Deb Nance

Texas writer, educator, and naturalist Roy Bedichek was born in 1878 and came to Texas as a young child in 1884. He was always interested in Texas nature but it was not until 1946 with the urging of friends including J. Frank Dobie that he wrote his first book. Karankaway Country is his second book, originally published in 1950. In it, Bedichek takes on efforts to assist the endangered whooping cranes, water rights issues, the decline of the Atwater prairie chicken, and other nature stories of the Texas Gulf Coast. Bedichek is a delightful writer, witty, clever, and always on point, and the stories he tells are surprisingly relevant today.

For more about Roy Bedichek, see the PBS special, Roy Bedichek's Vanishing Frontier.

A little narwhal wanders off from his fellow narwhals, and he is all alone until he comes upon a group of whales. Though reluctant at first, the whales and the narwhal gradually learn how to be friends.

This is based on a true story, and that makes the tale even more lovely. If a narwhal and whales can be friends in this world...

Moka the cow is afraid to swim. Her friend teaches her how to do so. Then Moka and all her friends have fun swimming.

Moka the cow is a series of picture books for very young children. I'd have put this book in the category for children of three and younger.

I read this one in Spanish.

One of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read.

I love to meet new people, and this book gave me the chance to meet 100 new folks from around the world, one for each age, from one to one hundred.

I think of many uses for this book, including use as a counting book or an intro to what people want to do when they grow up and how that works out or even just looking at photos of people at various ages.

A delightful read. Don't think this is just for kids either.

A boy saw a fish and greeted the fish, but the fish did not reply. “How rude,” the boy said. He meets up with a lion and a bee and neither is forthcoming. And then he meets a tree and he's surprised to have the tree greets him. The tree teaches the boy that the fish did not speak Kid and he instructs the boy in how to speak Fish. Suddenly the fish did not seem so rude after all. Things get better when creatures can communicate.

A lovely little parable with moments of humor along with wisdom.

Doris' twenty-six children—yes, one for every letter of the alphabet—give her a lot of grief. But that's just what you might expect from the offspring of a gharial. But Doris knows a lot about young gharial and she just might know how to get these dear delinquents under control again.

The charm of this book is in seeing the twenty-six different ways that twenty-six different children can stir up trouble and in the wonderful illustrations.

Mermaid Queen by Shana Corey

Loved this author and this illustrator's work together on a previous book about Alice Roosevelt. This one was even better. The wonderful text, printed in big and small fonts, with curls and swirls, combined with the fun illustrations makes for a great book.

I'm happy to learn about the life of Annette Kellerman, who began to swim to strengthen her legs weakened by debilitating disease. She loved dancing and was the first to create what came to be known as water ballet. She later revolutionized bathing apparel.

Here's a sample:

“When they arrived in London, they went to Soho and the Strand, Picadilly and the Palace, hoping to put on a show. But everywhere they went, people just scoffed.

A girl swimmer?

Too plain. Too plump. Too weird.

Too wet. Too bad!”

Charlie has died, and Louise and her family are sad because their beloved dog is gone. Louise is sad and angry, too, and each day she rows out to an island where she yells and hits trees, and there she meets a bear. She senses that the bear is full of sadness and anger, too. Somehow the two form a friendship that works to heal them both.

Lovely little story about grief and healing through time and nature and friendship.

Shahrzad learns about a king who lost his beloved wife and child and turned vindictive, making laws that would cause all his people to become as unhappy as he was.

Shahrzad goes to the king and tells him stories—perhaps ten, perhaps a hundred and one, perhaps a thousand and one—and the king listens to the stories and the king thinks about the stories and, slowly, the king starts to see himself and his kingdom and his people differently.

This is an intriguing new version of Tales from 1001 Nights that confirms readers' deepest beliefs: stories can change the world.

This is the second book today about Australian animals, and I'm seeing a theme: Australian animals have a difficult time finding their place in the world. Little Platypus is born, inextricably, from an egg among other eggs into a world where nobody is like he is. He wanders here and there, attempting to be a kookaburra and an emu and a wombat, but failing miserably, until he finally comes upon a creature that looks just like him. A lovely story for children and grownups, too.

The Black Panther Party! As a child and as a young person, I was terrified of the Black Panther Party as they were presented to me on the nightly news. Armed. Angry. They were shown to me as Very Scary People.

How different is this account of the party! The book tells the story of the formation of the party to combat police violence against Blacks and to promote pride in Blacks. The party rapidly gains new members despite having some of the key members jailed or killed, and it accomplished many of its goals. But then it began to decline and was finally dissolved.

A well-told and well-researched tale of an activist group that arose out of the movements of the sixties.

Abdul has lots of stories to tell, but he has trouble with writing and spelling—trouble just in getting the words down on paper. Then a real author comes to Abdul's school and shares his own troubles in getting the words down on paper.

A child learns that his stories have value even when he isn't good with knowing and following all the little rules of grammar and structure.

This is a children's picture book and it's a children's chapter book. And it's absolutely delightful. It may be my favorite of the 1001 Children's Books.

It wasn't easy to find.

Tow-Truck Pluck is the story of a little boy, Pluck, who drives a small tow-truck around town, and finds a place to live in the tower of the Pill Building. Pluck quickly makes friends with Aggie (whose mother is obsessed with cleanliness), the Stampers (a dad and his six unruly sons), Dolly (a helpful pigeon), Zaza (a cockroach who comes to live with Pluck), a wolf, a hermite (“I am not here” and, yes, he's a hermite, not a hermit), Carl (a one-legged seagull), a curlicoo (an enormously tall bird that hatched from an orange egg and was taken to be stuffed in a bird museum), and so many more that I can't tell you all about them.

Why isn't this book in every library in America? It would make a fabulous read aloud at schools or for parents with their children. I'd give it six stars if I could.

The cat wants a horse.
But the book cannot draw a horse.
The book can draw other things. The book draws other things.
The cat has many wonderful adventures.
But still the cat wants a horse.
Can the book draw a horse?

Aw, super fun story. Easy for any kid to read. And filled with illustrations any kid could draw.

And did I say that this story is super fun? It is. It is super fun.

Wanda admires her brother Zane. He shows courage and bravery all the time, and Wanda wishes she could, too. She really wants to try the Coaster of Doom, and so, for a year, she attempts to up her brave by doing things she's a little nervous about doing.

Then the day comes when she is in line for the Coaster of Doom and Wanda shows her brave!

A satisfying ending for a story written just for all of us who sometimes get a little scared about scary things.

A 1001 CBYMRBYGU.


Baby Bear and Grandbear have so much fun together. Hide and seek. Ring-a-ring o'roses. Playing in the snow. Roll over. The Bear Went Over the Mountain is just one story in this wonderful collection, The Big Baby Bear Book. Perfect.

Oh where, oh where has my little bear gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his soft little paws, and big wet nose,
Oh where, oh where is he?

We first meet Nana as the lead in an operetta at the Théâtre des Variétés. Everyone in Paris is talking about her, and we see right away that though Nana cannot act or sing, there is something about Nana that draws men to her. In every case, the men drawn to her lose everything in their attempts to keep her for themselves. As the novel continues, Nana goes from being a street prostitute to a high-priced call girl supported by rich men, by men of position and power. But Nana is easily bored, and she runs through the money of a man and discards him. Eventually she brings many men to ruin, and she ends up dying a horrible death.

Nana, like many women I have known, depends on her beauty and sex appeal to get along in life. She treats people like objects to be bought and thrown away; Nana is truly an awful human being.

I can't say I enjoyed reading this book. I was happiest reading the last pages in which Nana's corpse is gruesomely described, and even then I couldn't really take satisfaction in seeing a terrible end for this woman who was treated so badly as a child and as a young woman and who was never really loved for herself.

Nana is a picture of a world I have never visited before, a world I would rather not visit again, a world I wish did not exist.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

David Copperfield relates the story of his life from the moment he was born to a time he has settled into his career as a writer. Copperfield meets an astonishing array of people—Aunt Betsey Trotwood, Uriah Heep, Steerforth, Mr. Micawber, Peggotty, Dora, Little Em'ly—who are themselves now classic characters of literature, and he experiences an equally astonishing array of life experiences that shape him from a naive boy into a thoughtful man.