ShareThisCelebrate Mother's Day with some of these great new children's books:
-- Moms can be so embarrassing, at least when they're kissing you in public and talking too loudly and insisting that you eat only healthy food. And that's just the beginning of the complaints made by the scowling young narrator in "My Mom Is Trying To Ruin My Life" (Simon & Schuster, $16.99).
Author Kate Feiffer has a hilarious time playing with a common childhood fantasy of trying to figure out how to get your parents out of your life -- at least temporarily. Reminiscent of Margaret Wise Brown's classic book for younger readers, "The Runaway Bunny," Feiffer's story offers breezy reassurance that parents may be troublesome, but they're also good to have around when you're lonely or scared or just need a hug.
Illustrator Diane Goode further boosts the comedy quotient of Feiffer's text with her witty watercolor illustrations. (Ages 4-7.)
-- Author Alyssa Satin Capucilli uses a lilting rhyme to highlight the diversity of mothers in "My Mom and Me" (Little Simon, $7.99). The book has an unusual design -- just five double-page spreads, each with a foldout page that continues the illustrations and text. In each of the spreads, Capucilli focuses on a different culture by noting how "mother" is said in each one: "mami" in Spanish, "ima" in Hebrew, etc.
The illustrations by Susan Mitchell are less successful, giving only a vague nod to the cultural diversity spotlighted in the text. Still, the book will likely be popular with young readers for its design and with mothers for its celebration of their nurturing role. (Ages 2-4.)
-- Don't be fooled by the picture-book format -- "Most Loved In All the World" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17) isn't a book for preschoolers. Yet the book, written by Tonya Cherie Hegamin, offers a wonderful way to bring alive African-American history for older children. Hegamin uses a first-person narrative and black dialect to tell a compelling story of a mother who is a slave and a secret agent on the Underground Railroad and who sends her own young daughter off with others to freedom and a better life.
The girl takes with her a quilt sewn by her mother, with patches showing the North Star, a log cabin and other symbols that may have been used by Underground Railroad agents as directional devices. Artist Cozbi A. Cabrera intensifies the story's emotional impact by integrating the fabric motif into her illustrations, which are done in acrylic paints and textile collage.
Hegamin includes an author's note at the end explaining how she came to write the story, and includes a list of resources for young readers who want to learn more about the Underground Railroad. (Ages 7-10.)
-- It's amazing what a mother's love can do as author Jane Yolen shows in her delightful book, "Mama's Kiss" (Chronicle Books, $14.99). But this isn't a sappy ode to maternal devotion; instead, Yolen uses sprightly rhymes and sometimes-earthy images (for example, a burping baby) to tell what happens when one of Mama's kisses goes astray.
Illustrator Daniel Baxter catches the lighthearted flavor of Yolen's text, portraying the kiss as a set of red lips with wings and using a red line and arrows to show its path. Young readers will love following the kiss through the book as it wends its way back to the child for whom it was intended. (Ages 3-6.)
-- Ozzy, a young mouse, wakes up and immediately begins searching for his mother. Is she behind the fence? No, that's just some cattails. What about behind the rock? No, that's an earthworm. And so it goes in "Mommy, Where Are You?" (Atheneum, $16.99), as author-illustrator Leonid Gore combines a simple text with die-cut illustrations to take young readers on a search for Ozzy's mother. Of course, there's a happy ending, but young readers will enjoy the suspense along the way. (Ages 2-5.)
-- Gut-wrenching and beautifully written, "Mother Poems" (Henry Holt, $16.95) by author-artist Hope Anita Smith details a girl's love for her mother and her crushing grief when her mother dies suddenly. Written as a series of poems, Smith's story is, by turns, sad, funny, devastating and joyous. Smith, whose book "Keeping the Night Watch" won a Coretta Scott King Honor this year, illustrates "Mother Poems" with expressive cut-paper collage that captures the complexity of the narrator's emotions. (Ages 8-12.)
-- Author J.D. Lester and illustrator Hiroe Nakata join forces to create a delightful board book for the youngest readers, "Mommy Calls Me Monkeypants" (Random House, $7.99). Bouncy rhymes and lighthearted, bright illustrations make this a winner for babies and toddlers. Parents, get ready to read this one over and over. (Ages birth-2.)
(Karen MacPherson, the children's/teen librarian at the Takoma Park, Md., Library, can be reached at Kam.Macpherson(at)gmail.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
CHILDREN'S CORNER
