With villain names like Professor Von Evil and the Flaming Eyeball, how can you not be dying to read Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon’s debut picture book THE ASTONISHING SECRET OF AWESOME MAN, illustrated by Jake Parker? With short text and plenty of derring-do action (take a peek inside), this picture book will be a favorite of kids who love comics, as well as kids in your storytime programs.
In its starred review, School Library Journal said “the depiction of a showdown between Awesome Man and his nemesis-the Flaming Eyeball-is priceless. Readers may notice that there’s a moral peeking out from Awesome Man’s cape, but they’ll still grab this story in their ‘ginormous Awesome Power Grip’ and not let go.”
Monica Edinger (of Educating Alice and Huffington Post fame) recently had the chance to interview Michael Chabon himself! Here’s how the conversation went:
Photo by Jennifer Chaney
From reading your Pulitzer Prize-winning adult novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, fans probably know you have a long-term relationship with superhero comics. Can you give us a taste of your own childhood introduction to them and how that might have inspired this story of Awesome Man?
Well, of course I remember seeing Batman and the first animated Spider-Man show on television when I was very small… but my first true plunge into the world of superheroes came through the comic books that my father began to bring home for me, as soon as I could read. He had grown up reading them himself, and felt they were an important part of a kid’s education.
You clearly revel in language and names — Professor Von Evil, Moskowitz the Awesome Dog, positrons, and…pooped (and what kid doesn’t like saying “pooped!”). As an adult author known for reveling in words and language, how did you manage to balance that with the need to keep things relatively simple for a picture book audience?
I was really thinking about the parents here–how much it meant to me, when I was reading a book aloud to my children for the 33832nd time, if there was a little verve or snap to the language. Probably the all time champ, in that regard–to me, at least–is William Steig. Nobody used English, in kids’ books, the way he did.
You have children of your own — were they helpful in the creation of this book?
I wrote this book for my younger son (I have two, and two daughters), Abe. He was the direct inspiration, in every way, for the main character of AWESOME MAN.
Are you a reader of children’s books yourself and if so, what are some of your favorites?
One of the greatest, and most lasting, pleasures of having children, for me, has been the excuse and the opportunity that bedtime reading has given me to revisit, and re-relish (usually), so many of the books I loved a
This month for the Book Review Club, I curled up with Michael Chabon's, Summerland. I chose the piece because I'd never read anything by Chabon. Simple as that. I didn't know he'd won the Pulitzer Prize before choosing the book. I also (guilty cough) didn't know how good-looking he is. Wow. A good-looking man who can write? Compelling.
As is Summerland.
The story is about 12 year-old Ethan Feld, whose mother has died. His father, an engineer, wants to build dirigibles for a living, but as balloons that people can use individually. He moves Ethan and himself from Colorado to a small island, Clam Island, off of the coast of Washington to fulfill his dream.
His father also has another passion, baseball. Ethan doesn't share that passion, at least not at the beginning of the book. He's horrible at baseball, but plays for his father, winning himself the nickname Dog Boy because he stands at the plate waiting and trying to get a walk - like a dog - rather than trying to hit the ball.
Games on Clam Island take place on a narrow section of the island that, unlike the rest of it, is constantly sunny. Oddly sunny. Out of the ordinary sunny. Ethan soon learns why. The section of land is pleached - co-joined - with an alternate universe, The Summerlands.
The Summerlands is inhabited by ferishers - fairies - giants, sasquatsches, and the stuff of legends and old adventures. What's more, everybody in the Summerlands plays baseball. EVERYBODY. Much to Ethan's surprise, he's recruited by a strange old scout to play baseball for the Summerlands, and learns, when he journeys between his world and theirs, that it's for more than a world cup, it's for the world as we know it.
Wily old Coyote - the book is full of a rich mixture of various legends and folklore, this one being American Indian - is trying to bring about the end of the world. Ethan must somehow stop him. Coyote, however, gets a hold of Ethan's father and tricks Mr. Feld into reproducing the picofiber material that he created for his dirigibles for Coyote's end-of-the-world plans.
In the meantime, Ethan races across the Summerlands to stop Coyote. The trickster is planning on poisoning the Lodgepole, the tree, the brancehs of which both hold up and connect the Summerlands, the Middling (where we live) and the Winterlands (wher Coyote and his band of tricketers like to hang out), and the Gleaming (where spirits reside) - the alternate universes.
The tree is fed by a well, and Coyote wants to poison the well by using Mr. Feld's picofibers to transfer Nothingness down to the very roots of the tree. To get to the well, Ethan - like an hero - has to go through a series of adventures, most of them involving some form of baseball, which test his character and help him find his true strength and courage.
If it sounds rich and complex, it is. Chabon deftly uses 500 pages to introduce and bring to life this intricate and moving tale. While perhaps the greatest criticism I've both experienced and read about the piece is its slower pacing, the longer I've thought about it, the less inclined I am to mark it up as a fault of the book. Ethan's dad, Mr. Feld, says more than once that "a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day." Chabon creates and weaves into the story steady, relaxed, even pacing, I think, to get the reader herself to slow down, to chew on the gristle of the story, and to perhaps, if one can slow down enough, relax into and get lost in the journey, rather than race pell-mell through its adventures and mishaps toward that all-encompassing climax. Of course, the book does have a climax - one that will you make smile and remember fondly your own hours spent in a game up pick up baseball - but I'd venture to say, after having traveled through Summerland at a leisurely pace, this read is a lot more about the journey being the goal, as much as the climax of the story.
So if you're up for a relaxed adventure rich with tongue and cheek as well as a 
smattering of the world's collection of mesmerizing folklore, that will leave you yearning for the Summerlands as much as Ethan, pick up Chabon's bases loaded, sunny day, just you and your bat against the tomfoolery of the world's oldest trickster Summerland.
Go on, pick it up....you know you want to.
For more awesome reviews, mosey on over to our fearless leader's blog, Barrie Summy, whose put up links to them all.
