My choice for nonfiction Monday this week is Alexander Graham Bell, written by Victoria Sherrow and illustrated by Elaine Verstraete.This is an On My Own Biography published by Carolrhoda Books.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I found the story of Aleck’s early life interesting, and enjoyed the way he tried to make his dog talk. Just the thing that a boy would do. I appreciated, too, that the author pointed out that Aleck was not good in math and Latin while he excelled at science. A child doesn’t have to be a jack of all trades and an expert of none. It is good to nurture strengths and not worry too much about weaknesses. Children who are not good at geography can still do great things in other areas.

I loved the illustrations in this book, too. They are lively and warm and the facial expressions made me want to know the people. Aleck’s family seemed like a loving, close-knit family, so it makes sense that Aleck grew up loving art and music and science but devoting much of his life to helping deaf people.

This is a great book for an early reader (first or second grade) to enjoy. It sketches out Aleck’s story in broad, but interesting, strokes, and makes me want to get more books about him so I can learn more.

For more reviews of nonfiction books visit Great Books for Kids to see this weeks roundup.

I’m sorry about this, but even though I have been out of the hospital for two months, I took a good long while recovering from my surgeries and I have been sluggish at getting back on track with my work. I feel like I’m still behind, panting to catch up.

So, I didn’t get any interview questions in to Nancy Bo Flood (I should have because she’s lived all over the world and is, I’m sure, a fascinating person—I hope I’ll be able to interview her later) or to Tony Kuyper, the man behind the photos in Sand to Stone and Back Again.

Nor did I get permission to post any of the photographs from the book on my blog. So I shall refrain.

But you can easily go over to Tony’s gallery and see his photos. They are amazing.

One of the reasons I love Sand to Stone and Back Again is that it shows me what I’ve been too busy to see. I’ve driven through the desert. I’ve seen stone formations. I’ve been in caves. But I haven’t really slowed down, not often enough, anyway, to see the beautiful pictures tucked away in the middle of the arid places. A good photographer moves around his subject until he finds the light and angle that will bring out the picture that will elicit emotion when it is viewed later. He forces the world into the background and pulls forward the subject that moves him. In one sense he lets the big picture go, so we can see the tree without being distracted by the forest. So we can forget about the hustle and bustle and revel in the moment.

Go to this page, and drink in that picture for a minute, and read the blurb below it, and then tell me Mr. Kuyper is not a poet in his own right. I warn you, though, start clicking on those pictures and you’ll be there for a good long time. Also, some of you may not thank me for this…but…you can buy prints or cards with his photos on them.

OK, on that happy note, I’ll leave you to it. I know once you click over to Tony’s site I’ll have lost you, anyway.

I’ve talked about Sand to Stone and Back Again before, but I didn’t say a lot about it because I knew I wanted to tour the book later with the KidzBookBuzz.com blog tour.

Today, after being delayed by a couple of months, we finally are starting our tour for Sand to Stone and Back Again, written by Nancy Bo Flood, with photographs by Tony Kuyper.

This book is a lovely picture book for a couple of reasons. Today I want to talk about the writing—the story and the language in the book.

Nancy Flood sets out in this book to show children that they share some things in common with nature in general and with sandstone in particular. She takes a circle of life approach to her subject. A mighty mountain starts with one grain of sand. That binds together with other grains until millions are bound together to form a mountain. And then wind and rain wears against the stone breaking it back to down to sand.

The author compares this process to the process of life and growth that humans beings enter into. We start out as a single cell, she tells us, then that cell multiplies. Over and over, the cells multiply, until there are millions bound together in each person. By implication we will be ground back down by the winds and the waters in our lives, too. Just like the sandstone. Flood didn’t go there—that would have been a bit much for a picture book. But I like that the bright child will no doubt make an unconscious connection with the death of the sandstone and the deaths of men.

I think taking this approach adds to the depth of the book. Different folks will interpret the message differently—some may bring a pantheistic view to the reading and see an interconnectedness to all of universe. Others, Christians like myself for instance, will inject into the work the understanding that humans are created, and so they share things with other parts of creation. Also I see that there is a rhythm to creation and a beauty that speaks to me of an orderly and beautiful Creator.

I like that the author was not dogmatic with her words and left the interpretation open. She stated what is true—sandstone has a life cycle, if you will, and so do humans—and left the application of that truth up to the reader.

But I like the way she wrote this book even more because I like the repeating theme she used. In one series of pages she starts with rain washing off the back of a mountain, and then moves to water trickles cutting into the mountain to make tiny cracks. After that she shows us bigger channels that have been cut and which allow narrow streams to flash through, and she finally gets to the Grand Canyon. So there is a method, a time-line, a traveling through the life of the sandstone that repeats itself through the book.

Those of you that know me, though, know I’m a word person. I love the sound of words and the rhythm as they drip across the page. Particularly in a picture book this is important, I think, when you have fewer words to play with. So here is one small bit from the book I loved:

Narrow streams flash through corkscrew corridors, slicing out twisty, twirly, skinny slot canyons.

Isn’t that a gorgeous bit of writing? Doesn’t that paint a wonderful, textured and active picture?

If you have children studying geology, or the life cycles found in nature, this would be a lovely book to read with them. It uses word poetry to match the poetry of creation.

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little about the photographs.

In the meantime, please feel free to visit others on the tour:

SMS Book Reviews
Never Jam Today
SmallWorld Reads
Our Big Earth Media Co.
My Own Little Corner of the World
Dolce Bellezza
KidzBookBuzz.com
Cafe of Dreams
The Hungry Readers