New York Review of Books Gifts for Kids
Children'southward Books
Gift Books for Children (That Adults Will Likewise Love)
Upside-downward fairy tales, a neon periodic tabular array, the fine art of Ramona Quimby and more than.
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Telephone TALES
By Gianni Rodari
Illustrated by Valerio Vidali
Translated past Antony Shugaar
212 pp. Enchanted Lion. $27.95. (Ages 8 to 12)
Once upon a fourth dimension, for many nights each week, "no matter where he was — at nine o'clock on the dot," Signor Bianchi, an accountant who worked as a traveling salesman, called his little girl on a pay phone to tell her a bedtime story. Those 67 whimsically surreal tales, well-nigh as short as the time 1 coin allotted — first published together in Italian in 1962 and finally all brought together again in a new English language translation — make upwardly this treasure trove of a book. Its author, Gianni Rodari, who would have turned 100 this year, is as revered in Italy equally Carlo Collodi, the creator of Pinocchio. Valerio Vidali's new illustrations, inspired by the act of doodling on a message pad, match Rodari'south radical playfulness. Vibrant and fanciful, they run the gamut from small inserted flaps of newspaper to brightly colored foldout drawings. Rodari'southward upside-down fairy-tale world, in which the table of contents is at the back, features, among other delights, a stoplight that turns blue; a city double-decker full of passengers that on a lark heads off its route into a meadow; a country that boasts pencil unsharpeners, clothes unhangers and war machine uncannons ("good for unwaging war"); and an entirely edible planet that offers this for breakfast: "The warning clock goes off, you wake upward, yous catch the alarm clock, and y'all gobble information technology down in two bites."
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THE SHRINKING OF TREEHORN
50th Anniversary Edition
By Florence Parry Heide
Illustrated by Edward Gorey
Foreword by Lane Smith
80 pp. Holiday House. $xvi.99. (Ages half dozen to nine)
Having "stumbled on" this title for the starting time time several decades ago while "trolling for Edward Gorey books" at New York's now-shuttered Gotham Book Mart, the Caldecott honoree Lane Smith (illustrator of "The Stinky Cheese Man") wondered nearly its author: "Who was this Florence Parry Heide person, Gorey'due south equal in the deadpan department?" In his foreword to this "alpine" tale well-nigh a male child who gets smaller and smaller as the adult earth ignores him, Smith marvels at the "cumulative result" of the book'south "deadpanness." Reading information technology, he writes, "you may feel an disease the opposite of Treehorn's, finding yourself not shrinking, only growing with a rolling, snowballing laughter. Who would have thought the commonplace, the humdrum, could exist giddier than a traditional ha-ha-funny children's book?" Eventually Smith tracked down "this Florence person" and illustrated one of her books himself. If your children are curious virtually "this Gorey person," also check out "Nonsense: The Curious Story of Edward Gorey," a recent flick volume biography written by Lori Mortensen and illustrated past Chloe Bristol (Versify/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, twoscore pp., $17.99; ages 4 to seven).
TIMELINE: SCIENCE & Applied science
A Visual History of Our World
By Peter Goes
80 pp. Gecko. $29.99. (Ages ten to 18).
Who knew the Roman Empire produced a daily "paper," called the Acta Diurna (stone tablets carved with news reports that were distributed throughout Rome), too equally public toilets on which to read them (stone benches over a aqueduct of running water)? This gigantic, propulsive, lavishly drawn and smartly annotated global timeline of scientific discipline and engineering science from the Rock Age to the present, past the Belgian author and illustrator Peter Goes, provides wry glimpses of these sorts of developments, as well as deeper dives into oft-neglected periods and cultures: the peaceful Norte Chico, or Caral, civilization on the northward coast of Peru (3500-1800 B.C.); the mixed-race Indus Valley civilization of northwest South asia (1900-1700 B.C.); the Abbasid Caliphate, or Golden Age of Islam (750-1258). Filled with hidden details and subtle wit, Goes'southward sweeping graphic history is peopled with endearing Gumby-like worker beings and more richly textured, realistically rendered individual game changers. As the terminal quarter of the book shows humanity dominated by machines and electronics, Goes segues to climatic change, dwindling natural resources and endangered species. On the 2020 page, he sounds a hopeful notation for the future, while including this quirky, double-edged factoid: "Using advanced cloning techniques, Russia is planning to bring the extinct woolly mammoth back to life in society — in truthful Jurassic Park style — to breed the animals in Siberia."
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EXPLORING THE ELEMENTS
A Consummate Guide to the Periodic Table
Written by Isabel Thomas
Illustrated by Sara Gillingham
240 pp. Phaidon. $24.95. (Ages 8 to xiv)
This comprehensive, securely informative educational resource doubles as an high-sounding java-tabular array book, the kind scientific discipline-minded readers and fact-finders beloved to pore over. Its pattern motif of bright neon-hued icons against a dark-black background had me fantasizing that the illustrator, Sara Gillingham, had included in her palette rubidium, strontium and barium salts, which the author, Isabel Thomas, tells usa are sometimes used in the creation of violet, ruddy and green fireworks, respectively. The reverse side of the book's jacket features an equally stunning periodic table that can be removed and tacked to a message lath or hung on a wall.
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MUSIC
A Fold-Out Graphic History
By Nicholas O'Neill and Susan Hayes
Illustrated by Ruby Taylor
What on World Books. $19.99. (Ages 10 to 14)
Published in partnership with London's Royal Albert Hall, this timeline is more than 8 feet long when unfolded, and sturdy enough to stand on its own. Because it's double-sided, that'southward almost 16½ feet of global music history. Certain aspects of British music go preferential treatment (in that location's a break from the format to devote a full folio to the Beatles, in improver to a full-page shout-out to Albert Hall at the end), only this exuberant overview of an art form that makes us laugh and cry, call and respond, twist and shout does a pretty proficient task of covering the world's greatest hits from prehistory to artificial intelligence. A playlist, along with a Spotify link, is also included.
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RESPECT
Song lyrics by Otis Redding
Illustrations past Rachel Moss
24 pp. Lyric Popular/Akashic Books. $16.95. (Ages 0 to 7)
In the King of Soul's own original recording of this song in 1965, a man asks a woman for respect. Two years later, Aretha Franklin'due south feminist rendition took the same song to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Later on it became a civil rights anthem. Now an ultrasimple children'southward volume whose just words are the lyrics themselves reimagines it however again, through the eyes of a immature daughter and her blood brother equally they try on hereafter roles and careers, and appreciate the bonds they accept with their parents, friends and customs. While the event may exist too over-the-top happy for some — none of these people seems to have a care in the world — its art, by Rachel Moss, a Jamaican illustrator fueled by the free energy of the Caribbean area, will make readers want to amp up the music and dance, which perhaps is exactly what all of us need right at present. "Respect" is currently i of eight books, by diverse songwriters, in the Lyric Pop serial, with another Otis Redding title, "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay," coming this jump.
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THE ART OF RAMONA QUIMBY
Sixty-5 Years of Illustrations From Beverly Cleary's Dear Books
By Anna Katz
Essays by Annie Barrows and Jacqueline Rogers
256 pp. Chronicle. $40. (Ages eight and up)
Five unlike illustrators have fatigued Ramona Quimby, from her get-go appearance in the Henry Huggins series, begun by Beverly Cleary in 1949, through a new set up of reissues in 2014, well after the last Ramona book was published. The truthful pleasure of this retrospective is that it highlights cardinal moments from the books, in chronological society, and compares the various illustrators' ways of depicting them. We see the same sequence drawn in unlike eras (with different fashions and hairstyles); we see varying unscripted reactions on the characters' faces, and a wide range of demeanors. We run into situations from dissimilar angles and perspectives, with positive versus negative spins; individual choices of which parts to prove (crisis or resolution, detail or overview, Ramona and her sis'southward focus on their father or on the candy he's brought them).
Louis Darling's original comic-volume pen-and-ink Ramona, the author Anna Katz notes in her lively running commentary, looks a lot like Cleary herself did as a child. From 1975 to 1990, Alan Tiegreen drew Ramona in a purposely "messy," sketch-like way (for which he won a Newbery Medal and an American Volume Accolade). During the same flow, Joanne Scribner painted realistic Rockwellian covers for which she used her own young daughter equally a model. Later, Tracy Dockray's "more inclusive, cartoonish style" introduced apartment gray shading when showing groups of people, to reflect variety. The almost recent illustrator, Jacqueline Rogers, describes her style, in an afterword, every bit "sometimes scratchy," with a variety of thick and thin lines, "loose and full of energy," merely similar the incorrigible, irresistible Ramona. Appendixes include Darling'southward correspondence with Cleary (whom he met only once in person over twenty years of collaboration) and Dockray'south early on sketches.
THE STORY OF BABAR
By Jean de Brunhoff
Archive textile from the Morgan Library & Museum
Essays by Faïza Guène, Adam Gopnik and Christine Nelson
Folio Society. $495. (All ages of smitten adults and advisedly supervised children)
This charming, brainy tribute to le petit éléphant includes a facsimile of the French first edition; reproductions of Jean de Brunhoff's mock-up for the book and early Babar sketches; and a volume of commentary (containing a newly deputed essay by the French-Algerian author Faïza Guène most Babar every bit a symbol of "assimilation, French style," previously published essays by the New Yorker author Adam Gopnik and the Morgan Library curator Christine Nelson, the text and translation of the mock-up and sketches, and a new English translation of the French start edition) — all housed together in a cloth box. Limited to 750 copies, hand-numbered on a certificate.
Jennifer Krauss is the children's books editor of the Book Review.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/books/review/childrens-holiday-gift-books.html
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