Camping Chaos!!!

"It didn't exactly look like summer camp. But then, summer didn't exactly look like summer in the Nice Icy Land."

Any child who as been camping will love this story. Tacky, the penguin, is on a mission to show kids it's ok to be different. It's ok to be a little "weird". Whereas Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly, and Perfect like to keep things nice and neat, Tacky always has to do things a little differently.

In this Tacky adventure, the penguins are at summer camp. At the end of the day, they decide to tell each other scary stories, the only problem is that one of the stories comes true! But don't worry, Tacky comes to the rescue just in time.

This book has a couple neat features that make it an especially good interactive book for children. At one place the author, Helen Lester,  uses pictures as an integral part of the text, so that readers must be able to switch back and forth between comprehending written text, and integrating the meaning of the pictures. At another point, she has included the camp song, and has even provided a tune.

Lynn Munsinger, the illustrator, does a great job of incorporating Tacky's differences in a humorous way. In one illustration, she shows all the other penguins at Camp Whoopihaha rock climbing, while Tacky just lets them pull him up by his safety belt.

I look forward to reading about all of Tacky's other adventures, which include: Tacky and the Emperor, Tacky in Trouble, Three Cheers for Tacky, Tacky and the Winter Games, Tackylocks and the Three Bears, and Tacky the Penguin.

The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale

"There is an ancient Chinese belief that an invisible, unbreakable red thread connects all those who are destined to be together."

The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale is a heartwarming fairy tale about a king and queen who wake up one morning with a strange pain in their hearts. They try every manner of remedy, but still the ache remains. Then one day a traveling peddler shows them his magic glasses. The glasses reveal that the king and queen have an entwined red thread leading from their hearts. 

The peddler tells them that they must follow the thread and find out who or what is pulling it if they want to make the aching stop. They follow the thread uphill and downhill, through good weather and bad, across the wide ocean, until finally they come to a small Chinese village. In that village they discover there is a little baby girl holding on the other end of their threads, and the baby has been tugging at the thread all along. They bring the child home to their kingdom and raise her as their own.

Perhaps one of the cutest things about this book is that it is actually a story inside a story. The opening page has two Caucasian parents sitting in a living room with their little girl who appears to be of Asian descent. She asks them to read her the story about the king and queen, and the king and queen in the story closely resemble the parents. This is a great book for anyone who has adopted children, or who wants to discuss different family structures with children in a classroom. It is so original, and yet so straight forward. It addresses the idea of adoption in a way that reaffirms the natural and loving bonds that form between the parents and their children. It would also be a good addition to any study of fairytales.

The illustrations are extremely colorful and Grace Lin uses a spiral pattern to enhance the background of the sky. The looks of sorrow and emptiness on the faces of the king and queen are heart wrenching. This story is a new kind of fairy tale, because it addresses a topic that can't be found in older stories, but it does it in a way that stays true to the genre. The book is dedicated to "all children adopted, the parents who loved them but could not keep them, and the parents who traveled far to find them."