CET Writes

In this sequel to  Get Well Soon , Anna Bloom continues along the path of self-understanding.  She has just returned home from a three-week stay in a mental hospital and is struggling to adjust to life outside of its walls.  Although she misses the near magical realism of life inside and the friends she made there, she is terrified of the implications of such feelings and reluctant to ask about the goings on back at the hospital.  Anna desperately craves a return to “normalcy” and shuns being stigmatized as “the crazy girl. ”   Unfortunately, her return home immediately precedes the dissolution of her parents’ marriage and she fears that she’s the cause.  Miraculously, Anna’s saga comes to a middle and brings the novel to a close with a bittersweet poignancy that avoids feeling incomplete even though there is clearly more to tell.  In addition,  Halpern’s use of first person point of view fosters an intimate connection between the reader and ...

Owl at Home  is one of Harper & Row’s many titles in the  I Can Read!  series.  The inside cover explains the series’ system for promoting independent reading in young children, and the title page is followed by a table of contents that enumerates the book’s chapters.  Young children will enjoy the protagonists’ childlike innocence in this episodic narrative of loosely connected adventures in which he demonstrates his faulty understanding of physics by welcoming winter as a house guest, becoming frightened by his own feet, making tear-water tea, striving to be in two places at once, and discouraging the moon from following him home.  Readers will delight in predicting the outcomes of Owl’s mishaps and recognizing the flaws in his logic.  Lobel’s heavily shaded, representational, cartoonish line art provides a depth and richness that complements and extends the text, facilitating the reader’s comprehension of Owl’s logical fallacies.  Furt...

Image from goodreads.com In Knuffle Bunny, Willems expertly manipulates the readers’ response by maximizing his use of the book’s composition to relate the story of a trip to the laundromat that turns unexpectedly dramatic. On the dust jacket flap, the reader is greeted by a brief plot summary that alludes to Knuffle Bunny’s fate. The end pages establish the book’s signature illustrative style--“a melding of hand-drawn ink sketches and digital photography”--by repeating one image over and over again: Knuffle Bunny as seen through the window of the washer door at the laundromat watching his family walk away. The plot begins prior to the title page with a series of family photos that depict the wedding of Mommy and Daddy, Trixie’s birth, and an early family outting which have been hung so each successive picture progresses not only time but also space and encourages the reader to follow the pictures to their logical conclusion--a large framed photo of Trixie hugging Knuffle Bun...

Image from goodreads.com Wiesner’s nearly wordless tale begins with a disclaimer on the book jacket that “the events recorded here are verified by an undisclosed source to have happened somewhere, U.S.A., on Tuesday. All those in doubt are reminded that there is always another Tuesday.” An establishing scene prior to the title page depicts three frames in which frogs placidly enjoying their lily pads find themselves, surprisingly, beginning to levitate. Following the title page is a formal text arrangement that belies the surreality of this enchanting tale. Three large panels appear on the recto, zooming in on a turtle in a body of water being startled by the frogs who are happily flying overhead like UFOs. They continue their adventure throughout the night startling beast and man alike as they traverse alternations of double-page, full-bleed spreads that contain vignettes which highlight the antics of individual frogs; double-page spreads within frames; single-page spreads ...

Image from goodreads.com Among the chief goodwill ambassadors of Class Insecta, the ladybug is a beetle of which most have a good opinion. Playing against type, Carle’s protagonist has a chip on its several shoulders. After encountering and threatening another ladybug over a morning leaf of aphids, this grouchy ladybug flies off looking for a fight. A big one. The die-cut pages typical of Carle books soon come into play as the first page of his adventure is very narrow, just big enough for itself and the yellow jacket it challenges to a rumble. Deciding that an insect only three or four times its size is an unworthy opponent, it finds a bigger creature to pick on and then another and so on as the page and typeface size grows, the sun rises higher and higher on each opening, and the clock which appears in the upper right of each two-page spread ticks forward an hour with each proposed and abandoned showdown. Full-bleed collage illustrations crafted from cut paper add an expressive d...

Image from amazon.com Much like its protagonist, The Very Hungry Caterpillar metamorphoses. As its story begins and as it ends, it is a nature book featuring the life cycle of the butterfly from egg to adult; in the middle, though, it becomes a counting book featuring a tactile hook. Starting with the larva-eaten endpages, the copious whitespace allows for easy focus on the little caterpillar as it sets out on its journey through a series of die-cut pages. Beginning with a single hole in a single apple on a very short page, each opening in this section becomes longer and longer, with more fruit and more holes. Therefore, a child learning to count has multiple signifiers of increasing amount and quantity: the simple visual of the brightly-colored cut-paper fruit; the hole in each piece, which he or she can feel as an individual item; and the size of the page, which scales in direct proportion to the the number represented. The days of the week are also taught as these feats of ...

The Space Race  is one title among many in the  World History Series .  This book is an illustrated informational book that explores the history of rocketry and explains America’s race against the Soviet Union to be the first to land a man on the moon.  The books illustrations are largely comprised of photographs through which readers can understand the scope and depth of the concept.   The Space Race  pairs nicely with a study of President John F. Kennedy’s persuasive speeches, especially  “The Decision to Go to the Moon.”     CHRISTINA E. TAYLOR The Space Race [World History Series] b y by  Nathan Aaseng Middle School     Lucent Books 110 pp.  Published 2015  ISBN 978-1560068099 $28.70