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You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien

2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. Did you know that? Yeah maybe the astounding array of commemorative books tipped you off. We've had books by everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Norman Mailer hit the shelves this year. Many, if not most, of these books have been inspiring and beautiful. Many, if not most, have made me cry.

But while I am fully aware of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission as a concrete example of the highest heights that can be achieved - by man and by mankind - I have wondered just how engaging this story is for young people. My own children are mystified and a little alarmed when I get all choked up reading them Brian Floca's atmospheric and detailed Moonshot or try to explain to them the unique perspective represented by former astronaut Alan Bean's paintings in Mission Control, This is Apollo.

That's why I think Patrick O'Brien's work of "speculative non-fiction" is so important this year. For my kids, and for their friend Alex, who is the model for the kid in the book (disclosure: Pat's family and mine have been friends since our 3rd-grade boys were barely walking, much less traveling through space), space travel is not something that happened on a tiny black-and-white TV set in the kitchen forty years ago. Space travel is not even the - let me take a deep breath and try to use an adjective that is not pejorative - somewhat tepid space shuttle program.

Space travel is "huge ships shaped like pine cones with lots of little sonar devices and everyone wears goggles that can switch from night vision to underwater vision to sunglasses." (I asked.) They think the future will involve "a permanent space colony on the Moon as big as Texas." "Or maybe at one of the Lagrange points!"

But ok, that's my kids. Not every kid knows that the gravitationally stable Lagrange points are good spots for a space station. But will argue that my kids are representative of many kids when they think that space travel is part of THEIR future. And Patrick has done them a service by writing and illustrating, with his usual blend of meticulous research and stunning art, a reasonably plausible conception of travel to Mars. His journey includes a space elevator up to a geosynchronous orbit point, a nuclear thermal ship that gradually accelerates to 75,000 miles per hour as it covers the 35,000 miles to Mars, and a Mars lander that bombs through the Mars atmosphere before parachutes drop it gently to the dusty red surface.

The friendly, explanatory second-person narration contrasts nicely with the giant grin on the face of the kid as he bounds across the Martian surface. The impression is that of a teacher chaperoning a really good field trip, trying to keep from letting on that she is just as excited as the kids are.

Anyone familiar with Pat's previous books (on sailing ships, extinct mammals, knights, and, er, dinosaurs in space) will know that the man researches like a maniac. Marianne Dyson, herself an author of numerous kids' books on space, picked apart every fact presented in You Are the First Kid On Mars when she reviewed the book, but revised her opinion when the author emailed her, addressing her objections and supporting his every phrase. It is really nice to know that the book stands up to that kind of scrutiny.

The artwork in this book was done on a computer, a departure for O'Brien, who, in addition to illustrating his own books, paints large oils of ships under sail. His mastery of the software and techniques involved is impressive - many of the illustrations look like they could be photos, which is important for those kids who want things to be above all else "real".

We had the delightful O'Brien family over for dinner this weekend, and after my husband's excellent fish tacos, I had the chance to ask Pat some questions about the book.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: What was your inspiration for writing You Are the First Kid on Mars?

Patrick O'Brien: My editor, Tim Travaglini, was really into the whole space idea. It was his idea to do a speculative book about going to Mars. My books usually come from my ideas, but this one came from him.

YNL: Was there anything different about writing about future science vs. your usual subjects?

PO: All of my other books were about historic and prehistoric nonfiction subjects. It is fiction, because it hasn't actually happened, but I was treating it as a nonfiction book. The reason that it’s in the second person is I read some books like that as a kid. You will go to the Moon is the one that I remember most clearly. And they had it all wrong, it’s really funny to see all that. Presumably, my stuff will be all wrong.

YNL: What was your research process? Do you regularly read science periodicals like Wired or Scientific American? Or was this a new area for you?

PO: I’ve always been a science guy, I was a biology major in college, but my son is really into space. We watch a lot of space stuff on TV. When Alex was really young, he liked real space more than the fictional movies. We'd watch NOVA together, and his toys were Apollo models, not Star Wars toys. I read a lot about space with him, and on my own.

I used the most up to date, most accurate information that I could find about what it would take to get to Mars. I went through the NASA website, books on space travel.

YNL: Is this your first work created digitally?

PO: This is the first book I illustrated on the computer.

YNL: You're such an accomplished painter though - why did you decide to do it using techniques that are new to you?

PO: Well, for fun, as a change. It was different, and I just thought it was appropriate to the subject matter. The thing about using the computer to do the art, a lot of people who don’t do it think you just push the spaceship button and you get a spaceship. You push the astronaut button, and you get an astronaut, and then you make it do what you want. But you still have to draw it, you still have to paint it. It’s just one more medium. When they invented watercolors, it didn’t put the oil painters out of business.

But there are advantages. You can make infinite changes - with watercolors, pretty much once it's down, it's there. You can make a certain amount of changes with oils, but with the computer, you can keep tweaking it until it's just what you want. I used Corel Painter X and a tablet, so it’s a lot like painting. It wasn't hard to learn.

YNL: Did you find it hard to stop making changes? Was it tempting to keep touching it, trying out variations?

PO: No. A little. I know what I’m going for, I have a picture in my mind, and when I've made that, it’s done.

There you go, folks. I made it, it's done. You will go to the Moon was, not surprisingly, on my shelf as a kid too.

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Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman

Andrew Zuckerman has made an entire little industry out of the images from his big fat Christmas-present book Creature. There are notecards and floor puzzles and a calendar, and now there's an ABC book.

I kind of can't fault the guy for it, either. When I swung open the cover of Creature abc, I gasped. His pictures of animals great and small - details, portraits, and full-length shots - are lit so brightly I worry for their fur, and shot (and printed) at such a high resolution as to appear three-dimensional. I just looked through the portraits (of humans) on his web site, and I didn't actually want to be that close to Nick Nolte.

The big bold black sans-serif text is easy to read. The little fact boxes about each animal that appear at the end are easy to digest. And there is just nothing funner than turning each thick page with a three year old. "What is that animal? It's a LION, you're right! Is that lion gonna eat you? NO! You eat that lion up first!"

Definitely my new favorite present for two- and three-year-olds.

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The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

Jerry Pinkney is a god. I think that's my whole review. No, wait, I have to mention that this book is wordless (except for beautifully lettered onomatopoeia incorporated into the paintings).

In a year when Jerry Pinkney also illustrated The Moon Over Star, I think he is his own stiffest competition for a Caldecott.

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The Roar by Emma Clayton
Almost five hundred pages of immersive postapocalyptic British fiction, full of luminous sensory stimuli, economical (but not stingy) world-building, and an extra helping of good old-fashioned LANGUAGE. I read it in two days, and I loved it, and I want to do it justice. So I'm going to keep this short.

He paced and watched the sea and for a while he felt like a firecracker with its fuse lit, a bit dangerous - as if when she walked through the door he would erupt and fly around the room breaking the lights, setting fire to things, and taking lumps out of the ceiling. Then he felt all soft and gooey, as if when she walked in he would melt and she would find nothing more than a puddle of love in the middle of the floor. Then he felt both of these things, that he was a firecracker about to explode, but instead of sparks, he was full of love and it was all going to be a bit messy.

Do not take this passage the wrong way. It occurs on page 471, and contains I think the first and the second (and the last) instances of the word "love" in the book. I picked it because it gives you Emma Clayton using a twelve-year-old's casual vocabulary to precisely describe a complex emotional state - some trick! Plus, cute there at the end.

The best science fiction - and, I would argue, the best teen fiction - pulls pieces of the status quo out of context so that the reader has a chance to see some aspect of contemporary life from a new perspective. In the case of The Roar, Ms. Clayton has picked natural resource management, environmental degradation, and (because she is English and name me one English author who doesn't, given the chance) the injustice of class.

Exciting, beautiful, gut-wrenching stuff, fully on par with, say, Jo Walton and other adult sci-fi writers. Cyborg animals, fighter planes, high-stakes video games, diverse characters, mutations, truly dreadful villains, and food made of mold! No wonder it nearly crests the 500 page mark. The ending feels a little rushed perhaps, but by the time I hit it, I was so swept away that I did not mind.

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Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon
It's possible that my opinion of this book has been influenced by the appearance in my bed this morning (at, possibly, 7am, I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on yet), of a seven-year-old who wasn't interested in it when I suggested it to him yesterday at the library, but who had apparently woken up, read the whole book, and now needed to synopsize it for me, read the funniest passages out loud, and tell me that he needs the next book in the series RIGHT NOW. He could barely get the words out for laughing.

After we kicked him out (my saintly husband: "Let Mommy sleep, ok? Go read something else."), I fell back to sleep and dreamed about pudgy animated dragon pirates. Ursula Vernon, get your agent on the phone with Noggin. Danny Dragonbreath is good animated.

So. Danny Dragonbreath is the only semi-mythological creature in a school full of non-mythic reptiles and amphibians. He gets a little picked-on for this, but his is an upbeat, enthusiastic semi-mythological 5th-grade spirit, and he doesn't let that bully Big Eddy the Komodo dragon get him down. His best friend Wendell is (predictably) a more cautious, intellectual type, and in the way of mismatched best friend pairs everywhere, Danny has to cajole Wendell into assisting him in his pursuit of unorthodox solutions to common problems.

In this instance, the problem is a research paper on the ocean, a subject that Danny knows nothing about. Danny's solution? A visit to Cousin Edward the sea serpent, who takes the gung-ho Danny and freaked-out Wendell on an undersea tour. They explore a coral reef, a sunken ship, and a deep-sea trench. Along the way, sneaky Ursula Vernon finagles interesting facts about sea creatures and ocean phenomena into the adventure.

But it's the snarkalicious writing that will keep my seven-year-old, and other kids who appreciate funny (I'm thinking it might appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid devotees, if I can get them past the dragon thing) coming back for more. In a sidebar, Vernon writes, "A school of potato salad can skeletonize a cow in under two weeks, assuming that the cow doesn't get bored and move."

Our library system has Dragonbreath filed as a graphic novel, but it's not. It's one of those hybrids, something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with pages of panels carrying the action in some places and pages of text doing the bulk of the work. There could be more graphic passages, I have to say. Ursula Vernon's drawing style is extremely nice - full-on grownup quality work, with a strong line quality and bold shading that highlights each panel's central idea. Think Owly.

Such high contrast sometimes makes a comic look ominous and bleak (Dark Knight Returns, Grendel), but in this case, the choice of grass green as a highlight color keeps that from happening, and it's a technique that is particularly appropriate and effective in the undersea scenes. The vertical panels that show the sinuous Edward diving or rising to the surface are unusually lovely. Page layouts are varied and interesting, but still quite simple and easy to follow.

In sum: snappy, giggle-inducing narrative and strong, coherent graphic passages tell a fun, friendly, exciting story. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs with bated breath!

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Today I Will Fly! by Mo Willems
It is obviously completely superfluous for me to review this book. I have lauded the Elephant & Piggie series frequently on this blog. I have personally handed Elephant & Piggie books to dozens of parents, some of whom have actually sought me out later to tell me that little Susie didn't think she was "a reader" until Gerald and Piggie showed her that she was. Heck once I even hired a skywriter to fly over a teaching convention and spell out "GERALD & PIGGIE TAUGHT ME TO READ!!"

But today, my six year old son sat down and read this book to me, cover to cover, sounding out the words. I didn't know he knew how to read. When I told him that, he said, "Neither did I!" We are so proud, and so is he. When I asked him what he wanted to read next, he instantly responded, "Percy Jackson and the Olympians".

In all fairness, I did hear him sort of struggle through Time to Pee! last night with his dad, but I was half-asleep and literally thought I had dreamt it.

What do you hear in your dreams? If it's not a six-year-old reading Mo Willems, you're doing it wrong.

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I am woefully behind in my YA reviewing. I have been reading YA books all summer - in part because I like YA books, partly because I got so many YA ARCs at BookExpo, and of course, partly because I like to be able to recommend books to teenagers.

But I haven't been able to bring myself to review them. Sure, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Steifwhatever was fine, with romance and uncertainty and music and telekinesis, and the similar but less romance-y Troll Bridge: A Rock'n' Roll Fairy Tale I would recommend without hesitation.

The forthcoming Sphinx's Princess, in which Esther Friesner imagines the pre-royal life of Nefertiti (King Tut's wife) the same way she did Helen of Troy's in Nobody's Princess, was perfectly serviceable clean teen historical romance fiction. The Goldsmith's Daughter, about an Aztec teen who crosses gender lines to protect her family, was terrific - right up until she fell in love with a conquistador. Hey, doesn't everybody love a good-Nazi love story?

I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I have independent confirmation that YES it is a good choice for young adult readers. Wondergirl, my favorite middle schooler, read it over the summer at my suggestion, then rented the movie and laughed all the way through it. Hee hee hee!

But WHYYY have I not reviewed all these things? What is the MATTER with me? Have I lost my joy in reading and nowadays I am just plowing through these novels for the sake of getting them done? WOE!




Cough. That was probably a little more melodramatic than the situation warrants. Anyway. I am, by contrast, supernaturally excited about this book, the most recent in the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil series. I am a newcomer to Maggie, her friend D&D Lisa the evil genius, her paladin of a boyfriend, and the trouble - EEEVIL trouble - that seems to dog their footsteps. I picked up the book because I liked the coolio Craig Phillips cover, and because on it, Maggie wears aviator sunglasses while motoring along in her Jeep with no doors.

And now I've just finished it and I'm happy, I'm happy happy happy. Maggie and Lisa are geeky plus good-looking, but in a believable, Kristen-Bell-in-Fanboys kind of way. Their banter is witty but not so witty that it sounds fake. They call each other "moron" with regularity. They are aware that together, they make up Bart Simpson's sisters, and if you point it out, they will roll their eyes so hard they'll almost knock themselves over.

Maggie is psychic and Lisa is a witch, and BF Justin has the looks, the good manners, and the physical competence of a Riley Finn without all the whining. Seriously, I'll never forgive Whedon for what he did to that character. Make him evil, kill him off, but emasculating him like that was just mean.

The plot is TIGHT. There's enough going on that the author could be forgiven for letting a detail or two go unexplained, but she does not. Furthermore, answers are not hurled into the text at the end in any old "Have this droid's memory wiped" manner. They are woven in, sometimes not even overtly. My new pal Rosemary Clement-Moore doesn't seem to think it's necessary for a character to say, "Oh so that's why the demon absorbed that shotgun blast without injury." If it's not a major plot point, she'll let you make that connection yourself, which, I have to say, is extremely generous. If I'd written anything half so clever, you can bet I would be showing off all my tied-off ends like a Boy Scout who just earned his Knots merit badge.

PLUS. Maggie is petite and powerful, and sassy and cute. I'm a geek. But I didn't think of Buffy until page 270, when she tells a giant amalgamated demon who is doing a good job of intimidating her, "You are so full of crap." Of course, now I can't stop.

The book is, somewhat refreshingly, not without God. I am a little weary of the dances that many authors do in order to keep their teen demon-fighting free of any actual discussion of faith. As when Buffy runs into a high school classmate in the cemetery and he asks (about God), "does he exist, by the way? Is there word on that?" and Buffy answers, "Nothing solid."

In this book, Lisa, in particular, is quite concerned about going to Hell after having summoned a demon in a previous book. There are Catholic characters who participate in the Back Demon Back, saying prayers and swinging branding irons.

Our setting is the fictional Dulcina, TX, right down in the foot of Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico. Lucky for us, Clement-Moore knows her Texas. She writes the landscape - its smells and sky, its few features, the effect livestock has on it, and most of all its subtle rises and falls - really well, with unstrained, natural imagery. You get the feeling she's spent some time on a horse.

(I briefly became a little concerned that the "Moore" in "Clement-Moore" was as in Christopher Moore, which would make sense, kind of like when I found out Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld are married, but looks like not. Apparently, though, she and I are the same person, because she lists Television Without Pity and Go Fug Yourself as good wastes of time, and Susan Cooper and Meg Cabot - whose blog writing I thought of more than once while reading this book - as hero authors. Plus she liked Firefly. Awww.)

Funny and smart, exciting and hip, Highway to Hell was just the squirt of lime I needed to cut through my midsummer complacency.

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Thunder-Boomer! by Shutta Crum, illustrated by Carol Thompson
A summer afternoon story, magnificently paced as a storm builds and then crashes over a farm family, onomatopoeia out the wazoo, and Dad's underwear flying around the farmyard.

Scooter's scared! He hides his head beneath
the couch,
but the rest of him won't fit.

Lovely rhythm, homespun imagery, powerful watercolor paintings. Ahhh. A perfect peach of a summer book.

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Audio books will save your life. Or at least keep you out of jail. Yes. Don't argue. Stop it. It's true! I'm serious! Do you want me to pull this car over? Because I swear I will leave your narrow butt right here by the side of the highway! We have at least 13 more hours in this car today and if you keep arguing with me you will not be going home with the rest of us! And stop making that "Eeeee" sound. I know it's you.

But a crappy narrator, or a stupid story, will NOT help. I listened to The DaVinci Code one summer in the car and I nearly drove off a bridge in desperation. Oh my god that book was terrible. So - the following titles have been selected as being engaging for adults and for kids, often with superlative narrators, classic appeal, and/or historical interest. Look in your local library for these - they're awfully expensive to buy.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Fever 1793.



Avi. The true confessions of Charlotte Doyle.

Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting.

Balliett, Blue. Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, and The Calder Game. I admit that I'm not a giant fan of the nasal narrator, but don't let that stop you. Probably just me.



J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan. Narrated by Mister Jim Dale.

Bruchac, Joseph. But not for super-little kids - too scary!

Buckley, Michael. The Sisters Grimm (series). Awfully funny and even more clever, although I didn't like the way the sisters sniped at each other in the first book. The kids did though. I'm just too sensitive.

Collins, Suzanne. Underland Chronicles (series).



Cooper, Susan. The Dark is Rising (series). IF you can find them. Ably narrated by Simon Jones.

Dahl, Roald. British A-listers such as Alan Cumming, Eric Idle, Jeremy Irons, and Lynn Redgrave read Dahl’s subversive stuff. As does the author himself.

Dowd, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery.

Fleming, Ian. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. SOOOO much better than the movie. Hard to find, but worth it. First of all, mom's not dead, she's along for the ride, and second of all, the ride is great!

Funke, Cornelia. The Inkheart series, the Ghosthunters books, Dragon Rider, and The Thief Lord. Brendan Fraser narrates some of these, and he has a nice voice for it. But they're no George of the Jungle. (And yes, any excuse will suffice for me to link to a picture of Brendan Fraser in that movie.)



Gaiman, Neil. The Neil Gaiman audio collection. Silly + weird = fun. Don't miss the author interviewed by his daughter at the end.

George, Jean Craighead. My Side of the Mountain. Dated, but still beautiful and exciting. Another one that's kind of hard to find.



Landy, Derek. Skulduggery Pleasant series, read by Rupert Degas. Rupert Degas is my new hero. His characterization of the Troll under Westminster Bridge alone is worth the price of admission. There's an interview with the suave, sarcastic, conceited Skulduggery himself at the end. You know, Rupert Degas also reads Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Brr - if I didn't have kids in the car, I would totally be listening to that.



Law, Ingrid. Savvy.

Lofting, Hugh. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. Don't let the interminable, strange, sappy movie spoil this crazy old story for you. There is no Anthony Newley and his fruity accent here.



Lowry, Lois. The Willoughbys. Vellly intelesting narration by Arte Johnson, who, apparently, is still alive.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter. Award-winning narration by Jim Dale, who I swear has won every award except knighthood and an Oscar for his work on this series.



Riordan, Rick. Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Ok, I don't like the reader's brutal Queens accent and extremely poor Greek pronunciation. But I suck it up, because the stories are terrific and the kids LOVE them. And so should you.

Sinden, David, Matthew Morgan, Guy Mac Donald (aka The Beastly Boys). An Awfully Beastly Business (series). The GRRRREAT Gerard Doyle reads these. Can't wait! Book trailer here.



Selden, George. The Cricket in Times Square. Friendly narration by the versatile Tony Shalhoub, lovely violin passages.

Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events (series). Although this series is no longer the hot ticket in print, I feel like the audio versions will persist in popularity, because of Tim Curry's chuckling, mournful, spitty, insane readings. A depressing yet beautiful and hilarious song by The Gothic Archies is a bonus on each audio book.



Stanton, Andy. You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum. A truly distinguished audio book. Read by the author, he takes liberties with his own text, adapting certain 4th-wall-busting asides to the audio format. Plus, my god this book is funny! The red fairy in the bathtub who hits Mr. Gum with a frying pan whenever his garden starts looking messy... brilliant!

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. Alfred Molina ("Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip") does for the sound of Treasure Island what N.C. Wyeth did for the look - now, whenever I think of that book, I will hear Mr. Molina's voice. Stevenson's very large and at times obsolete vocabulary (what is a mizzen, anyway?) is a lot easier for kids to digest in the audio context. And Molina is a genius with characterization, by turns silky, gruff, naive, you name it.

Stilton, Geronimo. Read by Edward Herrmann.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. The Little House books. Cherry Jones reads these, in a timeless voice that is both dry and warm. Even if you know these books well, her perfectly paced performance brings them to life in a new way.



White, E.B. Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Julie Harris reads Stuart Little, and White himself memorably reads Charlotte's Web. Beautiful and kind of heartbreaking there at the end.

Winkler, Henry. The Hank Zipzer series. The Fonz reads his own books, and when you hear him do it, you'll think, "Seriously? Somebody cast this funny little guy as a cool motorcycle dude?" The seventies really were a little weird.

Woodson, Jacqueline. Anything she reads herself is always going to be beautiful and affecting.

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How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals by Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson, illustrated by Ward Jenkins
Oh my gosh do I need this book!

When you select books for school libraries, you are always on the lookout for sports-related books. It's a fact that some people - usually gentleman-type people, although there are ladies who fit this description too - just won't read anything that's not about sports. So we need sports books for every assignment: we need sports fiction, sports poetry, sports science project books, and lots and lots of sports biographies.

Most of that stuff is easy. Dan Gutman and Tim Green can carry a lot of water for a school librarian (especially Gutman - guy, if I ever meet you, I'm gonna kiss you right on the mouth!). But then there are the bios. Now, when you select biographies of athletes, you want to cater to local tastes. I mean, of course, we're all going to buy LeBron and A-Rod, but you might not plonk down your school system's hard-earned $17.95 on, say, Troy Polamalu unless your school is full of Steelers fans. Even if he is an athletic polymath with fabulous hair. Which, yeah, no Steelers fans in Baltimore.

So there's my problem. Baltimore. Which is in Maryland. We play things like lacrosse here, and do you know what I have to offer the young ladies looking for biographies of outstanding female lacrosse players? Zip. Also, our football team is the Ravens, whose players are famous not only for their athletic prowess, but also for their arrest records. So, no juvenile biographies of famous Ravens. (Way to go, JAMAL.) And? we don't even have a basketball team.

So, here in the kids' sports biographies aisle in Baltimore, we've got Johnny U, who played for a team that doesn't even live here anymore, and Cal, who the kids are kind of rapidly forgetting. Thank heaven, then, for Michael Phelps. Can I make little sparkly fireworks shoot out of his name? Blogger? Help me? No? Ok then you have to imagine them.

Michael Phelps is a hometown boy. Born, raised, learned to swim, went to school here... heck, the kid even uses the library where I work (when he uses a library, which, well... after all, you can't read in the pool, regardless of what the condition of a lot of our Large Type books might seem to indicate). Michael Phelps is a bona fide sports hero. Unprecedented achievement. Also, accessible to the point of goofy. Ok, there's the pot thing, but as far as I'm concerned, that just proves he's a real guy. It's not like he tortured dogs or beat up his girlfriend. He just got - one has to imagine - really, really high. Seriously. The lungs on that guy? Bad decision though. Bad. Say no to drugs.

Say yes to How to Train with a T.Rex though! Michael gives us a quantitative look at his Olympics training - in 6 years, he swam 12,480 miles, napped for 273 days, ate half a ton a year, leg-pressed 9 tons per workout... you get the idea. These figures are given scale in multiple ways: we see Michael sitting down to eat half a car, swimming the length of the Great Wall, and lifting a NYC subway car (the W, my old line!) with his legs. Curriculum connection to measurement and scale lessons - niiice! The illustrations are perfect - as loose-limbed and friendly as our hero himself. Although rendered digitally, they have a very nice, tactile, watercolor-y feel. Colors are both bright and earthy. I feel like I've seen the work of Ward Jenkins before (but apparently I haven't), and I like it.

Eight gold medals to this fun new book!

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The Moon over Star by Dianna Hutts Aston, pictures by Jerry Pinkney
Give me a second. I am a mess. Let me get a Kleenex.

Wow.

I was four years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon (while their shorter, funnier counterpart, Michael Collins, circled the block in the car), and I still feel privileged to have witnessed that moment. Hell, my husband and I named a cat Buzz Aldrin, we're still so impressed with this human feat. So I guess I should have expected that this book would give me goosebumps.

But my goodness - this is one damn fine book. I summarized it to a jury of my (younger) peers later in the evening, and just my synopsis made them all choke up.

Dianna Hutts Aston gives us that day in 1969 as experienced by an eight-year-old girl (who may or may not be Mae Jemison) on her grandfather's farm in a town named Star. Mae and her cousins pray for the astronauts in church in the morning and build a rocket ship out of scraps from the barn in the afternoon. Mae is the oldest, so she gets to pretend to be Armstrong as they count down to liftoff together. Later, they watch Cronkite on TV and hear those immortal phrases, "The Eagle has landed," and even later, "One small step for man..."

In between times, Mae thinks about the astronauts' children and whether they are proud but also scared, and about President Kennedy, who did not live to see this dream attained, and about her own grandfather, who does not approve of the space program. "Why spend all that money to go to the moon when there's so many folks in need right here on Earth?"

When I googled this title, I learned that President Obama read this book aloud to a group of second graders at a charter school in D.C. two weeks into his presidency. Well. If I wasn't impressed by this man before (and I was), I am now. If I tried to read this thing aloud, I do not think I could manage it. Which, given the class of second graders I know best, would still be a fine thing, because they would want to know why, and I would have the opportunity to tell them.

Or I might just show them the back cover of this book, with Jerry Pinkney's freakin' masterpiece of a full moon, and then open to his two-page spread of the Apollo 11 rocket clearing the launch pad. When I see that image, I always think of my dad explaining to me, "The U.S. space program was miserable in the beginning. People used to say, 'Our rockets always blow up.'" (Tom Wolfe quoted the exact same line in The Right Stuff.)

But hundreds, thousands of people believed that we could do it, and in the end, that rocket didn't blow up, and those astronauts had the courage to strap themselves into it, and we went to the damn moon. And if all that can happen, and if Jerry Pinkney can paint the Moon just as beautifully if not more beautifully than he has always painted people and trees and birds... well, then, an eight-year-old black girl in the town of Star can do anything with her life, and that's the message of this book, and now I'm snifflin' again.

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The Day-Glo Brothers: The true story of Bob and Joe Switzer's bright ideas and brand-new colors, by Chris Barton, illustrated by Tony Persiani

One of the things I do, as I state in my sidebar over there, is manage the collection for my kids' school library. I buy the books. The school is opening a new school next year, and they've asked me to select all the books for the new school's library. It's a labor of love, believe me. It may sound like fun, spending $30 grand on kid books, but when you think about covering the entire span of human knowledge, for children aged 5 to 14, it's kind of brain-melty. Just when I think I have assembled a nice, even collection, I smack myself on the forehead and go, "I FORGOT ANCIENT CHINA!" or "CRAP! THE CIVIL WAR!"

There's also the problem of picking lots of nonfiction without relying too heavily on series books. Now, lots of fine authors write series books, and I'm not saying that all series suck... but it's a fact that all series should be scrutinized carefully before purchase. Publishers do not always put their best design teams on series books, for one thing. For another, the pictures on the cover may be, er, AWFUL.



AAAA!

Which is why, when possible, I will always snatch up stand-alone juvenile biographies instead of series biographies. I read 94 series biographies this winter for an assignment - and exactly 8 of them made me say, "Oooh!". (I will not count the number that made me go, "Aaack!") For example: there are 176 biographies of Ella Fitzgerald written for children, but I will pick the one by Andrea Davis Pinkney every time - because I believe that Andrea Davis Pinkney sat around and thought about Ella Fitzgerald while she wrote the book, that Brian Pinkney had some Ella playing in the studio while he did the paintings, that they put a little heart and soul into that book.

The Day-Glo Brothers is another of these books. Chris Barton's author's note reminds me of that scene in Working Girl when Melanie Griffith hauls out a Page Six clipping to explain just how she got the idea that the Big Investor might be interested in buying a radio station. Barton read Bob Switzer's 1997 New York Times obituary and realized that the story of Day-Glo paint was one that he wanted to tell.

You get the feeling that he had to explain that in some detail to the publisher when he proposed this, his first book. I would bet that Day-Glo, to most people, is just kind of an annoyance that we've learned to live with because it saves lives, and as long as we avoid Spencer Gifts, we don't have to deal with it much. Just saying: it might not seem like the most captivating subject at first blush.

And there we would be wrong. Not only is this biography chock-full of arresting details: a fluorescent angel food cake, a headless Balinese dancer, a flaming billboard, and a terrible accident involving a railcar full of ketchup, but also... oh come on, do I really have to finish this sentence? With facts like that, who needs skill?

But. If I had a checklist of Things To Look For In Kid Nonfiction (and I kind of do), every box would be checked (except for the "photo" box - I think kids always want an author photo and a subject photo, just to prove it's really nonfiction).

Barton sets the context swiftly, helps us distinguish Bob from Joe with a few easy-to-remember character illustrations, documents the process of discovery, provides lots of examples, and follows through on the applications of their inventions. As befits a mid-century success story, the illustrations are swingy and hep. The color palette is all black and white and grey at the beginning of the book, and as Bob and Joe embark upon their lurid journey, the colors get more and more intense - clever! Back matter and web content expand the science documentation, and Barton shares his own process of discovering the Switzer family story, in the above-mentioned author's note.

Of the things that I want the students at our school to take away from a book, this last may actually be the most important to me.

The Day-Glo Brothers is a real winner. Assignments for Chris Barton: the story of Mike Nesmith's mom, the lady who invented Liquid Paper; and the story of Hedy Lamarr - seriously? the screen siren who invented a torpedo guidance system? I want our new friend Chris to be the one to tell those stories.

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Mungo and the Spiders from Space by Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower
Well, looks like Your Neighborhood Librarian has a new artist boyfriend. Sigh. The beginning of a relationship is always so magical, n'est pas? My previous secret husbands of children's illustration have included Adam Rex, William Joyce, and Oliver Jeffers (who gets extra points for being Irish). Plus Antoinette Portis and Emily Gravett.* I have no gender hangups.

I read and enjoyed Two Left Feet when it came out, but I don't think I reviewed it. I remember liking the artist's strong but delicate line, old-timey fashion sense, and bangin' colors, all of which Mungo and the Spiders from Space has, times twenty. It has a steampunk vibe, very like Chris Riddell's work, but more energetic. My colleague TinkerCinderBelleAhontas finds it busy, but that's just because her son is still a baby and they like soft colors and one visual idea per page. Which is cool. But my sons, my boys who are 6 and 7? Jeez, my sons craaaave "busy". They want extra bonus cartoons, they want books within books. They want trompe-l'œil effects and they want marginalia and detail-alia and backgroundalia and illustrated endpapers and extra jokes on the back cover.

All of which, not coincidentally, Mungo and the Spiders from Space - has. Plus: a plot that keeps the reader hanging, slime, goop, a butt joke, and robots. Sigh. It's love, in point of fact.

Think I'll go gaze at the cover of The Shadow World for a little while.

*And David Roberts and Marla Frazee and David Shannon and Kadir Nelson and LeUyen Pham and a few others...

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Tillie Lays An Egg by Terry Golson with photography by Ben Fink
Chickens, like penguins, are always funny. When I had chickens, and, yes, I had chickens in my city backyard, I used to go out a couple times a day to just sit and watch them bumble around and giggle to myself. Chickens - well I don't think I'm going to offend them by saying this - chickens are... not bright. My chickens, for example, were dumb enough to get themselves eaten by anything with teeth, and at least one thing without teeth. I've sworn off keeping chickens because I can't endure the heartbreak of losing any more. Hawks, foxes, raccoons, a dog, and I think possibly a family of possums consumed a total of eleven chickens at my house.



So I dedicate my review of this darling book in loving memory of Micker-Micker and Mrs. Miller, timid Penguin, big beautiful Barge, rock star Lou, Lou Two, three pullets that the kindergarten had raised from chicks, and two bad-tempered Polish hens whose names I can't remember. The funny, fun, beautiful photographs in Tillie Lays an Egg made me heave a wistful sigh thinking of how wonderful it was for my kids to have a chance to observe the life cycle firsthand, to think about food and where it comes from, and how nice it was to pet those gorgeous girls.

As you can probably tell from my photos, taking pictures of chickens is not easy. Either they are curious about the camera, and you get freaky close-up pictures of beaks and eyes - not the most attractive aspect of a chicken - or they are terrified of the camera, and run like idiots as soon as they see it. So the photographs in Tillie Lays an Egg, which are well-lit, in focus, and STAGED, for goodness sake! are not only entertaining, but really impressive.

As is the concept as a whole. Tillie, a chicken who thinks outside the coop, prefers wandering in search of worms to waiting for her turn in a nesting box. Every day she explores a different corner of the farm, and every day she lays her egg in an unexpected place. Children and adults have been observed enjoying the hunt for Tillie's eggs in each day's picture, and chuckling over the vintage chicken-themed items that pop up here and there - a chicken doormat, board games, table linens, and a juice glass that I covet.

I can't think of a more lovely hommage to these sometimes underappreciated farmyard friends, and I was so pleased to read that the chickens in the book - and all the chickeny props - are the author's own. I look forward to the further adventures of Tillie.

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You're a bad man, Mr. Gum! by Andy Stanton, read by the author

"'I am glad you asked me that,' said Friday, 'because the universe is my specialist subject and I am the winner of quizzes where that's concerned.'

This audio book had our whole family giggling all the way up Interstate 95 from Georgia when we came home from Spring Break. Really. Now, I don't want to take away from the print edition, which is certainly a funny book, with hip little illustrations and a chapter entitled "Mr. Gum Has a Cup of Tea" whose entire text is "Mr. Gum had a cup of tea," but on audio...

Let's put it this way. The other audio book that we really enjoyed on that trip, Neil Gaiman's The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection, included an interview with the author as a Special Bonus Feature. The interview is conducted by Gaiman's daughter Maddie, who asks good questions, including: "Why do you like audio books?" Neil answers this (and all the other) questions with his accustomed brevity, saying, (and I am paraphrasing here - that thing about Gaiman's brevity was me lying) that he likes audio books because he as an author can read the book as he first heard it in his head when he wrote it. Funny voices and all.

So, Andy Stanton apparently had choirs of lunatics speaking in his head when he was writing You're a Bad Man, Mr. Gum!. Or maybe just Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and the entire Monty Python ensemble, including the dead guy who wanted to be a doctor. His characters are by turns terrible and silly, mystical and silly, adorable and silly, crabby and silly, and... silly. PLUS we get extremely Adams-y silly stuff like"

"She ran past a cat's ears that were lying on the pavement and a cat's nose and whiskers that were lying on the pavement and a cat's body and tail and legs and eyes and claws that were lying on the paveme -- in fact it was all just one cat, lying on the pavement."

And don't look for any Special Bonus Features on this CD, or in the book, because there AREN'T ANY.

Or... that's me lying again.

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Patrick the Somnambulist, written and illustrated by Sarah Ackerley
To all of the tedious, obvious, cheery-fake picture books that try to demonstrate that Being Different Has Hidden Benefits! REALLY! Your Love of Ballet / Eccentricity / Fashion Sense / Favorite Color / Intelligence / Strabismus / Bipedalism / Love of Poetry / Lack of Athleticism / Species / Size / Diet / Unusual Color Makes You Special (and ok, most of these books are neither tedious nor obvious, I am just being lazy, because I tend not to remember books I don't like) - I finally have a response: LOOK AT THIS ONE.

Patrick is a normal penguin kid who is also a sleepwalker. His concerned parents take him to therapy. The therapist confirms that Patrick is a normal penguin kid who is also a sleepwalker. Teaches Patrick a fancy word for himself - somnambulist. Patrick adores his new word, is empowered by it, does great things under its imprimatur. Goes on Conan. Becomes a multi-millionaire at the age of six.

The little full-page watercolor illustrations are witty and sweet, done in a rather somber nighttime palette that in no way harshes the happy, giggly mellow of the text. Love the mute, soulful penguin expressions (no mouths on these penguins and yet we know just what they're thinking). Kids will get a laugh out of all the odd situations Patrick finds himself in as a result of his sleepwalking, and parents will surreptitiously enjoy, "At first his parents just thought he was just weird."

Who hasn't thought that at one time or another?

Endpaper bonus: Patrick wrapped in toilet paper, rocking an umbrella, and wearing a plunger on his head.

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Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young
Breathtaking. Pass-around-the-workroom-and-marvel-at-it gorgeous. Intense. Gripping. A terrific story. I seem unable to describe this book except in tiny movie-blurb phrases. It's that good.

Gazing upon the illustrations in Tsunami!, I could feel the thunder of the great wave in my chest. I felt the pressure of the silence before the wave, and I heard its hissing retreat. The two-page spread of the wave hovering over the village is the best work that Ed Young has ever done, and the story is just as strong. He depicts scale so masterfully here - the temple gate, in pieces, tiny against the crashing wave... the villagers so small as to look like confetti on the exposed beach.

I am grateful that the story is set "long ago" in Japan. If this book had been about the more recent tsunami, it would have been too emotionally wrenching for me, and possibly for younger readers too.

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Snow Falling in Spring by Moying Li
I have to say, I always found the story of Mao's War on Sparrows to be a little far-fetched. Leader of one of the world's largest countries, and he takes aim at... sparrows? Seems a little petty. On the other hand, commanding every man, woman, and child in China to go outside, 24 hours a day, for weeks, and frighten off millions of tiny birds so that they have nowhere to land and drop dead out of sheer exhaustion? Inconceivably arrogant. Almost an arbitrary exercise of power. Also, I know it was 1958, but surely somebody must have realized that eliminating such a widespread species might have complicated consequences.

All in all, it sounds exactly like the kind of thing some short-sighted, delusional monarch might decree in a fairy tale.

I recently read about it in Sparrow Girl, a picture book set during the Cultural Revolution, written by The Talented Sara Pennypacker (the Clementine books, Pierre In Love) and illustrated by the likewise talented Yoko Tanaka. A little girl rescues a few sparrows from the Sparrow War and keeps them in her family's barn. In spring, when it becomes apparent that the absence of sparrows has caused a proportional increase in the insect population, and crops all across China are being ravaged because of this, she releases the last sparrows in all of China, and there is hope.

It's a lovely book and a sweet story, but it reinforced my "Naw... really? Oh come on," attitude about this event.

But I think Moying Li's memoir (the book I'm actually reviewing), subtitled "Coming of age in China during the Cultural Revolution," finally has me convinced.

And so, day after day we watched the battle unfold as vigilant Beijingers stood their ground. Then, suddenly, sparrows started to fall from the sky, utterly exhausted. Soon there were hardly any left. At dinner one evening, flushed with pride as he waved a copy of the People's Daily, Baba announced that in our city alone we had eradicated over 400,000 sparrows!

Moying Li takes us along as, step by step, her country moves from the excitement and hope that accompanied The Great Leap Forward to the paranoia, zealotry and despair of the Cultural Revolution. Her family goes hungry, is split up, endures denunciation, but ultimately survives and moves forward. The kindness and loyalty that she encountered during these years brought tears to my eyes as I read.

The pace never falters in this gripping memoir. Not too demanding, the book includes some photographs and a helpful glossary (which would have been enhanced by pronunciations - my favorite axe to grind), and would be a spectacular class read, in addition to being a great leisure read.

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Fanny by Holly Hobbie
Rare is the book that manages to be both girly and empowering. Many are the books that try. Fanny is the real deal.

Fanny's mom won't buy her a glamorous Connie doll ("I don't like the way Connie dolls look," says Mom. "They're just too... much," and don't you know that feeling!). So, resourceful Fanny cuts up a pair of pink pajamas and makes her own doll - a doll that, despite her blonde hair and big blue eyes, is not... quite... like the Connie dolls her friends are so obsessed with.

There's a lot of pink, and there are dolls, and Fanny feels the pressure of wanting what the other girls have, but she is sweet and creative and loyal, and comes up with her own solutions.

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Marveltown by Bruce McCall
When I plucked this big sunny square off the Professional Review shelves at work and surveyed the faux- Fifties Futurist paintings, I flashed back to pulling old books on rocket science off my Dad's shelves when I was a kid. The illustrations in those books were so intriguing - immense curved structures with impossibly thin floors and spires, a few tiny humans scratched in to give them scale; cratered surfaces and craggy mountains; big control rooms stocked with banks of giant flanged capacitors and oversized dials... but the books would always disappoint. I would expect breathless stories full of firecracker surprises, but... there was a lot of nonfiction in our house. Those books would actually be about rocket science. Lots of parabolas and charts.

I shook my head paging through Marveltown, thinking that Bruce McCall had a lot of fun creating a catalog of outscale inventions, and thinking that just drawing lots of cool stuff does not make a book.

What a fantastic surprise, therefore, to turn a page and, beneath a painting of a huge control room with banks of flanged capacitors and oversized dials, see the words, "Until one quiet midnight..." A story! A robot rebellion! Yeah!!

I couldn't wait to get Marveltown home to my boys. I wanted to see whether my enthusiasm was purely based on my retro-futurist nostalgia - ideas of the future that were old when I was a kid: Helmut Karl Wimmer's paintings from the old Hayden Planetarium, which came down when I was working at AMNH; the illustrations of Frank Tinsley and Chesley Bonestell; the villain's control room in old Bond movies; silly stuff from very old MAD magazines. There's a picture in Marveltown of a terrified guy in a hat, his pipe flying from his mouth as he runs screaming, that I think is a direct quote from a Kelly Freas painting.

The interesting thing about Bruce McCall, in this context, is that Wikipedia says the man is 73 years old - same age as my Dad. These illustrators that I am all nostalgic over... their careers overlapped his. These ARE his visions of the future. Makes Marveltown extra-sweet to me.

So let's hear from our panel. Here's what the boys said as Mao read the book aloud:

"It's supposed to be the kids are the run-away-ers and the grownups are the stayers, but it's the opposite!"

"How about they don't make living robots, they just make working robots?"

"Whoa, that's what somebody invented?" (about a tall crack-the-whip Maypole kind of thing that... ok yeah I can't describe it)
"That is totally better than a big robot."

"The ripple-rug was my favorite invention."
"The metal dog who ate everyone's homework was my favorite, because he was a great guard dog."

Does it make you want to invent things?
"Makes me want to want to turn our LEGOtown into Marveltown! With giant robots! With a couple different things, with the robots only attacking three grownups - bad guy grownups - not Skeletor, because he's dead. They would attack Larry Jenkins, 50-foot Spreitel, and The Boss."

Ok, so... any questions?

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BEWARE OF THE FROG by william bee
This is one for motherreader's Weird Ass Picture Book category. I read it with my seven-year-old, and he LOVED it. But my husband overheard us, and after the kid scampered away chuckling, he said, "That's... that's awfully DARK, wouldn't you say?"

Heh heh heh... yeah man. The surprise ending in this one is kicky, and funny, and brilliantly colored (green! pink! yellow like no yellow on this earth!), AND dark.

William Bee's illustrations are scratchy, detailed, full of great little patterns and ornaments, and remind me of jazzy pen-and-ink illustrations from when I was a kid (call that early '70's). They almost look like they'd make a great hipster t-shirt. Or a Target product line. Or wallpaper in the powder room in the basement of a swinger's suburban ranch house. And there's a little South Park to the faces. Are you having a hard time collating this description in your head? Ha. Read the book. See if you can do better.

Here is a synopsis - maybe that will help: a little old lady (Mrs. Collywobbles) lives on the edge of the ghetto (ok, the deep dark woods) protected only by her little pet frog. Big monsters come out of the forest one by one to steal from, stink at, or eat Mrs. Collywobbles. They see the sign, "BEWARE OF THE FROG" and scoff. And then the little frog eats them.

GOBBLE. GOBBLE. GOBBLE.

And then there's a surprise ending, which, ok, I know it's a picture book, and usually I have no scruples about spoilers for picture books, but it's a real treat to read a picture book that you can't anticipate, and I wish you that treat.

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Dinosaur vs. bedtime by Bob Shea
Oh. Mygod. How much do children love reading this book?! Even kids who aren't reading yet can read this book. And they love to do it!

I finally got a chance to read it to my two kids tonight, but even then I didn't really! They chimed in with all the ROAR ROAR ROARs, they loved doing a high-pitched, hysterical announcer voice for every challenge the dinosaur faces: "Dinosaur versus... A BOWL OF SPAGHETTI!!" and oh GOD did they love "Dinosaur versus... TALKING GROWN-UPS!" BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!

And they even enjoyed the winding-down part of this tried-and-true story arc, as Dinosaur's ROARs wane and his eyelids droop, until finally, "Bedtime wins." Usually, my kids are too savvy - they see it coming and they kind of roll their eyes, "Oh sure, of course the kid runs out of steam and it's time for bed." They know it's a ploy meant to get THEM into bed, and they resent it. But it's so fun to turn those ROARs into yawns, they buy in completely.

Bob Shea, king of the LOUD picture book.

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Chiggers by Hope Larson
I read this sweet-but-not-too-sweet graphic novel at the same time, and for the same reason (it's a Cybils nominee), as Betsy, Ms. Fuse #8, did, and I pretty much have to say... what she said.

Is that a cop-out? Yeahhh... but no! She just happens to have written just exactly what I'd've written (except, hrm, more words, 'cause of the part about me being lazy and sometimes being content to just go like, "ME LIKE," and I guess you'd have to say this current review would be an example of that).

Except that, unlike Betsy, I do have some memorable summer camp experiences, both as a camper, at Girl Scout camp and orchestra camp (I played oboe) and, if I'm not mistaken, some G&T camp where we read Walden Two and discussed behavior modification... and as a counselor, at a beautiful hippy-dippy camp up in Maine where I taught candle-making and fencing to Manhattan preteens wearing Echo and the Bunnymen t-shirts (in 1984). And reading Chiggers took me right back to camp, especially to Maine, and I found myself trying to remember the names of the girls in my cabin: tall Allison, shy Betsy, bubbly Deenie, and a girl we called Titsy, whose personality traits you may intuit all on your own.

Chiggers is terrific that way - the art, the plot, the characters all ring true. Even the trees look just right. Why, I remember the morning I found a dead mouse in a trap, and since I didn't have my glasses on I had to bring it right up to my face to see what it was, and then... but I guess that's a story for another blog.

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The Three Robbers by Tomi Ungerer
Here's an old book that is worth a fresh look. Originally published in 1962, the same year as Where the Wild Things Are , The Three Robbers is a weird little tale of three fierce little criminals in tall black caps and cloaks.

Armed with a blunderbuss, a pepper blower, and an alarmingly large axe, the three hold up carriages and steal the passengers' cash, jewels, watches, and bearer bonds, then take the loot back to their cave. One night, they hold up a carriage containing only a little orphan named Tiffany, who is en route to live with a "wicked aunt" and only too happy to have been intercepted. The robbers take her back to the cave and give her a place to sleep. In the morning, taking stock of her surroundings, she asks, "What is all this treasure for?" and the robbers are stumped, never having considered spending their booty.

Together, the robbers and Tiffany decide to round up all the lost and abandoned children they can find and buy a castle for them to live in. All the kids get red capes and tall red hats like the robbers' black ones, and when they grow up, they build houses near the castle, and a lovely little town is born.

Reading this to my kindergartner last night, I at first thought of monastery towns. The robbers in their capes reminded me of monks in their habits, and the ending kind of reeks of folktale (reeks in a nice way - reeking like potato soup with lots of garlic, say). The story has something of a Bremen Town Musicians vibe to it, and I was wondering if it was the kind of story a child would make up about a medieval orphanage run by monks.

My mind kept catching on the robbers' cluelessness about their loot. That is very kid. Arguably, that's specifically very boy. With them, the goal is the action (in this case, robbing) - the action is rarely the means to the goal. Whereas girls, in my observation, often have more complex goals in mind, and develop strategies - sometimes mind-boggling complex strategies - in order to attain them.

Ergo, you could read The Three Robbers as an allegory of play. Three boys are playing their pointless yet fun game; a girl comes along; they charitably include her in their play; she doesn't get it, but figures out an extension to their game that makes sense to her, and they end up building a doll hospital for her.

You could also just enjoy this book for the hats. I love the hats.

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Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean.
Geraldine McCaughrean is one prolific and well-rounded person. She writes adaptations of classical literature for children (Gilgamesh. Odyssey. Cyrano. etc.). She won the contest to write the sequel to Peter Pan. She writes reg'lar old adventure novels. And she wrote Not the End of the World, a "realistic" retelling of the story of Noah and his family, complete with onboard predation, physical and psychological brutality, manure, and moldy grain.

Yeah man, it's a wild premise. Our main narrator is Noah's daughter Timna, who gradually begins to question her father's version of what's going on and why; but most of the other humans and some of the animals on the ark weigh in with their points of view as well. I think it could be an important book for a kid who is learning to discern alternate perspectives, who is beginning to, you know, question the dominant paradigm.

Certainly I've never spent much time parsing the story of the Flood - I'm a big wintry atheist and I think it's all B.S. So Ms. McCaughrean's thoughtful and thoroughly imagined book took me somewhere I've never been.

I would press this book into the hands of every potentially open-minded kid I came across - if I weren't worried about the parents. You can call me a coward but I would really run it by the parents first. I would hate it if a hypothetical Malka and Elisheva weren't allowed back at the the library because some pink-haired propagandist librarian (that's me!) suggested a book that gave their parents hives.

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