Whole Days Outdoors: An Autobiographical Album

Whole Days Outdoors: An Autobiographical Album
Author: Jim Arnosky
Photographer: Deanna Arnosky
Publisher: Richard C. Owen Publishers
ISBN-10: 1572748591
ISBN-13: 978-1572748590

Whole Days Outdoors is the story of Jim Arnosky, prolific nature writer of titles such as All Night Near the Water, Armadillo's Orange, Big Jim and the White legged Moose among many others. His sketches of animals and nature are some of the most detailed and lifelike illustrations.

In this autobiography in the Meet the Author Series, Mr. Arnosky tells of growing up in Philadelphia, living on a farm in Vermont and being out in nature. He learned drawing from his father. This book, like the others in the series is insightful and fascinating.

The photographs that compliment the text are wonderful and give added depth. I found it both interesting and highly entertaining to find he sometimes writes a paragraph for a manuscript while sitting on his lawnmower.

I love how these books really make writing so accessible to children. The authors who do these books are really contributing something of value to children. I can see whole generations of children inspired to write because of these books. It will give a deep appreciation for the process and of the work that goes into writing a book.

Fred Patten Reviews Amid Amidi's Cartoon Modern

Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation
Author: Amid Amidi
Artist: Adam Stower
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN 10: 0-8118-4731-4
ISBN 13: 978-0-8118-4731-5

Up to about 1950, there was only one art style in theatrical animated cartoons; the “pictorial realism” established by Walt Disney. Then, beginning in the late ‘40s, new studios emerged with radically different cartoon styles that could never be mistaken for Disney’s.

This beautifully designed 200-page book examines in detail, with color illustrations on almost every page, the explosion of “modern art” styles in cartoons of the 1950s. Amidi traces it back to the early 1940s, when a non-Disney style began to appear in industrial films produced by small, new studios. The ‘50s not only brought new studios like UPA (the Mr. Magoo cartoons, among others) to theater-goers’ attention, but the new medium of television brought cartoons into every home with animated TV commercials for adults, not to mention TV cartoons produced for children. In addition, established theatrical animation studios like Warner Bros., Terrytoons, and Disney itself began to embrace stylized modernism in their works.

Amidi studies the American cartoon animation of the 1950s on a studio-by-studio basis. Some studios, especially those that concentrated on TV commercials, are virtually unknown by name today, but their work was highly influential at the time and is still remembered by nostalgic fans of “classic TV”: the Hamms Beer Bear, Bucky Beaver promoting Ipana toothpaste, and the like. Warner Bros. and Disney are shown to have adopted modernism to an extent often forgotten today, such as WB’s heavy use of abstractly stylized backgrounds by Maurice Noble and Disney’s surrealistic Tomorrowland TV features like “Mars and Beyond” by Ward Kimball. The cartoons of UPA (United Productions of America) represented the pinnacle of “anti-Disney” modernistic art, and Cartoon Modern devotes many pages to its most daring and critically-acclaimed cartoons such as “Rooty-Toot-Toot” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

Academy Pictures. Grantray-Lawrence Animation. John Sutherland Productions. Playhouse Pictures. Shamus Culhane Productions. These and other studios are profiled, along with the directors and art designers that created their works. The graphics include animation model sheets, design sketches, cels, background paintings, candid photos, posed group photos, and more, many never published before. Cartoon Modern is an essential book for anyone who wants to know about American animation in the 1950s, when it was transitioning away from dominance by the theatrical market to television, and the “classic Disney look” was being added to by dozens of more modernistic art styles.

Meet the Authors Series - Self Portrait - George Ancona

Meet the Authors

Self Portrait by George Ancona

Publisher: Richard C. Owen Publishers

ISBN-10: 1572748605

ISBN-13: 978-1572748606

I get a lot of email these days because of the blogs and websites I write for as well as from new people I meet each day. A couple of weeks ago I received a most interesting email telling me about a series of books I had never heard of. That in itself is unusual. I follow the trades, read for at least four hours a day on publishing stuff alone. So how could I miss this great sounding series?

The series is called Meet the Author and they are published by Richard C. Owens Publishing. There are currently 35 books in the series. Each one is hard cover, 32 pages long and designed to give children an inside view of the writing process. The books are geared for the 7-10 year old range.

I just finished the first of three new books in the series and was incredibly impressed. The book I chose to read first was George Ancona – Self Portrait. I’ve been a fan of Mr. Ancona’s books for quite some time. Both his books and the photographs in them are arresting and gorgeous. I have my favorites like El Pinatero which I reviewed some time ago (check the archives).

To find a book that he wrote for children telling them about his process of writing and photography as well as a little background on himself and what got him started was fantastic. The book reads like a conversation and it’s just wonderful. Mr. Ancona talks about his days, how he takes a notebook with him and sketches out ideas. There are accompanying photographs and each one adds warmth and depth to the conversation.

I couldn’t think of a better idea and a better way to get children interested in writing. If the rest of the series is anything like the one book I read, then I want them all! Look for my reviews on the next two in the coming weeks. I can’t say enough good things about these marvelous little books. A must for any library and any parent’s list!

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Ernie Colón
Based on the Final Report of the National Commission of Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
With a foreward by the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton
Publisher: Hill and Wang (a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13: 9780809057399
ISBN 10: 0809057395

On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government’s fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes.

Que, que! I was stunned to read that! Only one A! Twelve D’s! Three F’s! If it had me at school back in the day, I would have been scared to come home with a report card like that. My mom would have given me a hell of a chanclaso. I literally would have been grounded for life. My grandparents would have cried. This isn’t a teenager’s report card, it’s our government’s report card.

I had meant to read the 9/11 report when it first came out, but was too busy trying to hold my life together at the time. I had lost my job right after 9/11 and had a hell of a time finding a new one, I’d moved because I couldn’t afford my old place anymore, my son was shipped off to the Middle East, my boyfriend was sent to Iraq and my family was just struggling to re-establish our pre-9/11 sense of security. Reading an 600 page report in the middle of it all seemed to make no sense. I retreated into the lovely and enchanted world of children’s literature. This was too deep for me to deal with.

Three years after the report came out, I still hadn’t read it. Life was back to normal (kind of) and I was busier than ever with writing, reviewing, helping out with the grandkids, working and just life in general. The 9/11 Report completely slipped my mind. Then I volunteered to be on a nominating panel for The Cybils (http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/) in the graphic novel category and one of the nominated books was The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation.

I read this amazing report and was completely astounded by how well the graphic novel format suited it. Sid Jacobson’s text comes directly from the original report in a condensed and intelligent version and frequently follows it word for word. It’s extremely accessible to anyone without “dumbing down” the subject matter.


There are four separate timelines for each of the four flights that brilliantly illustrate what was going on with each. Each page is illustrated beautifully with a moody, dark feel which fits in perfectly. Ernie Colón's stunning artwork is highly detailed and captures the emotions and terror of the day as well as what followed. The book gives background on each of the terrorists as well as the events that led up to that horrible morning.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation captured me with it’s arresting story and art. Each detail was engraved on my mind in a way that no plain text would have done. The comic book format truly created an impact for me in a way that words alone would not have done. I, like many I suppose was put off by what I had perceived to be a dry story. I was wrong. The story of the four planes and of what happened both before and after 9/11 was absolutely riveting and painful to read. It brought back that horror that I felt watching my television that morning and of the dark times that followed. I felt everything all over again and I was reminded in a way that I needed to be reminded. I had become far too complacent and settled.

I think that the graphic novel and comic book mediums are excellent ways to present certain subjects to those who wouldn’t normally read them The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation belongs in every library.


About the Author:
Sid Jacobson was the managing editor and editor in chief for Harvey Comics, where he created several characters, among them Richie Rich, and was executive editor at Marvel Comics. He is the author of two novels.

About the Illustrator:
The artist, Ernie Colón, has worked at Harvey, Marvel, and DC Comics. At DC, he oversaw the production of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Blackhawk, and the Flash; at Marvel, Spider-Man.

The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell by Joe Loya

Joe Loya is an ex-convict, ex-bank robber turned writer whose correspondence with essayist Richard Rodriguez provides him with an anchor while he is imprisoned.

His story is appalling, violent and absolutely riveting. At times, I had to put it down because some of the things that happened to him or that he did were just so disturbing. Mr. Loya writes so well, however that I kept picking this book back up again to find out what happened.

It's an amazing look into the psyche of this precocious little boy who, through the abuse he suffers from his father slowly evolves into this manipulative criminal. This book shows us so clearly how violence and abuse affect society as a whole. The boy’s father is dealing with his own pain and demons, the loss of his wife.

Mr. Loya’s transition from bible verse spouting boy to manipulative, lying young man, to bank robber, to prisoner and finally, to writer is a journey into a life we rarely, if ever see or want to see. It is a beautifully written and detailed account of his life.

Goddess of the Americas by Ana Castillo

These essays by modern writers on the Virgen de Guadalupe are incredible. It is so wonderful to read these writers’ thoughts and feelings on the much beloved Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico.

Since La Lupita is such a cultural icon both here in the US and in Mexico, I feel this is an important book. La Lupita permeates the consciousness of the Mexican and Chicano people. Ana Castillo gives the reader, not a glimpse but a full sense of that consciousness. This book is an education and a joy to have.

The poems and stories contained within are a glimpse into the personal journeys and thoughts of important writes and how Tonantzin or Guadalupe plays her magical role in their lives. You will find private and personal reflections by Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros (Caramelo); there is a wonderful essay by the very talented writer and documentarian of gang life in L.A., Luis Rodriguez; a brilliant essay by Richard Rodriguez (Hunger of Memory) as well as contributions by writers like my personal favorite Elena Poniatowska, Pat Mora, the beloved Octavio Paz and many others. You will read it over and over again.

My Invented Country by Isabel Allende

My Invented Country is Isabel Allende’s best book yet, but I have yet to read her version of Zorro which is getting rave reviews including an amazing review by Yxta Maya Murray in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

This amazing biography takes the reader on a poetic journey though Ms. Allende’s young life. Her writing is stellar and poetic. This book is to be savored for its beauty of language. Writers dream of crafting sentences like these. Lovers of language will adore this book for it’s symmetry and grace. Readers of all ages will love it for its beautiful and absorbing story.

You know, it’s a funny thing about books and readers, the true book lover, not just the person who read the best sellers because they think they should or because everyone in the office is talking about it and they don’t want to feel left out. The true book lover anticipates and lives in hope that the next book will transcend the ordinary, take humble prose and uplift it to something else, something magical. That doesn’t happen often. There are plenty of good and well written books out there, don’t get me wrong. But the sublime, no those are rare.

My Invented Country is one of those to me. I opened the book with my usual hope and expectation, a little more hopeful because it was an Allende book, and was immediately caught up in the beauty of the language. The love Ms. Allende has for her country, her memories and family simply shine through.

I wonder just how many people after reading this book, made travel plans to Chile. I know I wanted to. I know I plan on going soon and that I think is the power of words, to transcend reality, to enthrall, to sweep away on a literary magic carpet, to urge the reader to expand their horizons, to see things in different shades. Gracias, Isabel Allende for the amazing trip!

Burro Genius by Victor Villasenor

Victor Villasenor is an incredible, wonderful writer. He is all the more so when you read this biography and learn of the immense challenges he faced from the educational system, his extreme dyslexia and from bigotry.

Mr. Villasenor writes with pathos about growing up during a time when Mexicans were thought of as dirty, lazy and sub-standard. Forced to not speak Spanish in school, he was taught to be ashamed of his parents, ashamed of being Mexican. The teachers were horrible and abusive. I can’t believe the child that was so abused and mistreated grew up to be such an astounding writer.

As I read this book, I became more and more aware of how important it is as a Mexican-American or, as I refer to myself as a Mexica, to keep our culture, to speak our Spanish, to teach our children who they are and where they come from. So much was taken from us in ways such as you will read in this book that we can’t let any more be taken. We have to make a stand and start taking back what belongs to us, starting with our culture.

This astounding book will make you laugh, cry and incredibly angry. It should be required reading in any school and certainly for anyone with Mexican heritage

The Presumed Alliance by Nicolas Vaca

For those of you that wouldn’t think about reading a book like this, that it wouldn’t be interesting and maybe too much like reading statistics or a schoolbook, stop thinking and read it anyway.

When this book first came to my attention, I knew I had to review it but dreaded doing it because it seemed so studious and dry. I wondered if I could do it justice or that I’d become bored and not write a good enough review of it. I dragged along for a few months just avoiding doing it. However, upon reading the first page of the introduction, I became so fascinated and enthralled that I finished the book on the train ride into work.

Nicolas Vaca explores the political alliance between Latinos and African American as supposed by White America. It was amazing to me. He also explores racial tensions, population growth and unveiled hatred between the two groups. The statistics that Mr. Vaca quotes are astounding in terms of population growth among the Mexican American community. I couldn’t believe how much our community had grown in twenty years. Mr. Vaca also delineates points of conflict and issues that he feels will arise. He cites the L.A. Riots and how many of the incidents that occurred were African American against Mexicans, not Caucasians.

I’m a Xicana women and have always known about the racial tensions between these two groups because I have lived but I never really got a good sense of just how deep and hw damaging those tensions are to both groups until I read this book. It’s a controversial book and bound to incite a lot of bad feeling and anger among many groups, not least White America. I think as Xicanos, we are obligated to read this book and see how potentially powerful we can be politically and economically. The statistics and numbers are simply powerful. I know I felt tremendously empowered just reading the percentages of us in different states across the union.

It is important to understand these tensions and challenges that present themselves to us. We must educate our children and ourselves for the future. Hispanics are the fastest growing minority in the United States and the numbers are mind numbing.

Nicolas Vaca, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and also holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley is a Mexican American practicing attorney in the Bay area.

The Mexicans by Patrick Oster

The Mexicans: A Personal Portrait of a People was previously published in hardcover in 1989 and I find the book is just as pertinent and important today at the beginning of the new millienium. Patrick Oster, the former Mexico City Bureau Chief for the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, writes intelligently and with great understanding of a complicated people.

This collection of intense, brutally honest stories both compels and chills. We hear about Enrique, a doctor in the economically depressed barrio of Nezahualcoyotl struggling to earn a living as well as save babies dying from caused by the city’s bad water. There is a story of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and his fight to change Mexico, to become president. He eventually lost to Salinas-Gortari but this short story of his quest is profound.

The book is a marvellously complex weaving of political intrigue, torture, hunger, dreams or lack thereof, class tensions, angry punk gangs, pick pockets and corruption. It also speaks of both the ugliness and incredible beauty of Mexico. There are stories of illegal border crossings, the tragafuegos or fire eaters who daily shorten their lives by consuming kerosine to breathe fire for a few pesos.

Patrick Oster has written an important book and has an understanding of the Mexican people as a whole that not too many have. His writing is to the point and without emotion, yet compels the emotion and stirs the heart. Some of the stories will make you cry, others will outrage you. Not one story will leave the reader unmoved and each will stay with you forever and change your perspective of this complicated and magical Mexico and its people.

Soldaderas in the Mexican Military by Elizabeth Salas

Elizabeth Salas’ Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History is such a fascinating and useful book. I first came across it when I wanted to find out more about the Soldaderas in the Mexican Revolution. I was shocked to find that there wasn’t very much material on the subject except for brief mentions in books about the Mexican Revolution and of course songs like La Adelita. I was angry that there was so little material on a subject that I believed to be highly overlooked.

I bought the book, not expecting much after all the dead ends that I had found on this subject and was blown away by it’s detail and wealth of information.

Ms. Salas book is an excellent reference tool and an absorbing read. It sheds light on these amazing women who fought bravely for their country. Ms. Salas not only references the Mexican Revolution, she goes from pre-Conquest times and the warrior women who fought then to the Xicana activism of the 1970’s.

Soldaderas in the Mexican Military breaks the stereotype of the soldadera being a camp follower or a basket toting wife of a soldier. Sala’s tells of women who held high ranks in the military and even drew pension. She lets the reader know just how important these women were and how hard they fought. These women were spies, lieutenants, corporals and generals. They provided food, smuggled in arms and fought just as hard as any man. Viva la Mujer!

Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America

Eduardo Galeano is a Uruguayan essayist, journalist and historian. He was editor in chief of Marcha, a weekly journal with contributors such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Mario Benedetti. He also wrote for Epocha and University Press. In 1973 after a military coup in his country, Mr. Galeano was imprisoned and then exiled from Uruguay. In exile in Argentina, he started the magazine Crisis. In 1976, another military coup forced him from his adopted country and put him on the list of those condemned to death. He then moved to Spain where he wrote Memory of Fire.

Open Veins of Latin America won the Casas de America prize in 1970 and was the first of his books to be translated into English. He writes with eloquence of Latin America's 500 years of occupation and of the cultural, emotional and physical genocide of our people and our land. His prose is so beautiful, even while writing of rape, pillage, abuse of power and other atrocities. He combines both fact and imagery into a sublime reading experience.

Mr Galeano documents meticulously the statistics of exploitation and murder - the facts, the numbers, and most importantly the emotions and situations behind the well documented data. He speaks of how the genocide of Latin America’s indigenous peoples and the enslavement of the African people were the very foundation for “the giant industrial capital”.

Every Xicano should read this book. It has actually been prohibited in some countries and is well documented. I’ve read it over and over again. It has enraged me, made me cry, frustrated and motivated me. Every time I feel overwhelmed and get to feeling that all my protesting and marching aren’t letting me have a real life, I read the first chapter of this book. It gets me angry, that cold, purposeful anger that drives me, that pushes me out the door into the rain and cold to protest by dancing barefoot in the streets in my traditional Azteca traje de gala (Aztec regalia) to preserve my culture. Any book that does that for any of us is not only much needed, it should be required.

We need our eyes open. After 500 years, we’re still here fighting the good fight and God willing, 500 years from now we’ll still be here, culture intact and reading this book to remind us.

One of my favorites quotes by Mr. Galeano is this, "I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia." This book won’t let us have amnesia. Read it.

A Cafecito Story by Julia Alvarez

A Cafecito Story is the story of Joe, a farmer’s son from Nebraska who finds himself in the Dominican Republic on holiday. Joe meets a family who are growing coffee in the traditional way, organically.

The book is charming in its simplicity and folkish look. Belkis Ramirez, one of the Dominican Republic’s most accomplished artists, does the woodcuts that so beautifully illustrate the pages. It is a bilingual book with the Spanish story in red and the English in black. Zapatista colors, I think to myself. A good sign.

This isn’t your typical Xicano book, not by any means. The author is Dominican, living in Vermont and married to an American. It is something we should read because it is about positive change, about going back to what we had, about Mother Nature. It is about the symbiosis between plants and animals. It is about songbirds singing happiness into the coffee beans. It is about giving back what we take. It is an attempt by the author to save her land from being raped by the huge coffee companies.

In the afterword by Bill Eichner, Ms. Alvarez’ husband, he talks about the “green deserts” of modern coffee farms eating up the land. He speaks of the future and of the choices we make. A Cafecito Story is a story about taking back the indigenous ways, of saving land, of working in a cooperative. Think about it while you’re drinking your Starbucks instead of Zapatista or Alta Gracia coffee.

There is a beautiful passage in the book as Joe is practicing his high school Spanish before leaving on his trip, three simple words that mean everything. Saber, sonar, surgir. To know, to dream, to rise.

Note: Julia Alvarez is the co-owner of a small, organic coffee farm called Alta Gracia. She is also author of In the Time of Butterflies, Before We Were Free and How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents.