Oh The Pressure!

Looking at that title, you may be wondering what kind of pressure I am experiencing. Or maybe you are not wondering, but I plan to tell you. First, there is water pressure. Glorious, wonderful water pressure has been restored in my home. I've been flushing toilets with abandon for at least an hour now. Apparently my water will be running brown and dirty for a few days, but at least it's running.

That settled, I can worry about more bookish matters. Here is the other pressure in my life: I have been invited to be Guest Reader in my fifth grade son's classroom this Friday. I have twenty minutes to read to the class. What do I choose? Keep in mind, he will be in middle school next year and there will be no more guest reading. What should I choose to entertain this audience?

Last year Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Duck! Rabbit! was a huge hit. It inspired conversation and doodling.

Several times in the past I have read Tomie De Paola's Fin M'Coul. It is the perfect choice for March and I love to lay it on thick with the Irish brogue.

I am looking for something different this year. My son's teacher told me I will be reading immediately before phys ed class (I've been informed by my first grader that "Gym is a room and Physical Education is a class.") Maybe I should read about an inspirational athlete. David Adler's biographies of Lou Gehrig and Gertrude Ederle might be good selections. What to choose? Any suggestions?

What's The Difference Between a Hockey Blogger and a Pit Bull?

In case you don't have hockey fans in your home, yesterday was a big day in ice hockey. There was nail biting and screaming and dropped jaws in my house yesterday as the Canadian team beat the US team in overtime yesterday afternoon. If "our team" had to lose, at least it was Sidney Crosby who scored the game winning goal. My boys really admire him. In fact, last February I posted an entry about a Crosby biography here at The Book Bench. I don't generally rerun posts, but I will provide the link in case you are interested. It is http://thebookbench.blogspot.com/search?q+sidney+crosby. That said, I would be much happier today providing the link to a book about Zach Parise or Ryan Miller. Ah well, good for Sidney!

If the link above does not work, my original Sidney Crosby post is from February 3, 2009.

Play Ball!

To celebrate Major League baseball's opening day, I've got a lineup of some of my favorite baseball books new and old. My most recent discovery is B is for Baseball: Running the Bases from A to Z. The text of this wonderful ABC book is written by Sara Gillingham. It is much better than your run of the mill alphabet book. B is for Baseball is an interesting primer on the game incorporating original artwork and archival photos to present rules, history, and trivia. I think it would appeal to a wide range of ages, from about four to nine or ten. So would Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man, a gorgeous and inspiring picture book written by David Adler and illustrated by Terry Widener. That duo has the Midas touch. Their books on Gertrude Ederle and Joe Louis are equally good at combining great stories with American history and fantastic artwork.

Another inspiring baseball book is We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball. Kadir Nelson's words and paintings have created a compelling experience in this book. I don't know what audience to say this book is for. Clearly it is a picture book, but I can't imagine an adult who wouldn't be riveted by the artwork and story. Kadir Nelson paints a picture of the dignity, heroism, and athleticism of the players of the league and presents the history of segregation for his readers. The title comes from a quote by Rube Foster, the founder of the National Negro League, "We are the ship; all else the sea."

Since we're on the topic of American history, I have to mention an old favorite of mine that I used when teaching high school students about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It is Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and illustrated by Dom Lee. It begins, "One day, my dad looked out at the endless desert and decided then and there to build a baseball field." It is a very different field of dreams; one of stolen dreams actually. This book always provided me a solid "in" to discussing the internment camps before we started reading heavier, more adult writing about it.

Last on deck is a new piece of baseball fiction, Six Innings, by James Preller, author of the beloved Jigsaw Jones books. Six Innings, a well written, character driven baseball story, is written for readers a bit older than Jigsaw Jones fans. I would say it is best for baseball fans between the ages of nine and thirteen. It tells the story of a championship game between two Little League teams and the backstory about the players as well.

It's officially baseball season and you should be out there watching a game, playing in one, or just having a catch outside, but if rain should cancel those activities, I recommend checking out any or all of these baseball books.

Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Today is the Ides of March (Beware!) and my older brother Andrew's birthday. I owe some of the best reading of my life to Andrew. I admired him so much when we were young (still do) that if he read a book, you could bet I'd be reading it the minute he put it down. It's funny, when I close my eyes and picture him in our childhood, the image is not one of a kid with a book in his hands. Rather, I see a scrappy blond kid playing baseball or soccer, swimming, riding his bike, or tearing through the house at full speed. Whether I'm picturing five year old Andrew or fifteen year old Andrew, he's laughing, sweating, and in motion. However, I know he was a voracious reader and I tried to read every single book he read. There's one exception to that. He read and reread Johnny Bench's biography I don't know how many times when we were growing up. It seemed always to be lying around the house. That book held no appeal for me.







But thanks to Andrew, I met the Hardy Boys and Hans Brinker. I went Where the Red Fern Grows and imagined living on My Side of the Mountain. I loved My Side of the Mountain but knew, even as a child reading it, that I would have been miserable and never survived on the mountain. I think, on the other hand, it sparked Andrew's imagination, and he pictured himself surviving, even thriving, in the wild. It had that same effect on my own boy who was captivated by it when he read it last year. And, thanks to Andrew, I read one of the best series of my youth, John D. Fitzgerald's Great Brain books. Oh, how I adored The Great Brain. For that, I am forever in his debt. Those books gave me hours and hours of enjoyment.

I am looking forward to my own kids meeting The Great Brain, TD, and Sweyn, and reliving their adventures. Every once in awhile, I read a book with my kids and think how much the eight or ten or twelve year old Andrew would have loved it. Eoin Colfer's Half Moon Investigations being a perfect example. It combines humor,mystery, plot twists, and adventures he would have relished. The first time I read one of Jon Scieszka's Time Warp Trio books, I physically felt sad that it hadn't existed in 1977, because boy, was there a kid I knew who would have enjoyed it.

When my sons and daughter picture their Uncle Andrew, the image is not of a man sitting in an armchair reading a book. No, I'm sure what they conjure in their minds' eyes is a guy hosting legendary family parties, telling stories, shooting off fireworks, allowing them to help him use (God help us) his chainsaw, wrestling with them, teaching them to shoot a BB gun, cheering at their games, and more. But still, thanks to him, they've got some great books on their shelves because he is a reader and always has been, and he's been a huge influence on my taste in literature.

Look for Joy in the Rink

A number of years ago, I went to visit my grandfather in the hospital after he had undergone surgery. I remember being very worried about him. He looked so small in the hospital gown and bed, and I wasn't sure how aware he was of what was going on or if he even knew I was there. He was such a sharp and proud person, he would not have wanted to appear confused or helpless. So I just sat there quietly in the room with him. There was all the usual daytime noise of a busy hospital going on in the hallway. In particular, the nurses all seemed to need someone by the name of Joy. Who knew if she was a candy striper, maintenance worker, therapist, or doctor? All I know is I kept hearing people loudly ask, "Has anyone seen Joy?" and "Where's Joy?" A nurse came in to fiddle with my grandpa's tubes. Another nurse ducked her head in the room and inquired of her, "Where should I look for Joy?" From his bed and without opening his eyes, my grandpop said, "Not in Mudville." My worrying ended and my love of the greatest sports poem ever, "Casey at the Bat," increased tenfold.
Marty Sederman has written a fast paced rhyming picture book about a pee wee ice hockey game inspired by the style of "Casey at the Bat." If for no other reason, I like Casey and Derek on the Ice because it gave me a chance to tell that story. It does also have some other strengths to recommend. It has lots of action and an underdog story, as well as exciting, spot on illustrations. Illustrator Zachary Pullen has definitely put in some hours at ice hockey rinks. His details are realistic from the black puck marks on the boards to the kids' names written on masking tape affixed to their helmets. Young hockey players will recognize and appreciate the attention to detail. It won't disappoint those who like a happy ending for the underdog.

Amazing Athlete, Great Nonfiction Book

Lerner Publications has just released a new title in its Amazing Athletes series aimed at readers in the second through fifth grades. This one is Sidney Crosby by Jeff Savage. Sidney Crosby's story is a great one. His father first taught him to play hockey at the age of two, and he began skating at three. Savage includes some interesting anecdotes. For example, the young Sidney Crosby practiced slapping pucks into the clothes dryer in his family's basement. His mother must have been a patient woman! Savage also includes the types of stories hockey fans love, of Sidney playing with a broken foot and having his front teeth knocked out by an opponent's skate blade. He went on to be the NHL's number one draft pick in 2005. He was named the Pittsburgh Penguins team captain, the NHL's youngest captain, as a teenager in the 2007-2008 season. Clearly, Sidney Crosby's impressive achievements make a good story, but this is also a great example of well written nonfiction, the kind of nonfiction more kids should be experiencing. The book presents information in a variety of ways. It includes bolded words in the text which are defined in a glossary, relevant sidebar information, captioned photographs, a table of contents, index, and suggested further reading and websites.

Everyone in the Pool!

I have a wonderful twelve year old niece who is an all around great athlete. One of the sports at which she excels is swimming. Every year for her birthday and Christmas, I want very much to buy her a good book about competitive swimming, like a Matt Christopher sports book but for a girl audience. I've had very little luck. A few years ago I recommended the fantastic picture book America's Champion Swimmer about Gertrude Ederle, but I didn't give it as a gift because she was a bit old for picture books. I did give her Liz Kessler's chapter book The Tail of Emily Windsnap, but that's more a book about a seventh grade girl who goes to a swim class and finds out she's a mermaid. It's a good read, but not quite what I wanted to give her. A few months ago I found a book that would have been ideal to give my niece back when she was in first, second or third grade. It is Swimming with Sharks by Betty Hicks, one of her Gym Shorts series. It's a fun and easy to read chapter book about a girl and her friends who swim competitively. My own eight year old daughter read and enjoyed it. It got us talking about why kids choose different sports and how they deal with difficulties.

Even more recently, I finished a fantastic book which tells of a teenage boy's experiences swimming the butterfly on his summer swim team. It is warm hearted and hilarious, but not quite appropriate for my twelve year old niece. If, however, you are looking to get a high school boy a book he will enjoy, even if he's not into swimming, Don Calame's Swim the Fly is a great first choice. Fifteen year-old Matt and his best friends Sean and Coop get themselves into a number of awkward but very funny situations as they try to achieve their summer goal of seeing a real live naked girl. There is plenty of gross out humor and crude nicknames, but also a lot of loyalty, and persistence, and sweetness too. I think somebody out to hurry up and make a movie out of this before Michael Cera gets too old to play Matt.

So my quest for the perfect swimming themed book for a sixth grade girl continues. Please tell me if you know of a good one!

This Hockey Mom's List of Hockey Books

The NHL season is on, college hockey starts soon, my nine year old son's squirt level hockey team has its first league game of the season this Saturday, and hockey moms are all over the news lately, hence this list. These are five hockey books we enjoy:

1. Z is for Zamboni: A Hockey Alphabet This is a wonderfully illustrated alphabet book with rhymes for each letter, such as "Puck begins with the letter P black rubber to the core. It's what the players try to shoot past the red goal line to score." For older readers there is much sidebar information on the history, rules, and culture of the game.

2. Hockey in Action by Niki Walker and Sarah Dann is part of the Sports in Action series which is an easy to follow primer on the sport of ice hockey, suitable for elementary school age readers.

3. Hockey for Dummies by John Davidson with John Steinbreder. You've seen the For Dummies series with their distinctive yellow and black covers. I have found this to be a very useful reference book on a sport that I had little experience with before my child began playing it. My children do wonder why someone would carry around a book that advertises its holder is a dummy.

4. and 5. Ice Magic and Wingman on Ice by Matt Christopher. These sports chapter books are great for second through fifth graders interested in sports in general or hockey in particular.

Worth the Wait

Yesterday I left my kids' swim meet sore all over. No, I wasn't in the lake with the swimmers. My shoulders ached from the big bag of towels, snacks, camera, and sunscreen. My feet hurt from three hours standing on a plastic dock in paper thin flip flops. My hands hurt from clapping, my throat was raw from cheering, and my ears were happily tired from the applause and cheering around me. Here's what I love most about summer swim: often the loudest applause is for the slowest swimmer. There was a mighty roar for my five year old as he completed 25 meters of backstroke, using a kickboard, after what seemed like a week. Throughout these meets, the spectators and swimmers from both sides cheer the hardest for the littlest and the slowest. Another mom and I were trying to articulate why that is. We think it has to do with the effort. How can you not encourage someone who is trying so hard? And in sports like swimming and track and field, that effort is so plain to see.
I came home from the meet and Googled "Rick Reilly and cross country" until I found "Worth the Wait," a column from his very popular Life of Reilly column in Sports Illustrated. I had read it months ago in Reilly's funny, inspiring, opinionated, and scathing (when on the topic of Barry Bonds) collection of columns called Hate Mail from Cheerleaders.
"Worth the Wait" is about a high school cross country runner with cerebal palsy named Ben Comen. It will make you feel good and make you think twice the next time you think something is too difficult to attempt. It is certainly worth looking up on the Internet or checking the book out of your library to read it.
I'm going to get you started with the first few paragraphs here:

"Why do they come? Why do they hang around to watch the slowest high school cross-country runner in America? Why do they want to see a kid finish the 3.1 miles in 51 minutes when the winner did it in 16?

Why do they cry? Why do they nearly break their wrists applauding a junior who falls flat on his face almost every race? Why do they hug a teenager who could be beaten by any other kid running backward?"

Okay, go now. Read the rest. It's worth it.

America's Champion Swimmer

All three of my children are on the summer swim team at our local lake. It is a fun and healthy, family friendly summer activity. Yesterday was the first practice of the season and the first practice ever for my youngest son. Last night was the perfect opportunity to read one of our family's favorite picture books, America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle by David A. Adler and illustrated by Terry Widener. To be honest, this would be the perfect book to read on the first day of any new challenge or to inspire a new challenge.

Born in New York City in 1906, Gertrude Ederle did not learn to swim until she was seven years old. After she nearly drowned as a child, her father was determined to teach her. At first, he tied a rope around her stomach, held onto the other end and put her in a river. She took to the sport, to say the least. She won her first big competitive race at the age of fifteen. She won three medals at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. At this point in the book, in addition to enjoying captivating illustrations, my children have absorbed some important lessons. The first is that she didn't learn to swim until she was seven and didn't compete until she was a teenager, but that did not hold her back. The climate around kid's sports today is so hyper competitive that kids are "specializing" by age seven and have personal coaches and trainers by ten.

Gertrude's story gets even better. By 1925, she decided to take on the ultimate swimming challenge at the time- to swim the twenty mile wide English Channel. Only five men and no women had made it all the way across. Here are some more lessons in the book: geography and setting goals for oneself. She failed in her first attempt, but tried again on August 6, 1926. Adler's book shows Margaret, Gertrude's sister, greasing her up before the swim to protect her from the icy water. It also shows the encouraging "This way, Ole Kid" and an arrow pointing to England that Margaret chalked on the side of the tugboat which accompanied Gertrude on her more than fourteen hour swim. The illustrations and details of her sister's support are tremendously moving to me.

In the end, Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel, fighting rain, wind, and a strong current, in fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes, beating the men's record by almost two hours. Although there was no Nike or Gatorade endorsement waiting for her, Gertrude did receive a ticker tape parade, joyously depicted by Widener's painting, and much praise from common folks and dignitaries alike.

America's Champion Swimmer is a beautiful and inspiring book. Adler and Widener also teamed up on Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man which also delivers a story of American history, personal heroism and athletic greatness.

Happy Father's Day!

Three of the greatest dads I know are my husband, my father, and my brother George. All three do a lot of reading, making shopping for birthdays, Christmas, and Father's Day pretty fun for me. There's not much I enjoy more than browsing for books. However, my husband and brother only read nonfiction. Left on my own, I would rarely stray from the fiction and cooking sections of the bookstore. Selecting gifts for them has been eye-opening. In recent years I've found books for them about oysters, lobsters, sailboats, mountain climbing, soldiers, religion, ice hockey, submarines, music, dogs and more. Happily I've gone on to borrow and read some of their gifts. Later today, my husband will be unwrapping a book about the restoration of a wooden sailboat and one about the connection between the human brain and music. There's a lot of good nonfiction out there! Unfortunately, not enough young people are reading it. I've read some articles and studies lately about how many high school and college students report having never read a nonfiction book other than assignred chapters in textbooks. This affects not just their body of knowledge, but their ability to process written information. So much of what we read as adults, from how to manuals to the newspapers, is nonfiction. In order to make sense of it, we need experiences with nonfiction writing. Clearly this is not an issue for my husband or brother, but it shouldn't be for anyone with the wide range of nonfiction books out there today.

The one I plan to read next is It's Only A Mountain:Dick and Rick Hoyt, Men of Iron. I love the story of this father and his physically handicapped son who have competed in numerous marathons and the Iron Man triathlon. I use a magazine article about them when teaching my fourth grade religious education class and have cried while watching them compete on television and YouTube. This book about them has come highly recommended and I'm looking forward to it. If you are looking for a very last minute idea, it seems like an excellent Father's Day gift.

Equal Time

Yesterday I wrote about books to give as gifts to school age girls. I figure today I should mention a few books we've recently given to my nine year old son's friends. We've given a lot of Matt Christopher sports books over the last few years. These chapter books, aimed at boys from grades two through six, just about always have a lot of action and a male protagonist who loves a sport and faces some dilemma. While there are several baseball, football, basketball, and soccer books to choose from, less mainstream sports are written about as well, including, mountain biking, skateboarding, dirt biking, and, very popular in my house, ice hockey.

Dan Gutman's My Weird School series is an easy and fun read for boys from first through third grade. Actually, my daughter got us started on these at the beginning of her first grade year. Who can resist titles like Miss Daisy is Crazy and Mr. Klutz is Nuts?

We've also given a number of Eoin Colfer's books in the last year or so, as well as checking them out of the library for ourselves. No one in my house has yet read his immensely popular Artemis Fowl books because I think they look too challenging, but we love The Legend of Spud Murphy andThe Legend of Captain Crow's Teeth, written for a younger audience, more like grades two to four. I can't recommend Spud Murphy highly enough. It is about a pair of high energy brothers whose parents decide they need to spend their summer days in the local library in order to stay out of trouble. Once there, they come face to face with the feared and legendary children's librarian, Spud Murphy. Lessons are learned, and much fun is had in between the covers of this one.

Here's another great thing about giving boys books as gifts- they're much easier to wrap than basketballs and hockey sticks.

Standing Tall

I love a good novel and have to push myself to read more nonfiction. My chief complaint is that nonfiction is often boring. However, every once in awhile a biography or autobiography really moves me and I find myself raving about it to anyone who will listen. C. Vivian Stringer's Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph is one of those books.

Stringer is the head coach of the Rutgers University women's basketball team. That is what got me to pick this book up, as my husband, my three brothers, many of my friends, and I all graduated from Rutgers and have an interest in Rutgers athletics. I'm assuming many people will read it to find out more about the controversy sparked by radio personality Don Imus's negative comments about the team. Stringer does cover that incident, but this book has so much more. What an inspirational life she has led!

With dignity and quiet humor, Stringer writes about the tragedies in her life, including her fourteen month old baby daughter's spinal meningitis which made it impossible for her to walk or speak again, the death of Stringer's beloved husband of a heart attack in 1991, and her own battle against breast cancer. At the same time, Stringer writes of her professional triumphs (bringing two different teams to a National Championship tournament), and personal ones such as her strong marriage and the love and support of her family and friends.

Stringer admits mistakes she has made in her life and extolls the importance of hard work, education, and a can do attitude. It is a fantastic choice for a teenager or young adult, even one who has no interest in basketball.