Dance by Matthew Van Fleet

Are you ready to….dance? Shake a tail feather with Matthew Van Fleet’s adorable interactive board book, titled DANCE. The entire premise of the book is that a little newborn chick does not know how to dance, so it is up to the other older and wiser animals to teach him!

From the first page, you’ll be clapping your hands to the beat.

“Hey, Chickie Baby,” said the rhino at the door. “How ‘bout we shake some tail feathers out there on the floor?”

“I’d love to,” said the little Chickie Baby, “but I can’t. I just hatched yesterday and I don’t know how to dance.”

Hula Hippo teaches Chickie how to shake, Bunny teaches the Bouncy Bunny Hop, Gator teaches Chickie the Gator Mashed Potater. There are even tap-dancing pigs! Make all the animals dance by pulling on the tab. By the end of the book, you’ll be shaking, tapping, hopping and bopping around. Get up and DANCE with Matthew Van Fleet’s newest interactive board book. Find the song that accompanies the book at VANFLEETBOOKS.COM

Music Feeds the Soul

Sandra Boynton

One of the great things in life is watching a child fall in love with a song. When that happens, nothing else exists. The child instinctively starts moving to the beat and singing whatever he or she thinks the words are. Sandra Boynton's Frog Trouble gives children a songbook filled with likely candidates for a lovefest, and it includes the words so they can sing along with the CD with confidence, and with her signature animal characters to amplify the fun. 

What child wouldn't fall for Dwight Yoakam's ballad of a dog named Hank ("I've Got a Dog"), who howls to his crooner-owner's "lonesome song" and doesn't come when he's called, yet sticks by his human's side. A plucked string imitates a canine whining sound, and the spoons performed by Peter and Gordon Scott evoke the do-si-do of the best friends' dance. The Fountains of Wayne extol the virtues of "big trucks and little trucks and long trucks and tall," for "delivery or long-haul." A "downshift" in "Trucks" lowers the key for the singers, while a command to "throw it into fifth" leads to a modulation up. In the songbook, a pig in shades sits at the wheel of a red pick-up filled to capacity with apples. Later in the songbook/album, more than a dozen of Boynton's porkers star in Ryan Adams' wistful interpretation of "When Pigs Fly." 

Boynton and Ford vary tempos and tones beautifully. They follow up the soulful "Heartache Song," performed by Kacey Musgraves, and "When Pigs Fly" with a honky-tonk tune called "Broken Piano" (sung by Ben Folds) and the hilarious "Copycat," for which kids will attempt to keep pace with lead singer Brad Paisley trying to shake off the relentless feline chorus sporting identical hats and green guitars. For children who love to dance with partners, Boynton includes the choreography for "The Alligator Stroll" (a chicken crashes the reptiles' line dance).

In Boynton's equivalent of liner notes, which adults--especially teachers and musicians--and aspiring young singers and guitarists will regard as a treasured process log, she reveals that Alison Krauss was the first artist they signed to the project, for the elegant "End of a Summer Storm." The musicians' stellar work on this selection led Boynton and Ford to request that they play the entire album. With the variety of voices, moods and rhythms, these musicians provide the through line, along with Boynton's playful illustrations and design. You may also enjoy Boynton's TEDx Talk about working on the album.

A Cautionary Tale

Sharon Draper

How sad that the events in Cleveland this week point to the need for a book like Panic by Sharon Draper. In fact Draper, who divides her time between Ohio and Florida, said in a recent interview that Panic was inspired in part by the disappearance of two teenage girls in Ohio who went to buy an ice cream cone from an ice cream truck down the street and did not come home. (They, too, were able to get away from their abductor.)

Draper says we tell our 6-year-olds not to speak to strangers, but rarely do we tell that to our teens. In fact, the three young women who were abducted by Ariel Castro did not know him but got into a car with him. Just like Draper's protagonist, Diamond. Her book reads like a mystery--it's a page-turner--so teens may not realize how much they're learning about human nature in this cautionary tale until they've finished it.

In Panic, a good-looking 40-something man starts talking to Diamond in the Food Court at the mall, as she waits for her friend. He knows a lot about her, says he has a daughter who goes to high school with her, takes a phone call from his daughter in front of Diamond. He says he thought he was supposed to pick up his daughter, but his wife got there first. All attempts to earn her trust.

He tells Diamond, who carries her dance bag with her, that he's holding auditions for a dance part in his film. Diamond's cell phone is nearly out of juice, but she texts her friend to say she's going to an audition and will see her later. Draper paints Diamond as a responsible kid; she gets swept up in the possibility of starring in a film with two of her idols, and pushes aside all common sense.

Adolescence is a tricky time. Teens yearn for independence; they want to try on adult responsibilities. Yet they're on that cusp between childhood and adulthood. They don't yet have the experience to judge whom they can trust and whom they cannot. Diamond trusted the wrong guy.

A subplot in Panic follows Layla, the lead dancer, and Donovan, a big money, big car–driving fellow who's jealous of any time Layla spends away from him. Draper connects between these two men the need for complete control of women. How much is Layla willing to give up to stay with Donovan? It's a slightly different dilemma, yet it's not entirely. How much do you put the trust in someone else at the expense of your own intuition, your own dreams?

Panic is a true conversation starter, a way into some tricky topics, and a good way to explore the fact that there are some people who simply have evil intentions, and we have to be wary. By the end of Draper's book, both Diamond and Layla have realized that part of becoming an adult is taking responsibility for their own welfare. No one can do it for them.