Kids Books: Fun in the Summertime

Games, vacations, memories and unanticipated events make for intriguing seasonal reading for youngsters.
By NIKKI BATALIS
The Orange County Register
It doesn't matter if summer is spent at the beach, in the city or on vacation with the family – kids just love this season. Summer, with its freedom from school and schedules, makes the days seem full of endless possibilities. Hopefully, a small corner of those days will be taken up with reading. Here we offer a selection of books about summer in all its glory, with something for just about every age of young readers.
Title: "Lazy Days of Summer" by Judy Young; illustrated by Kathy O'Malley
Info: Sleeping Bear Press, 32 pages, $15.95, ages 4-8
Grade: B
You might like it if: You like to play games.
Remember when amusing yourself as a child in the summer was as easy as heading out to the street with a bunch of other neighborhood kids and playing kickball until the sun went down? Author Judy Young, who describes herself as an avid game player, would clearly love to bring those days back. Each page in this nicely illustrated book is devoted to a childhood game or pastime: marbles, jump rope, playing jacks, hopscotch, sharks and minnows, kick the can. Each section introduces the game in poetry form, followed by instructions on how to play, as well as facts about the history of the games. (Did you know that Roman soldiers played a form of hopscotch – carrying another soldier on their backs?) The watercolor pictures are in muted tones, evoking, perhaps, earlier and simpler times.

Title: "Pictures From Our Vacation" by Lynne Rae Perkins
Info: Greenwillow Books, 32 pages, $16.99, ages 5-8
Grade: A
You might like it if: Your vacations don't always turn out as planned.
Before Mom and Dad load the two children in the car to embark on the family vacation – visiting Grandma and Grandpa at the old family farm in the country – Mom hands each child a small camera and a notebook for chronicling the trip in words and pictures. The vacation doesn't turn out to be what everyone had expected: It rains for days on end, the badminton racquets are warped from disuse, it takes hours to find the lake for swimming, and when they do find it a storm blows in. But the family is together and they learn a lot about their past and present. Newbery Medal-winning author-illustrator Lynne Rae Perkins captures a wonderful slice of life in this book, accompanied by her insightful and highly detailed pen, ink and watercolor pictures. She captures the children's activities, adventures and disappointments beautifully, as well as the sense of family that emerges all the stronger from the journey.

Title: "The Dangerous Book for Young Boys" by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
Info: Collins Books, 270 pages, $24.95, ages 5-12
Grade: A+
You might like it if: You love adventure and gaining knowledge.
If you want to snap a youngster out of his summer lethargy, look no further than this guidebook of how to, basically, have fun being a boy – without the aid of a Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and the like. This nifty volume, compiled and written by a pair of British brothers, has step-by-step instructions on how to make a bow and arrow, play poker, build a treehouse, tie knots, make a tripwire and build a go-cart. It gives a sampling of Shakespeare, tells about famous battles in history, describes the seven ancient wonders of the world, and gives a beginners' course in astronomy. There is something to interest just about any boy. When one of my 9-year-olds got his hands on this book, he didn't put it down for hours – and it's tough to interest him in anything that doesn't involve a ball. Each section is written in a concise, easy-to-understand style, and the illustrations and visual instructions are terrific. Now, when will someone think up a similar book for girls?

Title: "I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean" by Kevin Sherry
Info: Dial Books for Young Readers, 32 pages, $16.99, ages 3 and older
Grade: A-
You might like it if: You like sea creatures.
A big blue squid makes his way through the ocean, cheerfully boasting along the way about how he's bigger than everyone he encounters: I'm bigger than these shrimp, these clams, that jellyfish, and so on. But even the squid meets his match when he comes up against a blue whale in this clever and funny book. The bright and bold illustrations are multilayered in watercolor, ink and cut paper, and manage to give even a bulgy-eyed squid and his seafaring cohorts plenty of expression and humor.

Title: "Firefly Mountain" by Patricia Thomas; illustrated by Peter Sylvada
Info: Peachtree Publishers, 32 pages, $16.95, ages 5-10
Grade: A
You might like it if: You enjoy poetry.
Imagine a hot, still summer day, where the heat shimmers from sky to earth and the smell of sweet clover hay fills the air. A young girl waits impatiently for night to fall, because her parents have told her that perhaps they will see a firefly mountain that evening. "It doesn't matter which way you wish, though. It takes just as long as it takes to turn a yellow afternoon into a purple evening," author Patricia Thomas writes in her wonderfully mood-evoking text. The family does take a walk that evening, and one of the black mountains nearby is covered from top to bottom in the blinking glow of millions of fireflies – a phenomenon the author says she once saw in the Great Smokey Mountains. The artwork, done in oil on hardboard panels, is stunningly rich in color and texture.

Title: "Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon" by Ruth Forman; illustrated by Cbabi Bayoc
Info: Children's Book Press, 24 pages, $16.95, ages 4-8
Grade: B+
You might like it if: You're interested in the urban experience.
Ruth Forman uses great poetic expression to recall her childhood summers on the streets of South Philadelphia in this terrific book. "We don have no backyard, frontyard neither. We got black magic n brownstone steps when the sun go down," she writes of her memories of playing double Dutch jump rope and hide and seek with friends, chasing after the ice cream truck, and having Mama braid tight new cornrows after "she snaps the naps out" of the children's hair. The text is lilting and easy to read, and the artwork is bright and bold, capturing great expressiveness on the faces of the children and their endless motion.

Title: "Summerhouse Time" by Eileen Spinelli; illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Info: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 224 pages, $12.99, ages 8-13
Grade: A
You might like it if: You like books about preteens.
Sophie is 11 and can't wait for her family's trip to the summer house at the beach with her extended family. But this year things are different: Her teenage cousin Colleen is sulking and won't talk to anyone, her aunt and uncle are having difficulties, and no one wants to hear about Sophie's crush on the "New Boy." Even her dad doesn't seem his usual cheerful self. Veteran children's book author Eileen Spinelli has a wonderful way with details that evoke memories of summer – the fish fry dinners, the saltwater taffy and the cool breeze of the ocean. Spinelli writes in short chapters spoken in Sophie's voice, and with all the preteen angst that comes with the age. Nicely done black-and-white illustrations capture the family members and the beach-town setting.
 posted by Jane