as he is raised and educated by the various animals of the jungle that become his adopted family. Gaiman's book tells a similar story about a toddler whose family is murdered and who then stumbles into a sprawling historical graveyard in London where he is protected and raised by the various ghosts of the men, women, and children who are buried there.

As you can probably already tell, this is an extremely dark book, insofar as it deals with the concept of death in almost every paragraph (in fact, death itself appears as a character a handful of times throughout the book). That being said, you would be wrong to assume that this is a horror book. While it does have the occasional monster and moments of peril (particularly frightening is Jack, the shadowy figure who murders the family at the beginning, and stalks the protagonist through the third act), the book has plenty of humor and a solid emotional core. The ghosts of the graveyard are not presented as mournful or tortured. They seem rather like retirees, who are content to wander the community of their graveyard, relaxed and unburdened by the stresses of living.

Structurally, the book is episodic in that each chapter is a complete adventure in the life of the main character, named Nobody Owens by his adopted parents (Bod for short). Each chapter takes place about two years after the previous chapter, so that over the course of the book, we see Bod grow from a toddler to a young man of about 15 years. 

The book begins with the brutal of Bod's family by a character referred to as "the man Jack". Bod, barely old enough to walk, escapes the carnage by chance, happening to stumble out of his open front door into the night pursued by the murderer. The boy ends up in a graveyard, where he is spotted by several ghosts. A man called Silas, who, it is heavily implied but never outright stated, is actually a vampire, uses supernatural powers of persuasion to convince the man Jack that he did not see the toddler enter the graveyard and to continue his pursuit of the child elsewhere. Meanwhile the ghosts of the graveyard argue about what to do with the child, with some saying they owe it to him to protect him, and others wanting to eject him. Eventually, the angel of death (here referred to as "the Lady In Grey") makes a rare appearance to tell the ghosts to take the child in. The Owens', an elderly couple who died some 250 years ago, takes him in.

The book then follows Bod's life in the graveyard, and the various supernatural adventures he has there. In one chapter, Bod discovers an ancient druid burial ground in a cavern beneath the graveyard, filled with ancient artifacts and protected by a phantom called the Sleer. In another chapter, Bod discovers that every graveyard on earth contains a ghoul gate, a portal to an ancient realm populated by mischievous, corpse-eating ghouls. In another chapter, Bod makes friends with a ghost of a teenage girl who has been shunned by the rest of the graveyard because she was executed for being a witch (which, it turns out, she actually was) While these various adventures are occurring, Bod's educator and guardian Silas, the only inhabitant of the graveyard who is able to leave its walls and enter the real world is conducted research to discover why Bod's family was murdered, and why the man Jack is still out there searching for Bod.

Eventually, Bod becomes old enough to star attending school. He has learned tricks from the ghosts he lives with about how to go unnoticed by most people and so is able to enter class without questions being raised about who he is or who his parents are; teachers tend to forget he exists as soon as they take their eyes off of him. Before long, Bod gets in trouble after using some of his other supernatural skills to exact revenge on a couple of bullies and he is forced to leave the school and return to the graveyard.

At the end of the book the man Jack finally tracks Bod back to the graveyard. It is revealed that he is a member of an organization called the Jacks of All Trades, mystical assassins and thieves, who murdered Bod's family because it was prophesied that someone from that line would be a being who walked in the land of both the living and the dead who would destroy the organization. The man Jack, and a few other Jack's (the last of their organization) attack the graveyard and Bod uses lessons and tricks learned from his previous adventures (the ghoul gate and the Sleer, for example) to defeat them. The book ends with Bod turning fifteen and slowly losing his ghostly abilities (as well as his abilities to see the ghosts at all). With money and a passport provided by Silas, Bod leaves to explore the world knowing that, after he has lived a full life, his spirit will return to the graveyard to be with his adopted family. 

This is a book full of fascinating ideas. In some ways, it feels like a story about time travel as the ghosts that help raise Bod all come from different points in history and still think and talk and act like people of their time. Gaiman uses these ghosts to talk about the history of London in a way that feels very natural and will appeal to young readers. There is also an extended mythology to the world that Gaiman presents here that, like Rowling's Harry Potter seems like it could fill thousands of pages of adventures. I would love to see this possibly turn into a series, though it works perfectly fine as the standalone story it was intended to be.

The character of Bod is very likely to connect with young readers who are transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Throughout the story, Bod finds himself torn between two worlds, unable to face the dangers and responsibilities of the world of the living, but never fully at home among the dead (one problem he faces, for example, is that he keeps outgrowing the ghost friends he makes, as ghost children don't age like he does). As befits a book about a graveyard, I would describe this novel as being a book about dealing with loss and transition. Death is discussed very frankly in this story and Bod often struggles to deal with changes in his life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone young, old, or recently deceased to help them learn about how to more gracefully accept that changes and losses with which life presents them.

Raven by Gerald McDermott

Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest is one of several books by writer/illustrator Gerald McDermott that details the story of one of the world's many mythical trickster figures. This particular book, a Caldecott Honor Book from 1994, follows the shapeshifting Raven from pacific northwest Native American folklore as he tries to bring light to the cold dark world.

The art is very unique, McDermott depicts Raven in bold geometric forms that mirror the traditional totemic art of the region, while the world and people around him are depicted in a more detailed modern style. The result is that Raven feels otherworldly and magical in his environment. This style also allows young readers to easily identify raven even as he changes his shape to a pine needle and a human child to achieve his mission.

The story, which has Raven infiltrate the village of a powerful man called Sky Chief in order to steal the light that will later become the sun, is told in simple clear sentences using words that young readers can easily understand. McDermott utilizes some fun techniques such as repetition (the sun is hidden in a box within a box within a box, for example) to add humor to the story and make it engaging without distracting from the simple folklore elements of the plot.

The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kerley

The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kerley, with illustrations by Brian Selznick, was a Caldecott Honor Book in 2002. The book is a non-fiction story about Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a London artist who, in 1853, worked with scientists to help create a series of life-sized models of dinosaurs. This is significant because, at the time, dinosaurs were a relatively new discovery, and though most people now knew that they existed, few people had any idea what they looked like. While later scientists would show that Waterhouse and his scientists would themselves get most of their dinosaur designs wrong, the book does an excellent job showing the combination of scientific and artistic methods through which Hawkins and his assistants compared the few discovered dinosaur fossils to similar bones of living creatures to try to recreate the prehistoric beasts.

I feel that this book earned its status as a Caldecott honor book by presenting what could be a drab historical biography in an engaging way without resorting to overtly fantastical elements. It is a grounded, factual, retelling of this man's life, but one that follows a relatable emotional journey as Hawkins finds himself welcomed into the scientific community that he has always admired as a result of his determination and imagination, and challenged by politicians who don't think money should be wasted studying long-dead animals. Like Hawkins' dinosaurs themselves, Brian Selznick's art combines historical accuracy with creativity, depicting actual events with a theatrical air and presenting Waterhouse as a kind of wild-haired magician who is endlessly delighted by the reaction of his growing audience. This book is a great way to introduce young readers who may have a fascination with dinosaurs to the worlds of science, art, and history that have been influenced by people with similar fascinations. It's also a great introduction to biographies of people less well-known than the historical figures they learn about in school; a great way to teach children that there historical figures and events that may not be significant enough to be included in their history textbooks, but are still worth seeking out and exploring on their own.

Hank Zipzer: Niagara Falls, Or Does It? by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver

Niagara Falls, Or Does It? written by Henry Winkler, who you may know as the Fonz from Happy Days (or, more recently, Barry the incompetent lawyer from Arrested Development) and Lin Oliver is the first in a series of chapter books focusing on the adventures of fourth grader Hank Zipzer and his friends and family. I had not encountered this series before (as it launched in 2003, when I was beginning high school), but personally I feel that this series and the characters presented in it would have made a profound connection with eight year old me.

Characters: Hank Zipzer, the titular character of the series is a manic class clown who can't seem to get anything right, but he is presented with more empathy and complexity than one might expect from such a character. Hank is often shown grappling with frustration and insecurity about his constant self-sabotaging behavior and the book ends with him at the request of a caring teacher, deciding to get tested for learning disabilities. The rest of the cast is made up of Hank's friends and family, who are supportive of Hank, and are all written with enough interesting details that I imagine that they will continue to grow and be of interest in later installments. There are also a collection of teachers both supportive (Mr. Rock, the cool new music teacher) and the adversarial (the stony Mrs Adolf; read into that name choice what you will).

Plot: The main plot of this novel is Hank grappling with a five paragraph assignment, which he decides to get around by replacing it with a visual representation of Niagara Falls, a decision which ends disastrously and interferes with the novel's b-plot of Hank and his friends being hired to perform a magic show for his grandfather's bowling club.

Setting: The book is set in New York City and it is a setting that definitly makes itself known. Cabbies shout vulgarities, sports teams are spoken of reverently, and every character seems to have a favorite deli or pizza shop. One thing I appreciate about the setting is the way that it presents Hanks school life and his home life in different tones, even though they bleed into one another.

Theme: If I had to pinpoint a theme in this book, I might suggest that it's about being grateful for the people in your life that support you. Unlike many books for this age-group about students clashing with the overwhelming and seemingly unfair world of academics, Hank never fully falls into despair and the reason for that is that he constantly recognizes
that he has a support system of friends and family. He is constantly remarking on how exceptional each of them is, and how lucky he is to have them in his life.

Style: This, I feel, is the book's greatest stregth. It oozes style and makes the whole thing exceedingly readable. In particular the grammar and vocabulary with which Hank narrates his story feels like the New Yorky voice-over of a Scorcese film (minus the violence and substance abuse of course). Hank speaks in a wry, sarcastic tone that seems uniquely Italian American (though his heritage is never stated, to my recollection.) I couldn't help but read it in the voice of someone like Joe Pesci or Robert Deniro. It is this tone that really sets the book apart from other similar books, and I suspect, that makes it a comedic hit with young readers.

Tone: As previously mentioned, the tone of this book is incredibly humorous. It never gets too bleak or overwhelming without veering back to the light almost immediately, creating a rapid pace that doesn't allow time for stress or self-pity to bog the characters down. I feel that the positivity and humor with which this book handles what turns out to be a child's learning disability are very refreshing, and a great way to introduce readers to the idea without making it seem frightening or upsetting.