Digging Deep

In fourth grade we are all about digging deep, re-reading to find evidence to back up our ideas and opinions.

In Sam and Dave Dig a Hole  by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, two boys are digging in order to find something spectacular.

There is humor here, lots of dead pan humor, as well as a little dog who is very wise, and a surprise ending. Here’s the trailer Mac & Jon made.

If you have a slightly more Gallic sense of humor, you might enjoy Three Little Peas by Marine Rivoal.

Here, two little peas go on an adventure of a different sort and eventually end up underground. The artwork in this is stupendous and tells more of the story than the text does.

I have a fondness for stories about peas. Seriously. In first grade, I wrote a story called “The Pea Family” and later, in grade seven, I returned to it during a writing unit and wrote “The Pea Family and the Yellow Beans”, a story a bout cultures clashing. I used felt for the peas and beans. Very cutting edge. It was the 70’s after all.

Enjoy!

A Mad Dash to the Finish

I am going out of town today. I’ve spent the last few days finishing up the library books I could not renew, renewing the ones I could, and finishing those that I could. One of these was The Glass Sentence by S. E Grove.

 S. E. Grove might have written this book with me in mind. It is a tale of exploration and cartography in world in which Time has been Disrupted.  Each of the continents has been flung into a different time period; some are broken onto many time periods. Sophia Tims, our heroine comes from a line of cartologers and explorers. Her parents disappeared on a journey of exploration when she was small and Sophia was raised by her Uncle Shadrack, the foremost cartologer in Boston, if not in the entire world.

The book opens with a call from certain elements within society to expel all foreigners and close the border to them. And to keep the citizens of New Occident safe within New Occident. I sort of wondered if the author was reflecting a little on the current immigration situation. In anticipation of this, Shadrack begins to prepare Sophia for a journey they will take together, by beginning her cartological training. This is cut short when Shadrack is abducted and Sophia, naturally,  sets out to find him. As she journeys, she encounters bad guys, new friends and all sorts of adventures.

I love a book with a map in it..and this book has three! And the maps Grove cannot show, but only describe are marvelous.The maps in The Glass Sentence are more than two-dimensional diagrams in the Cartesian coordinate system. Maps can be compilations of memory; and maps made of different materials might be layered one upon the other. In fact, the whole book is really about a race to fin the carta mayor, the map to end all maps which shows the world as it is, as it was and as it could be.

This is the first book in a series, but ends without a frustrating cliffhanger, which I appreciate. I am all for cliffhangers, but not when one has to wait months or years for the next installment.