Marion Dane Bauer

What a sweet middle-grade book about family trauma, forgiveness, and healing. Ben wants to spend a week with his mother at her remote wilderness cabin on an island in northern Minnesota, to finally get to know her and hopefully convince her to come back to live with him and his father. She left them when Ben was three years old, to be raised by his single dad, and Ben has always felt guilty that something he did (that he can't remember) caused her to leave him and never return. He has coped show more with his anxieties and fears (his "what ifs") with the support of an imaginary dog named Sunshine, who is always with him and comforts him, even though his dad says he's way too old to still have an imaginary friend. Now, on the island, he's going to learn both physical and mental survival skills. He finally finds out why his mother left, and both of them must learn to forgive. The storyline with the dog is particularly poignant, and I'd almost say this is magical realism because of the way the dog appears at significant times to aid Ben; even knowing it's just an aspect of his subconscious, you start to think there's really a dog there! show less

A simple but poetic text exploring the birth of the universe, the formation of the planets and the solar system, the eventual evolution of life, and the birth of an individual child - the reader and/or listener, perhaps? - is paired with astonishingly beautiful artwork in The Stuff of Stars. Each two page spread features a few sentences from author Marion Dane Bauer, who won a Newbery Honor for her children's novel, On My Honor, as well as the hand-marbled paper and collage art of show more illustrator Ekua Holmes, who won a Caldecott Honor for her work on Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer. The result is that rarest of specimens: a picture-book which manages to explore an abstract concept successfully, and have both poetic and scientific significance...

I found The Stuff of Stars both beautiful and poignant, and marveled at both the text and artwork. Bauer's wordcrafting here is top notch, and there were moments when I had to stop, and savor the poetry of her text. When she described that first speck of something, "invisible as thought, weighty as God," I paused to consider. Her description of stars catching fire, but having "no planets to attend" them, gave me a little thrill. Her conclusion, in which a child is born, made of stardust, put me so strongly in mind of the first day of my college astronomy class, in which our professor made that same statement - that we humans were indeed made of stardust, just like everything in our world - that I smiled with delight. Holmes' artwork is every bit as beautiful as the text - and what a difficult text it must have been to illustrate, with so many complicated and abstract ideas bound up in it! Somehow she managed to triumph though, creating collage artwork that perfectly captures the mystery and the majesty of the cosmos and of creation. I missed this one when it came out a few months ago, being in hospital and away from work, but am glad to have finally discovered it. It is definitely on my Caldecott possibilities list! Recommended to anyone who appreciates gorgeous picture-book art, or who is looking for children's books about the Big Bang, and the evolution of the cosmos. show less

An immensely engaging Halloween poem, written in unmetered rhyme by author Marion Dane Bauer, is paired with gorgeously creepy artwork from illustrator John Shelley in The Halloween Forest, which follows its young protagonist as he heads out of town and makes for the eponymous forest. Here he finds all kinds of bone-creatures cavorting, but is undismayed, insisting on trick-or-treating all the same...

I greatly enjoyed the text here, both because it is spooky and evocative, and because the show more structure and rhythm is a bit more complicated than what I usually find in rhyming picture-books. I'm a big believer in rhyme, as I find that the musical nature of the text, when read aloud, will hold the attention of younger child-listeners, and keep them entertained, even if they don't understand every word. That said, such picture-books tend to fall into two categories in my mind: the simpler, more limerick-y Dr. Seuss style text, that rolls off the tongue naturally, and the more complex text that has unexpected twists and turns, and requires a little more care to read. Bauer's narrative belongs to the latter category (as does Kirsten Hall's recent The Honeybee), and that is all to the good. The artwork here, created using pen and ink and watercolor, is absolutely lovely! The scenes in the forest, with the various bony creatures gathered around the boy, somehow manage to be both beautiful and creepy. The arrangement of the text on the page is carefully done, so that Shelley's artwork can accentuate its structure, and complement its meaning. On one page, for instance, as the narrator asks: Will you sigh? / Will you cry? / Will you dash away / in utter dismay?," the words themselves are arranged on the bones of a human hand, with the four lines appearing on the four fingers (thumb out of sight), and each word appearing on a separate bone. This might just be a clever use of image to support the textual structure, but it also struck me, while reading that page, that the image used could evoke the idea of fear that is explored in that portion of the text, as peering through one's fingers might be something a terribly frightened person would do.

However that may be, this was just an immensely engaging Halloween tale, one I would particularly recommend to young children who want something a little more scary than what is usually seen in picture-books for this season. show less

When the first snowflake falls in this picture-book from American author Marion Dane Bauer and English illustrator Richard Jones, a fine red fox wonders what to do. A series of animals, from a caterpillar to a bear, give him advice, but their recommendations are suited to themselves, not foxes. Eventually, the fox meets another of his kind, and he discovers what he is meant to do in snow: dance...

As someone with an interest in the depiction of foxes in children's books, someone who also show more finds snowy wintry vistas beautiful, I was pretty much guaranteed to enjoy Winter Dance, and I did. The narrative has a simple, repetitive structure that will no doubt appeal to younger children. I myself learned something new, being previously unaware that some butterfly and moth species go into a cocoon state over the winter. The accompanying artwork from Jones is gorgeous, and really enhanced my appreciation of the book. I loved the use of color, the stylized figures, and the vulpine charm of the main character. Apparently foxes do indeed like to dance in the snow, giving me a new life goal, in the form of one day witnessing such an enchanting scene. Recommended to picture-book readers looking for stories featuring foxes and/or winter. show less