Ah, the power of guilt. As Edgar Allen Poe fans know, there's no escaping it. Penny, the mouse heroine of Henke's easy-reader series, learns this the hard way when she spots a marble on her neighbor's lawn. The marble, big, shiny and as blue as the sky, proves irresistible. It seemed to say to Penny: "Take me home." And so she does.
Guilt soon plants itself in Penny's heart, and she hides the marble in her dresser drawer. At dinner she loses her appetite when she notices how the oranges look like big orange marbles and the peas like little green ones. In bed that night she tosses and turns, and when she finally falls asleep, she dreams the marble grows so big it demolishes her dresser.
The next morning Penny makes a decision about the marble. Beginning readers, many of whom have probably struggled similarly with their conscience, will be relieved to see Penny do the right thing.
In Penny and Her Marble, Henkes has delivered yet another winner. In the Horn Book's March/April issue, he confesses the seeds of the story. When he was five, he swiped a plastic medallion from his neighbor and was stricken with guilt. See, crime does pay!
Penny and Her Marble
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow, 48 pages
Published: March 2013
Naming a new doll or stuffed animal is of supreme importance to young children. Cleaning house a few years back, I forced my adult daughter to go through bag after bag of stuffed bunnies, bears, cats, and other assorted animals with the challenge to get rid of at least half. There had to be more than a hundred and each one that was pulled from its trash bag home had a name, whether it be Ella, or Sleepy William Rabbit, or Silly Bones Jones.
In Kevin Henkes' second easy reader starring Penny, the young mouse receives the gift of a doll from her doting grandmother. Penny loves the doll at once but is stumped by what her name should be. Her wise parents advise her not to force the issue, and, left to her own devices, Penny eventually finds the perfect name for her doll, one that alert young readers might be able to predict before Penny's announcement.
Both Penny and Her Song and this new book hark back to classic easy readers, a genre I'm admittedly partial to. The story is unhurried and unfolds in its own time. The text is written in rhythmic, simple sentences with certain words repeated to help new readers with fluency. Here's a sample:
Penny unwrapped the doll.
The doll had pink cheeks.
The doll had a pink bow.
The doll had a pink dress
with a big button.
The illustrations support the text and add delightful details, like the wicker basket Penny's two wiggly baby siblings are often put in to stay out of trouble. And no one can do subtle expressions on a mouse face like Henkes. Bravo!
Penny and Her Doll
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow, 32 pages
Published: August 2012
Kevin Henkes's picture books were well-thumbed in our house back when my daughter was a child. She especially loved Julius, the Baby of the World, which features Lilly, a mouse child who does not take well to the arrival of a baby brother. As Lilly puts it: "If he was a number, he would be zero." I spent hours reading this story to my daughter, and later, when she was school age, she'd laboriously copy the text in her childish hand. What I found amazing about her dedication to this work of sibling rivalry is that she's an only child.
Fast forward twenty years. Penny and Her Song is Henkes's latest book and it's an easy reader. Penny, the story's young heroine is, like Lilly, a mouse child, but with two baby siblings. While this would have driven Lilly around the bend, Penny takes their existence in stride. Where Lilly was boisterous and outrageous, Penny is quiet and resourceful. She comes home from school bursting to share her song with her parents. Except she can't. The babies are asleep. Now Lilly would have thrown a tantrum on the spot. Not Penny. She goes to her room and attempts to sing the song to herself and to her glass animals. Neither does the trick. She needs a proper audience. After dinner Penny finally gets her chance and after listening, her parents and the babies join the show, singing until they are all tuckered out and ready for bed.
When I started the story I fully expected Penny to act up when she didn't get her way. How refreshing that Henkes, without moralizing, shows his readers the benefits of using self-control and patience. Short, direct sentences combined with Henkes's always delightful illustrations give us a winning easy reader children will want to read again and again. And, who knows, maybe even copy the text word for word.
Watch Kevin Henkes as he talks about Penny.
Penny and Her Song
by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow Books, 32 pages
Published: February 2012
