Sisters & Brothers

Sibling Relationships in the Animal World
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Houghton Mifflin 2008

I learn more from picture books than I probably did back in high school. Of course, I have a different perspective on what interests me than when I was younger, and kid books are pretty much all I read these days so I'm probably not learning as much as I could.

Still.

Did you know that armadillos give birth to four young, either all male or all female, each an exact clone of the other? I can't say I did, and that would make for an interesting relationship if you were raised along side three exact copies of yourself. More weirder than being identical twins.

Turkeys, on the other hand, hang around with mom for a year and then the ladies go off to mate while the brothers stay together in a band. Dudes, it's like some guys I went to school with! I guess they were turkeys of a sort.

Then there are the naked mole rats. Okay, they are practically blind and live in these huge burrows underground, that I knew. What I didn't know was that each colony has a single mom -- sort of like a queen bee -- and that when they meet each other in a narrow passage way they have to sniff one another to determine who has seniority, because the eldest gets to climb over the youngest.

And then finally, a puzzle piece I didn't realize was missing in a story I conceived long ago. New Mexico Whiptail Lizards are all female. There are no males. That just blows my mind.

I think this is the first time I can remember where the text upstaged Jenkins cut paper illustrations. Or perhaps I've just gotten so used to his work that it no longer surprises and delights the way it used to. That doesn't make it bad, it's just become as familiar as Eric Carle's style in it's sameness.

By using sibling relationships to explore these unique animal families, Page and Jenkins supply a lot of great information in a clean, easy to understand style that is obviously engaging enough for an adult but readily accessible to young readers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Whiptail Lizards to research.

The Chicken of the Family

by Mary Amato
illustrated by Delphine Durand
Putnam 2008

It is the sacred duty of the eldest child to deviously taunt the youngest sibling. If one can do so with the aid of middle siblings, all the better. It is equally the duty of the youngest sibling to both believe the most gullible lies delivered by the oldest sibling and find an equally clever, but innocent, way to get their revenge.

And so we have The Chicken of the Family.

Henrietta is woken from her sleep and told by her oldest sister Kim that she isn't really a member of the family, she is a chicken, acquired from the farm down the road. Middle sister Claire's job is to go along with the joke, the support of two people saying the same thing giving the statement the weight of truth. Henrietta doesn't believe it's true until she wakes up in the morning and finds an egg in her bed and a couple of feathers on the floor.

Certain now that she is truly a chicken she runs away, down the road to the farm where she takes her rightful place in the chicken yard. Henrietta has no qualms adjusting to her new life as a chicken, scratching and taking a dust bath and playing follow the leader.

Kim and Claire arrive with a directive from their parents to admit their prank and bring Henrietta home. The only problem is that Henrietta is enjoying herself too much, feels she really is a chicken, and refuses to follow. Exasperated, Kim decides to call for back-up from her parents but Claire has decided to stay -- she's broken away from her sister's scheme after seeing what fun it is to be a chicken. Henrietta and Claire do trundle on home just in time to see their older sister getting chewed out for causing this fiasco.

"Sometimes it's good to be a chicken."

Indeed, sometimes embracing your gullibility is no different than embracing what makes you unique. Accepting what her sisters have told her, Henrietta is free to discover what it means to be different. She knows she's not a chicken on some level, just as she doesn't run away to get her sister in trouble, but along the way she's learned something about herself, about another culture (if you will), and about the things others will do to control you.

Yes, this is a deeper reading that a light and fluffy picture book deserves, but it's true: sometimes it is good to be a chicken.

Operation: Dump the Chump

by Barbara Park
Random House / Yearling 1982
(Knopf 1979)

This is probably the middle grade reader best used as an example for how to outline a middle grade reader. It's right there in the third chapter, written as a list of things Oliver has planned out in order to get rid of his annoying younger brother, Robert, involving an elderly couple who live down the street:

1. Tell Hensons that Robert needs a home.
2. Tell parents that Hensons need a boy.
3. Put fake ad in the paper from Hensons.
4. Show ad to parents.
5. Put fake ad in paper from parents.
6. Show ad to Hensons.
7. Write fake letter to Hensons.
8. Write fake letter to parents.

A couple chapters up front to set the scene and show what Oscar hates about his brother, a chapter where the plan goes awry and another to wrap things up and that's it. The idea is to convince his parents to send his brother away to live with the Hensons down the street, and to convince the Hensons that they want to take Robert in. There's all kinds of cover stories involved about Oliver's father losing his job (he doesn't) or old man Henson being unable to get around his garden (untrue) and every other little fib along the way to make the plan work.

The twist should be obvious, as any boy's plan is bound to bite back in a middle grade reader, and you know what? That's why kids read through to the end, because they want to know how it's going to go bad, how bad it's going to go, and what the fallout looks like.

My co-worker Anna (who really should do a blog of her own, because she'd rock) reread this recently and said her teacher read it to her back in elementary school. It still held up and it's easy to see the appeal. The story is solid, everything moves along at a clip, and the anticipation that builds from knowing that everything Oscar attempts somehow goes askew (despite his "perfect planning") is exactly what keeps kids coming back to books like this.

Having the chapter outline practically spelled out in Oscar's to-do list is interesting because it really does open itself up for classroom lessons on plotting and on how to avoid the predictable. How many ways can this outline go wrong, and how long can things go right before they have to start falling apart at the seams? I've read some truly dreadful galleys lately that could have used this lesson, from adults who ought to know better. Or at least their editors should. I'm not saying new ground is being broken here, only that there's a reason this book has lasted more than two decades.

Take a look at that cover. You look at that and you think "Huh, the older brother's going to have his kid brother taken away by movers. How's that going to work?" It doesn't. There are no movers involved. This cover is part of a recent redesign of all the Barbara Park books, one of those things publishers do to keep older titles that still have some life in them "fresh." I can't fault them for the practice although it would be nice if the cover image actually made sense.

This was Barbara Park's first book for kids and she's had quite a run. I'm just going to pretend that I've never heard of Junie B. Jones and check out a few more of her earlier books.