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Despite intentions otherwise, the Reading Level 1.5 label at wellness-geniar.com represent a wide range of books. My intention with this  distinction is to recommend books that can serve as a bridge between the large format, leveled beginning to read books and the smaller chapter books like Magic Tree House, Junie B Jones, Ivy + Bean and the like, which are a solid second grade reading level, if not a bit higher in many cases.  While the books that end up with this label don't always fit the mold I thought they would (graphic novels like the fantastic TOON Books and the super Squish series as well  as books that probably truly belong in the Reading Level 1 category like Penny and Her Song, Ling and Ting and the sublime Dodsworth) they are all standouts for their wonderful stories, great illustrations and, above all, ability to serve as bridge books for emerging readers. Chapter books like the Lighthouse Family series and The Cobble Street Cousins, both by Cynthia Rylant, as well as the Andy Shane series by Jennifer Richard Jacobson, books that have less than 70 pages and lots of illustrations but look like the higher reading level chapter books are examples of what I had in mind when I created this label. I am thrilled to add to this list Mrs Noodlekugel, the delicious new book from the venerable Daniel Pinkwater with illustrations by wonderful Adam Stower, who reminds me a bit of one of my favorites, Chris Riddell.

At 72 pages long with a large font and lots of pictures,  Mrs Noodlekugel could almost work as a picture book, but I am very glad it is a chapter book. There are so few books written at this level and so many readers anxious to make the jump to chapter books and not quite ready, that I would be happy to see a whole new section created at the bookstore where I work just for these "bridge" type books. Happily,  Mrs Noodlekugel is going to be a series (yet another thing emerging readers crave when choosing a book)! At the start of  Mrs Noodlekugel, we find main characters, siblings Nick and Maxine, have just moved into a high rise building. Standing on his dresser, Nick calls Maxine to his room to look out the window at the curious sight he has discovered - a little house tucked in a garden and surrounded by more high rises - a bit like Virginia Lee Burton's Caldecott winning The Little House. The two are curious and unsure of how to get to the house, ruling out using a rope to rappel down the side of the building. Instead, they decide to ask Mike the janitor. If you don't know the work of Daniel Pinkwater, for kids or adults, then you might not realize that he is usually a bit of a subversive with a pretty kooky way of seeing the world that somehow makes sense in the end (see The Hoboken Chicken Emergency or his fantastic picture book that he illustrated, The Big Orange Splot). You might not even learn this about him by reading Mrs Noodlekugel until you come to the character of Mike the Janitor, anyway. Nick and Maxine found Mike the janitor sitting in "a little room in the basement, eating stewed tomatoes out of a can, talking to himself, and listening to the radio." Stower's brilliant illustration shows a fella with thick droopy eyebrows, a five o'clock shadow and a thick droopy mustache. And canned tomatoes! Mike tells the kids a bit about the lady who lives in the house and that they can reach it by going through the boiler room, but not to tell their parents about this. Nick and Maxine make their way through the dark, kind of spooky room and emerge into a a lush green oasis with a charming little house in the middle.

The two approach the house and are met by Mr Fuzzface, the talking (among other things) cat who appears to be a lawn ornament at first. Mrs Noodlekugel invites the siblings in to tea and introduces them to her curious world. She tells them how she met Mr Fuzzface when she was working on the railroad. He was a "railroad cat and could not speak a word of English." Mr Fuzzface assures the children that Mrs Noodlekugel was "very patient. Cats have trouble with consonants, you see." Mrs Noodlekugel gave him exercises, like saying "jingle, jungle, jungle joker" one hundred times. The children also meet the mice, four farsighted, prize winning rodents who, when they ate crumbs at the table, "went to put them in their noses and eyes as often as their mouths."

I can't believe I haven't reviewed The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater before now! This is one of those books that I owned before I ever had kids. My husband grew up with Pinkwater and introduced me to him as well as NPR, where Pinkwater and host Scott Simon have been reading and reviewing picture books for years. The two men clearly delight in the books that they share and their readings are always worth listening to.

I just love this book to bits, especially as someone who has lived in four tract housing developments over the course of her life. Pinkwater's book a straightforward tale with a subtle message, wrapped in a story that somehow manages to be realistic and ridiculous at the same time.  The Big Orange Splot is illustrated by Pinkwater in his unique fashion - not quite as nuanced or painterly as some other illustrators, but distinctive and capable of telling the story just as well as the words.  The Big Orange Splot begins, "Mr Plumbean lived on a street where all the houses were the same. He liked it that way. So did everybody else on Mr Plumbean's street. 'This is a neat street,' they would say. Then one day . . . " A seagull carrying a can of "bright orange paint. (No one knows why.) And he dropped it (no one knows why)" right over Mr Plumbean's house."

At first the neighbors sympathize with Mr Plumbean's mess, saying, "Mr Plumbean will have to paint his house again." Mr Plumbean supposes he will, but as time goes by and he makes no move to remove the splot the neighbors change their exclamations to, "Mr Plumbean, we wish you'd get around to painting your house."

Mr Plumbean buys some paint and fixes up his roof (and whole house) in the middle of the night because that is when it is cooler. The neighbors awake to quite a surprise. Mr Plumbean's paint job only inspires him to get more creative in the cool of the night, adding a clocktower, baobab and palm trees, a hammock and an alligator. Then Mr Plumbean settles into his new oasis to enjoy a pitcher of lemonade.

The neighborhood is in an orderly uproar and they ask Mr Plumbean's next door neighbor to go and talk to him. The two share a pitcher of lemonade under the palm trees in the cool of the evening. The next morning the man has transformed his house saying, "My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams." The uproar continues, as does the change in perspective as various neighbors try to reason with Mr Plumbean.

By the end of the book the whole street is transformed and ends with these words:

Whenever a stranger came to the street of Mr Plumbean and his neighbors, the stranger would say, "This is not a neat street." Then all the people would say, "our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams.

So many books today, picture and chapter, try to encourage kids to "be yourself" and "follow your dreams." In my opinion, they end up coming off as saccharine, heavy-handed and dull. But, when a true genius puts his pen (and brush) to this subject as Pinkwater did way back in 1977, you get something worth buying and reading over and over. No wonder this book is still in print, and thank you to Scholastic for keeping it so! This is a pretty cool website I found while researching The Big Orange Splot. Visit Teaching Philosophy to Children for some great discussion questions linked to The Big Orange Splot, appropriate for all ages.

And here is a house that could happily fit on Mr Plumbean's street!

The mouse tries to warn the magpie about the dangers of her passion, but it takes the breaking of the branch that holds her nest, leaving the magpie buried under her treasures, to open her eyes.

The final image of the book shows the magpie with a reasonable amount of treasures tied onto a ribbon, flying off with the mouse. Less is more. Lesson learned? For a glimpse into Brian Lies' artistic process, check out 7 Impossible Things. Julie Danielson also reviewed More for Kirkus and reveals a very interesting backstory to the book. Danielson writes, 

I chatted briefly with Lies about this book, and it turns out that it’s had an interesting, rather mind-meldy path to publication. “I first came up with the idea of a book about a bird with a hoarding problem back in 1995,” he told me, “but I couldn't make the text I'd written to accompany the suite of sketches I'd drawn NOT be preachy. Then in 2010, I.C. Springman's spare text, through several sheer coincidences, was plucked from the slush pile by the assistant to my editor, the intrepid Kate O'Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who had never seen my earlier attempts at More. She thought I might be able to do something interesting with the spare text. Those quantitative words made all the difference—though it definitely has a message, it no longer wags a finger at you.”

Amazing to know that Lies and Springman were, in different ways, working toward the same end. It took Springman's spare vision to frame Lies' visual tale and, as Lies says, express the message without being preachy. Creating a worthwhile book with a message or "life lesson" that is not overly didactic or moralizing is much, much harder than you could imagine, but Springman and Lies do just that and in a very memorable way.

Little Bird by Germano Zullo, illustrations by Albertine, 

translated by Claudia Zoe Bedrick

Finally, the bird takes flight and the man smiles, watching as he flies through the sky. As the man backs up his truck and turns to head down the road he drove in on, he experiences the true treasures, the little things, because, "One is enough to enrich the moment. Just one is enough to change the world." Like Blackall, I won't reveal the lovely end (and images) that finish this charming book, but I will tell you that it is perfect and would make a lovely gift. Consider doing something a little different and give the graduate in your life Little Bird instead of Dr Seuss's Oh the Places You'll Go this year!

Little Bird is published by the wonderful, independent, family-owned Enchanted Lion Books. Besides keeping the invaluable Arthur Geisert (Ice and The Giant Seed) in print and featuring a line devoted to wordless picture books, they publish picture books in translation by authors and illustrators from all over the world, upholding this philosophy:

As we all know, books help children to cross all kinds of boundaries and borders long before they begin to grasp the world through actual travel and experience. We thus take as our task that of connecting young readers to the wonderfully diverse modes of expression that exist in the world, so that in the end they will feel that the whole world -- with all of its wonderful, surprising and very real similarities and differences -- is their home.

Having been a children's bookseller for almost seventeen years now and a parent for a couple of years longer, I have seen many children, including my own, express a fascination with the story of the Titanic. Like other seemingly frightening and/or dangerous things that small children are fascinated with (sharks, dinosaurs, bugs) they grasp the literal enormity of the thing but don't yet grasp the emotional enormity of that which they are drawn to. Kids can't really fathom what it must be like to be hunted by a T-rex or a shark, nor do they grasp the tragedy and needless loss of life that resulted from the hubris of the builders of the "ship that couldn't sink." Kaspar the Titanic Cat was difficult for me to read and I had to put it down more than once, but I know that how I read this book and how a child reads it are different. In fact, I had the good fortune to speak with a second grader who had just finished reading this book and I asked her if it made her sad at all. A head shake "no" was the answer, and rightly so, I suppose. However, in his newest book, Michael Morpugo, author of War Horse, finds a way to portray the suffering and loss of life that was part of this disaster, weaving an uplifting story around it. Michael Foreman's illustrations are realistic but softened with and even sometimes playful and add a valuable dimension to the story of Kaspar the Titanic Cat. 

While Morpugo's story impacted me, reading his author's note that comes at the end of the book gave the story a historical anchor beyond the event that was the sinking of the Titanic as well as a nice twist to the tale. While Kaspar the cat is the center of this book, young Johnny Trott, fourteen-year-old orphan and bellboy at the Savoy Hotel in London is the main character and narrator of Kaspar the Titanic Cat. The first half of the book tells the story of how Kaspar ended up at the Savoy and how Kaspar and Johnny find themselves on board the Titanic as it sails from Southampton. The book begins, "Prince Kaspar Kandinsky first came to the Savoy Hotel in a basket. I know because I was the one who carried him in." Prince Kaspar is the pet of Countesss Kandinsky, a Russian opera singer who will be performing Mozart's Magic Flute at Covent Garden. Being a prince, Kaspar has particular demands and, being one of the few people in the world he does not dislike, it is Johnny Trott who takes on the task of attending to him. And in turn, the Countess grows fond of Johnny, buying him a suit and a seat at her performance. Johnny has often fantasized about the real mother he never knew and begins to look to the Countess with the same fondness. This makes the death of the Countess even harder to bear when she is struck down by an omnibus. Johnny watches as Kaspar refuses to eat and wastes away while awaiting the Countess's family to arrive in London and collect her belongings. At great risk to his job and home, all the servants live in the Savoy and work long hours, Johnny sneaks Kaspar into his small attic room. 

It seems that Kaspar might actually die of his broken heart when an American family with a very rambunctious little girl arrives. Johhny comments that, unlike most American visitors, the Stantons seem reserved and aloof, although their seven-year old daughter Lizziebeth makes up for this. Constantly running off and exploring the hotel on her own, the staff if often asked to locate her. One day Johnny finds her in his room, petting and feeding Kaspar, who seems to be perking up. From there on out, Johnny, Lizziebeth and Kaspar are fast friends. When Lizziebeth climbs out onto the ledge of the window in Johnny's room to rescue a wounded pigeon, he is there to coax her back inside safely and rewarded generously by her parents. Johnny begins to feel like he might have a chance at a bright future. However, Skullface, the cruel head housekeeper, takes it from him with threats of losing his job if he complains. Johnny keeps it to himself, but in the end, with the departure of the Stantons not far off, he shares this sad turn of events with Lizziebeth. As a final gesture of thanks, the Stantons employ Johnny to accompany them to to Southampton and load their baggage onto the Titanic. Lizziebeth convinces them to bring Kaspar along for the ride and one last goodbye.

How Johnny and Kaspar end up on the ship and how they spend the five days before she sinks are intersting. In the chapter titled, "Women and Children First," Morpugo tells the story of how Johnny first learns of the breach in the ship and how he alerts the Stantons, who had no idea he was on the ship. As he and Mr Stanton see Lizziebeth and her mother safely onto a lifeboat, Johnny knows he must return to their room and rescue Kaspar, whom Mr Stanton insisted be left behind. The next chapter, "Good Luck and God Bless You," tells the harrowing story of the sinking of the great ship and how Mr Stanton and Johnny fare as well and how others die. One of the most painful parts to read finds Mr Stanton and Johnny clinging to a canvas lifeboat in the freezing sea. Of reaching and being pulled onto the boat Johnny says, 

Only then did I really begin to take in the horrors of the tragedy I had been living through. The shrieks and the cries of the drowning were all around me. I caught my last sight of the great Titanic, her stern almost vertical, slipping into the sea. When she was gone, we were left only with the debris of this dreadful disaster strewn all around the ocean and those terrible cries that went on and on. And there were swimmers in the sea all around us, every one of them, it seemed heading our way. Very soon we were swamped with them, and we were turning them away, yelling at any other who came near that there was no room. And that was true, horribly true.

When he has to turn away a swimmer, a man he knew, Johnny says, "I will carry to the grave the guilt of what I did to that man and to many others." 

Although the sinking of the ship makes up only two of the ten chapters in the book - there is a final chapter where we learn the fates of the Stantons, Johnny and Kaspar that is very rewarding - they made an impact on me as a reader. What the target audience, presumably 8 - 12 year olds, make of it, I am curious to know. In this year that marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking, Kaspar the Titanic Cat is a story that focuses on the individuals, who, while fictional are representative of the various classes and cultures that were on the Titanic, and gives a human side to the story that might help younger readers begin to grasp the full weight of this maritime disaster. By adding a sleek black cat to draw you in to the story, Morpugo brilliantly finds a way to reach a larger audience and encouraging empathy from readers who might just be discovering this human quality.

The Real Savoy Hotel and the real (statue) of Kaspar.

Other Titanic fiction and non-fiction you might like:

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (known as Small Change for Stuart in the UK, where it was first released) by Lissa Evans is fantastic! This mystery with a missing magician, a trail of clues and a hidden trove of amazing mechanisms reminded me very much of a childhood favorite of mine, John Bellairs, (The House with the Clock in Its Walls, The Letter, the Witch and the Ring, The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn) a master of creating the haunting, creaky mysterious mansion with hidden clues and treasures and a little bit of magic at the center of it all. Many of Bellair's books were illustrated by the equally eerie Edward Gorey, and Evan's cover art and chapter headings echo this style as well. However, for those of you familiar with the work of Bellairs, Evan's book is a bit less intense and a lot less spooky, which makes Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms the perfect book, especially for young readers wary of stories with larger-than-life villains and ominous overtones. While the suspense and mystery of Evan's book is fast paced and chock full of vivid details and characters, her villain has only a small role in the events of the story and her most intimidating traits are being mean to her assistant and bossy.

The first thing we learn about Stuart Horten is that his parents are very tall and he is not. His parents are also very intelligent however, as the narrator tells us, "clever people aren't always sensible. A sensible person would never give a child a name that could be written down as S. Horten. A sensible person would realize that anyone called S. Horten would instantly be nicknamed 'Shorten,' even by his friends." However, it seems that Stuart has many friends, a bike with eight gears, a tree house and a "large and muddy pond" in his back yard and life is good - for now. And while it may seem like Stuart's stature will play a large part in Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms based on that set up, it does - but not in the way you might imagine. 

When Stuart's mother, a doctor, "not the sort who stitches up bleeding wounds, but the sort who peers down a microscope," accepts a job in a new town, the family packs up and moves to Beeton, Mr Horten's hometown. at the start of the summer vacation. Mr Horten has a flexible job. He writes crossword puzzles and speaks like a human thesaurus, frequently leaving Stuart to decipher what he has just said. The move to Beeton begins a slow unravelling of family history that Stuart never knew. It turns out that shortness skips generations in his family and Stuart learns that he has an Uncle Tony who was a magician with the stage name, "Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten, Mini Master of Magic." He also learns that Tony, brother of his father's father, Ray, lost his fiance and magician's assistant in an air raid during World War II. Distraught over his loss, Tony retired to his workshop where he built his magical props and, after a few years, disappeared himself. Interested sorts spent years looking for his secret workshop in Beeton, but it was never found. Now, some fifty years later, his derelict house is about to be torn down. Stuart learns all this piece by piece, bit by bit. As he and his father take walks around town Stuart sees the old sign for "Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms," the pre-WWII factory where the family made locks and safes, later diversifying into all sorts of coin-operated machines. A trick money box that Uncle Tony gave to Stuart's father as a birthday gift right before he disappeared proves to hold the first clue that starts Stuart on his adventure and odyssey to find his Great-Uncle's workshop, which turns out to be a race for time when he learns that his old house will be torn down in a matter of days.

In Stuart, Evans has created a wonderful, believable main character with a genuine sense of frustration and loneliness, both in his family and his new town. Of course, the distractions of his parents also allow him the freedom to pursue the mystery at hand. Nevertheless, Stuart is still conscientious about his excursions and regretful when he finds he must tell lies. What makes Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms truly great are the other characters that Evans populates her book with. Stuart's new neighbors are triplets, his own age, named April, May and June, who crank out their own newspaper with the occasional bits of yellow journalism. Seemingly adversaries at first, April (the triplet with glasses) proves to be a willing and very helpful partner as Stuart races to figure out the mystery. Uncle Tony, his trail of clues and the miraculous mechanisms are also fascinating characters themselves. Rounding out the cast are Leonora, younger sister to Lily, Tony's fiance and assistant who disappeared in the air raid, and Jeannie, the domineering magician and business woman and owner/instructor of a magician's school, who bought the land where the Horten factory once stood and built and empire of sorts selling magic tricks. Leonora would dearly love to see her sister and Tony again and Jeannie would desperately love to find the workshop and raid it for the miraculous magical mechanisms inside. Finally, there is Clifford, Jeannie's pupil who is continually hoping to pass his grade-two requirements and become a full-fledged magician. I think my favorite part of Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms has to be the white dove, a prop from Clifford's failed magic act, that flutters into almost every vital scene in this book, a bit like Waldo popping up all over the place. A bit iconic, the dove is a gentle reminder of the wonderful world that Evans has created as well as the masterful story she tells.

The final chapter of the book is a treat with a twist and Evans pulls it off perfectly and in a most satisfying manner. And, while she offers closure to the story, the last page of the book reveals that there will be a sequel to Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms coming this fall! I, for one, am happy. I would like to get to know April, Stuart and maybe even Clifford, as well as the town of Beeton and the miraculous mechanisms both in and out of Uncle Tony's workshop, a bit better.

Mini Grey's action filled, comic book style panel illustrations with word bubbles (well, word rectangles, really) create suspense and movement in her books that readers will respond to. As I write this review, I have all three of the Traction Man books on my desk and it is intriguing to see the subtle changes in Grey's artwork over the course of the series (I hope it's a series - PLEASE WRITE MORE TRACTION MAN BOOKS, MINI GREY!!) Everything that is wonderful about Traction Man is Here is multiplied by the time, seven years later, Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey hits the shelves. The intricate, detailed illustrations, the exciting locales and the new cast of characters all accentuate Grey's skill as a writer and artist. Just take a look at the front papers from  Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey, above. The endpapers are similar, but feature a comic strip titled, "Beach-Time Brenda in It Came From the Sea," which finds Traction Man emerging from the ocean exclaiming, "Great Scott! I seem to have been washed up in the wrong comic strip!"while Brenda holds a tray of "snacks and sundowner cocktails." Do I even need to mention how fun these books are from an adult perspective?? For an old but excellent interview with Grey, visit Seven Impossible Things. But really, just go buy all of the Traction Man books! Biscuit Bear is a really great book, too.

Some other brilliant books by Mini Grey: