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Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
By Peter Brown
Little, Brown and Company
$18.00
ISBN: 978-0-316-20063-9
Ages 3-7
On shelves now.

Here’s a fun exercise to liven up a gloomy day. Find yourself a copy of the picture book Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. Now turn to the publication page. It’s the green one opposite the title page at the beginning of the book. Now scroll down until you find the Library of Congress subject headings for this title. The very first one reads, “Self-actualization (Psychology)”. I am no cataloger, nor do I particularly mind it when they attribute terms of this sort to picture books, but anyone can see that this is a pretty amusing way to describe a book about a tiger with issues with civilization. It is rare to find a picture book this easy to love on sight, but author/illustrator Peter Brown is beginning to perfect his form. Hard to believe that the man who started out with Flight of the Dodo and Chowder has figured out how one goes about writing and illustrating modern day classics. With influences as diverse as Rousseau and 1960s Disney animators, Brown creates a wholly believable universe in a scant number of pages. Now prepare to turn said pages over and over and over again.

No one expected Mr. Tiger to be such a troublemaker. At first he was like everyone else. Sporting starched collars and silk top hats. Attending dignified tea parties and engaging in the usual chitchat about the weather that day. But Mr. Tiger is bored. “He wanted to loosen up. He wanted to have fun. He wanted to be… wild.” But wildness is not tolerated in the city, a fact Mr. Tiger discovers when his explorations into wildness involve pouncing across the rooftops, roaring in public, and going au naturel. It’s that final sin that has him dismissed from the city to the wilderness, where he gets to completely let go. It’s great for a time, but soon Mr. Tiger misses his friends and his home. When he returns he finds more comfortable clothes and the fact that the people there have loosened up a bit themselves, thanks in no small part to his influence.

Now I know there are folks out there for whom The Curious Garden is the top of the pops and Brown will never be able to make anything that good again. And that was a very nice book, no question but here is a book where Brown has hit his stride. First off, he has tackled the old anthropomorphic animal question; If you put a tiger in a suit, is he even a tiger anymore? Kids are very used to seeing animals wearing clothes and fulfilling human roles. I’ve always said that if you ever want to write a book about adults for kids, all you need to do is turn those adults into furry woodland creatures (hey, it worked for Redwall!). The idea that an animal might want to return to its wilder roots is a novel one for them. Imagine if Donald Duck tore off his sailor suit to peck at bread on the water, or Mickey Mouse removed those red shorts and started hunting down some cheese rinds. It’s almost, but not quite, obscene. Brown taps into that seeming obscenity, and uses it to give kids a mighty original tale.

2013 was a very good year for picture books with wordless two-page spreads. When used incorrectly, such spreads stop the action dead. Used correctly, they make the child reader stop and think. In a particularly Miss Rumphius-ish two-pager, Mr. Tiger walks alone in a wide-open field. He isn’t prancing or running or leaping anymore. His expression is utterly neutral. It’s just him and the flowers and the scrub bushes. Little wonder that when you turn the page he’s lonely once more. Brown uses this spread to bridge the gap between Mr. Tiger’s catharsis and his desire for company. Without it, the sudden shift in mood would feel out-of-character.

It’s hard to find folks who dislike this book but occasionally one comes out. The only real criticism I’ve seen of it was when I heard someone complain that Brown’s style is just like a lot of books coming out these days, particularly those of Jon Klassen. Hardly fair, though you can see what they mean when you hold this up next to This Is Not My Hat. But Brown is quite capable of manipulating his own style when he sees fit. Compare this book to others he’s made and you’ll see the difference. The noir feel of Creepy Carrots or the folksy faux wood border of Children Make Terrible Pets are a far cry from Mr. Tiger’s Rousseau-like setting. Brown has culled his influences over the years, and in this particular book he flattens the images purposefully, emulating the backgrounds of 1960s Disney films like Sleeping Beauty. The colors here are particularly deliberate. There’s the orange of Mr. Tiger (and his speech balloons), the green of the wilderness, and the orange of the sun. Beyond these and the blue of Mr. Tiger’s new shirt and the water of the fountain/waterfall, the palette is tightly controlled. And that doesn’t feel like anyone’s choice but Mr. Brown’s.

Another criticism I encountered came from someone who felt that the ending didn’t make sense to them. The animals all criticize Mr. Tiger then emulate him in his absence? But I have read and reread and reread again this book to my 2-year-old enough times that I know precisely how to answer such questions. Look closely and you’ll see that while some animals are very vocal in their disapproval of Mr. Tiger’s free-to-be-you-and-me ways, others are less perturbed. For example, in one scene Mr. Tiger is leaping from rooftop to rooftop. As he does so a bevy of onlookers comment on his actions. True, a bear shakes his fist and declares the tiger to be “Unacceptable” but look at the rhino and bunny. One is saying “Wow” and one “Hmm.” Then there’s the nude sequence (perhaps the only picture book centerfold shot in the history of the genre). First off, the pigeons are riveted. I loved that. And yes, a bunch of animals are pointing out of town, indicating that he should leave. But there’s a young fox that is absolutely enthralled by his actions, you can tell. It’s clear he has a far-reaching influence. I wasn’t surprised at all by the changes in his absence then.

Every child is a battlefield. In them rage twin desires, compelling in different ways and at different times. One desire is for the wildness Mr. Tiger craves. To run and yell and just go a little wild. The other desire is for order and organization and civilization. What Mr. Tiger Goes Wild does so well is to tap into these twin needs, and then produce a kind of happy medium between them. To entirely deny one side or another (or to entirely indulge one side or another) is an unhealthy exercise. We’ve not many books that touch on the importance of balance in your life, but let me just say that the lesson Mr. Tiger learns here would probably be greatly appreciated by large swaths of the adult population. Kiddos aren’t the only ones that chafe under their proverbial starched collars. A grand, great book with a lot of very smart things to say. Listen up.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Four Legs Bad, Two Legs Good by D.B. Johnson
• Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems
• Wild by Emily Hughes
• You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer by Shana Corey
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Misc:

• Click here to download the Mr. Tiger Goes Wild printable activity kit.
• You can’t help but love Elizabeth Rose Stanton’s version of Mr. Tiger.

Videos:
Peter Brown introduces his book to you:

And here he talks about his process:

Author and Illustrator Peter Brown On His Process from School Library Journal on Vimeo.

Journey
By Aaron Becker
Candlewick Press
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6053-6
$15.99
Ages 3-8
On shelves now.

I’ve encountered something new and exciting at this late stage of the game. For years I’ve been reviewing picture books written for children. Working with them on almost a day-to-day basis as a children’s librarian, I did not doubt that my experience helped me to separate out the wheat from the chaff (so to speak). Then I had my own kiddo and together we were able to plumb the depths of the board book genre. Now the small child has grown quite fond of picture books, so together we’ve explored books that would be within her age range and those that are, perhaps, a tiny bit of a stretch. I will tell you right now that Journey by Aaron Becker is not intended for the toddler crowd. Not necessarily. With its fine attention to detail and jaw-dropping storyline, Becker has created a modern day classic in the midst of an overpopulated genre. That said, do not hesitate to introduce this book to any and all kiddos you have at hand. Give it to your teenagers. Give it to your ankle biters. The more people that sit down and take in the pages of the book, the better off the whole of humanity will be. For my part, I’m just delighted that repeated one-on-one readings of books like this one yield all sorts of additional information and details that will help my reviewing. There’s a lot to be said for this whole parenting thing, eh?

A girl is bored. Bored bored bored bored bored. With her mom cooking and yakking on the phone, her dad glued to his computer and her older sister consumed by some kind of electronic handheld device, there’s no one to play with. But when the girl’s cat reveals itself to have been sitting on a bright red writing implement (is it a marker, a crayon, or chalk?), she knows immediately what to do. A door is drawn on the wall of her room and passing through it instantly yields a glorious lantern lit world, replete with tall green trees and a meandering stream. When the girl draws a boat with which to explore the stream she is drawn into a massive water-driven city full of friendly residents, canals, and locks. An accidental slip over the side causes her to draw a hot air balloon and all is well until she spots a beautiful purple bird. Pursued by a relentless villain, the creature is caught and caged. Our heroine attempts a daring rescue but is caught herself in the attempt. Fortunately, things turn out well in the end and she finds that maybe in her humdrum drab little world at home there’s someone else there willing to share an adventure or two.

Seems this book can’t get a review without someone comparing it to Harold and the Purple Crayon. That’s fair, I suppose. After all, it’s about a kid creating solutions to the world around them with the help of a brightly colored . . . I guess I’ll call it a crayon, though at no point does it ever establish itself as one thing or another. And there’s even a falling-and-drawing-a-hot-air-balloon sequence that is straight upHarold, no question. That said, all other similarities to Harold stop right there. You see, I’ve always personally been a bit creeped out by Harold. Sure, I recognize the brilliance in the simple writing and the art is a dream to the eye in its minimalism. Yet there was always something cold and lonely to the Harold books. Nothing he draws ever moves. He’s creating his own reality, but everything he encounters originally sprouted from his own crayon. Journey is vastly different. Here our heroine meets new people, some of whom are friendly and some are not. She interacts with them. Instead of being limited to the world of her crayon, her crayon instead introduces her to whole new worlds she would never have seen otherwise. So while Harold exists in the cold white plain pages of a book, destined to provide only one color for variety, this girl uses her one color to explore other colors and other worlds and other people and cultures. There’s a metaphor just ah-brewing here, you know it, but I’ll leave it to you to extend it to its natural end.

Not afraid of architecture is Mr. Becker. Nope. Not a jot afraid. When you turn the pages of the book and see the castle-like city for the first time with its golden domes and green parasol-carrying residents, it’s a jaw-dropper. Honestly awe-inspiring. I may have to credit it with my daughter’s current obsession now with castles. The first person it made me think of, actually, was David Macaulay. Macaulay’s books featuring expansive architecture are the closest kin to what Becker is doing here. But unlike Macaulay, Becker does not seem to sport any actual degrees in architecture. He’s a trained artist, and clearly a well-trained one, but if he excels in this area it is due to his talent rather than his experience. I then showed this book to my husband and he looked at it with interest. “It has a lot of similarities to Avatar: The Last Airbender,” he pointed out. Boy howdy, I’m glad he pointed that out. It most certainly does! I don’t know how many of you have taken the time to studiously watch the Nickelodeon hit animated television show, but in truth there’s a lot of Avatar to be found here. From the city with the waterways and locks to the boats in the sky to even the sensation of flying over unfamiliar cities and lands, at the very least this makes a darned good companion to “Avatar”, if not an outright introduction to it.

I don’t know how many authors and illustrators know this, but in my experience there are a lot of teachers out there who send their students into libraries to ask for wordless picture books. Often these are used for writing exercises where the kids write the plot of the books, but once in a while you’d get a creative soul who understands that visual storytelling is the great unifier. Take a kid from another country that has recently immigrated, hand them a wordless book, and watch as they find (much to their own relief) that they are able to “read” the text. This goes for reluctant readers and kids that are reading below their grade levels. It’s also great for very young readers who cannot yet read words but delight in telling stories. Becker easily could have added text to this book. It wouldn’t have been pretty, but it could have happened. Instead, he and his editor and even his publisher took a chance and let the images and the storytelling do the talking. Sometimes you have to shut your trap to truly hear what a book has to say.

I’ll confess a small quibble I had at one point involving the villain. There’s not a ton of diversity in this book, and I do prefer titles that aren’t afraid to show folks from a variety of different races. That’s why I was a bit unnerved at first by the baddie. Dressed in full regalia worthy of a villain, with his Fu Manchu moustache and samurai dress, there’s something distinctly Asian about him. This struck me as a bit unfortunate, but upon closer examination I realized that I couldn’t tell the race of the girl either. And for that matter, it’s not like Becker is pinpointing a single nation or ethnicity as his big bad. There appear to be Egyptian decals on some of his architecture. His house for the bird has a somewhat pagoda look to it. Maybe I’m justifying everything, but it seems to me that Becker was trying more than anything else to have a bad guy who was easy to spot (note the golden helmet) and that looked different from the residents of the water-based city. Becker himself spent time in Japan, I believe, so it’s not out of the question that his art style might be affected, but I hardly think he’s guilty of playing on stereotypes.

There is a very different argument against this book that I should address, however. I was at a nice little shindig the other day, talking with librarians about picture books we think should win big awards and the subject of Journey came up. “Oh,” said a woman to me, “I love it, but one of my librarians had a real problem with the gun.” I blinked a little and then searched my memory banks. The gun? I had no idea the book had a gun. Well, you can bet I ran back home and looked the book over cover to cover. After some work I finally located the alleged “gun”. It’s tricky, but I think this is what the woman meant. There is a scene in the book where the bad guy is seen from a distance, directing his two men to place the captured purple bird in a cage. He is pointing at them, but the way Becker drew the image the hand takes on the shape of, yes, a teeny tiny gun. This is clearly a quirk of the art. Look on a previous page and you can see the villain doing the same hand movement in his little airship, just with his fingers (some folks think his hand is a gun as well, but if you look you’ll see that the colors of said “gun” are the same as his arm, suggesting that this is just a very insistent pointer finger). That same pointing movement is replicated on the next page, but because of an extra bump of his glove, the hand itself looks somewhat gun like. Of course, it would make NO sense for it to even be a gun. The baddie is just directing his men. He’s not holding them up at gunpoint. More to the point, if this guy was to carry a gun, a typical handgun wouldn’t make a lick of sense. He’s sport a blunderbuss or something that fits in with the environment around him. Plus, why would he be waving a gun at a bird he just wants to capture and cage? This is just a quirk of an image. A person reads into it what they themselves want to see. If you want to see a gun, you’ll see a gun, but trust me when I say it’s just going to be wishful thinking on your part.

Usually when we talk about stunning wordless picture books we talk about artist David Wiesner. With his three gold Caldecott medals and who knows how many awards to his name, it’s nice when someone else can also give us a glimpse into whole new worlds. Becker’s debut isn’t afraid to go epic on his first turn around the block. Packed with details, the book rewards readings and rereadings. It’s a true original, though it certainly harkens back to classic picture books of yore. I don’t get to use this word very often when I’m talking about books for young children but I’m going to dust it off and use it now: Beautiful. There’s no other way to describe Journey. Take your own today.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
• Castle by David Macaulay
• Sector 7 by David Wiesner
• Mirror by Jeannie Baker

Videos:

When I want to show people the best picture book trailers of all time, I lead off with this one.  Seriously.

And here is The Making Of video as well:

The Making of “Journey” from Aaron Becker on Vimeo.

The Other Side of Free
By Krista Russell
Peachtree Publishers
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-56145-710-6
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Have you ever read the adult book How I Became a Famous Novelist? Bear with me for a second here, I know what I’m doing. You see, in the title the author decides that he wants to become a New York Times bestseller. In the course of his quest he runs across a variety of different authors who embody a variety of different types of novels. His own aunt decides she wants to be a children’s author and sets about doing so by writing a work of historical middle grade fiction. The book is about a girl living in Colonial America who wants to be a cooper. In only a page or two author Steve Hely puts his finger on a whole swath of children’s books that drive librarians like myself mildly mad. They find familiar situations and alter very little aside from location and exact year to tell their tales. The result is an increasing wariness on my part to read any works of historical fiction, for fear that you’ll see the same dang story again and again. With all this in mind you can imagine the relief with which I read Krista Russell’sThe Other Side of Free. Not only is the setting utterly original (not to mention unforgettable) but the characters don’t fill the same little roles you’ll see in other children’s novels. If you have kids that have tired of the same old, same old, The Other Side of Free will give them something they haven’t seen before.

We’ve all heard of how slaves would escape to the North when they wished to escape for good. But travel a bit farther back in time to the early 18th century and the tale is a little different. At that point in history slaves didn’t flee north but south to Spain’s territories. There, the Spanish king promised freedom for those slaves that swore fidelity to the Spanish crown and fought on his behalf against the English. 13-year-old Jem is one of those escaped slaves, but his life at Fort Mose is hardly stimulating. Kept under the yoke of a hard woman named Phaedra, Jem longs to fight for the king and to join in the battles. But when at last the fighting comes to him, it isn’t at all what he thought it would be. A Bibliography of sources appears at the end of the book.

There are big themes at work here. What freedom is worth to an individual if it means yoking yourself to someone else. If militia work really does mean freedom, or just slavery of a new kind. Jem himself chafes under the hand of Phaedra, though I think it would be obvious, even to a kid reader, that he’s immature in more than one way. But with all that said, it’s the lighter moments that make the book for me. Omen the owl is a notable example of a detail that makes the book more than just a work of history. In this story Jem adopts an owlet and raises it as his own. In your standard generic fare the owl would be a beloved friend and companion, possibly ultimately dying for Jem in a heroic scene reminiscent of Hedwig’s death. Instead, the owl is hell on wings. A nasty, chicken-snatching, very real and wild creature that is, nonetheless, beloved of our hero. Again, expectations are upset. I love it when that happens.

I liked the individual lines Russell used to dot the text as well. For example, in an early character note about Phaedra the book describes her construction of a grass basket. “Her fingers snatched at the fronds again and again, until each strip was bent and shaped to her will.” It’s worth noting that it’s Jem who is saying this about her. Almost the whole book is told through his own perspective and, as such, may not be entirely trustworthy. He has his own prejudices to fight, after all. I also like Russell’s everyday descriptions. “Adine handed each man a jug of water. They drank until it ran down their faces, leaving tails like gray veins down their throats.” Beautifully put.

Honestly it would make a heckuva stage play. The settings are necessarily limited, with Jem spending most of his time in Fort Mose and the rest of it in St. Augustine. Not having been familiar with the people of Fort Mose before, I found myself incredibly anxious to learn what became of them. Russell ends the book on a hopeful note, but you cannot help but wonder. If there were freed slaves in Florida in 1739 then what happened when that state became the property of the English in 1763? All Russell says at that time is “At this time, the free Africans of Mose relocated to Cuba.” Kids will just have to extrapolate a happy ending for Jem and his friends from that.

A great work of historical fiction does a number of things. It introduces you to unfamiliar places and people. It establishes a kind of empathy for those people that you otherwise would never have met. It puts you in their shoes, if only for a moment. And most of all, it surprises you. Upsets your expectations, maybe. For most kids in America, the history of slavery is short and sweet. Slaves came from Africa. They escaped North. They were freed thanks in part to the Civil War. What more is there is say or to learn aside from some vague info on the Underground Railroad? Russell challenges these assumptions, bringing us a tale that is wholly new, but filled with facts. If the rote and familiar don’t suit you and you want a book that travels over new ground, you can hardly do better than The Other Side of Free. Smart and original, it’s a one-of-a-kind novel. Hardly the kind of thing you run across every day.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Notes on the Cover: I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I can see what Peachtree was going for here. In this image you get the dense canopy of a Floridian forest. You even have a black boy on the cover (albeit completely turned away from the viewer, which is kind of a cheat). But all in all, whether it’s the art or the design or the color palette, this book is not the most visually appealing little number I’ve seen in all my livelong days. I’m having a devil of a time getting folks to pick it up of their own accord. One hopes that if it goes to paperback someday, maybe it’ll be given a cover worthy of its content.

Like This? Then Try:

• Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Jefferson’s Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Wild
By Emily Hughes
Flying Eye Books
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-909263-08-6
Ages 3-7
On shelves now.

There lives in every child an animal. A wild, untamable creature that will emerge without fail at the worst possible moments, rendering its parents helpless and hopeless all in one swoop. There also exist in this world picture books that touch on this restrained/free duality. You might even argue that the BEST children’s books touch on this in some way (Where the Wild Things Are being the most obvious example). In 2013 alone we saw Peter Brown’s Mr. Tiger Goes Wild talk about the need in every child for order as well as wild uninhibited freedom. Wild, in contrast, is a simpler story. Following just one girl from her path from nature to the city and back again, it has a different lesson in mind. It is all well and good for some to find a happy medium between chaos and order but for some kids chaos is clearly MUCH more appealing!

“No one remembered how she came to the woods, but all knew it was right.” A green-haired baby smiles contentedly on a forest floor as a bear, bird, and fox look on. Over the years the bird teaches her to speak, the bear to eat, and the fox to play. Unfortunately a hunter’s trap catches the child by her foliage-like hair and a pair of baffled hunters takes her back with them to civilization. There the child is forced to reside in the home of a well-meaning psychiatrist and his wife. Attempts to normalize her fail resoundingly and at last she flees back to the wild, the family dog and cat in tow. After all, “you cannot tame something so happily wild.”

A British/Hawaiian author/illustrator, Emily Hughes’ art is fascinating to look at, partly because it’s so incredibly European. It’s something about the eyes, I think. Or maybe just the way the landscape and the animals intertwine. The bears, for example, reminded me of nothing so much as the ones found in The Bear’s Song by Benjamin Chaud (a Frenchman). The heroine herself is somehow big-eyed without devolving into preciousness (a delicate balance). Her plant-like hair almost looks like it might be sentient at times. People in general are rendered with a fine hand. My favorite shot is of the wild child being brought to civilization by the two clearly shell-shocked hunters. As the men, and even their dog, drive in the rain, their eyes ringed with worry, the child sits on the front seat with only her eyes visible over the dash. She is clearly silent and livid.

It’s interesting to look at the settings and colors in the book as well. As the girl is raised there isn’t a white page to be seen until the last fateful line of “And she understood, and was happy.” Then, when humanity intervenes, the white pages begin to proliferate. Interior spreads are either grey/green or peach/brown and nothing else. It’s as much a relief to the reader’s eye as it is the child’s spirit when she escapes again into the wild. I was particularly pleased too with the two-page wordless humanless spread displaying only the child’s wanton path of destruction. As for the wild itself, here we have a utopian Eden, where animals might eat the occasional fish but never a green-haired baby child. Or, for that matter, one another.

One quibble I have with the book is the final line. It ends on an ellipsis, you see. Now I’m as big a fan of your average everyday ellipses as the next gal. And I understand that there must have been long editorial discussions with the author/illustrator that justified its presence on the last page. I just have absolutely no idea what those justifications could possibly be. The line reads, “Because you cannot tame something so happily wild…” Maybe the dot dot dot is there to suggest that this isn’t the end of the story? I haven’t a better idea.

Oh, they’ll tag this as an eco-centric morality tale, I’m sure. Wild/nature = good, civilization/standardization = bad. That sort of thing. Honestly, I think it has a lot more to say about the inner life of a young child than any overt messagey message about Mother Earth. But there aren’t any rules governing how you use a book, so go on! Use it to talk to kids about nature and the outdoors. Use it to talk about acceptable and non-acceptable behavior and when those rules break down. Use it to discuss tropes most common in European vs. American books, or what makes this book a stand out in its field. Talk about it any old way you like, but make sure you talk about it. A surprisingly lovely little piece that bears similarities to hundreds of pictures books out there, but isn’t really like a single one. One of a kind.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman
• Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• No Bows! by Shirley Smith Duke
• Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown

Other Blog Reviews:

• 100 Scope Notes
• Read It, Daddy!
• Proper Noun Blog

Misc:

• Sketchbook art galore!
• Hughes discusses showing the book in a classroom presentation.

The Silver Six
By A.J. Lieberman
Illustrated by Darren Rawlings
Graphix (an imprint of Scholastic)
$22.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-37097-4
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Ambition. It’s not a term I usually associate with children’s graphic novels. Your average everyday children’s comic is not particularly ambitious. There are so few of them out there that you can’t make any grand sweeping statements about them, except maybe to stress that the difference between a GN for adults and a GN for kids is scope. While an actual prose novel for the kiddos can set its sights rather high (see: The Golden Compass, Hokey Pokey, The Book of Everything, etc.) children’s graphic novels have more of a tendency to limit themselves. They might encompass sprawling narratives over the course of several books (see: the Bone series, the Amulet series, etc.) but in a single book? Usually there’s not a lot you can say (unless you’re Shaun Tan, of course). So I would have thought prior to picking up Lieberman and Rawlings’ The Silver Six. What looks on the outside to simply be yet another tame adventure tale for the kiddos turns quickly into a story so packed with excitement that in any other author’s hand this could easily have been split into a trilogy (at the very least). With a large diverse cast, a relatable heroine, and a good old-fashioned evil corporation, Lieberman and Rawlings dare to dream big and it pays off. Like I say . . . ambitious!

Phoebe Hemingway’s been doing okay. Sure, her parents died in a mysterious crash about a year ago and ever since she’s been faking it with her robot Oliver, living on their own. But when child welfare services track her down and send her to the ultimate nasty futuristic orphanage she discovers she may be in grave dangerd. Fortunately she meets up with five other kids that share some shocking similarities to Phoebe. Like the fact that their parents all died in the same crash. Or that they all willed to their children the same moon registration forms. Now the team is on an epic quest to escape the orphanage, travel off the planet, dodge the bad guys, and find out the true conspiracy behind their parents’ deaths.

They say that people relate to action movies/books/comics etc. because immediate peril is instantly understandable and accessible to an audience. That said, you can write all the action thrillers in the world but unless you’ve a little additional heart it’s not going to have a lot of emotional impact. What makes “The Silver Six” a little different from the other books out there is that it isn’t afraid to go for the emotional heart more than once. So you’ve six orphans, and that’s fairly heartrending on paper. And you’ve one of the villains dealing with his own tragic past as well. But the moment that makes all the difference in the world comes when Phoebe must willingly give up the one last family member she has for the greater good. When you sacrifice the comic relief to stop the baddies, that’s tough enough. When you actually LIKE said comic relief? Pull out those hankies and blow.

And I love the way the book rewards rereadings. As you read through and pick apart the conspiracies, the first page is going to make a lot more sense. Throwaway moments, like when a character sees the initials S.O.S. scrawled on a wall, are explained at length later. Then there are the little in-jokes. My personal favorite was the tech geek who worries that he didn’t feed his fish that morning, with a glance later at the fish he’s since raised in their absence. Trust me, it makes sense in the book.

The art itself wasn’t a lure at first. Darren Rawlings hails from the world of animation and motion graphics, so there’s going to be a certain level of slickness to any enterprise he stands behind right from the start. I’ve no idea if Mr. Rawlings did his own inking and coloring (no one else is credited) but it’s a good job. Still, the first thing you’ll notice is how much the man has had to cram onto each and every page. I’m not just talking words but number of panels and even images that appear on those panels. You get the distinct impression over the course of this book that Rawlings would do best if the pages were long and extended as you might find in a Tintin or Little Nemo collection. Yet for all that, I never had the feeling that the pages felt cramped. The art packs a punch but at the same time it has a way of carrying you along. I wouldn’t give it to a novice GN reader, but for those kids with some experience it’s going to be enormously satisfying.

If there’s a problem with the book, and there are surprisingly few, I suppose it’s the ending. The big showdown with the baddie happens and then everything looks lost. Then we get a LOT of exposition and badda bing, badda boom, end of story. In a book of false climaxes and honestly awesome moments where the action rises and falls, this letdown of an ending momentarily sours an otherwise skillful outing. I won’t deny that there’s a sweet justice in the way the villain personally brings about his own destruction, but it’s odd watching your heroes stand idly by while the world comes around to their way of thinking.

Many is the parent who decides to buy their kids some comics for vacation only to find that within the first 20 minutes of the car trip their children have read every single one. If you want something with a little more meat that’s going to keep their attention for AT LEAST an hour, The Silver Six is your friend. Also recommended for fans of epic adventures, bored kids, comic lovers, boys, girls, anyone who likes snarky robots, and people who has to read these kiddos bedtime stories. A quick and exciting little package (the book literally begins with an explosion) with a surprising amount of depth. Nicely done.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke
• The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi
• The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis

Other Blog Reviews:

• 100 Scope Notes
• Geeks of Doom
• Charlotte’s Library
• Cinjoella
• Misbehavin’ Librarian

Professional Reviews:

• Publishers Weekly
• Kirkus

Videos: And here’s the book trailer -

The SILVER SIX – Book Trailer from Rawls on Vimeo.

• It’s been a good week and it’s only Thursday!  I’ve cooed and oohed and aahed over NYPL’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2013 list before.  Nothing new to say  . . . or is there?  I don’t suppose you happened to see NPR’s interactive booklist consisting of their Best Books of 2013 (in a rare moment of bliss, I like all their children’s book choices though some diversity wouldn’t have been out of place).  Well, NYPL took one look at that list and thought, “Heck. We can do that.”  And so they did!  Meet the Interactive Books List of NYPL.  It’s gorgeous.  It’s user friendly.  It’s the only place you can find animated Melissa Sweet.  Overall, I rather love it.  Hope you do too.

• In other best book news, Colby Sharp and Donalyn Miller teamed up at BuzzFeed and produced a list of 20 of the Best Children’s Books 2013.  And AGAIN I like all the choices.  Do you know how rare this is?  Extra points for including Donner Dinner Party.  Love that thing.  Love anyone who includes it on a list.

• Having trouble keeping track of all the Best Of lists out there?  Mr. Schu’s your man.  Thanks to him, we now have a nicely compiled 2013 Best Books Lists posting.  It’s very attractive.  Of course, if you want the most complete listing out there, there’s no better place to go than Chicken Spaghetti.  The information is AMAZING over there.

• A lot has been said lately about how big Best lists of children’s books this year have neglected to include any Latino characters (NPR and The New York Times most notably).  Perfect timing then for the 2014 Reading Challenge suggested by Latin@s in Kid Lit.  Take a look at the guidelines and join, but seriously?  One book a month?  I think you can handle that.  They even have some suggestions to start you off (yay, Nino!).

• And, of course, if you read only one Best list, read the 100 Scope Notes highly hilarious Year in Miscellanea.  Plus he mentions my superfluous little cupcake.  Quoth he it’s, “the Axl Rose Hair Metal hair of picture book cover cupcakes.”  You’re just going to have to read his piece to understand what that means.

• SLJ posted The Fault in Our Stars movie poster yesterday.  And you know what?  I love that tagline.

Well, every year I like to put out my list of 100 Magnificent Children’s Books from the publishing year. So far I’ve done this in 2010 and 2011 and 2012.  And every year the list looks suspiciously similar in some spots to the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list that NYPL produces. Little wonder, but I always like to use my own particular list to highlight those titles I love more than life itself but that are getting passed over. Here then were some favorites of the year. Not all my favorites, obviously (I read quite a bit of magnificent stuff) but at the very least 100 I care for with links to those I reviewed.  And yes. I’m shamelessly self-promoting at the same time.

Picture Books (For Children Ages 2-6)

Battle Bunny by Mac Barnett and Jon Scieszka. Illustrated by Matthew Myers. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Ben Rides On by Matt Davies. Roaring Brook Press
The Dark by Lemony Snicket. Illustrated by Daniel Handler. Candlewick Press
Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle. Chronicle Books
Giant Dance Party by Betsy Bird. Illustrated by Brandon Dorman. Greenwillow Books
Hank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley. Peter Pauper Press
Here I Am by Patti Kim. Illustrated by Sonia Sanchez. Capstone
Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon. Roaring Brook Press
It’s Monday, Mrs. Jolly Bones by Warren Hanson.  Illustrated by Tricia Tusa Beach Lane Books
Journey by Aaron Becker. Candlewick
Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me by Daniel Beaty. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
The Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleischman. Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Candlewick
The Mighty LaLouche by Matthew Olshan. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall. Schwartz & Wade
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild! by Peter Brown. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. Roaring Brook Press
No Fits, Nilson! by Zachariah OHora. Dial
Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale by Duncan Tonatiuh. Abrams Books for Young Readers
Picture a Tree by Barbara Reid. Albert Whitman & Co.
The Silver Button by Bob Graham. Candlewick
Take Me Out to the Yakyu by Aaron Meshon. Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great by Bob Shea. Disney – Hyperion
Water in the Park: A Book About Water and the Times of Day by Emily Jenkins. Illustrated by Stephanie Graegin. Schwartz & Wade
Wild by Emily Hughes. Flying Eye Books
Yes, Let’s by Galen Goodwin Longstreth. Illustrated by Maris Wicks. Tanglewood Publishing 

Folktales and Fairy Tales

Aesop in California by Doug Hensen. Heyday
Can’t Scare Me! by Ashley Bryan. Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Demeter and Persephone by Hugh Lupton & Daniel Morden. Illustrated by Carole Henaff. Barefoot Books
Grandma and the Great Gourd: A Bengali Folktale by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters. Roaring Brook Press
Hansel and Gretel by The Brothers Grimm. Illustrated by Sybille Schenker. minedition
Nasreddine by Odile Weulersse. Illustrated by Rebecca Dautremer. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Treasury of Egyptian Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Monsters & Mortals by Donna Jo Napoli. Illustrated by Christina Balit . National Geographic
Whiskers, Tails and Wings: Animal Folktales from Mexico by Judy Goldman. Illustrated by Fabricio Vanden Broeck. Charlesbridge

Poetry

Digger, Dozer, Dumper by Hope Vestergaard. Illustrated by David Slonim. Candlewick
God Got a Dog by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Marla Frazee. Beach Lane Books
Rutherford B., Who Was He? Poems About Our Presidents by Marilyn Singer. Illustrated by John Hendrix. Hyperion Books for Children
Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems by Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Carin Berger. Greenwillow
We Go Together: A Curious Selection of Affectionate Verse by Calef Brown. HMH Books for Young Readers
What the Heart Knows: Chants, Charms and Blessings by Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Pamela Zagaresnski. HMH Books for Young Readers
When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders by J. Patrick Lewis. Chronicle Books

Stories (For Children Ages 6-8)

Bowling Alley Bandit (The Adventures of Arnie The Doughnut #1) by Laurie Keller. Henry Holt and Co.
Call Me Oklahoma by Miriam Glassman. Holiday House
Gum Girl: Chews Your Destiny by Rhode Montijo. Disney – Hyperion
The Meanest Birthday Girl by Josh Schneider. Clarion Books
Mysterious Traveler by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Candlewick
Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow Books
Starring Jules (As Herself) by Beth Ain. Scholastic
The Truth of Me by Patricia MacLachlan. Katherine Tegen Books

Graphic Novels

Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You or Me by Emmanuel Guibert Illustrated by Marc Boutavant. Papercutz
Bluffton: My Summer With Buster Keaton by Matt Phelan. Candlewick
Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox. Graphix
Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale. Harry N. Abrams
Fairy Tale Comics: Classic Tales Told by Extraordinary Cartoonists ed. by Chris Duffy. First Second
Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson. Flying Eye Books
Jane, the Fox & Me by Fanny Britt. Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault. Groundwood
Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown. Scholastic, Inc.
Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell. Top Shelf Productions
The Silver Six by A. J. Lieberman. Illustrated by Darren Rawlings. GRAPHIX

Stories (For Children Ages 9-12)

Africa is My Home: A Child of the Amistad by Monica Edinger. Illustrated by Robert Byrd. Candlewick
Ballad by Blexbolex. Enchanted Lion Press
Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federele. Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers
The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas by David Almond. Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. Candlewick
The Center of Everything by Linda Urban, Harcourt Children’s Books
Doll Bones by Holly Black. Margaret K. McElderry Books
Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. Illustrated by K.G. Campbell. Candlewick Press
A Girl Called Problem by Katie Quirk. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
The Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell. Harper Collins
Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli. Alfred A. Knopf
How to Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks. HMH Books for Young Readers
One Came Home by Amy Timberlake. Knopf Books for Young Readers
The Other Side of Free by Krista Russell. Peachtree Publishers
Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked by Jarrett Krosoczka. Walden Pond Press
The Real Boy by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press
Rose by Holly Webb. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War by Helen Frost. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co.)  by Jonathan Stroud. Disney-Hyperion
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephen Pastis. Candlewick Press
The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt. Atheneum Books for Young Readers
The Water Castle by Megan Frazer Blakemore. Walker Children’s
Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones. Candlewick
Written in Stone by Rosanne Parry. Random House Books for Young Readers
The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes. Greenwillow

Nonfiction

Best Foot Forward: Exploring Feet, Flippers, and Claws by Ingo Arndt. Holiday House
The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős by Deborah Heiligman. Illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Roaring Brook Press
The Boy On the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible… On Schindler’s List by Leon Layson. Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Brick by Brick by Charles R. Smith, Jr. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Amistad
The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees: A Scientific Mystery by Sandra Markle. Lerner Publishing Group
Courage Has No Color, the True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tonya Lee Stone. Candlewick
Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton by Meghan McCarthy. Paula Wiseman Books
Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People by Susan Goldman Rubin. Abrams Books for Young Readers
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. Illustrated by Eric-Shabazz Larkin. Readers to Eaters
Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History by Lois Miner Huey. Lerner Publishing Group
Jumping Penguins by Jesse Goossens, illustrated by Marije Tolman. Lemniscaat
Locomotive by Brian Floca. Richard Jackson Books
The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius by Jan Greenberg & Sandra Jordan. Roaring Brook Press
Master George’s People: George Washington, His Slaves, and His Revolutionary Transformation by Marfe Ferguson Delano. National Geographic Children’s Books
Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery by Margaret Weitekamp and David DeVorkin. Illustrated by Diane Kidd. Abrams Books for Young Readers
A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant. Illustrated by Melissa Sweet. Knopf Books for Young Readers
To Dare Mighty Things: The Life of Theodore Roosevelt by Doreen Rappaport. Illustrated by C. F. Payne.  Disney  -Hyperion
The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever  by H. Joseph Hopkins. Illustrated by Jill McElmurry. Beach Lane Books
Wild Animal Neighbors: Sharing Our Urban World by Ann Downer. Lerner Publishing Group.

Happiness is a new list.

For 102 years, NYPL has consistently been producing the same list highlighting some of the best books for kids in a given year.  Now we’re pleased to announce our 2013 list and all the myriad titles it holds.  Admit it.  This is one of the most gorgeous covers on a booklist you ever did see, isn’t it?

The back cover isn’t shabby either.

Enjoy!

Written in Stone
By Rosanne Parry
Random House
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-86971-6
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Finding books of historical fiction for kids about Native Americans is an oddly limited proposition. Basically, it boils down to Pilgrims, the Trail of Tears, the occasional 1900s storyline (thank God for Louise Erdrich), and . . . yeah, that’s about it. Contemporary fiction? Unheard of at best, offensive at worst. Authors, it seems, like to relegate their American Indians to the distant past where we can feel bad about them through the conscience assuaging veil of history. Maybe that’s part of what I like so much about Rosanne Parry’s Written in Stone. Set in the 1920s, Parry picks a moment in time with cultural significance not for the white readers with their limited historical knowledge but for the people most influenced by changes both at home and at sea. Smart and subtle by turns, Parry tackles a tricky subject and comes away swinging.

A girl with a dream is just that. A dreamer. And though Pearl has always longed to hunt whales like her father before her, harpooning is not in her future. When her father, a member of the Makah people of the Pacific Northwest, is killed on a routine hunt, Pearl’s future is in serious doubt. Not particularly endowed with any useful skills (though she’d love to learn to weave, if anyone was around to teach her), Pearl uncovers on her own a series of forgotten petroglyphs and the plot of a nefarious “art dealer”. Now her newfound love of the written word is going to give her the power to do something she never thought possible: preserve her tribe’s culture.

It’s sort of nice to read a book and feel like a kid in terms of the plot twists. Take, for example, the character of the “collector” who arrives and then immediately appears to be something else entirely. I probably should have been able to figure out his real occupation (or at least interests) long before the book revealed them to me, and yet here I was, toddling through, not a care in the world. I never saw it coming, and that means that at least 75% of the kids reading this book will also be in for a surprise.

I consider the ending of the book a bit of a plot twist as well, actually. We’re so used to our heroes and heroines at the ends of books pulling off these massive escapades and solutions to their problems that when I read Pearl’s very practical and real world answer to the dilemma posed by the smooth talking art dealer I was a bit taken aback. What, no media frenzied conclusion? No huge explosions or public shaming of the villain or anything similarly crass and confused? It took a little getting used to but once I’d accepted the quiet, realistic ending I realized it was better (and more appropriate to the general tone of the book) than anything a more ludicrous premise would have allowed.

If anything didn’t quite work for me, I guess it was the whole “Written in Stone” part. I understood why Pearl had to see the petroglyphs so as to aid her own personal growth and understanding of herself as a writer. That I got. It was more a problem that I had a great deal of difficulty picturing them in my own mind. I had to do a little online research of my own to get a sense of what they looked like, and even that proved insufficient since Parry’s petroglyphs are her own creation and not quite like anything else out there. It’s not an illustrated novel, but a few choice pen and inks of the images in their simplest forms would not have been out of place.

Now let us give thanks to authors (and their publishers) that know the value of a good chunk of backmatter. 19 pages worth of the stuff, no less (and on a 196-page title, that ain’t small potatoes). Because she is a white author writing about a distinct tribal group and their past, Parry treads carefully. Her extensive Author’s Note consists of her own personal connections to the Quinaults, her care to not replicate anything that is not for public consumption, the history of whaling amongst the Makah people, thoughts on the potlatch, petroglyphs, a history of epidemics and economic change to the region (I was unaware that it was returning WWI soldiers with influenza that were responsible for a vast number of deaths to the tribal communities of the Pacific Northwest at that time), the history of art collectors and natural resource management, an extensive bibliography that is split between resources for young readers, exhibits of Pacific Northwest art and artifacts, and resources for older readers, a Glossary of Quinault terms (with a long explanation of how it was recorded over the years), and a thank you to the many people who helped contribute to this book. PHEW! They hardly make ‘em like THIS these days.

I also love the care with which Parry approached her subject matter. There isn’t any of this swagger or ownership at work that you might find in other authors’ works. Her respect shines through. In a section labeled “Culture and Respect” Parry writes, “Historical fiction can never be taken lightly, and stories involving Native Americans are particularly delicate, as the author, whether Native or not, must walk the line between illuminating the life of the characters as fully as possible and withholding cultural information not intended for the public or specific stories that are the property of an individual, family, or tribe.” In this way the author explains that she purposefully left out the rituals that surround a whale hunt. She only alludes to stories of the Pitch Woman and the Timber Giant, never giving away their details. She even makes note the changes in names and spellings in the 1920s versus today.

I don’t know that you’re going to find another book out there quite like Written in Stone. Heck, I haven’t even touched on Pearl’s personality or her personal connections to her father and aunt. I haven’t talked about my favorite part of the book where Pearl’s grandfather haggles with a white trading partner and gets his wife to sing a lullaby that he claims is an ancient Indian curse. I haven’t done any of that, and yet I don’t think that there’s much more to say. The book is a smart historical work of fiction that requires use of the child reader’s brain more than anything else. It’s a glimpse of history I’ve not seen in a work of middle grade fiction before and I’d betcha bottom dollar I might never see it replicated again. Hats off then to Ms. Parry for the time, and effort, and consideration, and care she poured into this work. Hats off too to her editor for allowing her to do so. The book’s a keeper, no question. It’s just a question of finding it, is all.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

• The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

• Echoes of the Elders: The Stories and Paintings of Chief Lelooska by Christine Normandin

Notes on the Cover: This marks the second Richard Tuschman book jacket I’ve reviewed this year.  The first was A Girl Called Problem, one of my favorites of 2013.  The man has good taste in books.

Other Reviews:

• City of Books
• Historical Novel Society
• You Decide: Should I Read It Or Not?

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Misc:

• Feel free to download the Teacher’s Guide if you’ve half a mind to do so.

Videos: Um . . . okay, I sort of love this fan made faux movie trailer for the book. It’s sort of awesome.  Check it out.

Herman and Rosie
By Gus Gordan
Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-1596438569
Ages 3-7
On shelves now

New Yorkers are singularly single minded. It’s not enough that our city be rich, popular, and famous. We apparently are so neurotic that we need to see it EVERYWHERE. In movies, on television, and, of course, in books. Children’s books, however, get a bit of a pass in this regard. It doesn’t matter where you grow up, most kids get a bit of a thrill when they see their home city mentioned in a work of literature. Here in NYC, teachers go out of their way to find books about the city to read and study with their students. As a result of this, in my capacity as a children’s librarian I make a habit of keeping an eye peeled for any and all New York City related books for the kiddos. And as luck would have it, in the year 2013 I saw a plethora of Manhattan-based titles. Some were great. Some were jaw-droppingly awful. But one stood apart from the pack. Written by an Aussie, Herman and Rosie, author Gus Gordon has created the first picture book I’ve ever seen to successfully put its finger on the simultaneous beauty and soul-gutting loneliness of big city life. The fact that it just happens to be a fun story about an oboe-tooting croc and deer chanteuse is just icing on the cake.

Herman and Rosie are city creatures through and through. Herman is a croc with a penchant for hotdogs and yogurt and playing his oboe out the window of his 7th story home. In a nearby building, Rosie the deer likes pancakes and jazz records and singing in nightclubs, even if no one’s there to hear her. Neither one knows the other, so they continue their lonely little lives unaware of the potential soulmate nearby. One day Rosie catches a bit of Herman’s music and not long thereafter Herman manages to hear a snatch of a song sung by Rosie. They like what they hear but through a series of unfortunate events they never quite meet up. Then Herman gets fired from his job in sales and Rosie’s favorite jazz club goes belly up. Things look bad for our heroes, until a certain cheery day where it all turns around for them.

You can know a city from afar but never quite replicate it in art. I do not know how many times Gus Gordon has visited NYC. I don’t know his background here or how often he’s visited over the course of his lifetime. All I know is he got Manhattan DOWN, man! Everything from the water towers and the rooftop landscapes to the very color of the subway lines is replicated in his pitch perfect illustrations. Maybe the medium has a lot to answer for. I love the map endpapers that identify not just where Herman and Rosie live, but also where you can find a great hot dog place. I like how the art is a mix of real postcards showcasing everything from Central Park (look at the Essex House!!) to the Rose Reading Room in the main branch of New York Public Library.

But the art is far more than simply a clever encapsulation of a location. It took several readings before I could see a lot of what Gordon was up to. Here’s an example: Take a look at the two-page spread where Herman is leaving his office for the last time with all his goods in a box, while on the opposite page Rosie trudges home from the closing club, her high heeled red shoes sitting forlornly in the basket of her bike. The two images take place at different times of the day, but if you look closely you’ll see that they’re the same street corner. Yet where Herman’s New York is filled with loud angry voices and sounds, Rosie’s is near silent, a black wash representing the oncoming night. Note too that while Herman’s mailbox was a mixed media photo, Rosie’s is painted in a black wash with some crayon scribbles. It’s a subtle difference, but I love how it sort of represents how objects become less real when the lights begin to dim. And the book is just FILLED with tiny, clever details. From the pictures and instructions that grace Herman’s cubicle at work to the fact that Rosie clearly washes her clothes at home (the clothesline the runs from her bike to the old-fashioned vacuum tube television was my first clue) to Herman’s bed in the living room, Gordon is constantly peppering his book with elements that give little insights into who these two characters really are.

And that right there is the the crux of the book. Time and time again Gordon returns to this idea of how lonely it can be to live in a busy place. The idea that you can be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people and feel as alone as if you were on a desert island is a tricky concept to convey to small fry. Herman’s whole personality, in a way, hinges on the fact that he’s terrible at his job as a telecaller because all he wants to do is talk to people on the phone, not sell them things. He longs for connection. Rosie, meanwhile, finds a certain level of connection through her singing gig. Once that gig leaves, her feelings of extreme loneliness echo Herman’s with the loss of his job. Their sole lifelines to the outside world have been severed against their wills. If this were a book for adults we’d undoubtedly also get a couple scenes of the various failed dates they fine themselves on (well, Rosie certainly… I’m not so sure that Herman’s the serial dater type). Kids understand loneliness. They get that. They’ll get this.

The book also plays on the natural inclination for a happy resolution, and the near misses when Herman almost meets Rosie and Rosie just barely misses Herman can be excruciating. You are fairly certain the two are made for one another (the natural tendencies of crocs to eat deer notwithstanding) so it can be particularly painful to see so many almost wases. This feeling is, admittedly, partly diluted by the fact that you’re not quite sure what will happen when the two DO meet. Are they going to fall in love? Well, not exactly. There may be a kind of child reader that hopes for that ending, but instead we’re given a conclusion where the two just learn to make beautiful music together, and in the course of that music happen to find financial success as well. This is New York, after all. Love’s great but a steady paycheck’s even better.

The truth of the matter is that Herman and Rosie could be set in L.A. or Minneapolis or Atlanta or even Sydney and I’d still love it as much as I do with its New York flavor, tone, and beat. It wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it’s the bones of the book that are strong. The setting is just a bonus, really. With original mixed media, a text that’s subtle and succinct, and a story that rings both true and original (for a picture book medium anyway), this is a city book, a true city book, to its core. Author Markus Zusak said the book was “Quirky, soulful and alive”. Can’t put it any better than that. What he said.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• When Blue Met Egg by Lindsay Ward

• Bat and Rat by Patrick Jennings

• Have You Seen My Dragon? by Steve Light

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• A star from Publishers Weekly

Misc: If you want to see some alternate covers for this book, scroll to the bottom of this fun blog post.

Jumping Penguins by Jesse Goossens
Illustrated by Marije Tolman
Lemniscaat
$19.95
ISBN: 9781935954323
Ages 6-11
On shelves now.

Here’s a puzzler for you. See what you think. There’s been a lot of talk lately about nonfiction for kids and the importance of highlighting those books that adhere strictly to the truth. That means no invented dialog in biographies and no invented facts. If you conflate facts, you start getting into a murky, sticky area. As Walter de la Mare is reported to have said (and no, I’m not blind to the irony of not knowing if he actually said it), “only the rarest kind of best in anything can be good enough for the young.” That goes for our nonfiction too. If we can’t trust them with reality (albeit selective reality) what can we trust them with? So with all this in mind, a stanch staid steady trust in the real world at hand, what are we to make of books where the facts are all true (insofar as we know) but the illustrations are fanciful? No one is ever going to say that the Jesse Goossens book Jumping Penguins is anything but one-of-a-kind. The real question is whether or not you think its delightful flights of fancy help or hurt the material at hand.

Without so much as a howdy-do, Jumping Penguins leaps into the thick of it right from the start. Turn the page and here we have a rather delightful turtle birthday party looking at us. The turtle of the hour is wearing a party hat that reads “150” while before him (her?) other turtles pile on top of one another, Yertle-style. As your eye wanders to the text on the far right you start reading startling and interesting facts. There are 33 species of turtles. The largest weighs as much as a small car. The oldest tortoise of all time was 225 years old when it died. Flipping through the book you are struck by the variety of facts. Sometimes these can be incredibly short (including the near non sequitur “A polar bear is left-handed, as are most artists.”) while others fill out the page from top to bottom. Fun, original pictures filling near two-page spreads continue throughout the book. There’s no particular order to the animals, but by the end you feel you’ve seen a wide variety. An index appears at the end of the book.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you end a book. Jumping Penguins is memorable for many things, but it’s hard not really love the fact that the very last words you will read mere moments before closing the cover are, “Panther: A black panther is not a panther at all – it is a leopard that happens to be black.” Pithy and to the point. There is, however, a downside to Goossens’ cleverness. It’s a downside that probably does not exist in The Netherlands where this book (under the title “Springende pinguins en lachende hyena’s”, in case you’re curious) was originally published. The trouble is that aside from the Index, there is no backmatter to explain where exactly Ms. Goossens is getting her facts. We’re sort of taking it on faith that if you drop alcohol on a scorpion it will go crazy and sting itself to death. This would probably pose more of a problem if I could envision any way in the world in which this book could be integrated into a school curriculum. Fact of the matter is that it’s just a really fun, and rather beautiful, collection of animal facts. No more. No less. So while I wouldn’t necessarily go spouting these off without doing the most rudimentary of checks, I think we’re okay overall.

Not to say there aren’t some moments of confusion. In the seahorse section I already knew that the daddy seahorse is the one who actually lugs about the baby seahorses for long periods of time in his pouch. However, since Goossens doesn’t mention that the females really do give birth to the eggs in the first place, statements like “He gets pregnant again within a few days” can prove more than a little confusing. Alternately, I rather liked the longer words and vocabulary terms that are spotted throughout the text. The casual understanding that the reader is familiar with words like “vertebrae”, “defecate”, and “nocturnal” gives the child reader the benefit of the doubt. I’m rather partial to that.

Clearly illustrator Marije Tolman is supposed to be the main draw here. How else to explain the fact that ONLY her name appears on the spine of the book (the cover doesn’t sport any words at all, so there you go there)? Certainly the art here offers a whole second way of reading the book. What Tolman has done that’s so neat is to illustrate each section with this silly, upbeat style while at the same time including lots of little elements that tie directly into the descriptive text. The Scorpion section, for example, contains about five different little drawn vignettes of various scorpions. It takes a careful reading of the text to realize what they’re getting at. The scorpion wearing three pairs of sunglasses? Well, that connects to the line “Scorpions have six eyes and some even have twelve but they cannot see well”. Slowly you can pair up each picture with the statement, but what becomes clear is that the illustrations in this book will not make any sense unless you do more than skim the pretty pics. Fortunately those same pics are also funny as well as occasionally quite beautiful (I’m personally rather fond of the Giant Octopus).

What Jumping Penguins does better than anything else is simply set up an appreciation for the natural world by way of its modest peculiarities. I mean, what exactly are we supposed to do with the information that “A giraffe has no vocal cords. It has as many vertebrae as you do”? There is no practical application for the knowledge you will find here. And that, I would argue, is actually its strength. Without relying on a specific hook (or precedent, for that matter) the combined efforts of Goossens and Tolman present you with something that looks, at first glance, like a picture book. Linger with it long and it’s rapidly clear that the overwhelming sense at the end is that the natural world is an awesome place. How many other animal fact books can say so much? Read this and you’ll find yourself amazed that you never knew half these facts. This is a book to inspire that most impossible of feelings: Wonder.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Orangutans Are Ticklish: Fun Facts from An Animal Photographer by Steve Grubman

• Wow! I Didn’t Know That: Surprising Facts About Animals by Emma Dods

• Never Smile at a Monkey: And 17 Other Important Things to Remember by Steve Jenkins

Other Blog Reviews:

• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast @ Kirkus

Professional Reviews:

• Publishers Weekly
• Kirkus

Misc: Happy Nonfiction Monday to you!  The roundup of the day is at NC Teacher Stuff.  Head on over there to see everything that everyone is linking to today.

It is my supreme pleasure and honor today to present to you a little video that you shan’t find much of anywhere else. Many of you are aware that Aaron Becker’s debut picture book Journey is getting a lot of critical acclaim and book buzz. What you may not know is that back in 2011 he contacted a friend of his to film the book’s progress. The result is today’s video. Ladies and gentlemen I give you The Making of “Journey”.

The Making of “Journey” from Aaron Becker on Vimeo.

Thanks that I cannot repay to Aaron Becker for passing this along to me.

Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me
By Daniel Beaty
Illustrated by Bryan Collier
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
$18.00
ISBN: 978-0316209175
Ages 4-8
On shelves December 17th

There is a perception out there amongst certain types of parents that the only picture books worthy of their little geniuses are those that reflect their own lives perfectly. I’ve complained more than once about this before, but there is nothing more disturbing to me than when a children’s librarian shows a parent a perfectly lovely book only to be asked, “Do you have anything a little less . . . urban?” And this in the heart of New York City no less. Of course we all know what “urban” is code for. Black, obviously (if I’m feeling snarky I’ll then follow up their request with Precious and the Boo Hag or something equally black AND rural). The ideal use of picture books, on some level, is to provide windows and mirrors for the kiddos. Mirrors that reflect their own worlds. Windows where they can see how other children live. So while Daniel Beaty’s Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me is ostensibly about a child with an incarcerated father, to my mind this is a book that has far reaching applications. It can be used with any child missing a parent, for whatever reason. It’s one of the very few picture books to talk about the process of growing into adulthood. And the art? Stellar stuff. So though I’m sure kids that find themselves exactly in the protagonist’s shoes will get something out of this book, they are not the only ones. Not by half.

It was the same every morning. The boy would pretend to be sleeping when his father went “Knock Knock” on the door. Then he’d “surprise” his father by leaping into his arms once he came in the room. That is, until the day his father didn’t knock anymore. The man is simply gone, poof! Like he was never there at all. Bewildered and lost, the boy writes his father a letter and leaves it on his desk in the desperate hope that maybe his dad’s in the apartment when the boy’s not home. He tells his dad that he was hoping that when he got older he’d teach him how to dribble a ball or shave or drive or fix a car even. Then, one day, there’s a letter from his father sitting on the desk. “I am sorry I will not be coming home,” it begins. It then proceeds to encourage the boy to seek his own path and grow to manhood without him. “Knock Knock with the knowledge that you are my son and you have a bright, beautiful future.” Years later when the boy has grown, his father returns to him. In his Author’s Note, Daniel Beaty discusses the effect his own father’s incarceration had on him when he was only three. As he puts it, “This experience prompted me to tell the story of this loss from a child’s perspective and also to offer hope that every fatherless child can still create the most beautiful life possible.”

As you might imagine, I vetted this one with some of my fellow children’s librarians and one concern that arose stemmed from the fact that the boy isn’t told what happened to his father. One day he’s there and the next he’s gone. Shouldn’t a kid be told? To this I have a couple answers. First and foremost, remember that you are getting this tale through the eyes of a child. For that very reason, you have reason to question the narrative. It is all too easy to believe that the kid has been told where his father is and he simply cannot process the information. This might be one of those rare picture book unreliable narrators we come across from time to time. Second, if the kid isn’t willfully ignoring the evidence at hand, it’s just as possible that his mother isn’t telling him. Whether it’s for what she believes to be his own good or because she can’t bring herself to explain, there’s a reality at work here.

But the explanation that rings truest to me is this; If the boy doesn’t know then it opens wide the possible applications of this book. The key to Knock Knock lies in the fact that Beaty’s tale is about an absent parent and not necessarily an incarcerated one. Lots of kids have one parent or another disappear on them. What Knock Knock is telling us is that even if they’re not there, you can grow up and become the man or woman you were meant to be. Now, obviously the book is primarily about incarcerated parents. The ending shows the boy, now grown into a man, hugging his father for the first time in years. Unless we’re going full on metaphorical here, that image is pretty clear. Nonetheless, I like to think that the book has a broader appeal than that. It’s not as if the word “jail” or “arrested” are ever in the text, and the images never follow the father but keep the focus squarely on the kid. As is right.

The art is the real kicker, of course. Not since Uptown has Collier lavished this much time and attention on the appearance and feel of Harlem. I should know. I live in it. From the Duke Ellington statue on the corner of 5th Avenue and 110th Street to brownstones and housing projects, Collier knows of which he speaks. Then there’s how he chose to bring Beaty’s words to life. According to Collier, he took a real interest in this text when he saw Beaty perform it in a monologue. In this book he then tries to capture the spirit of the performance. For example, he explains in his Illustrator’s Note at the end of the book that the watercolor and collage art affects the boy’s surroundings. “The sky in the art is not so blue”, a fact I’d completely missed. It’s true, though. You wouldn’t necessarily notice at first, but the dulled blue contrasts sharply with the vivid aquamarine on the last page.

To my mind, the eeriest image in the book is a two-page spread that shows the boy seemingly flying on the paper airplane message he’s trying to send to his dad. As his father’s oversized hat flies from his head you see below the fading faces of other children on the tarred roofs below. Their images are sometimes clear, sometimes eerily faint, like they’re memories being erased by time. There are also a fair number of elephants. The elephants are an interesting touch. I’m not entirely certain what to make of them. They trundle along the boy’s bedroom walls, then occasionally break free and appear in his memories, walking across the brownstones, partially obscuring a man’s face hidden behind the windows.

Impressive though the art may be, there are moments in the book that seemed better than others. Faces and features vary, sometimes striking the reader as affecting while at other times they take you out of the book entirely. The aforementioned shot of the boy flying in a paper airplane while his father’s hat drifts towards the faces of other children on the roofs below is a bit unnerving if only because the roof faces are so much more affecting than the boy himself. When done straight on, as on the page that reads, “I am sorry I will not be coming home” the results are much stronger. And that’s even before you notice that the boy has draped his father’s ties around his neck (and did you notice that as a man the boy continues to wear those ties?).

Here’s what might be my favorite line in the book: “Papa, come home, ‘cause I want to be just like you, but I’m forgetting who you are.” Kids everywhere grow up without fathers and a single book isn’t going to necessarily change their lives. But maybe, just maybe, it really will touch somebody in the right way. When Bryan Collier writes in his Note that “This book is not just about loss, but about hope, making healthy choices, and not letting our past define our future,” he’s talking to kids everywhere that are dealing with a deck that’s stacked against them. They don’t get enough books, those kids, about lives like their own. Fortunately, once in a great while, a book comes along that fulfills that gaping need. This year, it’s this book. Next year? Who knows? But as long as there are children struggling along without their parents, Knock Knock is going to have a job to do.

On shelves December 17th.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

List This? Then Try:

• Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson

• When Dad Was Away by Liz Weir

• A Visit to the Big House by Oliver Butterworth

Interviews: Collier talks a bit about his work on this book with SLJ.  Turns out he was the one who had the idea of turning Beaty’s poem into a book!

Videos:

Want to see Beaty perform it for yourself?  Then it’s your lucky day:

The Real Boy
By Anne Ursu
Illustrated by Erin McGuire
Walden Pond Press (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-201507-5
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

My two-year-old is dealing with the concept of personhood. Lately she’s taken to proclaiming proudly “I’m a person!” when she has successfully mastered something. By the same token, failure to accomplish even the most mundane task is met with a dejected, “I’m not a person”. This notion of personhood and what it takes to either be a person or not a person reminded me a fair amount of Anne Ursu’s latest middle grade novel The Real Boy. There aren’t many children’s books that dare to delve into the notion of what it means to be a “real” person. Whole hosts of kids walk through their schools looking around, wondering why they aren’t like the others. There’s this feeling often that maybe they were made incorrectly, or that everyone else is having fun without them because they’re privy to some hitherto unknown secret. Part of what I love about Anne Ursu’s latest is that it taps directly into that fear, creating a character that must use his wits to defeat not only the foes that beset him physically, but the ones in his own head that make even casual interactions a difficulty.

Oscar should be very grateful. It’s not every orphan who gets selected to aid a magician as talented as Master Caleb. For years Oscar has ground herbs for Caleb, studiously avoiding the customers that come for his charms, as well as Caleb’s nasty apprentice Wolf. Oscar is the kind of kid who’d rather pore over his master’s old books rather than deal with the frightening conversations a day in his master’s shop might entail. All that changes the day Wolf meets with an accident and Caleb starts leaving the shop more and more. A creature has been spotted causing awful havoc and the local magic workers should be the ones to take care of the problem. So why aren’t they? When Oscar is saved from the role of customer service by an apprentice named Callie, the two strike up an unlikely friendship and seek to find not just the source of the disturbance but also the reason why some of the rich children in the nearby city have been struck by the strangest of diseases.

Though Ms. Ursu has been around for years, only recently have her books been attracting serious critical buzz. I was particularly drawn to her novel retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” last year in the form of the middle grade novel Breadcrumbs. So naturally, when I read the plot description and title of The Real Boy I assumed that the story would be some kind of retelling of the “Pinocchio” tale. As it turns out, there is the faintest whiff of Pinocchio circling this story, but it is by no means a strict model. As one of the librarians in my system put it, “I am scarred for life by Pinocchio (absolutely abhor any tale relating to inanimate objects longing to become real to the point where I find it creepy) but did not find this disturbing in the least.” Truth be told it would have been easy enough for Ursu to crank up the creepy factor if she had wanted to. But rather than clutter the text up with unnecessary disgust, the story is instead clean, fast, exciting, and to the point. And for all that it is 352 pages or so, you couldn’t cut it down.

There have been a fair number of novels and books for children this year that have been accused of being written with adults rather than children in mind. I’ve fielded concerns about everything from Bob Graham’s The Silver Button to Cynthia Rylant’s God Got a Dog to Sharon Creech’s The Boy on the Porch. Interestingly, folks have not lobbed the same criticisms at The Real Boy, for which I am grateful. Certainly it would be easy to see the title in that light. Much of the storyline hinges on the power of parental fear, the sometimes horrific lengths those same parents will go to to “protect” their young, and the people who prey on those fears. Parents, teachers, and librarians that read this book will immediately recognize the villainy at work here, but kids will perceive it on an entirely different level. While the adults gnash their teeth at the bad guy’s actions, children will understand that the biggest villain in this book isn’t a person, but Oscar’s own perceptions of himself. To defeat the big bad, our hero has to delve deep down into his own self and past, make a couple incorrect assumptions, and come out stronger in the end.

He is helped in no small part by Callie. I feel bad that when in trying to define a book I feel myself falling back on what it doesn’t do rather than what it does do. Still, I think it worth noting that in the case of Callie she isn’t some deux ex machina who solves all of Oscar’s problems for him. She helps him, certainly. Even gets angry and impatient with him on occasion, but she’s a real person with a personal journey of her own. She isn’t just slapped into the narrative to give our hero a necessary foil. The same could be said of the baker, a fatherly figure who runs the risk of becoming that wise adult character that steps in when the child characters are flailing about. Ursu almost makes a pointed refusal to go to him for help, though. It’s as if he’s just there to show that not all adults in the world are completely off their rockers. Just most, it would seem.

There’s one more thing the book doesn’t do that really won my admiration, but I think that by even mentioning it here I’m giving away an essential plot point. Consider this your official spoiler alert, then. If you have any desire to read this book on your own, please do yourself a favor and skip this paragraph. All gone? Good. Now a pet peeve of mine that I see from time to time and think an awfully bad idea is when a character appears to be on the autism spectrum of some sort, and then a magical reason for that outsider status comes up. One such fantasy I read long ago, the autistic child turned out to be a fairy changeling, which explained why she was unable to communicate with other people. While well intentioned, I think this kind of plot device misses the point. Now one could make the case for Oscar as someone who is on “the spectrum”. However, the advantage of having such a character in a fantasy setting is that there’s no real way to define his status. Then, late in the book, Oscar stumbles upon a discovery that gives him a definite impression that he is not a human like the people around him. Ursu’s very definite choice to then rescind that possibility hammered home for me the essential theme of the book. There are no easy choices within these pages. Just very real souls trying their best to live the lives they want, free from impediments inside or outside their very own selves.

I’ve heard a smattering of objections to the book at this point that are probably worth looking into. One librarian of my acquaintance expressed some concern about Ursu’s world building. She said that for all that she plumbs the depths of character and narrative with an admirable and enviable skill, they never really felt that they could “see” the world that she had conjured. I suspect that some of this difficulty might have come from the fact that the librarian read an advanced reader’s copy of the book without the benefit of the map of Aletheia in the front. But maybe their problem was bigger than simple geography. Insofar as Ms. Ursu does indulge in world building, it’s a world within set, tight parameters. The country is an island with a protected glittering city on the one hand and a rough rural village on the other. Much like a stage play, Ursu’s storyline is constricted within the rules she’s set for herself. For readers who prefer the wide all-encompassing lands you’d see in a Tolkien or Rowling title, the limitations might feel restrictive.

Now let us not, in the midst of all this talky talk, downplay the importance of illustrator Erin McGuire. McGuire and Ursu were actually paired together once before on the underappreciated Breadcrumbs. I had originally read the book in a form without the art, and it was pleasant in and of itself. McGuire’s interstitial illustrations, however, really serve to heighten the reader’s enjoyment. The pictures are actually relatively rare, their occasional appearances feeling like nothing so much as a delicious chocolate chip popping up in a sea of vanilla ice cream. You never know when you’ll find one, but it’s always sweet when you do.

Breadcrumbs, for all that I personally loved it, was a difficult book for a lot of folks to swallow. In it, Ursu managed to synthesize the soul-crushing loneliness of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, and the results proved too dark for some readers. With The Real Boy the source material, if you can even call it that, is incidental. As with all good fantasies for kids there’s also a fair amount of darkness here, but it’s far less heavy and there’s also an introspective undercurrent that by some miracle actually appears to be interesting to kids. Whodathunkit? Wholly unexpected with plot twists and turns you won’t see coming, no matter how hard you squint, Ursu’s is a book worth nabbing for your own sweet self. Grab that puppy up.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Changeling by Delia Sherman

• Jinx by Sage Blackwood

• The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill

The Meanest Birthday Girl
By Josh Schneider
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$14.99
ISBN: 978-0-547-83814-4
Ages 6-9
On shelves now.

Life is easier when you can categorize it. When you can slot it in a distinct category and reduce everything to black and white terms. Gray is problematic and messy, after all. This type of thinking certainly applies to how people learn how to read. If you’re a library you separate your written fiction into five distinct locations: Baby & Board Books, Picture Books, Easy Readers, Early Chapter Books, and Middle Grade Fiction. Easy peasy. Couldn’t be simpler. And it would be an absolutely perfect system if, in fact, that was how humans actually learned how to read. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make mental leaps in difficulty from one book to another with sublime ease? Yet the fact of the matter is that for all that “leveling” a collection or trying to systematically give each book a Lexile reading level makes life easier for the folks who don’t want to bother to read the books themselves, it’s not so hotso for the kiddos. Not everything written in this world can be easily summarized. For this very reason I like books that don’t slot well. That are neither fish nor fowl. And I particularly like extraordinary books that fall into this category. Behold, then, the magnificent The Meanest Birthday Girl. Simple, straightforward, and smart as all get out, it’s too long for an easy book, too short for an early chapter book, and entirely the wrong size for a picture book. In other words, perfect.

As Dana sees it, birthdays are great for one particular reason. “It was Dana’s birthday and she could do whatever she liked.” Fortunately we’re dealing with a young kid here, so Dana’s form of Bacchanalian abandon pretty much just boils down to eating waffles for breakfast and dinner, showing off her birthday dress, and torturing fellow student Anthony. So it’s with not a little surprise that Dana finds at the end of the day that Anthony has shown up on her stoop with the world’s greatest birthday present. There, in the gleam of the house lights, stands a white elephant with pink toenails and a pink bow. Dana is elated and thinks that this is the best gift a gal could receive. It isn’t until she spends a little time with her white elephant gift that she begins to understand not just what a jerk she’s been, but how to spread the elephant “love” to those who need it the most.

I’ll confess to you right here and now that sometimes when I’m reviewing a book I find it helpful to look at the professional reviews so that I can nail down exactly WHY it is I like such n’ such a book. I mean, I liked the art and the story and the characters here, sure. But what I really liked was what the book was trying to say. Small difficulty: I’m not entirely certain what that was. Is this a book about the selflessness of parenthood or is the elephant a metaphor of unchecked desires? So I turned to the professionals. PW said the book “both makes amends and pays it forward”. SLJ eschewed any complex interpretations just saying that this was “more a story about a girl and her pet than it is about birthday shenanigans”. The Horn Book Guide (the book didn’t even rate a proper Horn Book review) found the message confusing while Kirkus gave the book a star and saw the elephant as simply a delivery system for a lesson about kindness. None of these really do the plot justice, though. I sympathize with Horn Book Guide’s confusion, but I disagree that the message doesn’t make any sense. It just requires the reader to dig a little deeper than your average Goosebumps novel.

Here’s how I figure it. Dana’s mean. She’s given an elephant (I love the idea that Anthony, the victim, may have previously been himself a pretty nasty customer to have had the elephant in the first place). The elephant demands constant attention, but subtly. It could just be Dana’s projections of what the elephant wants that undo her. That means she’s capable of empathy, which in turn leads to her feeling bad for what she did to Anthony. And then much of why this book works as well as it does has to do with the fact that the elephant isn’t, itself, a bully. If it were then the message of the book would be pounded into your skull like a hammer on a nail. Far better then that this particular elephant is just quietly insistent. It isn’t incapable of emotion, mind you. I was particularly pleased with the look of intense concentration on its face as it attempts to ride Dana’s rapidly crumpling bicycle. The slickest elephant moment in the book visually is when its trunk makes a sly play for Dana’s sandwich when she falls asleep under a tree, but the last image as the elephant stands in front of its new owner is of equal note. There you’ll see its trunk making the gentlest of movements towards the girl’s slice of birthday cake. It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to know that that’s the last the girl will ever see of her cake from here on in.

It was the PW review that probably did the best job of honing in on what makes this book special. Said they, the author “serves justice, [and] subtly (and quite cleverly) lets readers see another side to Dana …” That’s not something that occurred to me on an early reading but it’s entirely true. You meet Dana, her head resembling nothing so much in shape and size as those birthday balloons on the cover, and she does unlikable thing after unlikable thing. Then she gives up everything she has, from sandwiches to her bike, for a pachyderm. Kids may not make an immediate leap in logic between what Dana does and what they themselves sometimes have to do (willingly or unwillingly) for their little siblings, but it’s there. Schneider’s best move, however, is to show Dana being teased by a fellow classmate. Nothing cranks up the sympathy vote quite like someone suffering at the hands of another. Hence, by the time Dana formally apologizes to Anthony we’re completely Team Dana.

The art is all done in a simple execution of pen, ink, colored pencil, and watercolor. All of Schneider’s kids look like escapees from “L’il Orphan Annie” comic strips. They sport the same pupil-less eyes. Normally eyes without pupils are downright scary in some fashion, but Schneider shrinks them down so that they’re little more than incredibly expressive Os. Eyebrows go a long way towards conveying emotion anyway (the shot of Anthony raising one very cross eyebrow as Dana systematically nabs his cupcake is fantastic). Because Schneider’s books all have a tendency to look the same (Tales for Very Picky Eaters looks like The Meanest Birthday Girl looks like Princess Sparkle-Heart Gets a Makeover, etc.) there’s a temptation to discount him. Resist that urge. His is a star that is rising with rocket-like rapidity. I see great things for this guy. Great things.

The age level for this will cause no end of sorrow amongst the cataloging masses. I don’t care. The same could have been said for Sadie and Ratz (another preternaturally smart early early chapter book with a psychological base worth remembering) and a host of other books out there. What it all boils down to is the fact that The Meanest Birthday Girl is one of the rare books that makes for really intelligent fare. Odd? Certainly. But it’s willing to go places and do things that most books for kids in the 6-9 age range don’t dare. Not everyone will get what it’s trying to do. And not everyone deserves to. One of the best of 2013, bar none.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Sadie and Ratz by Sonya Hartnett

• The Bad Birthday Idea by Madeline Valentine

• Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan

Other Blog Reviews:

• A Year of Reading
• 2ndgradereading

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Publishers Weekly
• A star from Kirkus
• Booklist
• The Montreal Gazette
• The New York Times

A Girl Called Problem
By Katie Quirk
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
$8.00
ISBN: 97800-8028-5404-9
Ages 9-12
On shelves now.

Who says that mystery novels for kids all have to include the same tropes and settings? I tell you, half the time when a kid comes up to a reference desk asking for a mystery they think what they want is the standard white kids in suburbia model perfected by Encyclopedia Brown and his ilk. They’re wrong. What they really want is great writing and a good mystery with a twist they don’t see coming. So I will hereby give grand kudos and heaping helpfuls of praise to the librarian/bookseller/parent who hears a kid ask for a mystery and hands them Katie Quirk’s A Girl Called Problem. This book is a trifecta of publishing rarities. A historical novel that is also a mystery set in a foreign country that just happens to be Tanzania. Trust me when I say your shelves aren’t exactly filled to brimming with such books. Would that they were, or at the very least, would that you had as many good books as this one. Smart commentary, an honestly interesting storyline, and sharp writing from start to finish, Quirk quickly establishes herself as one author to watch.

The thing about Shida is that in spite of her name (in Swahili it would be “problem”) you just can’t get her down. Sure, her mom is considered a witch, and every day she seems to make Shida’s life harder rather than easier. Still, Shida’s got dreams. She hopes to someday train to be a healer in her village of Litongo, and maybe even a village nurse. In light of all this, when the opportunity arises for all of Litongo to pick up and move to a new location, Shida’s on board with the plan. In Nija Panda she would be able to go to school and maybe even learn medicine firsthand. Her fellow villagers are wary but game. They seem to have more to gain than to lose from such a move. However, that’s before things start to go terribly wrong. Escaped cattle. Disease. Even death seems to await them in Nija Panda. Is the village truly cursed, just unlucky, or is there someone causing all these troubles? Someone who doesn’t want the people of Litongo there. Someone who will do anything at all to turn them back. It’s certainly possible and it’s up to Shida to figure out who the culprit might be.

The trouble with being an adult and reading a children’s work of mystery fiction is that too often the answer feels like it’s too obvious. Fortunately for me, I’m terrible at mysteries. I’ll swallow every last red herring and every false clue used by the author to lead me astray. So while at first it seems perfectly obvious who the bad guys would be, I confess that when the switcheroo took place I didn’t see it coming. It made perfect sense, of course, but I was as blindsided as our plucky heroine. I figure if I honestly as a 35-year-old adult can’t figure out the good guys from the bad in a book for kids, at least a significant chunk of child readers will be in the same boat.

Now I’ve a pet peeve regarding books set in Africa, particularly historical Africa, and I was keen to see whether or not Ms. Quirk would indulge it. You see, the story of a girl in a historical setting who wants to be a healer but can’t because of her gender is not a particularly new trope. We’ve seen it before, to a certain extent. What chaps my hide is when the author starts implying that tribal medicines and healing techniques are superstitious and outdated while modern medicine is significantly superior. Usually the heroine will fight against society’s prejudices, something will happen late in the game, and the villagers will see that she was right all along and that she’ll soon be able to use Western medicine to cure all ills. There’s something particularly galling about storylines of this sort, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that Quirk was not going to fall into that more than vaguely insulting mindset. Here is an author unafraid to pay some respect to the religion of the villagers. It never dismisses curses but acknowledges them alongside standard diseases. Example: “Though Shida was certain Furaha should take medicine for malaria, she was equally certain she should guard the spirit house that night. Parasites were responsible for some sicknesses and curses for others, and in this case, they needed to protect against both.”

Quirk is also quite adept at using the middle grade chapter book format to tackle some pretty complex issues. To an adult reading this book it might be clear that Shida’s mother suffers from a severe form of depression. There’s no way the village would be prepared to handle this diagnosis, and Shida herself just grows angry with the woman who stays inside all the time. You could get a very interesting book discussion going with child readers about whether or not Shida should really blame her mother as vehemently as she does. On the one hand, you can see her point. On the other, her mother is clearly in pain. Similarly well done is the final discussion of witches. Quirk brings up a very sophisticated conversation wherein Shida comes to understand that accused witches are very often widows who must work to keep themselves alive and that, through these efforts, acquire supposedly witchy attributes. Quirk never hits you over the head with these thoughts. She just lets her heroine’s assumptions fall in the face of close and careful observation.

All this could be true, but without caring about the characters it wouldn’t be worth much. I think part of the reason I like the book as much as I do is that everyone has three dimensions (with the occasional rare exception). Even the revealed villain turns out to have a backstory that explains their impetus, though it doesn’t excuse their actions. As for Shida herself, she may be positive but she’s no Pollyanna. Depression hits her hard sometimes too, but through it all she uses her brain. Because she is able to apply what she learns in school to the real world, she’s capable of following the clues and tracking down the real culprit behind everyone’s troubles. Passive protagonists have no place in A Girl Called Problem. No place at all.

Finally, in an era of Common Core Standards I cannot help but notice how much a kid can learn about Tanzania from this book. Historical Tanzania at that! A Glossary at the back does a very good job of explaining everything from flamboyant trees to n’gombe to President Julius Nyerere’s plan for Tanzania. There are also photographs mixed into the Glossary that do a good job of giving a contemporary spin on a historical work.

Windows and mirrors. That’s the phrase used by children’s literature professionals to explain what we look for in books for kids. We want them to have books that reflect their own experiences and observations (mirrors) and we also want them to have books that reflect the experiences and observations of kids living in very different circumstances (windows). Mirror books can be a lot easier to recommend to kids than window books, but that just means you need to try harder. So next time a 9-12 year-old comes to you begging for a mystery, upset their expectations. Hand them A Girl Called Problem and bet them they won’t be able to guess the bad guy. In the process, you might just be able to introduce that kid to their latest favorite book.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer

• A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

• Burn My Heart by Beverly Naidoo

• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare

Notes on the Cover:  Now was that so hard?  We ask and we ask and we ask for brown faces on our middle grade fiction and still it feels like pulling teeth to get it done.  Eerdmans really blew this one out of the water, and it seems they spared no expense.  The book jacket is the brainchild of Richard Tuschman who you may know better as the man behind the cover of Claire Vanderpool’s Newbery Award winning Moon Over Manifest.  Beautiful.

Other Blog Reviews: Loganberryblog

Professional Reviews: A star from Kirkus

Misc:

• This is utterly fascinating.  In this post author Katie Quirk talks about the process that led to the current (and truly lovely) cover.

• And here’s the story behind the book itself.

• And Ms. Quirk shares what a typical day for Shida might look like in this video.

Picture a Tree
By Barbara Reid
Albert Whitman & Company
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-8075-6526-1
Ages 3-6
On shelves now.

If you weren’t a teacher or a librarian you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of how critically important tree units are to our school systems. They’re huge. Each and every year when I worked as a children’s librarian I would watch as mountains of tree-related picture books got sucked out of my branch by teachers and kids assigned arboreal units. The end result tended to be a hyperaware state where whenever I found myself within a close approximation of a tree picture book my internal radar would start ah-beeping. Imagine, if you will, little invisible antennae rising up on my head when I found myself inextricably compelled to pick up and read Barbara Reid’s Picture a Tree. From its magnificent cover to its jaw-dropping interior spreads, Reid has just upped the bar on the whole “tree genre”, such as it is. From here on in, when a kid asks a librarian for a tree book, that library had better have a copy of the Caldecott winner A Tree Is Nice on the one hand, and Picture a Tree on the other.

Endpapers display trees in a myriad of forms, from thunderstruck deciduous to the mushrooms that grow on a trunk. Says the text, “There is more than one way to picture a tree”. You might consider that the tree sporting birds or snow is engaged in a game of dress-up. Or you might think a tree-lined walkway a tunnel or (seen from above) an ocean. Delving deftly into the many different ways that trees can be seen and interpreted and equated with the humans that dart above their roots, Reid creates all new ways of looking at and enjoying our fine leafy friends. Her final words, “Picture a tree. What do you see?”

I’m a sucker for a glorious glob of Plasticine. Seems I can’t get enough of that colorful little substance. My first encounter with it in a children’s picture book was the remarkably lovely (and catchy) City Beats: A Hip-hoppy Pigeon Poem by Kelly S. Rammell, illustrated by Jeanette Canyon. In this particular case author/illustrator Barbara Reid is hardly a Plasticine newbie. Her work on books like Perfect Snow cemented her early on as one of our premiere picture book Plasticine artist experts. In Picture a Tree Reid has committed “a Peter Sis”. Which is to say, she’s made her job harder than it needs be and ended up with something truly beautiful as a result. I don’t know Ms. Reid so I can’t say whether not she actually said to herself, “Today I’m going to make a book that will require me to make five billion teeny tiny individual Plasticine leaves.” Regardless, that’s what she’s done here. “Five billion” might be a tad bit of an exaggeration but I suspect that if you were to corner Ms. Reid at a party she would admit that’s what it felt like in the end. A book of this sort could have worked perfectly well if the trees had been big blobs of color rather than little bitty dots of delightfulness. Hat tip to the artist for going the extra mile.

There are some artists out there (who shall remain nameless) for whom a tricky medium is an end in itself. Were they to work in the realm of Plasticine they would think it a triumph to merely produce something coherent. So what really allows Reid to stand apart from her peers isn’t necessarily her love of a relatively new artistic technique but that technique’s blending with great storytelling to boot. The fact that she’s able to discuss trees in a fun and interesting way without ever sounding cutesy or saccharine is remarkable. Playing in leaves really does feel like “A wild good-bye party” the way she displays it. Ditto a blanketing of snow as a “snowsuit”. The text shown here takes its time and carefully considers different seasons and the ways kids interact with trees on a day-to-day basis. Best of all, it balances out urban tree experiences with rural tree experiences. You don’t have to live in the suburbs to get what Reid is doing here. Hers is a tree book for all comers, all seasons.

The trick to any good picture book is the marriage of text and art. If you were to frame the art in a picture book, would it stand on its own and in its own right, free of context? And if you received a manuscript of this book with only the words, would you consider it a strong read? What I love about Picture a Tree is that it not only makes for an eye-popping visual jaw-dropper, and that it not only reads like a dream, but that it also fulfills a purpose. Kids need tree books. Good tree books. Original tree books that won’t bore them to tears. Reid delivers. Hers is a book you can enjoy any time of the year in any context, tree assignment or no tree assignment. Celebrate Arbor Day early. Grab yourself a bit o’ tree. A book that makes its pulped paper proud.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• A Tree Is Nice by Marc Simont

• This Tree Counts by Alison Formento

• Who Would Like a Christmas Tree?: A Tree For All Seasons by Ellen Bryan Obed

Blog Reviews:

• Books My Boys Love
• Mommy Kat and Kids
• Storytime Standouts
• Our Big Earth

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Quill & Quire

Misc:

• For fun, check out all the awards and honors this book garnered in Canada.

• And here are the bulk of the other reviews.

• Play a memory game with the book.

Videos:

Here’s the book trailer for this one.

And here’s a little behind-the-scenes peek into the art.

Okay, folks.  This is where we start the self-promotion machine.  I’m looking at it right now and it’s rusty and corroded and clearly falling apart at the seams.  Nonetheless, I shall grab my proverbial gas can, fill the tank, pull the cord, let ‘er rip, and see where she takes me.

So first and foremost, check this puppy out: www.betsybirdbooks.com

It’s me very own website!  Still in a transition phase admittedly (I’m putting the final touches on some promotional videos that’ll appear later this week) but a lot of fun.  Note the lovely tabs that aid in ease of movement.  Note the links to my Reviews, which happen to include this fan-freakin’-tastic one from Bookie Woogie.  Seriously, it’s kind of depressing that my best review had to come out right now.  Everything after this point will be downhill (though you are more than welcome to attempt to prove me wrong on this point).

Note too the fact that www.betsybird.com was already taken by a Memphis painter.  Alas that I have such a potentially common name.

Lest you think I have mad website building skills, full credit for my site goes out to my sister Kate.  Kate slaved relentlessly on this, which is why it’s as lovely as it is.  Thank you, sis!

It’s funny to think that I’d be so new to this brave new world of marketing myself, but honestly things change so quickly these days that it can be hard to catch up.  For example, I’ve made a Pinterest page for my book (it’s rather fun, I have to admit), and I’ve created a Lesson Plan for the book.  Currently I’m working on making the Lesson Plan a little more aligned with the Core Curriculum (it’s fortunate that I can speak the lingo).

So what does that leave?

Um….

Party party parties!

Yes, I’m going to start doing appearances.  Very very silly appearances.  Appearances that are well worth viewing, if I do say so myself (oh, storytime skills don’t fail me now).

My very first appearance will be this Saturday (oh me, oh my) at the Children’s Center at 42nd Street in the main branch of NYPL at 11:30 a.m.  There will be a reading.  There will be dancing.  There will be books for sale.  There will be boots that looked like I took the pelts of chinchillas and died them in electric blue Kool-Aid.  Oh, it shall be a good time!

And to be fair to Brooklyn, the very next day on this Sunday I will be appearing at Powerhouse Arena at 11:30 a.m.  So if you miss one appearance you can attend another.  And if it seems as though you’ve missed both?  I’ll be making stops in Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Kalamazoo (as well as more in Brooklyn) this months.  See my Events for more details.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

No Fits, Nilson!
By Zachariah Ohora
Dial (an imprint of Penguin)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3852-2
Ages 3-7
On shelves June 13th

The small child is a frightening beast. A truly terrifying creature that can level the most powerful adult with the mere pitch of their fury laden screams. As a children’s librarian I used to tell my husband that mine was one of the few jobs I knew where an average day was punctuated by human sobs and screams of terror, misery, and fury. What then is the reasoning behind the idea that you should read a child a book about a fellow kiddo having a meltdown? Well, kids can get a lot out of that kind of identification. They can put themselves into the role of the parent, to a certain extent. Or maybe it’s just good old schadenfreude. Better her than me, eh? Whatever the reasoning, meltdowns make for good picture book fodder. Add in a giant blue gorilla with a penchant for wristwear and you’ve got yourself a picture book as fine as fish hair. A treat to eye and ear alike, Ohora is truly coming into his own with a book that truly has universal appeal. And a gorilla. But I repeat myself.

Amelia and Nilson are inseparable. They play together, eat together, and with some exceptions (Nilson is afraid of water so no baths) they’re never out of one another’s sight. The fact that Amelia is a little girl and Nilson a gigantic blue gorilla? Not an issue. What is an issue is the fact that Nilson has a terribly short fuse. Good thing Amelia knows exactly what to do to calm him down. Don’t want to go with mom to do chores? Amelia calls them adventures instead. Nilson’s getting testy waiting in line at the post office? Amelia hands him her froggy purse. It’s the moment that Nilson gets the the last banana ice cream that Amelia’s composure finally breaks down. Now she’s the one who’s upset. Fortunately, Nilson knows the perfect way to make everything right again.

When we think of the great tantrum picture books out there, the mind immediately leaps to the be all and end all of fits, When Sophie Gets Angry Really Really Angry by Molly Bang. That book sort of set the standards for meltdown lit. It’s simple, it gets to the point, it teaches colors (though that’s more a nice bonus rather than anything else). After Sophie authors tried to come up with different unique takes on a common occurrence. Rosemary Wells came up with Miracle Melts Down, Robie Harris dared to discuss the unmentionable in The Day Leo Said “I Hate You “. And who could forget David Elliott’s truly terrifying Finn Throws a Fit? In the end, this book is almost an older version of Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (it involves preschooler fits rather than toddler fits, which as any parent will tell you are a different beast entirely). But part of what I like most about No Fits, Nilson! is that it sort of harkens back to the early days of Sophie. Ohora makes a metaphor out of the familiar and in doing so makes it even more understandable than it would be if his gorilla was nowhere in sight.

Ohora’s previous picture book, Stop Snoring, Bernard! was a lovely book to look upon. As an artist, the man has cultivated a kind of acrylic mastery that really does a wonderful job of bringing out the personalities of his characters within a limited color palette. However, while the art in Bernard was at times beyond stunning, his storytelling wasn’t quite there yet. It was all show without the benefit of substance. So it was a great deal of relief that I discovered that No Fits, Nilson! had remedied this little problem. Story wise, Ohora is within his element. He knows that there is no better way of describing a kid’s tantrums than a 400-pound (or so) gorilla. Most important of all, the metaphor works. Nilson is a marvelous stand-in for Amelia, until that moment of spot-on role reversal.

As I mentioned before, the acrylics threaten to become the stars of the show more than once in this book. Limiting himself to blue, red, pink, yellow/beige and green, Ohora’s is a very specific color scheme. Neo-21st century hipster. Indeed the book appears to be set in Brooklyn (though a map on one of the subways manages to crop out most of the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and half of Brooklyn, so maybe I’m reading too much into the setting). As I also mentioned before, painting beautifully is one thing, but coming up with delightful, memorable characters is what separates the RISD grads from the true picture book masters. Nilson is the one that’s going to get the kids the most excited to read this book so it was important for Ohora to make him a unique blue gorilla. Not the kind of guy you’d run into on the street. To do this, Ohora chooses to accessorize. Note the three watches Nilson wears on his left arm and the three on his right. Note his snappy black beret with the yellow trim, and yellow and black sneakers. Next, the artist has to make Nilson a gorilla prone to the grumps but that is essentially lovable in spite of them. For this, Amelia is a very good counterpoint. Her sweetness counteracts Nilson’s barely contained rage. Finally, Ohora throws in some tiny details to make the reading experience enjoyable for adults as well. The typography at work when the tiny words “banana ice cream” move from Amelia’s mouth and eyes to Nilson’s mouth and eyes is a sight to behold. Ditto the funny in-jokes on the subway (New Yorkers may be the only folks who get Ohora’s “Dr. Fuzzmore” ads, and the one for the zoo is a clear cut reference to Stop Snoring, Bernard!).

Yeah, I’m a fan. Kids may be the intended audience for books like this one, but it’s parents that are shelling out the cash to buy. That means you have to appeal to grown-up sensibilities as well as children’s. What Ohora does so well is that he knows how to tap into an appreciation for his material on both a child and adult level. This is no mean feat. Clearly the man knows where to find the picture book sweet spot. A visual feast as well as a treat to the ear, this is a book that’s going to find an audience no matter where it goes. At least it better. Otherwise I might have to sick my own 400-pound gorilla on someone, and believe me . . . you do NOT want to get him angry.

On shelves June 13th

Source: Review from f&g sent from publisher.

Like This? Then Try:

• Finn Throw a Fit by David Elliott, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering

• When Sophie Gets Angry – Really Really Angry by Molly Bang

• Nina in That Makes Me Mad by Steven Kroll, illustrated by Hilary Knight

• The Day Leo Said, “I Hate You” by Robie H. Harris, illustrated by Molly Bang

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Misc:

• Whence the inspiration for the book?  This comparison chart should clear everything up (WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SWEET KICKS).

Brick by Brick
By Charles R. Smith Jr.
Illustrated by Floyd Cooper
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-192082-0
Ages 4-8
On shelves now

Sometimes I feel like the older I get the more interesting history becomes. Not that history, real history, wasn’t always fascinating. It’s just that when I was a kid you couldn’t have named a subject duller. And why not? Insofar as I knew, the history taught in my schools gave me the distinct impression that America was a country forged by white people and that folks of any other race would crop up occasionally in the textbooks to be slaves or to appear in internment camps or to suffer Jim Crow. If anything came up about post-Revolutionary War America it was a pretty dry recitation of more white people doing whatever it was that they did. So for me the recent bumper crop of children’s books seeking to undo some of this damage is positively heady. Whether it’s works of historical fiction based in fact like Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson and Jefferson’s Sons by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, or fascinating works of nonfiction like Master George’s People by Marfe Ferguson Delano, we live in an era where kids can get a fuller, if not entirely complete, look at what has typically been a whitewashed era in their history books. For the younger sorts we have, Brick by Brick, a book that shines a light on something that I’m not even sure my own second grade teacher even knew, back in the day. Doesn’t hurt matters any that it’s gorgeous to boot.

“Under a hazy, / hot summer sun, / many hands work / together as one.” The time has come for the President of the United States of America to have a home to live in. So it is that white workers and free black workers are joined by slave labor to get the job done. In highlighting their work, poet and author Charles R. Smith Jr. focuses squarely on the hands of the laborers. Gentle rhyming text tells the tale, pulling in facts along the way. For example, we see that some of the more skilled laborers earned shillings that went towards buying their freedom. The house is built and the people look forward to a day when they won’t have to be slaves any long. Some factual backmatter appears at the end.

Last year we actually saw a book that was relatively similar to this one. Called The House That George Built it was by Suzanne Slade and raised hackles on my hackles when I read it. I was fresh off having watched the HBO John Adams series and it seemed to me an utter waste that Slade would write a whole book about the construction of the White House without giving additional attention to the sheer irony inherent in the fact that its very creation rested in large part on the backs of slaves. To be fair, Slade did mention the slave workers and her book had a broader scope in mind. Still, I read it and wanted it to be something else. And the something else I wanted, as it turned out, was Brick by Brick. I just didn’t know it yet.

Smith’s poetry sometimes stands second to his writing, if that makes any sense. He’s a great writer. Knows precisely what to highlight and how to highlight it. But I think it was the Booklist review of this title that mentioned that the rhythm sometimes feels “clunky, and the slant rhyme feels unintentional”. This is not untrue., though to be honest I had no trouble with the rhythm myeslf. But there are times when you’re not quite sure what Smith is going after. For example, there are two lists of names in the book. The first time you read the list, the slant rhyme works (“Len” and “Jim”). The second time you can’t help but wonder if it was supposed to rhyme at all (“Moses” and “Thomas”). That said, let’s get back to that writing, eh? Listen to this section:

“Chiseling, carving,
and transporting stone,
slave hands ache,
dark skin to white bone.”

Now that is down and out beautiful. It really is. Dark skin to white bone. And the book is just chock full of little lines like that. This is what sets “Brick by Brick” apart from a lot of nonfiction fare for younger kids. Why can’t children get their facts wrapped up in beautiful packaging? Why can’t something be both accurate and poetic? As a work of nonfiction, there is sadly little backmatter to be had. Smith doesn’t offer much more than a well-put answer to the question “Why Were Slaves Used to Build the White House?” He makes it clear that the house they built burned down in 1814, but that the contribution remains memorable. And he includes three Selected Resources, though sadly they all appear to be intended for adults. It would be nice if there had been something there specifically for children. Still, you go with what you’ve got.

And though it sounds odd, I cannot help but praise the author for not ending the book with Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly happy with most nonfiction works for children bringing the man up. But as I neared the book’s end I had to swallow my sense of dread. A shot of the White House today with Obama and his family would feel forced and obvious if it were just stuck in there. Sure, it would drill home the point of the book on a certain level but (A) the White House that Barack lives in is not the same as the White House built by the slaves and (B) do you really want an author to just shoehorn in someone contemporary when the entire focus until that point was squarely on the past? More to the point, Smith is not inclined to hammer home points above and beyond the facts. He doesn’t go on at length about what the White House would have symbolized (or not) to the slave laborers. He lets the facts stand on their own merit, and if there are connections to be drawn that is up to the teachers and the kid readers themselves.

Floyd Cooper likes the color brown. He’s quite partial to it. If you yourself are not a fan of the color brown, I suspect that perhaps Cooper’s style may not be to your liking. But for those of us that consider his work a step above mere sepia, Cooper gives readers a chance to feel as though they are peering at actual historical scenes through the foggy lens of history. I’ve always enjoyed the sheer beauty of a Cooper book but with Brick by Brick I found myself admiring his faces more than usual. If Smith’s text gives life to the long dead, Cooper gives those same dead their humanity. In him the faceless acquire faces. There’s a spread early on where the workers look at the reader dead on with mixed expressions. Front and center is a boy, not much older than the kids who would be reading this book, wearing a white shirt that with a little choice hemming would not be out of place today. This kid is there to give the child reader a chance to look and maybe realize that history is a bit closer than they may think.

As for the faces themselves, Cooper gives fellow illustrators like Kadir Nelson a run for their money. These are people who have worked their entire lives. One wonders where he pulled these faces from. They’re not the folks you would necessarily pass on the street. There’s toil in the lines of their foreheads. There’s something in their eyes. It’s unique. In terms of accuracy, I cannot say whether or not the image of the White House that appears here (that looks very much like today’s White House) is an accurate depiction of the building that burned. All I can say is that Cooper’s work on this book looks great. It’s brown, but you won’t mind. Not a jot.

It’s baffling to think that a book on this topic hasn’t really been written for children before. There’s the aforementioned Slade title but a book that considers the contributions of slaves to the most famous house in America should unquestionably be everywhere. How to account for Smith’s as the first? You can’t. All you can do is be grateful that the book is as good as it is. With a plain purpose and no folderols or frippery to muck up the history, Smith and Cooper have crafted a work of nonfiction that might actually be interesting to those small fry forced to sit through a recitation of late 18th-century highlights. Beautiful in every which way, it’s a gross understatement to call this book long overdue. Call it necessary reading instead. For every library, everywhere.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• The House That George Built by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Rebecca Bond

• Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill, illustrated by Bryan Collier

• Master George’s People: George Washington, His Slaves, and His Revolutionary Transformation by Marfe Ferguson Delano

• Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson

Other Blog Reviews:

• A Wrung Sponge
• Rhapsody in Books Weblog
• Creative Madness Mama
• A Mom’s Spare Time

Professional Reviews:

• The New York Times
• Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Interviews:

• Mr. Smith speaks with Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Misc:

• It’s Nonfiction Monday!  Check out Booktalking for the round-up.

• Browse inside the book here,

Video:

Mr. Smith does a bit of booktalking on his own title.  Can he booktalk everyone else too?  He’s darn good at it.

The Water Castle
By Megan Frazer Blakemore
Illustrated by Jim Kay
Walker Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Bloomsbury)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-8027-2839-5
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Where does fantasy stop and science fiction begin? Is it possible to ever draw a distinct line in the sand between the two? A book with a name like The Water Castle (mistakenly read by my library’s security guard as “White Castle”) could fall on either side of the equation, though castles generally are the stuff of fantastical fare. In this particular case, however, what we have here is a smart little bit of middle grade chapter book science fiction, complete with arson, obsession, genetic mutation, and a house any kid would kill to live in. Smarter than your average bear, this is one book that rewards its curious readers. It’s a pleasure through and through.

Welcome to Crystal Springs, Maine where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. That last part seems to be true, anyway. When Ephraim Appledore, his two siblings, his mom, and his father (suffering from the after effects of a stroke) move to town he’s shocked to find that not only does everyone seem to know more about his family history than he does, they’re all geniuses to boot. The Appledores have taken over the old Water Castle built by their ancestors and harboring untold secrets. When he’s not exploring it with his siblings Ephraim finds two unlikely friends in fellow outcast Mallory Green and would-be family feuder Will Wylie. Together they discover that the regional obsession with the fountain of youth may have some basis in reality. A reality that the three of them are having trouble facing, for individual reasons.

When one encounters an old dusty castle hiding trapdoors and secret passageways around every corner, that usually means your feet are planted firm in fantasy soil. All the elements are in place with Ephraim akin to Edwin in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and a dusty old wardrobe even making a cheeky cameo at one point. What surprised me particularly was the book’s grounding instead in science fiction. That said, how far away from fantasy is science fiction in children’s literature? In both cases the fantastical is toyed with. In this particular case, eternal life finds its basis in discussions of mutant genes, electricity, radiation, and any number of other science-based theories. Interestingly, it’s actually hard to come up with many children’s books that even dwell on the fountain of youth. There’s Tuck Everlasting of course, but that’s about as far as it goes. One gets the impression that Babbitt did such a good job with the idea that no one’s had the guts to take it any farther since. Kudos to Blakemore then for rising to the challenge.

I’m very partial to children’s books that are magical if you want them to be and realistic if that’s what you’d prefer. This year’s Doll Bones by Holly Black, for example, could be an uber-creepy horror story or it could just be a tale of letting your imagination run away with you. Similarly The Water Castle could be about the true ramifications of eternal life, or it could be explained with logic and reason every step of the way. I was also rather interested in how Ms. Blakemore tackled that age-old question of how to allow your child heroes the freedom to come and go as they please without a droplet of parental supervision. In this case her solution (father with a stroke and a mother as his sole caretaker) not only worked effectively but also tied in swimmingly into our hero’s personal motivations.

In the midst of a review like this I sometimes have a bad habit of failing to praise the writing of a book. That would be a particular pity in this case since Ms. Blakemore sucked me in fairly early on. When Ephraim and his family drive into town for the first time we get some beautiful descriptions of the small town itself. “They rolled past the Wylie Five and Dime, which was advertising a sale on gourds, Ouija boards, and pumpkin-pie filling.” She also has a fine ear for antiquated formal speech, though the physical appearances of various characters are not of particular importance to her (example: we don’t learn that Ephraim’s little sister Brynn is blond until page 183).

An interesting aspect of the writing is its tackling of race, racism, and historical figures done wrong by their times. I was happy from the get-go that Ms. Blakemore chose to make her cast a multi-cultural one. Mallory is African-American, one of the few in town, and is constantly being offered subjects like Matthew Henson for class reports because . . . y’know. Henson himself plays nicely into a little subplot in the book. Deftly Ms. Blakemore draws some similarities between his work with Robert Peary and Tesla’s attitude towards Edison. Nothing too direct. Just enough information where kids can connect the dots themselves. For all this, I was a bit disappointed that when we read some flashbacks into the past there doesn’t seem to be ANY racism in sight. We follow the day-to-day activities of an African-American girl and the various rich white people she encounters and yet only ONE mention is made of their different races in a vague reference to the fact that our heroine’s family has never been slaves. This seemed well-intentioned but hugely misleading. Strange to discuss Henson and Peary in one breath and then ignore everyday realities on the other.

If the book has any other problems there is the fact that the author leaves the essential question about the mysterious water everyone searches for in this story just that. Mysterious. There are also some pretty heady clues dropped about Mallory’s own parents that remain unanswered by the tale’s end. Personally, I am of the opinion that Ms. Blakemore did this on purpose for the more intelligent of her child readers. I can already envision children’s bookgroups discussing this title at length, getting into arguments about what exactly it means that Mallory’s mom had that key around her neck.

In the end, The Water Castle is less about the search for eternal life and youth than it is about letting go of childhood and stories. Age can come when you put those things away. As Ephraim ponders late in the game, “No one back in Cambridge would believe that he’d been crawling around in dark tunnels, or climbing up steps with no destination. Maybe, he decided, growing up meant letting go of the stories, letting go in general, letting yourself fall just to see if you could catch yourself. And he had.” Whether or not Ms. Blakemore chooses to continue this book with the further adventures of Ephraim, Mallory and Will, she’s come up with a heckuva smart little creation. Equally pleasing to science fiction and fantasy fans alike, there’s enough meat in this puppy for any smart child reader or bored kid bookgroup. I hope whole droves of them find it on their own. And I hope they enjoy it thoroughly. A book that deserves love.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Notes on the Cover: Is that or is that not a fantasy cover? The ivy strangled stone gargoyles and castle in the background all hint at it. I wasn’t overly in love with this jacket at first, but in time I’ve discovered that kids are actually quite drawn to it. Whether or not they find it misleading, time will tell. Not having read the bookflap description of this title, I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time trying to turn the kids on the cover into Ephraim and his siblings. It was quite a while before I realized my mistake.

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly
• The Wall Street Journal
• Jack and Jill

Other Blog Reviews: Cracking the Cover

Interviews: Portland Press Herald

Misc: Check out the Teacher’s Guide for this book.

The Dark
By Lemony Snicket
Illustrated by Jon Klassen
Little Brown & Co.
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-316-18748-0
Ages 4-8
On shelves April 2nd

You do not know the temptation I am fighting right now to begin this review with some grandiose statement equating a fear of the dark with a fear of death itself. You have my full permission to slap me upside the head if I start off my children’s books reviews with something that bigheaded. The whole reason I was going to do it at all is that after reading a book like Lemony Snicket’s The Dark I find myself wondering about kids and their fears. Most childhood fears tap into the weird id (see, here I go) part of our brains where the unknown takes on greater and grander evils than could possibly occur in the real world. So we get fears of dogs, the color mauve, certain dead-eyed paintings, fruit, and water going down the drain (or so Mr. Rogers claimed, though I’ve never met a kid that went that route), etc. In the light of those others, a healthy fear of the dark makes perfect sense. The dark is where you cannot see and what you cannot see cannot possibly do you any good. That said, there are surprisingly few picture books out there that tackle this very specific fear. Picture books love to tackle a fear of monsters, but the idea of handling something as ephemeral as a fear of the dark is much much harder. It takes a certain kind of writer and a certain kind of illustrator to grasp this fear by the throat and throttle it good and sound. Behold the pairing of Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen. You’ll ne’er see the like again (unless they do another picture book together, in which case, scratch that).

“You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you.” Laszlo is afraid but there’s not much he can do about it. Seems as though the dark is everywhere you look sometimes. Generally speaking it lives in the basement, and every morning Laszlo would open the door and say, “Hi . . . Hi, dark.” He wouldn’t get a reply. Then, one night, the dark does something unprecedented. It comes into Laszlo’s room and though he has a flashlight, it seems to be everywhere. It says it wants to show him something. Something in the basement. Something in the bottom drawer of an old dresser. Something that helps Laszlo just when he needs it. The dark still visits Laszlo now. It just doesn’t bother him.

There is nothing normal about Lemony Snicket. When he writes a picture book he doesn’t go about it the usual route. Past efforts have included The Composer Is Dead which effectively replaced ye olde stand-by Peter and the Wolf in terms of instrument instruction in many a fine school district. Then there was 13 Words which played out like a bit of experimental theater for the picture book set. I say that, but 16 copies of the book are currently checked out of my own library system. Besides, how can you not love a book that contains the following tags on its record: “cake, depression, friendship, haberdashery, happiness”? Take all that under consideration and The Dark is without a doubt the most normal picture book the man has attempted yet. It has, on paper anyway, a purpose: address children’s fear of the dark. In practice, it’s more complicated than that. More complicated and better.

Snicket does not address a fear of the absence of light by offering up the usual platitudes. He doesn’t delve into the monsters or other beasties that may lurk in its corners. The dark, in Snicket’s universe, acts almost as an attentive guardian. When we look up at the night sky, it is looking back at us. In Laszlo’s own experience, the dark only seeks to help. We don’t quite understand its motivations. The takeaway, rather, is that it is a benign force. Remove the threat and what you’re left with is something that exists alongside you. Interestingly it almost works on a religious level. I would not be the least bit surprised if Sunday school classes started using it as a religious parable for death. Not its original purpose but on the horizon just the same.

It is also a pleasure to read this book aloud. Mr. Snicket’s words require a bit of rereading to fully appreciate them, but appreciate you will. First off, there’s the fact that our hero’s name is Laszlo. A cursory search of children’s books yields many a Laszlo author or illustrator but nary a Laszloian subject. So that’s nice. Then there’s the repetition you don’t necessarily notice at the time (terms like “creaky roof” “smooth, cold windows”) but that sink in with repeated readings. The voice of the dark is particularly interesting. Snicket writes it in such a way as to allow the reader the choice of purring the words, whispering them, putting a bit of creak into the vocal chords, or hissing them. The parent is granted the choice of making the dark threatening in its initial lures or comforting. Long story short, adults would do well to attempt a couple solo readings on their own before attempting with a kiddo. At least figure out what take you’re going for. It demands no less.

The most Snicketish verbal choice, unfortunately, turns out to be the book’s Achilles heel. You’re reading along, merry as you please, when you come to a page that creates a kind of verbal record scratch to the whole proceeding. Laszlo has approached the dark at last. He is nearing something that may turn out to be very scary. And then, just as he grows near, the next page FILLS . . . . with text. Text that is very nice and very well written and perhaps places childhood fears in context better than anything I’ve seen before. All that. By the same token it stops the reading cold. I imagine there must have been a couple editorial consultations about this page. Someone somewhere along the process of publication would have questioned its necessity. Perhaps there was a sterling defense of it that swayed all parties involved and in it remained. Or maybe everyone at Little, Brown loved it the first time they read it. Not quite sure. What I do know is that if you are reading this book to a large group, you will skip this page. And if you are reading one-on-one to your own sprog? Depends on the sprog, of course. Thoughtful sprogs will be able to take it. They may be few and far between, however. The last thing you want when you are watching a horror film and the hero is reaching for the doorknob of the basement is to have the moment interrupted by a five-minute talk on the roots of fear. It might contain a brilliant thesis. You just don’t want to hear it at this particular moment in time.

Canadians have a special relationship to the dark that Americans can’t quite appreciate. I was first alerted to this fact when I read Caroline Woodward’s Singing Away the Dark. That book was about a little girl’s mile long trek through the dark to the stop for her school bus. The book was illustrated by Julie Morstad, whose work reminds me, not a little, of Klassen’s. They share a similar deadpan serenity. If Morstad was an American citizen you can bet she’d get as much attention as Mr. Klassen has acquired in the last few years. In this particular outing, Mr. Klassen works almost in the negative. Much of this book has to be black. Pure black. The kind that has a palpable weight to it. Laszlo and his house fill in the spaces where the dark has yet to penetrate. It was with great pleasure that I watched what the man did with light as well. The colors of a home when lit by a flashlight are different from the colors seen in the slow setting of the evening sun. A toy car that Laszlo abandons in his efforts to escape the dark appears as a dark umber at first, then later pure black in the flashlight’s glow. We only see the early morning light once, and in that case Klassen makes it a lovely cool blue. These are subtle details, but they’re enough to convince the reader that they’re viewing accurate portrayals of each time of day.

The dark is not visually anthropomorphized. It is verbally, of course, with references to it hiding, sitting, or even gazing. One has to sit and shudder for a while when you imagine what this book might have been like with an author that turned the dark into a black blob with facial expressions. It’s not exaggerating to say that such a move would defeat the very purpose of the book itself. The whole reason the book works on a visual level is because Klassen adheres strictly and entirely to the real world. An enterprising soul could take this book, replicate it scene by scene in a live action YouTube video, and not have to dip into the film budget for a single solitary special effect. This is enormously important to children who may actually be afraid of the dark. This book gives a face to a fear that is both nameable and not nameable without giving a literal face to a specific fear. It’s accessible because it is realistic.

When dealing with picture books that seek to exorcise fears, one has to be very careful that you don’t instill a fear where there wasn’t one before. So a child that might never have considered the fact that nighttime can be a scary time might enter into a whole new kind of knowledge with the simple application of this book. That said, those sorts of things are very much on a case-by-case basis. Certainly The Dark will be a boon to some and simply a well-wrought story for others. Pairing Klassen with Snicket feels good when you say it aloud. No surprise then that the result of such a pairing isn’t just good. It’s great. A powerhouse of a comfort book.

On shelves April 2nd.

Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Creepy Carrots by Aaron A. Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown

• Singing Away the Dark by Caroline Woodward, illustrated by Julie Morstad

• Bob & Co by Delphine Durand

• Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Publishers Weekly
• Kirkus

Interviews:

• Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Snicket) speaks to Terry Gross at NPR about, amongst other things, this book.

Misc:

• Read an excerpt here.

• And yes, the rumors are true.  Neil Gaiman is reading the audiobook.

Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me
By Emmanuel Guibert
Illustrated by Marc Boutavant
Translated by Joe Johnson
Papercutz
$12.99
ISBN: 978-1-59707-399-8
Ages 9-12
On shelves now.

The French are different from you and me. They have better comics for their kids. Sure, America’s been doing passably well in the last few years, but take a look at the graphic novel shelves of your local library or bookstore and you won’t be able to help but notice how many of the names there sound distinctly French. Joann Sfar. Guillaume Dorison. Goscinny. The list goes on. While we’ve been frittering away our time with discussions of “New Adult” fads, the French have come very close to perfecting the middle grade graphic novel, and Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me typifies that near perfection to a tee. School stories wrapped in the guise of animal characters, Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant have managed to create yet another GN that will be cluttering up our American shelves with its presence. And if we’re going to be honest about it, you’ll welcome Ariol with open arms. If the French keep producing books as good as this one, let ‘em. There’s always room for more.

Split into twelve short stories, Ariol follows the day-to-day life and small adventures of an average blue donkey, his best friend (a pig), his crush (a cow), and his friends. As we watch he and his best friend Ramono go to school, survive gym class, and participate in a disgusting but fun game. On his own Ariol contends with his parents, longs for Petunia (the aforementioned sow), pretends to be his favorite superhero Thunderhorse, and plays pranks. Nothing too big. Nothing too epic. Just everyday school stories from a donkey you’ll love in spite of yourself.

It’s interesting to me how very everyday and down-to-earth Guibert’s stories are. In spite of the barnyard cast (complete with a talking teacher’s pet who also happens to be a fly) there’s nothing magical or out of this world to be found here. Ariol is sympathetic if flawed. His best friend’s a bit of a jerk, but for some reason you don’t hate him. His parents are well meaning without being pushy and his teacher’s put upon. In its review of this book Kirkus said it was “less vicious with the satire” than a lot of the Wimpy Kid type novels out that the moment. I’d agree, but that doesn’t meant the book doesn’t have bite. True it dares to get a little introspective from time to time (Ariol contemplating whether or not donkeys really are as stupid as the prejudiced say) but for every thoughtful contemplation there are at least two instances of characters sneaking fake vomit into their classmates’ changing rooms or nicking movie theater standees behind the backs of their grandmas. Let’s just say there will be plenty of stuff for uptight parents to object to if they really want to do so.

Author Emmanuel Guibert I knew from various graphic novels over the years like Sardine in Outer Space and The Professor’s Daughter amongst many others. Turns out, it’s Marc Boutavant who’s the surprise here. Not that I didn’t already know his work. It’s just that when you see a Marc Boutavant children’s book in America it inevitably stars big headed, wide-eyed children that seem this close to bursting out into a chorus of “It’s a Small World After All”. He’s . . . . cute. He does cute little books with cute little themes. There is nothing to indicate in All Kinds of Families or For Just One Day that the man is capable of giving life to a sardonic aquamarine donkey with superhero aspirations. Yet give life to Ariol he does. The art here is sublime. The style is just straight up panels. No messing with the essential design of the book or anything. Within these panels you can get one story from the text and another from the art. For example in the story “Moo-Moo” I got the distinct sense that the mother of the girl Ariol’s been crushing on was more than a bit aware of the boy’s feelings for her daughter. Little interstitial details make the whole thing fun too. I loved the tiny art at the beginning of each chapter. Some of it tells crazy stories, and others tell the story before the story (if you know what I mean).

The tales found here are universal in the best sense of the word. Yet like the Nicholas series by Goscinny (the series to which Ariol bears the closest resemblance) there is something overwhelmingly French about this book. I didn’t notice it at first. Not when the first story in the collection (“Match Point”) was essentially a one-donkey show of Ariol pretending to win a tennis match and become a rock star too while he’s at it. Not when the second story (“Rise and Shine”) compared the act of getting up to go to school with a person’s birth. Not when the furniture in Ariol’s living room looked more like something out of a doctor’s waiting room than a home. No, it wasn’t until we got to the chapter “Operation ATM” that it clicked. In that chapter Ariol engages in a raucous game of pretend in the backseat of the car as his dad drives. He leaps, he dances, he hides, he throws himself bodily all about and if you’re an American parent like me then you spend the better part of the chapter gripping your seat so hard that stuffing is coming out in clumps between your fingers as you growl through gritted teeth, “Where. Is. His. Seatbelt?!?” Kids won’t care a jot, but expect the parents to lift an eyebrow or two here and there.

Oh. And can I just give a special shout out to Joe Johnson for the translation here? Over the years I’ve come to recognize when a translator goes above and beyond the call of duty. I don’t think there’s a kid alive who will read this book and think the language is stilted or funky. Instead it reads like it was written in English in the first place. There’s only the most occasional slip-up and it goes by so fast that no one will ever notice.

In the end, a school set Animal Farm this is not. It’s just regular everyday stories with the slightest French lilt. American kids will gobble it up right quick and then hunger for more. New middle grade graphic novels are rarer in America than they should be considering their popularity. Here’s hoping funny imports like Guibert and Boutavant’s continue to make up for the lack we feel on our shelves every day.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Nicholas by Goscinny

• Amelia Rules: The Whole World’s Crazy by Jimmy Gownley

• Big Nate: In a Class By Himself by Lincoln Peirce

Other Blog Reviews:

• Comic Attack
• The Comics Journal
• Kid Lit Reviews

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• Onion A.V. Club

Other Reviews:

• The Lottery Party

Interviews:

• Free Comic Book Day interviews both Guibert and Boutavant about the series.

Doll Bones
By Holly Black
Illustrated by Eliza Wheeler
McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-416963981
Ages 9-12
On shelves May 7th

I don’t watch much horror in general. I’m what you might call a chicken. When I do see it, though, I’m not particularly disturbed by random splattering and gore. The psychological stuff is far more of a lure for me. If I’m going to be honest, though, one of the scariest things I ever saw was on the cheesiest of television shows. It was this insider look into the world of ghosts and on the show we heard about a haunted home. It was a well-lit suburban house and we watched as a woman took off her shoes, walked over to the couch, and took a nap. When she woke up, the shoes were next to her. And that right there is what scares me half to death. Which is probably why a book like Doll Bones by Holly Black works for me on a horror level. Yet for all its creepy packaging, Black’s latest hides at its heart a remarkable, thoughtful take on what it means to grow up and pass from childhood into adolescence. Dark enough to attract fans of Goosebumps and the like yet able to make them actually think a bit about their own lives on a deeper level, Black strikes the perfect balance between the sensational and the smart.

By and large middle schoolers do not play with dolls. But Zach, Poppy and Alice have been playing “the game” for years and it’s only gotten better with time. Using dolls of every type they spin wild tales and live out personalities different from their own. That is, until Zach’s dad throws out his toys in an effort to stop the game. Ashamed, Zach lies to his friends that he no longer wants to play. This act leads to unforeseen consequences when, in desperation, Poppy releases a bone china doll from her mother’s cabinet, only to find herself haunted by the ghost of a long dead girl. Inside the doll are ashes and if any of the three is to get any peace they will have to bury the doll in a specific grave. If they succeed they’ll have fulfilled their quest. If they fail? They may suffer worse than a ghost’s wrath. They might be . . . ordinary.

Essentially what you’re dealing with here is what would happen if R.L. Stine every wrote a Newbery quality horror book for kids. And though it may not sound like it, this is high praise. I’ve always been fascinated with the nature of horror in books for children. Kids adore being scared. I recall well the adorable three-year-old who would return to my reference desk over and over again asking for “scary books” (I’d just hand him some very tame vampire or ghost fare and he’d be happy as a clam). The fascination fades for some, but for others it taps into the same instincts that drive adults to watch loads of horror films. The trick to writing really good horror literature for kids is to strike the right balance between the creepy and the safe. Go too far in one direction and you’re no longer writing for children but for teens. Go too far in the other direction and you’re not creepy enough, the kids tossing you aside the minute you bore them. Do not be mistaken. Doll Bones isn’t a chill-a-minute festival of screams. It’s smart and thoughtful and just happens to be about a doll constructed out of human marrow and stuffed to the brim with a little girl’s ashes.

To my mind Doll Bones fits neatly into two distinct trends I’ve picked up on in 2013. On the one hand, it’s a book that doesn’t give up its mystery readily. You can read this book for a long time before figuring out whether or not the book really is a horror fantasy or if it’s just an elaborate con by one of our heroes. A book that is similar in its reluctance to give up the goods too soon is the remarkable science fiction/mystery The Water Castle by Megan Frazer Blakemore. These authors appear to be inclined to believe that their readers will stick with their novels partly for the good writing and partly to see if the book lives up to the promises of its dust jacket and cover. They aren’t wrong.

The second trend in chapter books for the kiddos I’ve notices is a prevalence of titles where characters must say goodbye to childish things. The aforementioned Water Castle does this, and the new Jerry Spinelli Hokey Pokey does little else. In Doll Bones, Black separates this book from being yet another average ghostly tale by giving it a tragic edge. The tragedy is partly the characters’, sometimes admittedly inane, inability to talk to one another honestly about what’s going on in their lives. It’s also the tragedy of getting older and realizing that the friends you had as a kid may not be the friends you’ll have as a teen. What once you had in common with other people fades away in the face of looming adolescence (a theme of the Frances O’Roark Dowell book The Kind of Friends We Used to Be albeit with less sentient dolls).

All this talk of letting go of your youth and babyhood is told in the context of dolls. The kids play with dolls and the storytelling relies on their physical presence. So is storytelling itself childish to kids? Playing pretend is, and Black has to provide her child readers with the question of whether creating stories is an act of adulthood or childhood. Certainly Zach is good at it. You can hear him standing in for millions of writers all over the world when it says, “He liked the way the story unfolded as he wrote, liked the way the answers came to him sometimes, out of the blue, like they were true things just waiting to be discovered by him.” Transitioning from pretend to some kind of a creative output is often so difficult people will just abandon the act when they become teens. You can feel Doll Bones fighting against this tendency.

In telling this tale Black holds herself back in a number of ways. She never shows too much of her hand when recounting multiple creepy moments throughout the quest. By the same token, she could easily have turned the kids’ fantasies with their dolls into separate narrative moments. You could have begun the book with a rip-roaring delve into the adventures of William the Blade and the hearty crew of the Neptune’s Pearl and then revealed that it was all the fantasy of three tweens. Instead, Black chooses to remain entirely in the real world. The gift of this book is that it feels like it could happen to the kid reading it. No one walks through a magic door into a strange land or encounters mystical creatures. These three kids have to get, on their own, to a graveyard far away and they have to deal with some VERY realistic problems like weird strangers on buses, bus tickets in general, suspicious adults, and cell phones (Black is to be commended for not ignoring their existence and instead weaving them skillfully into the plot). This grounding in reality is what makes the horror that much more engaging.

It is interesting to note that as of this review Ms. Holly Black is not a particularly well-known name amongst the younger set of readers. Years ago she helped Tony DiTerlizzi create the Spiderwick Chronicles and all the books in that series. Kids these days don’t remember Spiderwick all that well, though. So while Ms. Black continues to impress on the YA side of things, she hasn’t connected with children in a while. Happily, this solo outing does her proud. She indulges in smart wordplay and strong good writing for much of the book. I enjoyed lines like, “Before Lady Jaye, Alice’s favorite character had been a Barbie named Aurora who had been raised by a herd of carnivorous horses.” And the little details delight, like the fact that Zach’s cat’s name is The Party, or the fact that Poppy refers to her rear as her “buttular region”, or even the donut shop that has every possible donut flavor, from wasabi or acorn flour to Pop Rocks or spelt.

If the book has problems it probably has something to do with the suspension of disbelief. The entire story tips on the fact that Zach refuses to tell either Alice or Poppy why he won’t play the game any more. So why exactly does he make everything so monumentally worse by not telling them what his father did to him? For a long time this fact plays out as a convenient plot point and not a believable fact. It isn’t until you’re at the tail end of the book that Zach’s confession “ripped away the fog of numbness and made him grieve.” Until that moment he claims he doesn’t want to play the game because it’s easier than admitting he never can again. I buy it, but I didn’t buy it for a very long time before that explanation. Also unclear is the ghost/doll. It’s hard to root for folks to help something malicious. Was the doll evil and ghost good? Were they one and the same or different? All unclear.

It all comes down to something Poppy says near the end of the book. She’s upset that her friends are growing up and possibly apart from her. So she gives voice to a fear that so many children feel but are unable to verbalize on their own. “I hate that you’re going to leave me behind. I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like dying. It feels like each of you is being possessed and I’m next.” Pair that line with one earlier concerning Zach. “He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.” Doll Bones positions itself to look like a simple ghost tale about a creepy doll, then sneaks in an engaging, thoughtful look at the ramifications of adolescence and storytelling. Consider this the thinking child’s horror novel. A devilishly clever read from an author too long gone from the children’s book genre.

On shelves May 7th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Well Witched by Frances Hardinge

• Juniper Berry by M.P. Kozlowsky

• Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Other Blog Reviews:

• Carina’s Books

 Misc:

• Meticulous to the last, read Holly Black’s How I Wrote Doll Bones.  It shows the lot of the author bound to a word count a day.  And, as a native Kalamazoo girl, it makes me wonder what was so thrilling about Southwest Michigan in November!

One Came Home
By Amy Timberlake
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-86925-9
Ages 10 and up
On shelves now

I like children’s books that sock you in the gut. Not the books that telegraph their hits or do the old one-two punch you can see coming from a mile away. No way, man, I’m talking about the books where you’re reading along, merrily as you please, and then this hammer of a hit comes in from out of the blue and just hocks the wind right out of you. Middle grade fiction, also known as chapter book fiction for kids, can sometimes feel like one long unending stream of samey sameness. Then you get a whiff of something like One Came Home and it does you a world of good. Kids need a little variety. If they’re going to read historical fiction (and they are) then why not give them bloody interesting historical fiction for once? Something with gunplay and counterfeiting and true affection between sisters and gowns and all that stuff? A mystery and quest tale all at once, Timberlake’s latest lifts her from the masses of samey same middle grade onto another level. And kid readers end up the winners.

Agatha is dead, to begin with. Or is she? When the sheriff came home with a body in a ball gown with its features blown all to smithereens (or eaten by wild animals) everyone in Placid, Wisconsin believes that it’s Georgie’s older sister. The one that ran off after Georgie helped to spoil her engagement. Georgie, for the record, doesn’t believe a word of it and she’s going to find the truth. As far as she’s concerned Agatha just has to be alive somewhere, so with a local boy, a mule, some gold coins sewn into her hems, and a gun she can rely on, Georgie sets off to prove her theory. Trouble is, the truth ends up being a whole lot more complicated than she ever could have suspected.

You know, I liked Amy Timberlake when I read her That Girl Lucy Moon back in 2006. That book was a contemporary novel about a girl trying to buck the system in her own particular way. Like Norma Rae with sledding. What it didn’t do was allow Ms. Timberlake to indulge in a character’s voice. Lucy Moon was pleasant and all, but when you left the book you didn’t find her stuck in your head for long periods of time. Georgie has that over Lucy then. She’s the kind of gal who likes to make an impression, even if that means hanging around your grey matter. I don’t regularly wrestle with the mad desire to read a book aloud but somewhere around page 83 I had to stifle an impromptu recitation on the #7 subway train.

Now there is a True Grit feel to the book that is impossible to deny. Not merely because of the can-do attitude of the heroine with her straightforward methods and ahead-of-its-time gumption, but also because the book reads as if the events had taken place long ago in the past. Timberlake adeptly alternates between perspective and the emotions of a 13-year-old barely entering adolescence. Not that this is the first True Grit-ish middle grade I’ve seen since the release of the Cohen Brothers film of the same name. The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence would actually make a sterling companion to One Came Home. Both books involve a mystery and a protagonist with hidden skills in the 1800s West. [By the way, another reader pointed out that the book bears more than a few similarities to [book: Atonement] and where is the line drawn between homage and borrowing? An interesting point.]

In Georgie, Timberlake finds a voice prone to particularly beautiful passages. And if you believe that this book consists of the remembrances of a grown woman looking back then it is easier to accept lines like, “But those images of bells and streams dissolved, and all I saw was a wind stirred by the evil winged creatures from Pandora’s box.” Or, on the next page, “… there’s a difference between feathers and leaves. Feathers claw their way back into the sky, whereas leaves, after flying once, are content to rest on the earth. Agatha? She was a feather.” Later still, “I froze. My body did, anyway. My mind, on the other hand, jumped over the moon and ran off with the spoon.” And finally, “You don’t turn the color of dust unless you’re returning to it.” That’s just a small sample, but it’s a hint of what I mean.

I always thought that passenger pigeons were small. When we talked about them in school, usually in the context of extinct American animals, I pictured birds the size of the pigeons you see in cities today. In point of fact they were “as big as crows” and your average everyday 21st century American citizen really doesn’t know all that much about them. I know that I, for one, did not know about the vast swarms of pigeons that would pass by, yielding a disgusting sleet of bird poop beneath. The sheer history packed into this little book is far beyond mere tales of bird excrement, though. Timberlake has a tendency to spoonfeed her readers history alongside pertinent background information. It’s as if we’d choke if she didn’t get it out in piecemeal. This is not a criticism, mind you, merely an observation. She is quite adept at giving the reader believable and relatable period details that feel right for the time. For example, we learn that Georgie finished her sixth year of winter school the year before and thought it would be fun but in the winter, “no schoolwork made the dark hours endless.” Tell me a kid can’t get behind that.

Now certainly there are passages here that defy credulity. Georgie’s prowess with a gun takes on near superhuman attributes later on in the story, and there may be a danger that this plunges some readers out of the story. I didn’t particularly mind. I like my superheroes, particularly those of the 13-year-old female persuasion. And I very much like those girls who, when given a chance to kill another person, do not do so because their very doubt in God stays their itchy trigger finger. There is also an almost superfluous last chapter to the book that could potentially come right out. It sets the book in history nicely but feels like it comes after all the actions of the characters have been resolved (not to give anything away). Then there is the resolution to whether or not Agatha is truly dead. The answer comes in such a way where it appears that nothing Georgie has done has led to the answer. Dig a little deeper, though, and I think that you could argue that Georgie’s actions did, inadvertently anyway, move the book towards its ultimate resolution (this not giving anything away business is hard going, no?). Finally, there is a very good question as to why no one wonders why the body of Agatha was found wearing a ball gown. That important point isn’t raised by even Georgie at the beginning. Seems a bit of a slip for our proto-detective. Young ladies were not prone for traipsing about the wilderness in green/blue velvet, after all.

So will kids dig it? Some will. Depends on how they come to it. Though my inclination would be to booktalk it to them on the murder mystery solving, if you do that then they might get turned off by the sweeter sister interactions at the start. Best if you inform them straight out that it’s a book about two sisters who love one another very much until one ends up dead in a ditch and the other doesn’t believe in the body. A good honest hook is all this title really needs to get some interest. And I’ve just gotta believe that a kid with a canny ear will pick up on everything Timberlake’s doing. Hopefully anyway. It’s a smart little book that does a small misstep from time to time but ultimately ends up being one of the most gripping little novels you’ll come across. Smart and funny and not something a kid with a yen is likely to put down, it’s a funky little number. Hope to see more books of the past like it in the future.

For ages 10 and up.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

First Sentences: “So it comes to this, I remember thinking on Wednesday, June 7, 1871. The date sticks in my mind because it was the day of my sister’s first funeral and I knew it wasn’t her last – which is why I left. That’s the long and short of it.”

Like This? Then Try:

• The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence

• Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

• The Misadventures of Maude March by Audrey Couloumbis

• Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

Other Blog Reviews:

• The O.W.L.
• Waking Brain Cells,

Professional Reviews:

• A star from School Library Journal
• A star from Kirkus
• The Washington Post,

Interviews: I Read Banned Books

Misc:

• Download the discussion guide here.

• Fellow author Karen Cushman’s also a fan.

• And finally, Timberlake discusses her influences and research.