Book Review: What To Do About Alice?

WHAT TO DO ABOUT ALICE?
Written by Barbara Kerley
Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
Scholastic, 2008

Are you looking for a great nonfiction book to read aloud to elementary children? One that’s just perfect for sharing during Women’s History Month? Look no further than Barbara Kerley’s newest book, What To Do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy! This picture book biography about Teddy Roosevelt’s oldest child is a delight from beginning to end.

Born in 1884, the precocious Alice was different from most of her female contemporaries. Not one to be bound by the conventions of her day, she enjoyed living her life to the fullest. She rowed across Oyster Bay for picnics. “She roamed the streets of Washington from the Capitol to the gypsy camps by the racetrack.” She was a tomboy. She even joined an all-boys club.

When Alice’s father decided she should begin attending a prim boarding school so she could grow up to be a proper young lady, she spent the summer in despair. Her father relented. She didn’t go to school that fall. Instead, she stayed home and educated herself by reading the books in her father’s library. “She taught herself astronomy, geology, and even Greek grammar. She read Twain, Dickens, Darwin, and the Bible, cover to cover.” She also developed an interest in politics.

When Teddy became president, Alice welcomed visitors to the White House with her pet snake named Emily Spinach. She stayed out late at night. She sped around town in her runabout. Despite her father’s admonitions not to speak to reporters when she was out gallivanting, she often made headlines in gossip columns. Conservative women’s groups thought her behavior was “outrageous.” What her father referred to as “running riot,” Alice called “eating up the world.” Teddy had trouble keeping his high-spirited daughter in check, once remarking: “I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”

During Teddy Roosevelt’s second term of office, Alice traveled abroad for four months—to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, and China. In addition to returning home with twenty-three cases of “loot,” she came back with a fiancé named Nicholas Longworth, a congressman she had met on the trip. Eight hundred guests attended her wedding at the White House.

The irrepressible Alice, whose life was immersed in politics, also became a great asset to her father. She served him as a goodwill ambassador. She was also a trusted adviser. But whatever Alice did…wherever Alice went, she always played by her own rules.

Barbara Kerley’s well-paced text is lighthearted and would be a fine biography to read aloud. Young children will, no doubt, enjoy hearing about the early years and antics (waving wildly to friends at her father's inauguration, jumping fully clothed into a ship’s pool) of a president’s rambunctious child who was full of life—and lived life to the fullest.

Visit Barbara Kerley's website for Classroom Ideas, which includes "fun" ways to use her books--including What To Do About Alice?


More about Alice

From salon.com: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, wild thing

From the Theodore Roosevelt Association: Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth

From Alice Roosevelt.com: Photo Album & Slide Show

Anastasia Suen has the Nonfiction Monday Roundup at Picture Book of the Day.

More Poetry for Women's History Month

Last Saturday, I posted a review of More Spice than Sugar: Poems about Feisty Females, a book that would make a great classroom resource for Women’s History Month. The post also includes recommendations for other books to use in conjunction with that poetry anthology. Here’s a review of another poetry book I recommend for sharing during the month of March.

ALL BY HERSELF: 14 GIRLS WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE
Written by Ann Whitford Paul
Illustrated by Michael Sreirnagle
Brwondeer/Harcourt Brace, 1999

This is a book of poems about fourteen young women—some of whose names may be well known to most of us: Amelia Earhart, Rachel Carson, Sacajawea, Wilma Rudolph, Pocahontas, Wanda Gag, Mary Jane McLeod, and Golda Mabovitch/Golda Meir. Many of us may be less familiar with the names of others: Violet Sheehy, Ida Lewis, Harriet Hanson, Kate Shelley, Maria Mitchell, and Frances Ward.

In free verse poems, Ann Whitford Paul, celebrates the hard work, courage, and accomplishments of these remarkable females. In the back matter of the book, the author includes additional information about each of the “girls.” Each two-page spread includes a boxed poem on the left-hand side and a framed portrait of a young woman, picturing her in a setting emblematic of her early life, her interests and dreams, or a specific event written about in the poem, on the right hand side. Sacajawea is illustrated leading explorers through snowy terrain. Ida Lewis is shown in a rowboat on a rough sea rescuing men whose boat has capsized. Children’s author and illustrator Wanda Gag is pictured with pen in hand drawing a picture, and Maria Mitchell is shown staring through a telescope. Both text and art inform readers about these “14 girls who made a difference.”

A Look at the Poems

SACAJAWEA

From Sacajawea

Long years ago a girl embarked
with two explorers, Lewis and Clark,
to learn about uncharted land…

traveling on for two years’ time,
trudging, tramping day by day,
wending, winding on her way,
with every dauntless step she took,
she walked into our history books.

I highly recommend reading Joseph Bruchac’s well-researched historical novel Sacajawea.

SACAJAWEA
Written by Joseph Bruchac
Scholastic, 2000

MARIA MITCHELL
(Maria, who was mostly self-educated, taught for many years as Professor of Astronomy at Vassar College.)

From Maria Mitchell

With her father, each clear night,
Maria watched the dome of sky,
studying with careful eye,
entranced by every cosmic sight.
He let her use his telescope,
so she could see the lights out far—
the color, gleam of every star.

I recommend reading Maria’s Comet, a picture book about Mitchell that “is fanciful and rich in poetic imagery that will work well for reading aloud” (School Library Journal). The book does have a lovely lyrical text. It includes a note from the author explaining that the book is a work of fiction—but inspired by the life of the real Maria Mitchell. The author also includes a page with information about astronomy terms that were used in the book.

MARIA’S COMET
Written by Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrated by Deborah Lanino
Simon & Schuster, 1999

Here’s how Maria’s Comet begins:

As darkness falls,
Papa goes up to the roof to sweep the sky.
When I was little,
I thought Papa stood on our rooftop
sweeping the stars into place,
with one great whoosh of a broom.

Maria’s father was an astronomer. She learned later that he swept “the sky with a small brass telescope/moving it slowly over the sea of stars/like a sailor scanning the waves.”


KATE SHELLEY

Kate Shelley helped rescue survivors from a train wreck on a railroad bridge during a torrential storm in the summer of 1881. She later received a gold medal from the state of Iowa for the heroism she showed that night.


From Kate Shelley (This poem captures the drama of Kate’s rescue mission.)

The water lapped the railroad bridge.
Her lantern’s small flame quivered. Then it died!
Kate strained to see the ties placed far apart,
stooped down to her knees, and groped through the dark.
Jabbed by splinters, ripped by nails,
she crawled along the planks—across a span, five hundred feet.

Read your students Kate Shelley: Bound for Legend, a fine nonfiction book that tells about Kate’s family life prior to the train wreck and provides a gripping account—in both text and illustrations—of her rescue mission.

KATE SHELLEY: BOUND FOR LEGEND
Written by Robert D. San Souci
Paintings by Max Ginsburg
Dial, 1995

RACHEL CARSON

From Rachel Carson
(This poem speaks of her childhood and how she felt when, at the age of ten, she saw a story she had written published in a children’s magazine.)

So pleased was she to see her words in print,
she knew what she would do
when she was not a child—
she’d write about the flowers
bugs and birds and trees
and all things growing wild.

RACHEL: THE STORY OF RACHEL CARSON
Written by Amy Ehrlich
Illustrated by Wendell Minor
Silver Whistle/Harcourt, 2003

I recommend the beautifully illustrated picture book biography Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson. While not a complete biography, this book gives readers brief glimpses of Rachel at certain times/days in her life: when she won a silver badge for a story she had sent to St. Nicholas Magazine, in a college biology class in 1927, at Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory on Cape Cod in 1929, collecting specimens to study under her microscope along an estuary of the Sheepscot River in Maine in 1953, learning about the aftereffects of spraying insecticides to kill mosquitoes in 1958. It also touches on the discussions that followed the publication of her book Silent Spring and how Congress established committees to investigate the poisons. This book would be a good introduction to Rachel Carson for young people who have probably never heard about this woman who is credited with beginning today’s environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring.

Wendell Minor’s luminescent one and two-page spreads, done in watercolor and gouache, draw readers into the natural world that Rachel loved so much, into the world she studied and loved to explore.

Click here to read an interview with Amy Ehrlich and Wendell Minor about Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson.

At Blue Rose Girls, I have Forgotten Planet by Doug Dorph.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Simple and the Ordinary.

Mask Poems Reprise

Here are the mask poems I posted previously at Wild Rose Reader. I thought I’d include them all in one post in response to this week’s Poetry Stretch—Mask Poems at The Miss Rumphius Effect.


LOOK AT US NOW!
by Elaine Magliaro

The day we hatched from jellied eggs…
We looked like fish.
We had no legs.
We breathed through gills.
We had no lungs.
We didn’t have long sticky tongues.
We didn’t look like frogs…for sure.
But then we started to mature.
And day by day we changed and grew.
To tails and gills we bid adieu.
Now we have lungs and four fine limbs…
And we can croak
and jump
AND
swim!


THOUGHTS OF THE WOLF AS HE DESCENDS THE THIRD LITTLE PIG’S CHIMNEY
by Elaine Magliaro

This Pig’s outwitted me before.
No, I won’t knock upon his door,
Won’t threaten him, won’t huff and puff.
I’m finished with that macho stuff.
WELL…down the chimney here I go.
I’ll get that little pig. Ho, ho!
Can’t wait to taste his tender meat,
His juicy snout, his porky feet.
I’ll serve him up with grated cheese,
Potatoes, parsley, parsnips, peas.
Yeh! That’s my kind of swiney grub.
Uh-oh!
Splish-splash!
Bubble!GLUB!
I guess I’m in hot water now.
Goodbye, cruel world.
I’m piggy chow!


GRIZZLY BEAR
by Elaine Magliaro

I’m grizzly bear. I’m fierce and fat…
And dangerous. Remember that!
My teeth are sharp as sabers.
My curvy claws can cut like saws,
And when I prowl the woods I growl
And frighten all my neighbors.
I rule this land. These woods are mine!
I ain’t NOBODY’S valentine!
Don’t think that you can be my friend…
My dinner?
Yum!
GULP!

The End


JUST A SCENTIMENTAL GUY
by Elaine Magliaro

I’m black and white.
My tail’s all fluff.
I never growl.I don’t act tough.
I wander into yards at night.
I’m really harmless…
I don’t bite
Or snarl
Or scratch
Or kick
Or pounce.
I just dispense scents by the ounce.
That’s how I frighten foes away—
I lift my bushy tail and SPRAY!

I do not need long fangs or claws,
Bulging muscles,
Mighty jaws.
My malodorous defense,
I think,
Makes a lot of SCENTS!

So if you see me take my pose
To ward off predatory foes…
Just stand back and hold your nose!


BLUE WHALE’S BOAST
by Elaine Magliaro

I’m the biggest whale
in the big blue sea.
I’m blubbery big
as a whale should be.

I’m bigger than
an elephant
three rhinos,
a giraffe.

I’m bigger than
ten walruses
twos hippos
and a half.

There’s nothing
in the world
that’s bigger than me…
except, of course,
for the big blue sea!


SNAKE SOLILOQUY
by Elaine Magliaro

I’m a slippery slitherer
silent and sleek
sliding and slinking
through grasses
I sneak...
weaving and winding
legless and low
I slip slyly hidden
wherever I go.
Wending and bending
by stalk, stem, and stone
like a ribbon of muscle
and skin without bone
tongue catching the scent
of a soft, furry prey.
Smells like it’s field mouse
for dinner today!


FOR SALE: FAIRY TALE ARTIFACT
by Elaine Magliaro

My magic mirror is for sale.
It’s such an awful tattletale!
It told me things about my foe
I’d really rather never know.
I MUST be fairest in the land…
Not second best! You understand?
I want to be the most divine.
My reputation’s on the line!

The seven dwarfs are little cretins!
They should be in the dungeon, beaten.
They foiled my plans to kill the lass.
So…now I’ll sell my looking glass
And spend the cash on wrinkle cream,
A nose job, and a health regime,
Two weekends at a beauty spa.
Then I’ll look like a movie star.

I’ll be the fairest in the land!
And Snow White? She can go pound sand!


LETTER FROM THE QUEEN OF BEASTS
by Elaine Magliaro

Dear Lion,

I’m tired of doing the hunting, the preying
While your only job is to watch the cubs playing.
I’m tired of stalking the zebras and gnus
While you lie around on the grassland and snooze.
I’m tired of running, and pouncing, and killing.
I want a career that is much more fulfilling.
I’m tired, so tired. I’m spent to the core.
While I’m hard at work, you just eat, sleep, and snore.
I fetch all the food. You grow stronger…I thinner.
For the next seven days you can catch your own dinner!
I’m going away for a well-needed rest.
I’ll be seeing you soon.

All my love,
Lioness

Out & About: March 3, 2008

The February 2008 The Edge of the Forest has been posted. Here’s what you’ll find in this issue:

• An interview with Eric Rohmann, by Julie M. Prince
• A hearty defense of YA Literature, by Little Willow
• Graphic Novels: A Gateway to a New World, by Kelly Fineman
• A profile of illustrator Sylvia Long, by Kris Bordessa
• A fantastic new column called A Backward Glance, by writer Candice Ransom
• P.J. Hoover is this month's Blogging Writer, interviewed by Christine Marciniak
• Reviews in all categories—from Picture book to Young Adult.

The February Carnival of Children’s Literature is at Anastasia Suen’s Blog, Picture Book of the Day.

It’s The Year of the Frog. Check out the Leaping into Books about Frogs (And Other Amphibians) for some excellent book recommendations.

Hot Off the Press at the Children’s Book Council: A Sneak Peek at Publishers’ Newest and Hottest Titles

Check out Pam Coughlan’s I Am a Mother Reader article at ForeWord Magazine.

Check out the new list of recommended concept books at The Horn Book website.

The March/April issue of The Horn Book is out. Check out the online articles.

Poetry for Women's History Month

I thought some teachers might be looking for special resources for March, Women's History Month.

Here is a poetry book I recommend for use in the classroom—especially during Women’s History Month.

MORE SPICE THAN SUGAR: POEMS ABOUT FEISTY FEMALES
Compiled by Lillian Morrison
Illustrated by Ann Boyajian
Houghton Mifflin, 2001

This substantial anthology for children in the upper elementary grades and middle school contains forty-five poems about famous women of the past and present: Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Molly Pitcher, Anne Frank, oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle, Elizabeth Blackwell, Jeanne d’Arc, artist Georgia O’Keeffe, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and several Olympic medalists It also has poems about women and girls playing sports, traveling west as pioneers, making music—and poems about females with a can do attitude and a desire to achieve. Adult and children’s poets whose works can be found in this book include Emily Dickinson, Stanley Kunitz, Marianne Moore, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Felice Holman, Lillian Morrison, J. Patrick Lewis, X. J. Kennedy, and Ann Turner.

More Spice than Sugar has a nice mix of serious poems and those that are lighthearted in nature. Most of them are written in free verse. Many of the poems Morrison selected for this book can’t be found in other anthologies.

More Spice than Sugar is divided into three sections: When I Am Me, She’s a Winner, and Against All Odds. In the back matter, Morrison includes “Notes” about the real “feisty females” who were written about in the poems.

One of the most touching pieces in the book is Where Are You?, a poem of address in which the writer speaks to Anne Frank. It would be a fine poem to share with children after reading The Diary of Anne Frank or a biography about her.

Here’s an excerpt from the poem:

From Where Are You?
By Marjorie Agosin
(translated from the Spanish by Monica Bruno)

Anne Frank,
though each of us
is not an everlasting flower,
we are looking for you
as though you were still alive,
still sailing along, in your party dress,
putting into shore through
Amsterdam’s canals
and your sparkling bicycle
were still waiting for you on the blue piers.


Here’s an excerpt from another poem in the book about Dr. Sylvia Earle, marine biologist, oceanographer, and author. It would be great to share this poem with students before or after reading one of her nonfiction books for children.

From Sylvia Earle: Deep Ocean Explorer
By Bobbi Katz

Her eyes might gaze
toward
distant
stars,
but not for her the lure of Mars.
She’s challenged by a different place,
just as unknown as outer space.
Not for her the stratosphere
but a life-filled, liquid atmosphere—
where she can…be a pioneer!

Read your students Kathleen Krull’s inspiring picture book biography Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Female and then read them the following poem from More Spice than Sugar:
From Wilma Rudolph
(Who Won Three Gold Medals in the 1960 Olympics)
By Grace Butcher

She was the one who seemed
to run in the sky
legs from nothing,
from nowhere,
her feet surrounded by air…

Her knees bumped into clouds.
Her arms pushed the wind
out of the way.


Emily Dickinson speaks out to us from the pages of this poetry book:

From [The Poet Emily]

They shut me up in prose—
As when a little Girl
They put me in a Closet—
Because they liked me “still”—


Also included in More Spice than Sugar is Sam Cornish’s poem about Fannie Lou Hamer and voting rights.

From Fannie Lou Hamer
By Sam Cornish

fannie lou
ate
her greens
watched
her land
and wanted
to
vote
men went
to the bottom
of the river
for wanting less


There are also poems that add levity to this anthology—including a humorous one by X. J. Kennedy entitled The Girl Who Makes the Cymbals Bang. The poem is about a young girl who convinces her music teacher that a female has enough strength to crash cymbals together...that a girl can do the job as well as any boy.

From The Girl Who Makes the Cymbals Bang
By X. J. Kennedy

…Though I complained,
Our teacher Mister Cash
Said, “Sorry, girls don’t have the strength
To come up with a crash.”

“Oh yeah?” said I. “Please give them here!”
And there and then, I slammed
Together those brass plates so hard
His eardrums traffic-jammed.

The girl proves her point…and becomes the one to give “each song a real smash ending.”

More Spice than Sugar would definitely make an excellent classroom poetry resource—one tailor-made for Women’s History Month.

Looking for more resources? Check out my earlier post Book Lists & Other Resources for Women’s History Month.