10 Reasons to Befriend a Book

It seems commonsensical to say that the more you read, the smarter you get. That’s a reasonable justification for hitting the books. One study says the more education you have, the more money you make. Another tells us that poor readers die earlier. The research seems clear: if you want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise—read. It’s a start, anyway. Ask your students: What’s so important about being a reader? What is it about a great book that is so enticing?

In my title, Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3 (Libraries Unlimited, 2006), I wrote a chapter with “10 Reasons to Befriend a Great Book.” Here, then, is an updated list to share with children, with one memorable new read-aloud book for each reason.

“Once upon a time, in a grand castle, there lived a rat named Bob, who was fond of baking and wild about reading.” I was smitten with that first sentence of Mary Hanson’s How to Save Your Tail: If You Are a Rat Nabbed by Cats Who Really Like Stories about Magic Spoons, Wolves with Snout-Warts, Big, Hairy Chimney Trolls . . . and Cookies Too. (Schwartz & Wade, 2007; Gr 2–5). Hey, me, too! I thought. I love baking and reading, too! A captivating first sentence in a children’s fiction book is a gift. I continued: “Now, baking can be dangerous for a rat. Paws get burned and tails get caught in eggbeaters all the time. But it was his love of books that almost killed….” (Killed who?) Eagerly, I turned the page. “Bob.”

On page two, there was also the first of John Hendrix’s genial black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations, with my new friend Bob lounging on a pot holder, his head resting on a rolling pin, a bandanna tied around his neck. On page four, Bob is snared by the Queen’s cats, Brutus and Muffin, but he bribes his way out with warm butter cookies and a story.

Luckily, Bob is a storyteller, though it takes him five tales to save his own neck from those hungry but not-so-swift-witted cats. If you know your fairy tales, you’ll recognize elements of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Three Pigs,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Toads and Diamonds,” and “Cinderella,” retold in short, rat-themed chapters just begging to be read aloud with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk.

Don’t assume your students are familiar with the tales on which Bob’s stories are based; read them in tandem. With older children, follow up on the rat versus Cinderella theme with Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat (Knopf, 2000; Gr 4–7). For a writing tie-in Bob would appreciate, have children read other well-known fairy tales and rewrite them, putting Bob’s relatives in major roles. (Refer to the book’s chart of his extensive family tree for inspiration.)

In Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant (HarperCollins, 2007; Gr 5–8), readers meet Stephanie Edgley, a 12-year-old girl described by her Uncle Gordon as “strong willed, intelligent, sharp-tongued, [and] doesn’t suffer fools gladly,” who has just inherited the bulk of her late uncle’s estate in Ireland. He was a best-selling author whose tales of horror and magic Stephanie always assumed were fiction, but that was before she teams up with her uncle’s good friend, Skulduggery Pleasant, an enigmatic figure in a tan overcoat and gloves, his face obscured by his scarf, hat, and sunglasses.

In his prime, Skulduggery was an Elemental, a type of sorcerer or mage, but ever since his murder, oh, several hundred years back, he’s been a walking, talking, wisecracking, mystery-solving skeleton, trying to save the world from rogue magicians. It’s entirely possible Uncle Gordon was murdered because he had knowledge of the legendary Scepter of the Ancients, and Stephanie might unwittingly possess the key that the bad guys need to find it.

Be forewarned: there are lots of fireballs and car crashes and violence and blood in this breezy but suspenseful fantasy. Still, readers will get quite fond of the girl and the living skeleton, which is good, as this is the first in a series of seven and a booktalker’s dream.

The singular voices of all of the main characters in Christopher Paul Curtis’s books are what pull you into his novels. Joining my favorite narrators, Kenny from The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 (1995) and Bud from Bud, Not Buddy (1999, both Delacorte), is 11-year-old Elijah Freeman in Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic, 2007; Gr 4–8).

In this latest masterpiece, set in 1859 in Buxton, Ontario, a Canadian village founded by freed slaves, Elijah knows he is considered special. He was the first child to be born free in the Settlement and, as an infant, the one who threw up all over visiting dignitary, Frederick Douglass.

He’s all boy, sneaking a toady-frog in his Ma’s knitting basket with predictable results, but is “terrorfied” and cries himself silly when Ma retaliates by putting a snake in the cookie jar for him to discover. She wants him to be less “fra-gile,” as she puts it, but he is naive and often bamboozled by a fast-talking con man known as the Preacher.

For all Elijah’s gut-busting stories and observations about his best friend Cooter, school days, and attending a Carnival of Oddities, this extraordinary novel has a serious component. After newly freed slaves make it to Buxton, bad news comes from America, and Elijah finds out firsthand the difference between slavery and freedom. The book is an eye-opener as a read-aloud, and a sterling example of personal narrative and voice. It ties into the social studies curriculum in its look at the realities of slavery.

“The day I decided to steal a dog was the same day my best friend, Luanne Godfrey, found out I lived in a car.” That first sentence of Barbara O’Connor’s How to Steal a Dog (Farrar, 2007; Gr 3–7) will get your children talking.

Live in a car? How can you live in a car? Daddy’s deserted them, Mama’s working two jobs, and, after school each day, Georgina and her little brother Toby wait outside the Chevrolet for Mama to meet them. It’s been a week now. Luanne says, “No offense, Georgina. But you’re starting to look unkempt.” Seeing a missing dog sign with its offer of a five hundred dollar reward tacked to a telephone pole, the desperate girl hatches a plan, recording in her notebook lists of the rules and steps she needs to carry it out.

Read aloud the first chapter, and scrutinize the cute little black-and-white dog on the book’s cover. Set up a debate. Would it be OK for Georgina to abduct that little dog if the reward money could help her family find a place to live? What should she do? Mind you, Georgina does steal that dog.

What’s compelling about this fast-moving novel is the utter realism of it for children. Georgina is a sympathetic character, but as you read, you find yourself talking to her in your head: Don’t do it, Georgina! Why doesn’t someone help them? Does this really happen to people? What would I do if it happened to me? Mookie, a homeless older man Georgina encounters, and the conscience of the story, has a relevant motto, which you can discuss: “Sometimes the trail you leave behind you is more important than the path ahead of you.”

Preteens get to have so much fun in fiction books. Look at 11-year-old Theodosia Throckmorton in Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. LaFevers (Houghton, 2007; Gr 4–7). Theodosia often sleeps in a sarcophagus at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London, where her preoccupied and clueless father is the head curator. Clueless? Although Father is an expert in Egyptian antiquities, and Mother is off at a dig in Egypt, neither parent has any idea that the artifacts they bring back to the museum are dripping with ancient, evil curses. Theodosia not only detects the black magic clinging to each object, but has educated herself in how to remove each curse. That’s one smart kid.

When Mother returns home with a priceless scarab, Thutmose III’s Heart of Egypt, and it’s stolen, Theodosia, aided by her younger brother, Henry, and a street urchin named Sticky Will, must find it before its curse brings down the British Empire. And the plucky girl must stow away on a ship bound for Cairo to do it. So not only do readers have the pleasure of a vicarious jaunt through the foggy London streets of 1906, but they also take a hazardous expedition through a pharaoh’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Pull out your books on ancient Egypt, hieroglyphics, and mummies and invite your students on an online tour of the British and Cairo Museums. There are all sorts of wonderful links, contests, facts, and even a blog where they can write to Theodosia and she’ll respond at www.theodosiathrockmorton.com.

Recently, I was working in my attic study late at night and heard a scritch, scritch, scritch behind me. I turned around to see a brown bat, sitting on a folder two feet from my head. Believe it or not, before I bolted down the stairs, I thought of Kenneth Oppel and my favorite bat novel, Silverwing (S & S, 1997), which gave me such bat empathy a decade ago. I perceived my little adventure as a sign to pick up Oppel’s sweeping prehistorical fantasy Darkwing (Eos, 2007; Gr 4–8), set 65 million years ago in the days before bats could fly.

Dusk is a chiropter, a fictional batlike creature, but he has only two claws on each hand instead of three, and weak legs, which makes climbing the sequoia where he lives an exhausting undertaking. There are two things Dusk can do that set him apart from the others: he can flap his wings and fly like a bird, not just glide, and he has night vision. These differences make him an outcast at a time when his father, Icaron, the leader of the colony, finds his authority being challenged. The peace the animals have enjoyed for years is now being threatened by a furry felid named Carnassial who has decided to become a predator. What’s real and what’s fantasy? An “Author’s Note” clarifies some of that; the Web site, www.darkwing.ca, adds more detail and is filled with sound and pictures.

All children come to school with emotional baggage; good books can help them deal with difficult issues. The toughest one of all is the death of a parent. In Amy Hest’s wistful chapter book, Remembering Mrs. Rossi (Candlewick, 2007; Gr 2–4), illustrated by Heather Maione, third-grader Annie Rossi and her professor dad are finding their way together after Mrs. Rossi, a school teacher, dies unexpectedly. They’re not the only ones affected; Mrs. Rossi’s sixth-grade class invites Annie and her dad to the school’s Winter Assembly to present them with a special book of students’ essays about their beloved teacher.

What the two discover is that somehow, in spite of bouts of tears and sadness and anger and missing Mommy, there’s joy, too. Somehow, life continues. There’s a snow day when Annie sits in on her father’s college English class and a summer at the beach when she and her friend Helen walk to town alone, without permission.

Told in present tense, the omniscient narrator shepherds us tenderly but carefully through what could be risky terrain for children—What if my mom died?—and lets us see how a family copes with tragedy. The book of heartfelt essays by Mrs. Rossi’s students, appended at the back, is a huge help to Annie and will be a source of writing ideas to use with your kids, too. Go to www.candlewick.com, type the title in the search bar, and you can download a good teacher’s guide.

Mac’s number one goal is to be the best fourth-grade scientist ever in Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Phineas L. MacGuire…Gets Slimed! (2007; Gr 1–4), illustrated by Preston McDaniels. If you read the first book, Phineas L. MacGuire…Erupts!: The First Experiment (2006, both Atheneum), you’ll recall Mac and his new best friend, Ben, only got an honorable mention for their science-fair entry, a volcano. Currently, Mac is thinking scientifically about mold.

What’s so terrific about this chapter-book series for younger readers is the melding of Mac’s comic and insightful left-brained observations about his friends and family, social issues that all children deal with—artistic genius Ben wants to run for class president to please his divorced dad—and pure science. Mac plans to put together a mold museum in the school basement. As he says, “There’s probably nothing more beautiful on the whole planet Earth than a colorful slime mold.”

Turn to Mac’s three science experiments at the back of the book for directions on how to grow some, and make a class project out of it. Have your students come up with topics Mac might want to tackle in his next book and write sample chapters, incorporating science facts into the narrative.

James Rumford’s pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations in Beowulf: A Hero’s Tale Retold (Houghton, 2007; Gr 3–8) are a visual feast, inspired by the works of Arthur Rackham and Edmond Dulac. Perhaps they’re not beautiful in the classic sense, infused as they are with two pretty creepy green monsters that rise up from the marshes and an orange dragon that lurks outside of the page borders, children will find them satisfyingly scary.

Rumford’s skillful retelling and distillation of the ninth-century hero poem is elemental enough for even third graders to comprehend. And what a saga it is. With his bare hands, the stalwart young knight Beowulf rips off the arm of the ogre Grendel, kills Grendel’s evil mother (“Then up through the gore-red waves came Beowulf, unharmed!”), and, many years later, as King of the Geats, meets his end fighting and defeating a flying fire-snake. Talk about testosterone!

In an appended note, Rumford explains how, with the exception of three Old Norse words—they, their, and them—he used only words that can be traced back to the Old English, a language also called Anglo-Saxon. Online, you’ll find many bits of side-by-side translations you can print out and audio clips of readings in Anglo-Saxon, including those on Ben Slade’s site, www.beowulftranslations.net/benslade.shtml. Children will be amazed to find they can’t understand a word of it.

In Barbara Kerley’s Greetings from Planet Earth (Scholastic, 2007; Gr 4–7), sixth-grader Theo says, “My science teacher asked our class if what we do is the same as what we are….I think sometimes we do things that aren’t who we are at all. And the more that happens, the harder it is to find yourself again.”

It’s 1977 and NASA is preparing to launch Voyager 1 and 2. Each spacecraft will carry a golden record with images of Earth recorded in it. Mr. Meyer poses a question for his students to answer in a recording: what would be most important for someone from another planet to know about earthlings? Theo has enough questions about his own world and place in it. Foremost in his mind are questions about his dad. He was supposed to return from Vietnam when Theo was five, but never did. Theo needs the truth.

Interspersed between each chapter are Theo’s tape recordings to his dad, with his observations about space and family and how he fits in. From this introspective novel, children will think about who they are, too. Ask them to put together a small box containing clues to themselves and a list of questions they’d like to see answered, both scientific and personal.

As S. I. Hayakawa, former U.S. Senator from California, said, “It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.”

Ask your students about the lives they’ve lived through books. They can then make their own lists of 10 Reasons to Read and include the titles, contemporary to classic, that they’ve befriended. Post the assignments in a prominent spot so everyone can find some new books to love.