Some More Nontraditional Titles

I feel as if recently I've been covering titles that don't fall into any kind of traditional kid category. Well, here are a couple more.

I haven't read Opening Day by Susan Bartlett, but it caught my interest because it deals with a subject that would have been considered traditional generations ago but now is of interest to a select group of children. But to those kids, it is probably of great interest, and I suspect they don't see many characters like themselves in contemporary children's literature.

I'm talking about hunting. I'm not a hunter, myself, but I grew up in a hunting culture, the same hunting culture Bartlett presently lives in. I had family members who hunted. When I was in high school, each year on the day before hunting season opened, the principal announced over the intercom, "Tomorrow is the first day of hunting season. It is not a holiday." And yet attendance always went down on that day.

So I can understand that there's a kid population that may be looking for books like Opening Day, which was published May 1.

According to The Hartford Courant Call Me Henri by Lorraine Lopez has won the 2007 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Call Me Henri was published by Curbstone Press, which has been publishing books and promoting educational programs from Willimantic, Connecticut for over thirty years.