Four more children’s books from the Cybils list and I can just barely see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, I think the end of the tunnel will appear sometime in January of 2012. Behind schedule – but I’ll get there. Eventually.
Non-fiction first, since there are three of them:
First, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped.
Next, Bones: Skeletons and How They Work. I liked it more than I thought I did. Some to scale images of bones of different creatures. Other smaller scale images of bones. Lots of different animals (and fish and birds and reptiles) represented here. Nice contrast between the bones and the background colors.
And, Dinosaur Mountain was fabulous. I’ve read a lot of dinosaur books in my time, for all ages, and this is one of the best. It was the narrative that did it. Forget the gold rush, think about the BONE rush. You’ve got Americans excited by the first dinosaur display, you’ve got Andrew Carnegie with an empty dinosaur room telling you to go find something big and here’s the money to do it… how do you find that big something? And just when you’re about to give up hope, you find it… but winter is coming and you’re in Utah. Gah. Imagine living in a tent next to the bones of a brontosaurus all winter long and not being able to get in there and dig those fossils out? Fabulous story. Loved it.
From the children’s fiction list, Shark vs Train. For some reason the two little boys reminded me of my nephews. Well really they reminded me of one nephew. That kid should have been twins, heck on wheels… heh. So two boys are playing. One has a shark, one has a train – who will win! Depends on the competition, now, doesn’t it? Cute book. Not my thing but I’m guessing there are a lot of kids who would get into this who would win type of game.