Beat
the June Heat and Read
by
Selene S. Vasquez
PICTURE
BOOKS: AGES 6 THRU 8
Milo’s
Hat Trick by
Jon Agee. (Hyperion, unpaged, $15.95).
Milo
the Magnificent is an untalented magician whose tricks get tangled
up or botched altogether in a funny, crowd-pleasing manner. Will
finding a rabbit for his bag of tricks enhance his amusing dilemma?
There
Once Was a Man Named Michael Finnegan
by Nadine
Bernard Westcott. (Little Brown, 32 pp., $14.95).
This
is an exuberant and preposterously silly traditional romp of a
tattered, unshaven man and his grinning doggie companion. Wacky
watercolor and ink illustrations make merry of poor Finnegan’s
violin playing.
POETRY:
AGES 6 THRU 8
Timothy
Tunny Swallowed a Bunny by
Bill Grossman. Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. (HarperCollins, 32
pp., $14.95).
Eighteen
slapstick poems resemble a literary version of The Three Stooges.
Hawkes is the quintessential zany artist for these madcap and
mischievous wordplays romping throughout the book.
NONFICTION:
AGES 8 THRU 12
Shipwrecked!
The True Adventures of a Japanese Boy
by Rhoda
Blumberg. (HarperCollins, 32 pp., $16.95).
Shipwrecked
in 1841, little Manjiro was rescued by an American whaling ship,
educated in New England, and amazingly, became an honored samurai
upon returning home to Japan. This is an absorbing biography with
vivid historical detail.
Selene
Vasquez is a media specialist at Orange Brook Elementary School
in Hollywood, Florida. She is formerly a children’s librarian
for the New York Public Library.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
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