By Jan Pease
How do you organize your week? I admire people who
stick to a pattern, such as Monday, laundry, Tuesday, gardening, Wednesday,
cleaning day, etc. “It’s Monday, Mrs. Jolly Bones,” by Warren
Hanson, stars an organized but crazy housekeeper who is helped by a crew of
animals. Here is how her week begins:
“It’s Monday, Mrs. Jolly Bones, there’s laundry to be done.
So gather up the dirty clothes and sort them one by one.
Wash them, dry them, iron them, and fold them nice and neat—
Then fling them out the window so they brighten up the
street!”
This book simply begs to be read aloud. I can’t wait
to use it at story time.
Three new concept books will appeal to football fans for
obvious reasons. They are “Football A B C,” “Football Opposites,”
and “Football Colors.” They were all written by Mark Weakland, and are part of
the Sports Illustrated Kids Rookie Books. Of course, “A is for
Action!” 
“One Gorilla, a Counting Book” written and illustrated by
Anthony Browne, is another concept book that stirs up some
interesting reviews at amazon.com. The pictures are incredible,
looking like formal portraits drawn of the various primates featured in the
book. Comments about the illustrations are uniformly full of praise. However,
Mr. Browne’s last message in the book is one of humans being part of the
primate family. Some parents strongly objected to this in their
reviews. One parent even went so far as to glue the last pages
together to protect her children. My suggestion is, if this concerns
you, don’t check out the book.
There were so many cloudy days during our spring and early
summer, that we might be surprised, like the rabbit in “The Black
Rabbit” to discover our shadow following along. Philippa
Leathers wrote and illustrated this story about a little rabbit that is
afraid of his shadow, until he encounters a real wolf. “The Black
Rabbit” may be a little too scary for some tender hearts since the wolf is
large and toothy, but the ending is happy and full of light.
“Uh-Oh, Baby” was written by Nancy Coffelt and illustrated by
our summer reading illustrator, Scott Nash. The baby is Rudy, who
starred in “Catch that Baby!” a funny book also written and illustrated by the
Coffelt/Nash team. Rudy tries to give his mommy a present, with
hilarious results.
Shrek wasn’t always a musical comedy star. In 1990,
William Steig wrote and illustrated “Shrek!” the story that inspired the
Dreamworks movies and now “Shrek! The Musical” being staged by our own
community theater. The book is very different from the movie and
musical versions. It has a very happy ending, as Steig wrote, “So
they got hitched as soon as possible. And they lived horribly ever
after, scaring the socks off all who fell afoul of them.” Don’t you just love a
good fairy tale?
