HELP! WE NEED A TITLE! by Hervé Tullet

-



By now, I hope that everyone reading my reviews has had the chance to enjoy Hervé Tullet's fantastic, innovative, very fun to read picture book PRESS HERE. I had the happy coincidence of having a copy of Tullet's newest book, HELP! WE NEED A TITLE! with me for my last librarian substitute gig, just after PRESS HERE won the   California Young Reader Medal. Every year, California students, with the help of their school librarians, nominate books published in the last four years in four different categories. CYRM is a program sponsored by four different organizations comprised of teachers, librarians and reading specialists and, having been in a few school libraries, I can tell you that the kids love the reading and voting process. They were very excited to have me read HELP! WE NEED A TITLE!, especially because Tullet playfully references PRESS HERE in his new book.

The premise of HELP! WE NEED A TITLE! breaks down the fourth wall when the reader opens up this unfinished book, surprising the characters inside. Not sure what to do, the characters try to give the reader what they want, from a story to a nice landscape to a bad guy. 


When these ideas fail, they realize that they probably need an author and they call for one, as loudly as they can. Happily, Tullet hears his characters and opens the door to his studio, inviting them (and the reader) inside, where his story is on the drafting table - and a copy of PRESS HERE is on the bookshelf, along with Tullet's other books. As I read this book repeatedly to classes ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade, over and over, the kids were surprised and excited to see Tullet himself pop up in the story. This is something that almost never happens in a picture book, making HELP! WE NEED A TITLE! a great example of how picture books are created and how a story is made. 


Tullet trties to appease his characerts (and readers) by giving them a quick, mostly unsatisfying version of their story to the vociferous complaints of the characters. Tullet tells them that they can basically take a hike if they don't like it. Then, he asks readers to turn off the light (by pressing HERE) as they leave the book, and to please tell other readers NOT TO CHOOSE this book because it's just not done.

Really, though, just like PRESS HERE, this isn't the kind of book that is well served by a written review. Happily, as with PRESS HERE, Tullet has made a very entertaining book trailer that, like his books, is INTERACTIVE! You get to choose to learn about more about Tullet or hear him read the book, which is priceless. Because of that, I included that video as well...





Source: Review Copy

Popular posts from this blog

Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala

-
Image
Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala Review Copy from Abrams Kids I picture-walked Be a Tree! three times before I actually read the words. Felicita Sala's illustrations for Maria Gianferrari's poetic text are mesmerizingly immersive and richly colorful within a palette of earth tones. Throughout the text, Gianferrari, who shares her inspiration for this book in the author's note ( Peter Wohleben's The Hidden Life of Trees ), gently maintains the human connection to trees and the connections (and communications) trees share with each other.  Be a Tree!  begins exuberantly, inviting the reader to "Be a tree! Stand tall. Stretch your branches to the sun. Let your roots curl, coil in the soil to ground you." From your spine/trunk to your skin/bark and your heart/pith, the words carry you inward and then zoom outward and up to the canopy and ultimately, the forest. "You are one of many trees," and our roots "twine with fung
Read more

Under Earth, Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński, 112 pp, RL: ALL AGES

-
Image
Under Earth , Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel  Mizieliński is their fourth book I have reviewed here and their fourth book with the marvelous Big Picture Press , a publisher of oversized, highly illustrated, gorgeous books who believe that books should be "visually intelligent, surprising, and accessible to readers of all ages, abilities and nationalities." BPP definitely achieves this with every book they publish and, if you are a book lover, you will want to seek out all their titles. Under Earth , Under Water will appeal to anyone who likes to look inside things and understand how things work. With Under Earth, Under Water , the Mizielińskis, who have an illustration style that is filled with tiny details and a unique palette, take readers on a detailed journey, from the top of the page to the bottom, over and under land and then sea. The endpapers serve as the introduction and table of contents, with images scattered across the spread, page nu
Read more

Reading Levels: A Quick Guide to Determining if a Book Is Right for Your Reader

-
Image
While I wrote an article titled Reading Levels: How I Assign Reading Levels to Books, How the Publishers Do It and How You Can Help Your Reader Find the Right Book at the Right Time that discusses how reading levels are determined by professionals and amateurs like myself, there is more on this subject to discuss. Determining the reading level of a book from the children's section is never easy, mostly because there are several different standardized methods of determining reading levels. Add to this the fact that knowing their children's reading level is most often the only tool a parent is armed with when exploring the bookstore, library, website, etc, and the job becomes even more difficult. While I think that knowing a child's reading level is a very valuable tool if your child is reading below grade level, I think that it is a secondary consideration when finding books for children reading above, especially well above, grade level because, in most cases, content app
Read more