Late folk legend Dave Van Ronk recorded a version of "Peter and the Wolf" that we've been digging on lately. Z is intimately familiar with both the story and the music of Peter and the Wolf - a favorite game of ours around the house is to quiz each other: "Which sound does the wolf make Z?" "Buuuuuh dah dah dah dah dah dah da da da da daaaaaa" (Yeah, it's hard to type - you can find a clip of each character's theme here.) Van Ronk put his on twist on the story by recording Peter and the Wolf using jug band instruments, and it's so much fun. Seriously, could there possibly be anything cooler?

Peter is the fiddle, the bird a penny whistle, the duck a kuzoo, grandpa is a mandolin, cat is a clarinet, hunters are a "snappy guitar," the wolf is "three deep voices" humming the wolf theme. Also included are a guitar, banjo, a jug and more instruments! Really, you've got to hear it to appreciate it!

The CD also includes six other songs, including one which Van Ronk describes as his "theme song," "Green, Green Rocky Road." It's a bit mellower than the "Peter and the Wolf" but you can get a taste of Van Ronk's talent and style in the video below.



This fun album is an easy ZRecs Top Pick. Its fusion of the jug band style and instrumentation with the classic story and music of "Peter and the Wolf" is a treat for any family. - Jennifer

How young is "too young" to explain sex to kids? That isn't something we worry much about. It's the how we could use help with.

Our approach to what schools awkwardly silo as "sex education" is to explore the topic in as much depth as Z seems interested in at any given time, which means that at four she is well versed not just in how pregnancy works but in sperm, eggs, and how they get together. Most of this learning has taken place through long conversations she has initiated and pressed forward,. This often involves us grasping for the right language to describe things on her level without "opening doors" to topics we aren't necessarily ready for, while allowing her to push us as far as she sees fit. Frankly, it's a process that cries out for a manual to help guide some of these discussions and make them more real and comprehensible for children through simple language, detailed diagrams, and some humor.

So we're thrilled to have found Robie Harris' and Michael Emberley's It's Not the Stork: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Family, and Friends, a book for kids ages 4 and up that explores a whole host of sexual and procreative topics including:

• the physical differences between boys and girls


• conception, the stages of pregnancy, and childbirth


• puberty


• infant behavior


• family structures (single parents, large and small families and, very subtly, two-mom or two-dad families)


• friendship and "okay" and "not okay" touching

Questions and answers are explored in a way that feels natural, using talking-bubble asides both between a curious young bird and bee who travel through the book's topics and between the many people pictured throughout the book; blocks of narrative text are relatively short, and cover topics in a way that is both breezy and, when facts of physiology and reproduction are involved, quite thorough.

Better yet, It's Not the Stork can be purchased on Amazon.com for under $10!

The authors also have a nice-looking previous book, It's So Amazing!: A Book About Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families. It's So Amazing! is intended for the same age group, and was published in 2004; it isn't clear just how different these two books are, except that It's So Amazing does include brief coverage of sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS, which frankly we'll wait a bit before introducing (. We've found Z at four and a half is fascinated by and entirely comfortable with It's Not the Stork! and would recommend it to anyone looking for this kind of book. - Jeremiah

Robert Crowther has been publishing pop-up surveys of modes of transportation at a rate of about one a year since 2006, and the relative simplicity of the papercraft in the three books in this attractive series - Ships, Trains, and Flight - are a reminder that pop-up books were not always made so delicately that young children could hardly touch them.

Ships, which we requested for review from publisher Candlewick Press, does a subtle bit of rethinking of standard pop-up orientations and makes a smart move in tilting the book sideways, wall-calendar-style, to allow artist Robert Crowther to build grand pop-up constructions along the center spine in simple, boxlike shapes that are given nuance and complexity in their detailing, rather than the many delicate paper parts that come together in the books of artists like Robert Sabuda, whose fragile and fascinating constructions come together in a way that suggests a role for computer modeling in papercraft. And it works. Ships engages children with detailed popups, colorful diagrams, and many small moving parts, with blocks of text arranged around pictures and diagrams in a layout of bite-sized chunks of information that young children can explore with adult guides and older ones can consume rapidly.






Parents will enjoy the clean, modern look Crowther and Candlewick have given the series, which has pulled the artist from the shadows of some previous pop-up work that looks more childlike and a little more visually dated.

All three of these books are significantly discounted on Amazon.com, selling for $10-$12, compared with a cover price of $18 each.


The artist also has a new book called Pop-Up House of Inventions that explores the origins and workings of household objects. Like the other books, it's oriented wall-calendar-style, and looks fascinating. - Jeremiah

We're often wary of children's literature that focuses on safety lessons because of quality issues that plague the genre. The topic is important but often not very interesting or fun, and authors often seem to turn out such titles more as a trade job than a creative endeavor. But prolific author Jean Pendizwol and illustrator Martine Gourbault are on a roll with a series of dragon-themed books that teach young children valuable safety lessons, and we have been pleasantly surprised by their light touch, memorable stories, and engaging humor.

Kids Can Press, publisher of the series, sent us two stories to check out - The Tale of Sir Dragon, a book about bullying, and Once Upon A Dragon, which tackles the unpleasant (for me) issue of stranger safety. In each of them, Pendizwol takes a unique approach to the topic that makes it far more engaging and easily understood to young readers.

Both books are, unlike many well-meaning tracts on safety, fun to read. Once Upon A Dragon sees a child and his friend thrust into a book of fairy tales, where Little Red Riding Hood's wolf attempts to lure them into the forest, Hansel and Gretel's witch offers them candy, and Cinderella's coachman tries to get them to get into his coach (by telling them that the Three Little Pigs are in trouble and sent him to get the the boy and dragon). The fantasy setting, rather than making the issue less real to readers, actually makes it both more compelling and less disturbing. Z was able to ask frank questions about why they shouldn't get into the coach with the man, and I was able to provide real-world advice and instruction, but we always had the fantasy and story to return to. It was a very comforting way to approach a difficult topic, and there is significant four-year-old humor in the fact that the (male) Dragon is frequently dressed as a a girl fairy tale character and is very gullible, only to be saved by his more worldly human counterpart.

The Tale of Sir Dragon has the same two characters facing a bully's aggression in a constructive way during a medieval-themed day camp. Again, Pendizwol's storyline sets us up for success: Because they are at a camp, there is a clear figure of adult authority to go to who can help resolve the issue; he is also play-acting the role of king at the camp (wearing a paper crown over his baseball cap) and calls the bullies as well as the victims to the "round table" to help work out a resolution. Again, the dragon is the object lesson - in this case, the victim of the bullies - while the child plays the role of defender of his friend and assists in negotiating a solution. And again, the blend of fantasy and reality speaks volumes to a young child making sense of a challenging emotional landscape.

The two authors have two other books in this series, one on water safety and one on fire safety. You can find them all on Amazon.com. - Jeremiah

We're always on the lookout for great books to help our family celebrate holidays in a non-religious context. Here are some of the best books we've found for kids' ages 4-8 for the Spring Equinox / Easter holiday.

The Country Bunny and the Little Golden Shoes by Du Bose Hayward, illustrated by Marjorie Flack. First published in 1939, The Country Bunny is a fascinatingly feminist take on motherhood for its era. Author Hayward (the man who also wrote Porgy, which would be adapted into George Gershwin's musical Porgy and Bess) tells the story of a happy mother of many children who gives up her dreams of becoming one of the five appointed Easter Bunnies (yes, there are five, not one, didn't you know?) who are the swiftest, wisest, and bravest bunnies in the land - but then seizes the opportunity to show her stuff when selection time comes, and proves that her childrearing skills actually demonstrate her worth. She then takes on the challenges of helping the other four Easter Bunnies deliver eggs to all the children of the world. | Buy on Amazon

The Bunny Who Found Easter by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Helen Craig. A little bunny hops through the seasons of the year in search of a place called Easter, because that's where a wise old owl told him he'd find other rabbits. In the end, the bunny learns that "Easter was not a place after all, but a time when everything lovely begins once again." Through the rabbit's journey, which spans the summer, winter, and spring, The Bunny Who Found Easter emphasizes the Easter holiday's position as a time to celebrate and a time of renewal of the earth and the seasons. | Buy on Amazon


The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson, illustrated by Jan Davey Ellis. The Spring Equinox tells the history and traditions of spring equinox around the world in short stories. It tells of the Iranian celebration of No Ruz, the Russian Maslenita, Passover, and Easter. Good for slightly older children, maybe 5 or 6 and up. | Buy on Amazon

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd. This may not be an Easter book, but it's one of my favorite children's books and you can't have too many bunnies for the holiday. In The Runaway Bunny, a little bunny wants to run away from his mother but mama lovingly thwarts every one of the little bunny's plans. Hurd's imaginative illustrations are beautifully painted and feature a hidden bunny-child and a mama coming searching. Z has enjoyed locating the hidden bunny in the pictures since we first found the book when she was two years old. | Buy on Amazon - Jennifer

With this post we welcome Erica Fry, a New York City middle-school teacher and dear friend, to our book reviewing team. Erica regularly reads middle-grade fiction to recommend to her students, and will be covering middle-grade fiction for teens and pre-teens on Punnybop.

On the surface, Matt De la Pena's Mexican WhiteBoy is a baseball story. Sixteen-year-old Danny Lopez spends the summer in National City, California with his dad’s side of the family, playing baseball and, through the game, coming into his own. Whether Danny is home with his mom, attending all-white Leucadia Prep, or hanging out in a cul-de-sac in National City, the game cuts across all boundaries and serves as his mooring on the turbulent sea of teenage life.

At heart, however, Mexican WhiteBoy is about how personal motivation grows and evolves - the fallout of acting on misplaced hopes contrasted with the freedom that comes from losing one’s illusions. Danny is handsome, silent, and full of potential, too brown to fit in Leucadia and too white to belong in National City. He speaks in gestures, getting by on shrugs and nods, all the while maintaining an internal dialogue with his father, whom he hasn’t seen in years. Danny’s dream, and his plan this summer, is to travel to Ensenada, Mexico, where his father is living, and track him down. A talented pitcher, Danny hustles to raise money for the trip and even visits a travel agency to find out about booking his flight. As the summer progresses, however, he wonders why he keeps putting it off.

De la Pena’s characters are gritty and compelling. He knows them inside and out, and has mastered their movements, their voices, the subtleties of their interactions. Though he tackles some challenging themes: mixed-race identity, self-mutilation and family violence among them, his treatment feels authentic, neither trite nor overreaching. He moves fluidly between nostalgia-inducing descriptions of playful games of truth or dare and unsentimental depictions of brutal violence. Though the book is written at about a sixth grade reading level, it is clearly intended for older readers (14+).

De la Pena’s previous book, Ball Don't Lie, was a Young Adult Library Services Association Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Readers who enjoyed Ball Don’t Lie will likely devour Mexican WhiteBoy, though parents concerned with violent content should preview the book for their children.

You can pick up Mexican WhiteBoy and Ball Don't Lie at Amazon.com. - Erica