So, you’re telling me it’s not a problem if I wander without direction or purpose through life? No, that is not what the book, nor I, are saying that’s what you should do or how you should act. It’s Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk’s Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time sounds like it could be an alternate title to a Korean drama or a positive affirmation statement you’d see in a middle school. However, in the latter situation, those students might’ve taken it as a carte blanche to do even less than their doing now. This is not a Spicoli get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s simply a book that encourages you to take a step back and think.
We’ve been working with our 12-year-old on context clues and how to better understand them. Whenever I’m with high school ELA students I work with them on context clues, albeit in a slightly more direct tone. That could fall under the category of “read the room” or being able to infer what happens in a story due to something else occurring. The Den That Octopus Builtis a smart illustrated book that tells a grand story with minute details that older readers will get the first time, and younger audiences will latch onto after one reading.
Author Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville have a niche in children’s publishing that speaks to the white spaces in illustration. The blank spaces in illustrations can bring about as much power as the colored parts. A page full of color might seem like more, but it can be overwhelming and is too much. The two authors have paired up two times prior to Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, and while each bok is different, they have strands that bind their quality and maintain their level of interest among elementary and lower-middle school readers. This is all the more surprising because the duo has written non-fiction books on women that typically have flown under the pop culture radar.
In How To Build A Hug they wrote about Autism expert, Dr. Temple Grandin. Pocketful of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire, told the story about a woman whose work people know, but few outside of the Disney-fandom could readily talk about or reference. With Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, the two are partnered again with the Brigette Barrager, the illustrator that did the wonderful work on Pocketful. This trio work well together, or more accurately, Barrager’s style of art flows very well with the minimalist, yet detailed story they’ve created.
In both books, the subjects could’ve had a much more in-depth look at their lives or accomplishments. Lucy! is predomately about the very early years of Lucille Ball. When she was very young her father died and she lived with her relatives, who did not agree with her constant tomfoolery. This led her to play by herself most of the time. When her mother returned from working in a different city, it allowed Ball to see how much of her she could become.
She performed in local plays, school functions or any activity that let Lucille be the funny person she wanted to become. Her mother saw the passion Lucille put forth, as well as, the local success she had, so she scrounged up the money to send her to acting school in New York City. When Lucille got there she saw that she had the drive, but that because she wasn’t a singer, dancer or dramatic person her ability to make people laugh was going to be challenging. She jumped at any opportunity to get in front of audiences and continued slogging it away. Lucile kept at it, honed her slapstick skills with Buster Keaton and was there when movies started being filmed in Technicolor.
This led to her coloring her hair bright red, which yielded more bit parts in 60 movies over ten years. Unfortunately, this was the same serious stuff that paid bills, but wasn’t the funny money that she knew was in her blood. That fruit happened when she signed on to be a funny housewife in a radio comedy show, My Favorite Husband. It was taped in front of a live audience, which scratched the itch she had for making people laugh and became a very successful show. As television was a new medium it was logical that this be translated to the small screen and the rest of Lucille Ball, I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, and the legend that she wrought is history.
I remember watching I Love Lucy I as a kid. I’ve seen snippets of the show as I wrote this review, which is one reason it took me so long to do. One highlight begets another highlight and so on, the show still holds up today and its humor translates to modern audiences. The only thing that will preclude it from being enjoyed by elementary or middle school audiences to the same degree is the fact that it’s in black & white, and much of the humor is based around relationships. There are still some hilarious physical gags and mistaken identity bits that don’t require any age limit to watch and enjoy.
Lucy! sets up the events and time period that lead up to her iconic television show. The story of never giving up, working hard for what you want and having the patience to see it through are characteristics that anyone can benefit from. You could easily imagine anyone who has trained hard for something, but had to wait decades until it was their time to go on stage, perform the operation, walk in space or do whatever had led them to that point. It’s resilience 101, a trait that some kids need lots more of and Lucy! is just the entertaining kind of book that they’ll enjoy reading and just might learn something from.
Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All is by Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville with illustrations by Brigette Barrager and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.
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The below was not in the I Love Lucy show, it might not even be about Lucille Ball, but it’s a great song from a criminally underrated band.
Seasons Change as the classic song from Expose goes. And while some trends in mglit might ebb and flow, the dystopian, end-of-the-world novel with a plucky, female heroine will never die. The Flicker is an entry into that genre that wants to accomplish so much but ends up tripping over its intended inclusiveness. It’s challenging to find a sympathetic or interesting character in the first 85% of the book, and the lengths that it went to in order to check off virtue signal boxes has us recalling that classic Keanu Reeves scene from Always Be My Maybe.
This book will not interest me because the main character’s name is Belva. At one point that name was probably super popular, but then it became something that’s more associated with crackers. Ballots for Belva seems like that, but it is very fascinating, educational, and eventually, entertaining. It’s especially so for know-it-all people, elementary school kids or those who are otherwise looking for the exception to every rule. It’s a non-fiction, illustrated book highlighting the first woman to complete a presidential election cycle and receive votes. That’s a complex way to describe it and exposes the issues of being a book about ‘the first (insert blank here) to…..’, but Ballots for Belva addresses those weaknesses, and moves on from them to deliver a concrete story that we can all hopefully put behind us.
Any book that sounds like a failed show on Netflix or has a page on “how to use this book” in it, can’t be entertaining, it’s probably needlessly complex or not interesting for young readers. Note: I prefer using the term young readers, as opposed to children or students because the latter will imply to them that it’s studious and not fun, while the former infers that they’re young and might not know certain things. Name That Thing! is a puzzle book that’s smarter than most elementary school ages, has a presentation that’s agreeable to anyone and information that runs the gamut from general trivia to world flags and food from around the world. With any luck, Netflix is working on a game show with the same premise.
There’s a hazy, fine line between a book that’s relaxing and the same one verging into sleepy. Big Sister, Long Coat is an illustrated book that straddles that line but also runs deeply into the other category, depending on the audience. It’s a book that could easily make for a relaxing story time session on the alphabet carpet at the end of the day, it can also end the day as little ones fade away, but also might escort some kids to slumber when it’s not intended. Big Sister, Long Coat also sounds like the start to a song by Cake that exists in an alternate universe.
Not knowing something isn’t always a sign of intelligence because sometimes you just haven’t been exposed to the content. Non-fiction ‘illustrated books’ are a great way to introduce things to young readers when their brains are forming their learning pathways. These books are meant for elementary school ages, but defy what people normally think of when they think of them. More often than not, they’re smarter and operate at a higher perceived level then what people expect. Unlocking the Universe: The Cosmic Discoveries of the Webb Space Telescope is living large in that section of the library now.
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