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Looking for the best books for your kids and teens? Of course you are! Fortunately, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre  (a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1976) publishes just such a list. And we’re thrilled to share that sixteen Orca titles made the list for Spring 2013.

“All of the titles in Best Books for Kids & Teens have been handpicked by expert committees of educators, booksellers, and school and public librarians from across Canada. The reviewed materials include picture books, junior/intermediate fiction, graphic novels, and powerful teen fiction, in addition to a wide array of non-fiction, magazines and audio/video resources.” —Canadian Children’s Book Centre website

The following Orca titles were selected for the list this season. Congratulations to all the authors on their achievement!

Close to the Heel, Norah McClintock
Dead Run, Sean Rodman
Edge of Flight, Kate Jaimet
High Wire, Melanie Jackson
I, Witness, Norah McClintock and Mike Deas
Jump Cut, Ted Staunton
Kiss, Tickle, Cuddle, Hug, Susan Musgrave
Oracle, Alex Van Tol
Pieces of Me, Darlene Ryan
Prince for a Princess, Eric Walters
Pyro, Monique Polak
Redwing, Holly Bennett
Seeing Orange, Sara Cassidy
Shallow Grave, Alex Van Tol
Three Little Words, Sarah N. Harvey
Uncle Wally’s Old Brown Shoe, Wallace Edwards

CCBC members receive a copy of Best Books for Kids & Teens as part of their membership package, as do subscribers to Canadian Children’s Book News.

Best Books for Kids & Teens can be purchased at select bookstores or online at: www.bookcentre.ca.

 

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey
By Gary Golio
Illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-547-23994-1
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now

Is there any complicated hero with a past so full of darkness that their life cannot be recounted to children? This is the conundrum of any author who takes it upon his or herself to tell the stories of people who didn’t grow up happy, live lightly, and die laughing in their beds. The most interesting stories are sometimes the ones about folks who look into the eye of the devil and walk away the wiser. Trouble is, it can be hard to figure out whether or not theirs is a story kids need to know. They might love the life of Charlie Chaplin, but do you bring up his penchant for the very young ladies? Bob Marley did great things in his life . . . and consumed great amounts of drugs. Do you talk to kids about him? In the end, it all comes down to the skill of the biographer. The person who sits down and turns a great man or woman into a 32-48 page subject, appropriate for kids too young to watch PG-13 films on their own. To do it adequately is admirable. To do it brilliantly, as it’s done in Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey is worthy of higher praise.

He led as perfect a childhood as any African-American kid in the late 1930s could hope for. A loving family, two grandfather preachers, a great musician for a dad, the works. But all that came before the deaths. First his grandfather, then his father, then his grandmother too. Things grew dark for John, but an opportunity to learn the saxophone for free arose. It became John’s new religion, and the void inside him was easily filled by drugs and alcohol. He was brilliant at the instrument but was his own worst enemy when his addictions held sway. Golio tells the tale of how one young man bucked his fate and went on to become a leader in more ways than one. An Afterward, Author’s Note, Artist’s Note, and Sources and Resources appear at the end.

In any picture book biography (and this applies to bio pics on the silver screen too) the author needs to determine whether or not they’re going to try to cover the wide swath of their subject’s life, or if they’re going to select a single incident or turning point in that life and use that as the basis of their interpretation. Golio almost has it both ways. He’s certainly more in the wide swath camp, his book extending from John the child to John the successful and happy (relatively) adult. But within that storyline Golio takes care to build on certain images and themes. Reading through it you come to understand that he is showing how a happy child can become a brilliant but cursed young man, and then can escape his own personal demons, inspiring others even as he inspires himself. Under Golio’s hand Coltrane’s early exposure to religion reverberates every time he seeks out more spiritual knowledge, regardless of the sect. He loses so many people he loves (to say nothing of financial stability) then grows up to become the perfect melding of both his grandfather and his father.

Just as Golio builds on repeating images and themes in his text, so too does artist Rudy Gutierrez make a go of it in his art. The author/artist pairing on picture book is so often a case of an author writing a story, handing it over to their editor, that editor assigning it to an illustrator, and the illustrator working on the piece without any interaction with its original creator. It seems like a kind of crazy way to make great picture books, and many times the art and the text won’t meld as beautifully as they could. Then you’ll see a book like Spirit Seeker and though I know that “Gary Golio” is not a pseudonym for “Rudy Gutierrez” (or vice-versa) it sure feels like the two slaved together over each double-paged spread. I suppose the bulk of that credit lies with Gutierrez, all fairness to Golio’s text admitted. Gutierrez explains in his Artist’s Note at the end of the book that Coltrane was such an “artistic angel” to him that he fasted for two weeks so as to best focus, meditate, pray and paint this book. The result is a product that looks as though someone cared and cared deeply about the subject matter.

Mind you, the book will do kids and adults little good unless they like Gutierrez’s style. I happen to find it remarkable. He strikes the perfect balance between the literal and allegorical representation of certain aspects of Coltrane’s life. Some artists fall too far on one side or the other of that equation. Gutierrez isn’t afraid to attempt both at once. You’ve the energy of his lines trying to replicate the energy of the music, John’s grandfather’s preaching, his spiritual journey, etc. There are moments when you can actually sit a kid down and ask them something like, “What do you think it means when that single curving line moves from John’s father’s violin to his son’s heart?” At the same time, you know that Gutierrez is doing a stand up and cheer job of replicating the faces of the real people in this book time and time again. The melding of the two, sad to say, does turn a certain type of reader off. Fortunately I think that a close rereading can allay most fears.

In my own case, it took several rereadings before I began to pick up on Gutierrez’s repeated tropes. Golio begins the book with a description of John sitting in his grandfather’s church, his mother at the organ, the words of the sermon making a deep and lasting impression. That passage is recalled near the end of the book when John does his own form of “preaching” with his horn. As the text says, he was, “a holy man, shouting out his love of man to the whole human race.” You could be forgiven for not at first noticing that the image of John’s grandfather at the start of the book, hunched over a pulpit, the curve of his body lending itself to the curve of his words, is recalled in the very similar image of John’s and his saxophone, the curve of HIS body lending itself to the curve of his saxaphone’s music near the book’s end. Notice that and you start jumping back to see what else might have passed you by. The image of the dove (my favorite of these being when John meets Naima and two doves’ tails swirl to almost become a white rose). There’s so much to see in each page that you could reread this book twenty different times and make twenty different discoveries in the art alone.

I’ve mentioned earlier that there are some folks that don’t care for Gutierrez’s style. Nothing to be done about that. It’s the folks that object to doing an honest bio of Coltrane in the first place that give me the willies. I have honestly heard folks object to this story because it discusses John’s drug use. And it does. No question. You see the days when his deep sadness caused him to start drinking early on. You see his experiments with drugs and the idea some musicians harbored that it would make them better. But by the same token it would be a pretty lackadaisical reader to fail to notice that drugs and alcohol are the clear villains of the piece. Gutierrez does amazing things with these light and dark aspects of John’s personality. On the one hand he might be looking at the symbols of countless world religions. Then on the facing page is an opposite silhouette of John, the borders little more than the frightening red crayon scratchings of a lost soul. Read the book and you discover what he did to free himself from his trap. Golio even goes so far as to include a lengthy and in-depth “Author’s Note: Musicians and Drug Use” to clarify any points that might confuse a young reader. Let’s just say, all the bases are covered here. These two guys know what they are doing.

If there is any aspect of the design of the book that makes me grind my teeth to a fine powder it’s the typeface of the text. I’m not a typeface nerd. Comic Sans does not strike a chord of loathing in my heart as it does with others. That said, I do harbor a very strong dislike of this horrendous LA Headlights BTN they chose to set this story in. It fails utterly to complement the writing or the tone or the art in any way, shape, or form and makes the reading process distinctly unpleasant. They say that in some cultures artists will include a single flaw in a work because otherwise that piece would be perfect and only God is true perfection. With that in mind, I’ll consider this the single flaw that keeps Spirit Seeker from attaining a higher calling.

The reason Coltrane works as well as he does as a subject is that his is a story of redemption. Not just the redemption of a life freed from the power of drugs and alcohol, but a spiritual redemption and reawakening as well. It would pair beautifully with books like Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly by Walter Dean Myers which perfectly complement this idea. It is the only real picture book bio of Coltrane worth considering, and a kind of living work of art as well. Melding great text with imagery that goes above and beyond the call of duty, this is one biography that truly does its subject justice. Complex in all the right ways.

On shelves now.

Source: Copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow, A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Golio

• Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra by Andrea Davis Pinkney

• I and I, Bob Marley by Tony Medina

Interviews:

• BayView with Gary Golio.
• SLJ with Gary Golio.
• KMHD with Gary Golio.

Other Blog Reviews:

• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• BooksForKidsBlog
• Casa Valdez Studios
• The Fourth Musketeer

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Horn Book
• The Washington Informer
• The New York Times
• The Skanner
• Oregon Music News

Other Reviews:

• Richie’s Picks
• Jazz24.org

 

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It’s a Tiger!
By David LaRochelle
Illustrated by Jeremy Tankard
Chronicle Books
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-8118-6925-6
Ages 4-8
On shelves now

There is an art to reading a picture book but I’ve not encountered many schools that actually teach that skill. Librarians will learn it in their graduate courses, of course, but what about parents and booksellers? Are they doomed to stumble through their readings without getting some of the insider tips and tricks? Yup, pretty much. The only thing you can really do is just recommend to them picture books that make reading aloud one-on-one or to large groups a painless experience. Books that have an inherent interior rhythm and logic that kids will naturally adhere to. So each and every year I sit and wait for those great picture book readalouds of the year. For 2012 I’ve seen a couple that lend themselves to groups. Up, Tall and High by Ethan Long is ideal for preschoolers. Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds is perfect for the 1st and 2nd graders. But the all-around best readaloud of the year, bar none as far as I can tell, has got to be It’s a Tiger! A boon to librarians and booksellers looking for new storytime fare as well as parents and grandparents, David LaRochelle’s latest is a hoot, a holler, and could even be called a hootenanny if you’re so inclined to call it that.

So you’re walking through the forest, minding your own business, checking out monkeys when you realize that the orange and black tail over there isn’t a vine at all. It’s a TIGER!! Like a shot you (which is to say, the boy in the book) take off lickety split. Still, it doesn’t matter where you go. Whatever you do, that darned tiger seems to follow. Dark caves, ships at sea, desert islands, the tiger is everywhere! At the end you realize that the tiger doesn’t really want to eat you. So to put it to sleep you decide to tell it a story. A story about a boy walking through the forest until he sees a green scaly vine. Wait a minute . . . that’s not a vine . . . .

It took a couple readings before I realized something essential about this particular book. Turns out, this is one of the rare picture books written in the second person. You do this. You do that. The reader actually is the little boy who finds himself inexplicably running into the same orange and black foe over and over again. It’s a narrative technique that I just know that I’ve seen in picture books before, but when I try to think of them I find myself stumped. They’re not as common as you might think and I certainly can’t come up with any that are also great read alouds for large groups. By making the audience the narrator they get all the requisite chills and thrills without actually feeling like they’re in direct danger. It would be a good companion to Michael Rosen’s We’re Going On A Bear Hunt honestly. Same threat level. Same you-are-there aspects.

I think what I like best about the book is the fact that it goes from surprising to funny in fairly short order. The first three or four times you turn the page and encounter a tiger the kids are still uncertain about the order of occurrences. Once the pattern is firmly established, that’s when they can kind of let go and enjoy. Then LaRochelle ratchets up the silly factor and the kids really begin to have fun. We don’t always remember that children have a relatively refined sense of the absurd. They’re literalists, every last one, and though they might point out the flaws in your logic as you read the book (how can you swing and land on the tiger when you just escaped the tiger?) there’s a different kind of fun to be had in telling grown-ups they can’t possibly be right about something. It’s a Tiger! combines several different kinds of reading pleasures then. Interactive (kids can yell “It’s a tiger!” along with the reader). Power plays (telling adults they must be mistaken). The element of surprise. The controlled fear factor. It’s all there. And it’s awesome.

It is difficult for me to be impartial about a book that features the art of Jeremy Tankard. A couple years ago he burst onto the picture book scene with three books that changed the way I do preschool storytimes (Grumpy Bird, Me Hungry!, and Boo Hoo Bird). Even when he’s working on other people’s books, as in the case here, he has a distinctive style that can’t be beat. In this book he utilizes his usual ink and digital media style, but the colors are extraordinary. They just pop off the page with these magnificent blues, greens, oranges, yellows, and reds. It was interesting to note that the pages themselves have a sheen and gleam I’ve not noticed in a picture book before. Hold them up to the light and watch as the thick black lines and colors seem as though they should be transparent, if that makes any sense. That visual pop means that when you reach the every-other-page “surprise” of the tiger, Tankard can really make the animal’s appearance seem surprising. He uses some anime-type lines around the tiger from time to time to direct the eye to the center of the page, which as of this review still has a new and contemporary feel to it. We’ve seen it in books by folks like Dan Santat for years, of course. My suspicion is that though it will certainly make the book feel like an early-21st creation, that doesn’t mean it’ll age poorly. It’s simply a work of its time now.

Long story short, we haven’t seen a boy/tiger relationship this complex since the days of Calvin and Hobbes. Tigers are such cute and cuddly carnivores, and honestly it’s very difficult to be perfectly afraid of something as soft and fluffy as a tiger. That sort of makes them ideal picture book threats. LaRochelle has written innovative picture books for years now (The End, etc.). Pairing him with Tankard just guarantees a hit. Put this one on your Must Have list and stat.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, ill. Helen Oxenbury

• Snip, Snap! What’s That? by Mara Bergman

• Fortunately by Remy Charlip

Other Blog Reviews: 

• Shelf Elf
• Picture-Book-a-Day
• books4yourkids.com
• Cinjoella

Professional Reviews:

• Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly

Other Reviews:

• ChildrensBooksGuide.com
• Richie’s Picks

Interviews:

• Watch. Connect. Read. talks with David LaRochelle
• Watch. Connect. Read. talks with Jeremy Tankard

Misc:

• A behind the scenes glimpse at the making of the book.

• And here’s the activity kit.

• And here’s a teacher’s guide.

Videos:

A handy dandy book trailer, here for the viewing.

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Happy 2013, everybody!

*tweet!*

And that officially marks the end of all my 2012 reviews.  I’ll have an appropriate regret-filled post on the matter tomorrow, but for now let’s celebrate the year!  Everyone has their own little lists, and I am no exception.  In case you’re curious, I did similar ones for 2010 and 2011.  Now just because I don’t mention your favorite book here, that doesn’t mean I don’t adore it on some level.  I just had to limit these titles to 100, which is bloody difficult.  Similarities to the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list from NYPL are acknowledged, but there are some definitely differences, you betcha.  For one thing, I could only include the books I’d actually read on this list.

So without further ado . . . here we go!!

Picture Books

And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano. Illustrated by Erin E. Stead. Roaring Brook Press

Baby Bear Sees Blue by Ashley Wolff. Beach Lane Books

Beach Feet by Kiyomi Konagaya. Illustrated by Masamitsu Saito. Enchanted Lion Books

Boot & Shoe by Marla Frazee. Beach Lane Books

Cat Tale by Michael Hall. Greenwillow Books

Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Adam Rex. Hyperion Books

Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds. Illustrated by Peter Brown. Simon & Schuster

Duck Sock Hop by Jane Kohuth. Illustrated by Jane Porter. Dial Books for Young Readers

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Jon Klassen. Balzer & Bray

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Roaring Brook Press

Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts. Illustrated by Lauren Castillo. Candlewick Press

H.O.R.S.E.: A Game of Basketball and Imagination by Christopher Myers. Egmont USA

It’s a Tiger! by David LaRochelle. Illustrated by Jeremy Tankard. Chronicle Books

Jimmy the Greatest! by Jairo Buitrago. Illustrated by Rafael Yockteng. Groundwood Books

John Jensen Feels Different by Henrik Hovland. Illustrated by Torill Kove. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers

Jonathan & Martha by Petr Horacek. Phaidon

Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters by K.G. Campbell. Kids Can Press

Let’s Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy by Jan Thomas. Beach Lane Books

Me and Momma and Big John by Mara Rockliff. Illustrated by William Low. Candlewick Press

My Dad Is Big and Strong, But . . . by Coralie Saudo. Illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo. Enchanted Lion Books

The Quiet Place by Sarah Stewart. Illustrated by David Small. Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost. Photographs by Rick Lieder. Candlewick Press

The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson. Illustrated by Julie Morstad. Simply Read Books

Trains Go by Steve Light. Chronicle Books

Up, Tall and High by Ethan Long. G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Folk and Fairytales

The Goldilocks Variations by Allan Ahlberg. Illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg. Candlewick Press

The Great Race: An Indonesian Trickster Tale. Retold by Nathan Kumar Scott. Illustrated by Jagdish Chitara. Tara Books

Hans My Hedgehog: A Tale from the Brothers Grimm. Adapted by Kate Coombs. Originally written by Brothers Grimm. Illustrated by John Nickle. Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Robin Hood. Retold by David Calcutt. Illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith. Barefoot Books

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: An Aesop Fable. Retold by Helen Ward. Templar Books

Poetry

Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems by Gail Carson Levine. Illustrated by Matthew Cordell. Harper

Leave Your Sleep: A Collection of Classic Children’s Poetry. Adapted to music by Natalie Merchant. Illustrated by Barbara McClintock. Farrar Straus Giroux

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry. Edited by J. Patrick Lewis. National Geographic

Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies. Illustrated by Mark Hearld. Candlewick Press

Shiver Me Timbers!: Pirate Poems & Paintings by Douglas Florian. Illustrated by Robert Neubecker. Beach Lane Books

Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School. Edited by Timothy P. McLaughlin. Illustrated by S. D. Nelson. Abrams Books for Young Readers

Early Chapter Books

The Adventures of Sir Balin the Ill-Fated by Gerald Morris. Illustrated by Aaron Renier. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Duck for a Day by Meg McKinlay. Illustrated by Leila Rudge. Candlewick.

The No. 1 Car Spotter and the Firebird by Atinuke. Illustrated by Warwick Caldwell Johnson. Walker & Company.

Rabbit & Robot: The Sleepover by Cece Bell. Candlewick Press.

Sadie and Ratz by Sonya Hartnett. Illustrated by Ann James. Candlewick Press.

Twelve Kinds of Ice by Ellen Bryan Obed. Illustrated by Barbara McClintock. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Older Chapter Books

A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton. David Fickling Books

Buddy by M. H. Herlong. Viking

The Case of the Deadly Desperadoes by Caroline Lawrence. Orion Children’s Books

Chickadee by Louise Erdrich. Harper

Crow by Barbara Wright. Random House

Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey. Putnam Juvenile

Fairest of All by Sarah Mlynowski. Scholastic

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen. Scholastic Press

Freaky Fast Frankie Joe by Lucile Clifton. Holiday House

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander. Margaret K. McElderry Books

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy. Illustrated by Todd Harris. Walden Pond Press

In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz. Dutton Children’s Books

The Kairos Mechanism by Kate Milford. The Clockwork Foundry

Katerina’s Wish by Jeannie Mobley. Margaret K. McElderry Books

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead. Random House

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine. G. P. Putnam’s Sons

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Illustrated by Patricia Castelao. Harper

Pickle: The Formerly Anonymous Prank Club of Fountain Point Middle School by Kim Baker. Illustrated by Tim Probert. Roaring Brook Press

Plunked by Michael Northrop. Scholastic Press

The Prince Who Fell From the Sky by John Claude Bemis. Random House

Return to the Willows by Jacqueline Kelly. Illustrated by Clint Young. Henry Holt and Company

Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz. Candlewick Press

The Star Shard by Frederick S. Durbin. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin. Little, Brown and Company

Summer of the Gypsy Moths by Sara Pennypacker. Balzer & Bray

Three Times Lucky by Shelia Turnage. Dial Books for Young Readers

The Traveling Restaurant by Barbara Else. Gecko Press

The Unfortunate Son by Constance Leeds. Viking

The Vengekeep Prophecies by Brian Farrey. Illustrated by Brett Helquist. Harper

Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket. Illustrated by Seth. Little, Brown & Co.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio. Alfred A. Knopf

Graphic Novels

Cardboard by Doug TenNapel. Graphix

Drama by Raina Telgemeier. Graphix

Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian by Michael Rex. G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Giants Beware! by Jorge Aguirre. Illustrated by Rafael Rosado. First Second

Hades: Lord of the Dead by George O’Connor. First Second

Little White Duck: A Childhood in China by Na Liu and Andres Vera Martinez. Graphic Universe

Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Big Bad Ironclad! by Nathan Hale Amulet Books

The Secret of the Stone Frog by David Nytra. Toon Books

Nonfiction Picture Books

Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why by Lita Judge. Flash Point

Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman by Marc Tyler Nobleman. Illustrated by Ty Templeton. Charlesbridge Publishing

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau by Michelle Markel. Illustrated by Amanda Hall. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers

How Many Jelly Beans? by Andrea Menotti. Illustrated by Yancy Labat. Chronicle Books

It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw by Don Tate. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. Lee & Low Books Inc.

Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter. Illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey by Gary Golio. Illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez. Clarion Books

Nonfiction Chapter Books

A Black Hole Is Not a Hole by Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano. Illustrated by Michael Carroll. Charlesbridge

Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert by Elaine Scott. Clarion Books

Chuck Close: Face Book by Chuck Close. Abrams Books for Young Readers

The Fairy Ring by Mary Losure. Candlewick Press

The Great Molasses Flood: Boston, 1919 by Deborah Kops. Charlesbridge

Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America, by Andrea Davis Pinkney. Illustrated by Brian Pinkney. Hyperion

The Human Body Factory by Dan Green. Illustrated by Edmond Davis. Kingfisher

Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure by Jim Murphy and Alison Blank. Clarion Books

The Skull in the Rock: How a Scientist, a Boy and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins by Marc Aronson and Lee Berger. National Geographic Books for Children

Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson. Scholastic Press

Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson. Millbrook Press

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Observe!  Before your very eyes I will now beat my breast and rend my clothing (simultaneously… I’m talented like that) while wailing at a fever pitch about the books that I wish I had reviewed in 2012.  You see, I give myself some pretty strict rules when it comes to reviewing.  Once the second hand strikes midnight and the new year comes in, that is IT for the previous year’s titles.  Not all is lost, of course.  There is a chance that if any of these books win a Newbery or Caldecott I will do some last minute reviewing of them right after the award announcements.  But otherwise, these are the folks who lost out and I sincerely regret it.  Technically every book that appeared on yesterday’s 100 Magnificent Children’s Books 2012 list should be here, but from that I’ll select just a couple that make me particularly sad.

Without further ado, and in no particular order whatsoever . . .

H.O.R.S.E. by Christopher Myers – Gah.  The ONLY reason I didn’t do this one is that the sole copy in my possession is at NYPL because we placed it on the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing List (which ain’t a bad thing) and there it stays with the other books of the year.  The book was remarkable for a lot of reasons, not least of which was the fact that it was one of the very very few contemporary picture books with African-American characters.

Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School. Edited by Timothy P. McLaughlin. Illustrated by S. D. Nelson. – The number of books written by Native Americans is small in any given year, so what was my excuse for not reviewing either Louise Erdrich’s Chickadee or this remarkable collection of poetry by the kids at the Red Cloud Indian School?  Whatever it was, it wasn’t good enough.

Crow by Barbara Wright – If it really does win a Newbery this year I’m gonna feel pretty stupid for predicting its win and then never reviewing it.  I just adore this description of the book on the author’s website: “The only successful coup d’etat in US history, seen through the eyes of a young boy.”  Great new paperback cover too.

The Fairy Ring by Mary Losure – Funny that other folks didn’t like this one as much as I did.  I really did feel it was one of the best little recaps of a successful hoax out there (though by no means the only one written in a children’s book format in 2012).  Great production and design, lovely writing, a stellar project through and through.

Bomb: The Race to Build – And Steal – The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin – This one took me a long time to read since I thought it was straight YA and I don’t get a chance to look at a lot of that fare in a given year.  That said, I think this is one of the rare YA titles eligible for the Newbery, and just a stellar piece of writing through and through!  Sorry I missed the boat here.

Trains Go by Steve Light – I officially reviewed only one board book this year.  Would that it has been two.  Though you could call this a sequel of sorts (Trucks Go came out four or so years prior) this book was a magical combination of great train sounds and stellar art.

Cardboard by Doug TenNapel – And then I go and find out that it’s currently being turned into a film starring Tobey Maguire.  Gah!  There were so few really imaginative graphic novels this year.  The sequence where the old man explains the cardboard’s sci-fi / fantasy / religious background was worth the price of admission alone.

Duck for a Day by Meg McKinlay, illustrated by Judith Rudge – Don’t count how many Candlewick books made my 100 Magnificent Children’s Books list for the year.  It’s a little silly.  Fortunately I was able to keep my reviews on par with the other publishers.  UNfortunately, that meant not getting a chance to review stellar works like this one.  A great little early chapter book it was by no means the only duck related early chapter title of 2012 (I counted at least four others) but it was, at least, the best.

Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery – Sweet jeebus it was good.  Bar none the best book on autism for kids I’ve ever read.  I think I missed this one because it got SO much excellent press when it first came out.  Guess I felt I would be a single voice lost in the chorus.  Ah well.

Duck Sock Hop by Jane Kohuth, illustrated by Jane Porter – My library’s amazing catalog (called Bibliocommons) allows us to make lists that are searchable by all the other 50+ systems that use the same system.  One list I made for this year was Top Ten Picture Book Read-Alouds of 2012.  And you can bet this book was prominently promoted on that list.  Oh yes indeedy it was.

Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey – Another victim of timing.  I’ll stand by my statement that it’s the funniest pirate chapter book for kids I’ve ever read.  There aren’t enough humorous books in a given year anyway.  May as well seek out the few that exist (and are honestly funny).

Let’s Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy by Jan Thomas – As a children’s librarian I have a natural adoration for Jan Thomas.  This book really ranks up there with Rhyming Dust Bunnies, coming across as funny in all the right ways.  The sole problem I have with it is that I keep misremembering the title as “Let’s Go Sleep with the Brave Cowboy” which would be a very different book (I have a similar problem with Mo Willems and his this-is-not-the-actual-title “Let’s Go Sleep with Sheep the Sheep”).

Plunked by Michael Northrup – Dang de dang de dang.  I totally failed to keep up with boy sports fiction this year.  So you’d think that the one really good one I read, one of the few where the hero is an actual honest-to-god jock, would have gotten some attention from me.  Michael’s been coming to my KidLit Drink Nights here in NYC for years.  Would have loved to give him his proper due.  Ah well.

Buried Alive!: How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert by Elaine Scott – I reviewed Marc Aronson’s Trapped on the same topic last year.  Would that I had seen this first.  Incredibly gripping and kid-friendly, I didn’t do right by Ms. Scott.  Couldn’t get enough people to read her in time.  If you get a chance, do look at this.  It’s a remarkable story and the visuals in this format just POP!

Drama by Raina Telgemeier – Well, at least I got Smile in, even if it was in the Times and not on this blog.  Even as I write this I come to the slow dawning horror of a realization that I’ve never reviewed Telgemeier on this blog . . . ever.  Not even once.  And it’s not like she churns one out a year or anything!  ARG!

In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz – Oh, you should have seen the notes I wrote at the back of its galley.  They were scintillating.  Brilliant.  Man, I was drawing comparisons between this and Starry River of the Sky that would have made your head spin.  Pity it never happened.  Still, I’m heartened to hear that #3 in this series (if you can call it that) is on the horizon and that it involves The Juniper Tree (amongst other things).  I’m having nightmares in anticipation already.

And in the final reviewing tally, here is the complete list of the publishers I DID review in the year 2012:

Abrams: 3
(Amulet: 2)

Barefoot Books: 1

Bloomsbury: 1
(Walker: 1)

Blue Apple Books: 1

Candlewick: 6
(TOON Books: 1)

Charlesbridge: 1

Chronicle: 2

Cuento de Luz: 1

Eerdmans: 2

Enchanted Lion Press: 1

Groundwood Books: 1

Harper Collins: 6
(Harper: 3)
(Balzer & Bray: 1)
(Greenwillow: 1)
(Walden Pond Press: 1)

Holiday House: 1

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 4
(Clarion: 3)

Hyperion: 1

Kids Can Press: 1

Lerner: 2
(Graphics: 1)
(Millbrook Press: 1)

Little Brown & Co: 2

Macmillan: 6
(Roaring Brook: 5)
(First Second: 1)

Mims House: 1

National Geographic: 1

Penguin: 3
(G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 2)
(Dial: 1)

Phaidon: 1

Random House: 6
(Anchor Books: 1)
(Wendy Lamb: 2)
(Knopf: 1)
(David Fickling: 1)

Scholastic: 2

Simon & Schuster: 5
(Atheneum: 2)
(Beach Lane: 1)
(Margaret K. McElderry Books: 1)

Simply Read Books: 1

Tater Tot Books: 1

I like to alternate the big guys with the little.  A couple folks are missing, so I’ll have to make sure I hit them in the new year.

Woot!  2012 OUT!

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Hokey Pokey
By Jerry Spinelli
Alfred A. Knopf (an imprint of Random House)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-83198-0
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Not a Jerry Spinelli fan over here. Nope. Some authors you love, some authors you loathe, and some you feel zip, zero, zilch feelings towards whatsoever. That was me and the Spinelli man. Maniac Magee? Nice enough book that did nothing for me. Stargirl? Certainly well written but not my cup of tea. Pull out names like Wringer or Milkweed or Loser and watch as my eyes oh-so-faintly glaze over as I think of what I’ll be cooking dinner tonight or what television shows are clogging up the old DVR. So mine was probably the ideal state in which to encounter a book like Hokey Pokey. It wasn’t that my expectations were low, necessarily. Enough smart folks in the field had been touting and hooting the name of this book ad nauseam to make me ad nauseous. But while I knew this was a high-caliber Spinelli project I probably just thought it would mean reading something like Maniac Magee 2: The Mageeing or something along those lines. I didn’t expect to find a book that does everything Peter Pan is reputed to do, but without the creepy factor. I didn’t expect to get swept up in the metaphor/allegory/what-the-heck-is-this-thing? that is Hokey Pokey itself. So it is that I stand before you with this book in my hand and admit with a little trepidation that it finally happened. I’m a Jerry Spinelli fan. And the reason for it is one of the strongest works of children’s fiction I have ever had the sheer joy to encounter.

It should be just another day in Hokey Pokey. For Jack, it’s his last. Somewhere, deep inside of himself, he knows it. And not just because his beloved bike Scramjet, is now in the possession of his number one most hated rival, the loathed girl Jubilee. No, it’s more than that. When his friends start noticing that the tattoo on his belly, the one on every kid in Hokey Pokey, is starting to fade away, he knows his time is up. Welcome to Hokey Pokey. A wonderland of a place where a kid gets to be a kid for as long as they like, every day. It’s the only place Jack has ever known and now he’s got to go.

Step One: Establish your world and separate it from Neverland. If this book is one great big allegory for childhood (Publishers Weekly essentially accused the book of being all a dream, which is the dullest interpretation of the story I can think of) then you’d better make it interesting. Childhood ain’t for the weak, after all. It wasn’t until I discussed the book with other adults that I realized that Spinelli essentially makes Hokey Pokey his own childhood. There are tons of kids on bikes (no helmets) and old Warner Brother cartoons on the giant television. Plus there’s Tarzan and not a single video game central to be seen. Writing groups for kids could ask them “What’s your Hokey Pokey” and ask children to describe their own perfect fantasylands. Spinelli’s made his own, but I don’t think kids will necessarily notice. For some reason, Spinelli can put in marbles and an old western pulp feel and who knows what all into this book and you go along with it. Fancy that.

I’m a mom so I read the book as a mother. That’s probably the number one worst way to read this book. I mean talk about a book steeped in nostalgia. People forget that kids love to feel nostalgia for their younger ages. Whether it’s a toddler staring in wonder at pictures of themselves as a baby or a nine-year-old smiling sadly at a six-year-old’s happiness, kids love thinking about the past. It makes perfect sense. As this book shows, the stages of childhood (rather than infanthood) are neatly separated into Gappergums, Longspitters, Newbies, Snotsippers, Sillynillies, etc. A single year in a child’s life provides a whole new universe of experiences! Is it any wonder then that they get nostalgic? When I was a kid I used to love to read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine because of the feeling it gave me. Now I’m a mom, and so what was my primary concern when I read this book? That if Jubilee is next in line to leave then how’s that going to affect Albert? Trust me when I say that there’s not a kid alive that will think of that. So clearly I am not without my own bizarre filters when I read books for children [though on a related note, how very interesting that Jubilee is allowed to acknowledge her brother in Hokey Pokey but that Jack never acknowledges Kiki. Hm.].

Oh. And did I happen to mention that the writing is rather good? Here I am talking about what the book does without ever getting into the simple matter of what the book IS. And what it IS is good. Spinelli’s not afraid to get a little grandiose in his descriptions if the situation calls for it. As a result you have sentences like, “The dust plume they raised shone golden in the sun, as if a celestial cloud had just then set them down from their home in some paradise of gods.” Earlier Jack mourns his lost in the wake of his rival by yelling. ” `Scraaaaaamjet!’ Jack cries, but his voice is already a hole in the afterwind.” And then there’s the opening sentence . . . but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Spinelli also does some really nice things with legend and community here too. There’s a great short story in The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales” about what happens when the dogs begin to talk. Written by Kij Johnson it’s called “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change” and what happens is that the dogs begin to tell tales about One Dog, a creature that’s part of their culture. The same could be said for the children of Hokey Pokey. They come up with stories about The Kid, who is seen as almost the first denizen of Hokey Pokey. In a world without religion, storytelling is the closest these children ever come to spirituality. Spinelli is fascinated with the notion of the stories kids tell one another. It’s the framing sequence for Maniac Magee and now it’s a pivotal plot point for Hokey Pokey.

The book is not without its occasional flaw, of course. I was a little disappointed to discover that there would be a map included in this book. To me, a map nails down Hokey Pokey too much. It’s better if it’s vague and shifting and the kind of place you picture in your head. But as someone pointed out to me, the advantage of the map is to establish from the get go that Hokey Pokey is not a neighborhood down the street from you. It’s a fantastical place and you’d better be on board with that from page one onward or you are gonna be lost, sucker. So map it is. The book also sort of drops the whole Destroyer subplot, to a certain extent. In the story, Destroyer is younger than Jack and gets his jollies from ruining the happiness of small children. As far as I can ascertain, Destroyer is in this book solely to show the motivations of bullies and how you can defeat them in your own mind. It’s Jack’s counsel to Jubilee’s little brother Albert regarding Destroyer that’s the focus. What that doesn’t take into account, however, is the fact that we were in Destroyer’s head for a very long time. Suddenly we’re booted out, meant to both loathe and pity him, but we’re never allowed back into his head again. For Destroyer there is no happy ending. You get the distinct feeling he cannot wait to get out of Hokey Pokey and when he does (and if he still has no friends) it could be a very bad situation.

So what the heck will kids get out of this book? Well, the reading will be interesting to watch. A certain strain of child reader will begin to question the world’s internal logic from the get go (i.e. what do the kids eat besides hokey pokeys, how do kids of different ages know that they’re siblings, where do newbies come from, etc.). One might point out that Maniac Magee (again) had ITs own internal logic so this is hardly new territory for Spinelli. Other kid readers will be hugely frustrated by something that doesn’t slot into standard fantasy. Still others will take it at face value and begin to imagine that they’re there. Those are the lucky ones.

There’s also a bit of a debate as to whether or not kids can have this book read aloud to them. I am of the opinion that while it might be chancy if you tried to do it in a group setting, one-on-one would be a better way to go. You have to realize that Spinelli begins this book with a crazy opening worthy of James Joyce (indeed I’ve already heard this book referred to as “the children’s Ulysses“). It’s not impenetrable, just unexpected. We’re all so used to the same kinds of books beginning the same kinds of ways that when we encounter something as unique as a one-page run-on sentence involving Orion and Mooncow and the fall of a lavender star, we’re unprepared. Those kids who read it on their own or read it with a parent and have someone to discuss it with, they might get a lot out of this one. You’ll have to booktalk it so that they get past that first page, but once they’re in, they’ll be in. Hopefully.

“Sometimes the story knows more than the writer.” Madeleine L’Engle said that. I think what she meant was that the reader is going to get something out of a story that might have completely slipped by the writer. And few books for children are as prone to this as Jerry Spinelli’s Hokey Pokey, a book that dares to recast childhood from a time to a place. In interviews Spinelli has said that the main character of this book is childhood itself. It may be divisive, but there’s no denying the writing. Let’s just say this much: Your kids have never read ANYTHING quite like it before. I happen to think that’s a good thing. Try it then.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Doll Bones by Holly Black

• Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

• Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

Notes on the Cover:  Honestly, it’s still too representational for me.  See, here was the original:

I could see what they were going for, but since it didn’t make the final cut I can’t say I’m surprised that it was ultimately rejected.  This final one is nice and all but a bit too dreamy.  Dunno.  Can’t say what I really wanted it to be, but not quite that either.  We’ll have to see what the paperback comes up with.

Other Blog Reviews:

• Educating Alice
• Confessions of a Bibliovore
• Killin’ Time Reading
• BooksnStories

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Examiner

Interviews:

• NPR
• TIME for Kids
• The Buffalo News

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In a mere twelve days the world will sit down and hear what the official winners of the 2013 Newbery and Caldecott Awards officially are.  Like you, I will tune in to the webcast to hear the announcements live.  ALA says that the announcement will be made ” 8 a.m. PT on Jan. 28, from the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.”  Um . . . 8 a.m. PT?  So, that would be . . . 5 a.m. ET?  Ruh-roh.  Might have to go to bed a bit early that night. UPDATE: In spite of traveling to the West Coast on a regular basis, clever readers have pointed out that the announcements will be made at 11 a.m. ET.  Clearly am incapable of math.

In the meantime, let’s speculate to our heart’s delight.  We don’t have much to go on above and beyond the Mock Newberys and Mock Caldecotts springing up around the nation.  I wondered if Heavy Medal or Calling Caldecott would tabulate these announcements, but apparently that’s not their bag.  Next year maybe I’ll give it a try.  Beats working.  In any case, I feel like we’ve seen a real increase in Mock Awards nationwide recently.  This is good news.  If you’ve a chance, check out some of the newer blogs like For Those About to Mock, which have been amusing me considerably over the last few months.

But enough jibber jabber!  Let’s talk about what I think will win for 2013.  I’ve heard a couple folks speculate that 2012 was a strong Printz and Siebert year but a weak Newbery and Caldecott one.  Not entirely certain how to account for that.  One thing I do know is that this is a year without villains.  There are some years where a book you loathe has a chance of winning it all.  There were a two or three books like that for me this year, but I don’t think they have a chance in the world, so I’m not worried.  I like pretty much everything.  So let’s look at the top contenders, shall we?

Newbery Medal

And the gold goes to . . .

Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin – Here’s my logic on this one.  If you want a simple (and entirely off-base) bit of reasoning you could note that Lin’s previous Chinese folktale-imbued novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon won a Newbery Honor.  This book is better than that one, ipso facto it deserves the gold.  But Newbery committees don’t look at an author’s past work.  They have to take every book as it comes and judge it on its own merits.  Consider then, the merits of Ms. Lin’s book.  Her subtle weaving of folktale and myth into the storyline is flawless, and so beautifully done that you’d suspect she made up those tale just to suit the tale (and you’d be wrong).  The characters have depth even in the midst of their fairytale-like setting.  Is it “distinguished”?  No bones about it.  Plus it’s funny, it has a snail- eating subplot (not a Newbery requirement yet, though it should be), and the tales are cyclical.  You can trace how one tale repeats back on itself later.  Long story short, there’s a reason NYPL made it the cover of the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list for 2012.  I may be off-base, but I’ll be damned if Lin doesn’t at least get an Honor for this.

Newbery Honors
(the likelihood of there being 5 Honors is slim to none but a girl can dream, can’t she?)

Bomb by Steve Sheinkin – After a long talk with Monica Edinger of Educating Alice I came to the decision that Sheinkin’s book may have a real chance.  Initially I thought it might play too old for the Newbery.  After reading it, though, I can see how 13 and 14-year-olds could certainly get a lot out of the text.  Then I worried that it would suffer the fate of so many other nonfiction books that came before.  You know how it is.  It’s 2 a.m., the committee is exhausted, and when the votes don’t make a clear cut winner then any small controversial fact in a nonfiction book makes it game for excising.  But Bomb seems pretty strong.  Some folks have questioned Sheinkin’s facts, but he can account for every windswept hair or fist hitting a table.  Other folks questioned how important heavy water was to a Allied win/Nazi win.  But if his facts are accurate then I don’t know that this is a real concern.  The book reads like an episode of Mission Impossible, it’s fun, it’s smart, it shows multiple sides, and it is without a doubt one of the most intelligent titles of the year.  So give it some lovin’ committee!

Twelve Kinds of Ice by Ellen Obed – Perhaps this is just stubbornness on my part when talking about this personal favorite, but when you’re bandying about the word “distinguished” this book hits on every level.  I’ve been singing its praises for months now, but I’m not listing it here for no reason.  I honestly think it has a shot.  It’s the shortest of my predictions, but it does what it sets out to do better than most books of the year.  If it Honored I would be honored.

Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz – Admittedly when I read it I figured I loved it but that it wouldn’t touch other librarians in the same way.  How wrong I was!  Over and over again folks have informed me that they adore this book.  Ms. Schlitz is one of our best children’s authors of the day, and this title was a long time coming.  Clearly her talent just shines on every page and Newbery committees have a tendency to reward that sort of thing.  Just sayin’.

Crow by Barbara Wright – My boss, as I may have mentioned, has a sixth sense about these things and her mental dowsing rod has been pointed straight at Crow for some time.  If it walks away with the gold, don’t act surprised.  Just watch her closely next year and put down some money.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate – I would actually be right pleased if it walked away with the gold. Is it distinguished?  Absolutely!  And smart and funny and a talking animal book that will even please folks who can’t stand talking animal books. Ivan, you have my vote of confidence.

So that’s that.  Which, inevitably, brings us to . . .

Where The Heck Is . . . .?

Wonder by R.J. Palacio – You know, I think this may be the Okay for Now of 2012.  It broke early, giving folks enough time to get over their initial sense of . . . . well . . . wonder, before noticing some of the problems.  For a complete listing of those problems I refer you to Peter Sieruta’s post on the matter here.  I think it’s a lovely book and I enjoyed it thoroughly, but in the end it may just have to rest on its massive popularity for comfort.  This book appears to have run its course.

Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead – While I can see it winning, I’d be surprised.  I enjoyed it very much when I read it but time has shown me that it may not have quite enough oomph to carry it over the finish line.

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristine Levine – Again, really enjoyed this one.  Didn’t get a chance to review it (doggone it) but if it wins I’ve a copy sitting on my shelf just waiting for that announcement.  Not sure if it’s the one that Levine’s going to be remembered for, though.  I think she has some more good books in her.  The next one she does may be “the one”.

And then there are the books that I adore but are so divisive I can’t see them winning anything.  In my perfect dreamworld Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage is the surprise 2013 winner (wouldn’t that be a BLAST?) and everyone’s jaws fall to the floor.  I mean, she’d be a perfect winner.  It took her twenty-eight years between books, she’s charming, the book is funny as all get out, etc.  Unfortunately some folks don’t much care for Southern humor or quirky small-town characters, so I can’t see it happening.  Sara Pennypacker’s Summer of the Gypsy Moths is similar in that way.  I love it, but I dunno.  Louise Erdrich is routinely passed over for this award, though I’d be delighted if Chickadee proved me wrong.  I loved The Unfortunate Son by Constance Leeds but since I’m the only one I’m fine with acknowledging it may not get so much as a wink or a blink.

So that’s Newbery for ya.  Let’s do the harder award to predict.  Which is to say, I almost NEVER get this right.

Caldecott Medal

And the gold goes to . . .

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger – Long story short, I think it does everything right.  The die-cuts work, the descriptions work, and it has a low ebb of ecological sensitivity running through it that is VERY attractive to a committee.  It’s not didactic, but it still manages to get its message across.  Living as I do in a city that was hit hard by a hurricane this year, I can’t help but notice that few picture books have tackled the environment in any way, shape, or form.  This is one of the few, so it’s timely as well as beautiful and well-written.  If it doesn’t Honor at the very least I am going to pelt the committee with plastic styrofoam peanuts until my rage has abated.

Caldecott Honors

More by I.C. Springmann, illustrated by Brian Lies – Saucy little magpie, isn’t he?  This is a book that I didn’t pay doodly over squat attention to this year.  I liked it.  I thought it was cool.  Heck I even cut up its F&G and turned it into a birdhouse for my baby’s bedroom.  But Caldecott?  Never occurred to me.  Not until it started showing up on Mock Caldecott lists.  Over . . . . and over.  . . . and over.  There’s something about this book that pleases large groups of people.  Someone questioned whether or not it was adult friendly rather than kid-friendly, but I’d disagree heartily with that criticism.  I mean, there’s a lot of enjoyable chaos in this book.  I’m sorry I never reviewed it, but if it wins something I’ll make up for that sin pronto.

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen – Another one that has come up enough times in discussions to convince me that it’s a real contender.  There was some discussion over whether or not the knitting technique in this book is inaccurate and whether or not that would disqualify it.  I happen to be the daughter of a pre-eminent knitter and this did not strike me a big problem.  Trust me when I say that I’ve seen MUCH worse needle techniques in books in my day.  The real question is whether or not the committee will deem Klassen’s restrained style as “distinguished”.  Of that, I cannot say.  I can only hope. Please read the speeches by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen after they won a Boston-Globe Horn Book Award for this book.  It’ll be the best part of your day.

Wild Cards

Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman – Forgot all about this one, didn’t you?  It came out early in 2012 and Priceman, lest you forget, is a previous Caldecott Honor winner.  There is a surprising LACK of diversity in the books we’re discussing this year, so let me at least bring this one up as a contender.  The writing is top-notch and the visuals amazing.  I don’t know how you can show Josephine’s banana dress dance and remain G-rated fare, but somehow Priceman pulls it off.  She should get an award for that alone.

Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten by Hyewon Yum – Who, may I add, is a Brooklyn resident.  It’s a divisive book to a certain extent, but those folks who love it REALLY love it.  Kids totally get the metaphor at work too, and it would be nice to see Yum get a little credit for her unique style.  Don’t count it out.  I could see this one pulling ahead from the rear.

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost, photographs by Rick Lieder – Because this is Helen Frost we’re talking about this book has also been bandied about for the Newbery.  I think it would be a very forward thinking Newbery committee to give the award to something quite this simple and refined.  Come to that, it would take a very forward thinking Caldecott committee to give an award to a book of photography (something that has never happened before).  Still, wouldn’t it be neat?

Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex – Adam Rex is, for whatever reason, continually passed over for Caldecotts time and time again.  I like to think that if he ever won one, it would be for this book.  It’s so smart and funny and clever, and it seems to me that since this is the 75th anniversary of the Caldecott, a book that is entirely ABOUT the relationship between the artist and the author would be a no-brainer of a win.  The timing couldn’t be any more perfect.  *hint hint* oh, committee *hint hint*

Boot & Shoe by Marla Frazee – Well she has a penchant for winning Honors, and this book’s delightful.  I don’t know that it’s coming up in that many conversations, but it would be nice to see it get a little kick.  Plus I’m a sucker for, as Kirkus put it, “erroneous bereavement”.

Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown – Oh it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in h-e-double hockey stick.  But a luuuuuuuurve it.  I want to go live in the universe where this wins.

Where the Heck Is . . . ?

And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogiano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead – Is it lovely?  Oh yup yup yup.  And I would NOT be surprised if it won it all.  But for some strange reason I just don’t think it will.  I can’t account for this feeling.  We’ll see.

Oh No by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann – This one, alas, may be sunk because of perspective.  There’s a moment when the animal p.o.v. in the hole makes it clear that they would not be able to see the tiger approach and yet they still cry “Oh no!” when he gets near.  That’s a teeny tiny detail, but the kind of thing a committee latches onto (depending on the tenor of the committee).  It’s gorgeous, though.  Would be nice if it got something.

Unspoken by Henry Cole – I know it has its defenders, but I confess that this book didn’t do it for me.  I can see what it was going for but the overall effect is (forgive me) Selznick-lite.  I didn’t get the emotional punch from the material that some have felt.  The committee may feel otherwise, of course.

This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen – If the predecessor did not win, I don’t think the sequel will either.  I do love the tiny hat, though.

For a larf, check out what I thought would win last year.  That’ll show you why everything up here is wrongdy wrong wrong.  I’m still mad about the Amelia Lost shut-out, but at least I had a vague notion about Inside Out and Back Again.  I called A Ball for Daisy as an Honor and Grandpa Green, but that was as close as I got to correct.  Ouch!

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The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős
By Deborah Heiligman
Illustrated by LeUyen Pham
Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-307-6
Ages 6 and up
On shelves June 25th

Make a beeline for your local library’s children’s biography section and learn firsthand the shocking truth about picture book bios of mathematical geniuses. Apparently there was only one and his name was Einstein. End of story. The world as we know it is not overflowing with picture book encapsulations of the lives of Sir Isaac Newton or Archimedes (though admittedly you could probably drum up a Leonardo da Vinci book or two if you were keen to try). But when it comes to folks alive in the 20th century, Einstein is the beginning and the end of the story. You might be so foolish as to think there was a good reason for that fact. Maybe all the other mathematicians were dull. I mean, Einstein was a pretty interesting fella, what with his world-shattering theories and crazed mane. And true, the wild-haired physicist was fascinating in his own right, but if we’re talking out-and-out interesting people, few can compare with the patron saint of contemporary mathematics, Paul Erdős. Prior to reading this book I would have doubted a person could conceivably make an engaging biography chock full to overflowing with mathematical concepts. Now I can only stare in amazement at a story that could conceivably make a kid wonder about how neat everything from Euler’s map of Konigsburg to the Szekeres Snark is. This is one bio you do NOT want to miss. A stunner from start to finish.

For you see, there once was a boy who loved math. His name was Paul and he lived in Budapest, Hungary in 1913. As a child, Paul adored numbers, and theorems, and patterns, and tricky ideas like prime numbers. As he got older he grew to be the kind of guy who wanted to do math all the time! Paul was a great guy and a genius and folks loved having him over, but he was utterly incapable of taking care of himself. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Folks would take care of Paul and in exchange he would bring mathematicians together. The result of these meetings was great strides in number theory, combinatorics, the probabilistic method, set theory, and more! Until the end of this days (when he died in a math meeting) Paul loved what he did and he loved the people he worked with. “Numbers and people were his best friends. Paul Erdős had no problem with that.”

There are two kinds of picture book biographies in this world. The first attempts to select just a single moment or personality quirk from a person’s life, letting it stand in as an example of the whole. Good examples of this kind of book might include Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell about the childhood of Jane Goodall or Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President And the Country by Kathleen Krull. It’s hard to pinpoint the perfect way to convey any subject, but it can sometimes be even harder to tell an entire life in the span of a mere 40 pages or so. Still, that tends to be the second and more common kind of picture book biography out there. Generally speaking they don’t tend to be terribly interesting. Just a series of rote facts, incapable of making it clear to a kind why a person mattered aside from the standard “because I said so” defense. The Boy Who Loved Math is different because it really takes the nature of biography seriously. If the purpose of a bio is to make it clear that a person was important, how important was a guy who loved math puzzles? Well, consider what the story can do. In a scant number of pages author Deborah Heiligman gives us an entire life synthesized down to just a couple key moments, giving the man’s life form and function and purpose, all while remaining lighthearted and fun to read. Who does that?

Did you know that there are kids out there who like math? I mean, reeeeeeally like math? The kinds that beg their parents for math problems to solve? They exist (heck, Ms. Heiligman gave birth to one) and for those kids this book will come like a present from on high. Because not only does the author highlight a fellow who took his passion for numbers and turned it into a fulfilling and fun life, but thanks to illustrator LeUyen Pham the illustrations are overflowing with math equations and puzzles and problems, just waiting to be interpreted and dissected. I have followed the career of Ms. Pham for many years. There is no book that she touches that she does not improve with her unique style. Whether it’s zeroing in on a child’s neuroses in Alvin Ho or bringing lush life to a work of poetry as in A Stick Is an Excellent Thing, Pham’s art can run the gamut from perfect interstitial pen-and-inks to lush watercolor paints. I say that, but I have never, but ever, seen anything like what she’s done in The Boy Who Loved Math.

It would not be overstating the matter to call this book Pham’s masterpiece. The common story behind its creation is that there was some difficulty finding the perfect artist for it because whosoever put pen to paper here would have to be comfortable on some level with incorporating math into the art. Many is the artist who would shy away from that demand. Not Ms. Pham. She takes to the medium like a duck to water, seemingly effortlessly weaving equations, charts, diagrams, numbers, and theorems into pictures that also have to complement the story, feature the faces of real people, capture a sense of time (often through clothing) and place (often through architecture), and hardest of all, be fun to look at.

But that’s just for starters. The final product is MUCH more complex. I’m not entirely certain what the medium is at work here but if I had to guess I’d go with watercolors. Whatever it is, Pham’s design on each page layout is extraordinary. Sometimes she’ll do a full page, border to border, chock full of illustrations of a single moment. That might pair with a page of interstitial scenes, giving a feel to Paul’s life. Or consider the page where you see a group of diners at a restaurant, their worlds carefully separated into dotted squares (a hat tip to one of Paul’s puzzles) while Paul sits in his very own dotted pentagon. It’s these little touches that make it clear that Paul isn’t like other folks. All this culminates in Pham’s remarkable Erdős number graph, where she outdoes herself showing how Paul intersected with the great mathematicians of the day. Absolutely stunning.

Both Heiligman and Pham take a great deal of care to tell this tale as honestly as possible. The extensive “Note From the Author” and “Note From the Illustrator” sections in the back are an eye-opening glimpse into what it takes to present a person honestly to a child audience. In Pham’s notes she concedes when she had to illustrate without a guide at hand. For example, Paul’s babysitter (“the dreaded Faulein”) had to be conjured from scratch. She is the rare exception, however. Almost every face in this book is a real person, and it’s remarkable to look and see Pham’s page by page notes on who each one is.

Heiligman’s author’s note speaks less to what she included and more to what she had to leave out. She doesn’t mention the fact that Paul was addicted to amphetamines and honestly that sort of detail wouldn’t have served the story much at all. Similarly I had no problem with Paul’s father’s absence. Heiligman mentions in her note what the man went through and why his absences would make Paul’s mother the “central person in his life emotionally”. The book never denies his existence, it just focuses on Paul’s mother as a guiding force that was perhaps in some way responsible for the man’s more quirky qualities. The only part of the book that I would have changed wasn’t what Heiligman left out but what she put in. At one point the story is in the midst of telling some of Paul’s more peculiar acts as a guest (stabbing tomato juice cartons with knives, waking friends up at 4 a.m. to talk math, etc.). Then, out of the blue, we see a very brief mention of Paul getting caught by the police when he tried to look at a radio tower. That section is almost immediately forgotten when the text jumps back to Paul and his hosts, asking why they put up with his oddities. I can see why placing Paul in the midst of the Red Scare puts the tale into context, but I might argue that there’s no real reason to include it. Though the Note for the Author at the end mentions that because of this act he wasn’t allowed back in the States for a decade, it doesn’t have a real bearing on the thrust of the book. As they say in the biz, it comes right out.

I have mentioned that this book is a boon for the math-lovers of the world, but what about the kids who couldn’t care diddly over squat about mathy malarkey? Well, as far as I’m concerned the whole reason this book works is because it’s fun. A little bit silly too, come to that. Even if a kid couldn’t care less about prime numbers, there’s interest to be had in watching someone else get excited about them. We don’t read biographies of people exactly like ourselves all the time, because what would be the point of that? Part of the reason biographies even exist is to grant us glimpses into the lives of the folks we would otherwise never have the chance to meet. Your kid may never become a mathematician, but with the book they can at least hang out with one.

One problem teachers have when they teach math is that they cannot come up with a way to make it clear that for some people mathematics is a game. A wonderful game full of surprises and puzzles and queries. What The Boy Who Loved Math does so well is to not only show how much fun math can be on your own, it makes it clear that the contribution Paul Erdős gave to the world above and beyond his own genius was that he encouraged people to work together to solve their problems. Heiligman’s biography isn’t simply the rote facts about a man’s life. It places that life in context, gives meaning to what he did, and makes it clear that above and beyond his eccentricities (which admittedly make for wonderful picture book bio fare) this was a guy who made the world a better place through mathematics. What’s more, he lived his life exactly the way he wanted to. How many of us can say as much? So applause for Heiligman and Pham for not only presenting a little known life for all the world to see, but for giving that life such a magnificent package as this book. A must purchase.

On shelves June 25th

Source: Advanced readers galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• On a Beam of Light: The Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky

• Play, Mozart, Play by Peter Sis

• Me . . . Jane by Patrick McDonnell

• Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein by Don Brown

Misc:

• Read what Ms. Heiligman had to say about the book on a recent NYPL panel Ethics in Nonfiction for Kids.

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Flora and the Flamingo
By Molly Idle
Chronicle Books
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1006-6
Ages 3-7
On shelves February 3rd

Did you know that flamingos are pink because of their diet of plankton? Did you know that the flamingo is the national bird of the Bahamas? And did you know that when it comes to a pas de chat or a particularly fine jetée, no bird exceeds the flamingo in terms of balletic prowess? No? Then you’re clearly not reading the right literature these days. Now, before you get to thinking too hard about it, let me assure you that when I discuss a book like Flora and the Flamingo I should right off the bat say that this is NOT a book about a bird that wants to be a ballerina and must overcomes obstacles to achieve that goal. That is, without a doubt, the most common storyline in ballet picture books today. I would not review such a book as that. No, Flora and the Flamingo is notable because it is a perfect amalgamation of wordless storytelling, likable (or at least understandable) characters, and an artistic sensibility that will make you forget its unique formatting and remind you only of the classic picture book days of yore. So forget what flamingos eat. Are you getting enough flamingo picture books in YOUR diet? If not, time to start.

A single flamingo lands and perches on one leg beneath the falling pink blossoms. It does not notice the single flippered foot that appears behind it nor, at first, the bathing suited little girl that mimics his stance. But when he starts to stretch (or is he dancing?) he can’t help but see how she tries to imitate him, wing for wing. In a moment of cussidness he bleats at her, causing her to tumble head over heel into the water. Chastened, the flamingo offers a wing and the two embark on a fantastic dance, culminating in a joyous leap into the water and an elegant bow and curtsey.

Idle has the mark of the animator all over her. It’s a style of drawing you’ll find in the works of folks like Tony Fucile or Carter Goodrich. You can recognize an animator pretty easily right from the start. They tend to have very expressive protagonists. Take Flora, for example. Though at first she attempts to keep her face relatively placid, as the book goes on, a variety of emotions flit across her punim. From a miserable (mouthless) hurt glare to a skeptical raised eyebrow, to gentle trust, and, finally, pure pleasure. The white background sort of clinches it. Kirkus, in their review, said that there is a “courageous use of white space” in this book, and I have to agree. Yet for all that she has an animator’s heart, Idle avoids the pitfalls that have felled many from her field that have come before her. I’m talking about storyboarding. The laziest kind of picture book is the kind that feels like it began life as a serious of quick sketches tacked up on a wall somewhere. Storyboarding has its place in the world, but it is not an effective way to map out a picture book. There has to be a flow and a relationship between the pages. You have to know that by turning one you’re advancing the story right there. Idle achieves that feeling, and the reward is a tale that is as emotional as it is visual.

Idle does something particularly striking with the book that many an early 21st century reader might notice. Flora is certainly an everygirl, and in no way is that more evident than her weight. I am sorry to report that in the children’s book world, if a character is plus sized or larger than average, that will usually be the sole focus of their tale. The everyday adventures of kids that don’t look like walking popsicle sticks are nigh unto impossible to find sometimes. The nice thing about this book is that unless you want to interpret it as an exercise book (don’t) it isn’t about Flora’s pear-shaped body. Now if one were feeling somewhat cynical they might suspect that Idle is using her heroine’s weight to make her comical. I don’t think that’s really the case. Certainly the contrast between her and the flamingo is set off by their different appearances (more on that soon), but you could also argue that by giving her heroine a little more meat on her bones, Idle makes Flora easier to identify with. There are lots of overweight kids in America right now. Seems to me it shouldn’t be too hard to give them a happy dancing kid hero. Remember the “No Rain” by Blind Melon music video? It’s like that.

The unspoken (ha ha – there are no words in this book) irony here is the fact that flamingos are not usually considered unusually graceful birds. There’s a skinny gawkiness about them, and Idle makes use of that gawkiness to contrast her feathered hero with the very different awkwardness of the girl. Where he is all knobby knees and thin curled neck, she is circles and smiles. His elegant pink feet bear nothing in common with her ginormous brown flippers. This dichotomy is the striking difference that gives the book its visual kick in the pants. The white background and pink apple blossom-like flowers that frame the edges of the pages are perfectly suited to focus your attention on the bird and the girl. The flaps are just the icing on the cake.

I probably should have mentioned it before, but Flora and the Flamingo is actually a lift-the-flap picture book. If you want a fun exercise in clever book design, read just the pages with the flaps. You’ll see that at first Flora’s flap and the flamingo’s are on opposite pages with the flamingo directly in the center of his page and Flora’s flap slightly closer to the flamingo’s page. Skip ahead and you’ll see that Flora has traversed the gutter (the area found between pages) and suddenly her flap is touching the flamingo’s (no wonder he gets tetchy!). After he hurts her feelings the flaps are as far from one another as they can be. The flamingo makes good and for the first time the two characters share a single, large flap. They dance and it all builds up to a gatefold in the book that can be opened to reveal the two cannonballing happily into the water. Beautifully done.

I could get a lot of good out of this book with kids, I can see it now. First up, it would pair amusingly with another make-a-flamingo-your-buddy book, You WILL Be My Friend! by Peter Brown. As a ballet book, this title is also rather excellent. You can actually name the steps from time to time. I suppose if you absolutely had to you could even argue for this as an exercise book, but that’s pushing it. At its heart, Flora and the Flamingo is just an unassuming little story about making a friend. There’s nothing very complicated about that idea. It’s just all in how you present it, baby. Consider this one book that’s not afraid to let clever (yet essentially simple) design and good art do the heavy lifting.

On shelves March 1st.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• You WILL Be My Friend by Peter Brown

• Ballerina Swan by Allegra Kent, illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully

• Color Dance by Ann Jonas

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Publishers Weekly
• Kirkus

Misc:

• Look inside the book yourself!

Videos:

Lest you doubt me when I proclaim Idle’s Dreamworks cred . . .

Now see the flaps in action!

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Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
By Stephan Pastis
Candlewick Press
$14.99
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6050-5
Ages 9-12
On shelves February 26th

Call it the attack of the syndicated cartoonists. For whatever reason, in the year 2013 we are seeing droves of escapees from the comic strip pages leaping from the burning remains of the newspaper industry into the slightly less volatile world of books for kids. How different could it be, right? As a result you’ve The Odd Squad by Michael Fry (Over the Hedge) and Zits Chillax by Jerry Scott (Zits). Even editorial cartoonists are getting in on the act with Pulitzer prize winner Matt Davies and his picture book Ben Rides On. In the old days it was usually animators, greeting card designers, and Magic the Gathering illustrators who joined the children’s book fray. But now with graphic novels getting better than ever and libraries willing to buy the bloody things, the world has been made safe for cartoonists too. Into this state of affairs comes Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. It is, without a doubt, the best of the cartoonist fare (author Stephan Pastis is the man behind the strip Pearls Before Swine), completely and utterly understanding its genre, its pacing, and the importance of leveling humor with down-to-earth human problems. Funnier than it deserves to be, here’s the book to hand the kind who has been told to read something with an unreliable narrator. Trust me, you’ll be the kid’s best friend if you give them this.

Meet Detective Failure. No, not really. Instead, meet Timmy Failure, just a normal kid with dreams so big they make Walter Mitty’s fantasies look like idle fancies. Living with just his single mom and his sidekick Total (a 1,500 pound polar bear but that’s neither here nor there), Timmy spends his days solving crimes for the other kids in his class. He may not be very good at it but it’s a living. Timmy’s sure his talents will launch him into a future of fame an fortune. That is, if he can defeat his nemesis Corrina Corrina, get his mom to stop grounding him, deal with the loser she’s dating, and figure out how to keep Total out of a zoo. It’s a big job. Fortunately, Timmy has a more than hefty ego to handle it.

I am a grown woman with a child of my own. I am an adult. I pay bills and watch Masterpiece Theater. In other words, my grown-up cred is in place. That said, I can’t tell you how many debates I’ve already had with folks over whether or not Timmy’s darn polar bear is real or not. My husband claims that the bear is a manifestation of Timmy’s break with reality in the same way that Hobbes seemed to walk around in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. I like to point out that Hobbes had an actual physical form as a stuffed tiger and where precisely is the stuffed polar bear in all this? Maybe I have a hard time acknowledging the fact that Total isn’t real because if that’s true then Timmy’s life is even sadder than I initially thought.

Because, you see, that’s the real joy of Timmy Failure; the misery. On the one hand we are meant to yell and scream at our oblivious hero and to mock him for his inability to face reality. On the other hand, when you see how sad his life is, you cannot help but feel for him. That poignancy almost makes it funny again. His mom, for example, is single and holding down a low-income job as best she can. It’s not her fault her kiddo is as detached from the world around him as he is. And Timmy, truth be told, pretends to be a detective mostly because he wants to give his mom a better life. His bravado is hiding some pretty desperate hopes and dreams. You get glimpses past that bravado from time to time, and those are the moments that lift the book up and out of the world of pseudo-Diary of a Wimpy Kid notebook novel knock-offs that clog library and bookseller shelves. For example, there’s one moment when Timmy’s mom cuddles him then blows into his ear because he finds it funny. He objects in his usual staunch way then . . . “Do it again”. The book also dares to take potshots at folks who might actually deserve it. Timmy’s teacher has checked out of teaching long since. He’s the kind of guy who hasn’t cared about what he’s doing in years. Should’ve retired a decade or more ago. When you see that, can you help but love the hell Timmy drags him through?

I wonder to myself how far kids will go to believe Timmy. The book sets you up pretty early to understand how unreliable he is but there may be times when gullible readers believe what he says. They might actually think that Flo the librarian (a guy who looks like he’d be more comfortable pounding rocks on a chain gang than running a library) really does read books about crushing things with your fists. All the more reason Timmy is confused when he catches the man reading Emily Dickinson. “And if she can crush things with her fist, her photo is somewhat misleading.”

In the course of any of this have I actually mentioned that the book is guffaw-worthy? Laugh-out-loud funny? Look, any book where the main character reasons that since the name “Chang” is the most common in the world he should automatically fill it in on all his test papers because the odds would be with him has my interest. Add in the fact that you’ve titles of chapters with names like, “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile” (well played, Pastis) and visual moments where Timmy is holding a box of rice krispie treats above his head ala Say Anything. Clearly this is adult humor, but when he hits it on the kid level (which is all the time) the readers will be rolling.

The art is, of course, sublime. Look at Timmy himself if you don’t believe me. On the cover of the book he looks pretty okay but turn the pages and there’s definitely something a little bit off about him. Did you figure out what it was? Look at his eyes. With the greatest of care Pastis has places one pupil dead in the center of Timmy’s eye and the in the other eye the pupil is juuuuuuuuust barely off-center. It’s not the kind of thing you’d necessarily notice consciously. You’d just be left with the clear sense that there’s something off about this kid. Then there’s the fact that all the characters are often staring right at you. Right in the eye. It reminded me of Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back. Same school play feel. Same wary characters.

It should be of little surprise that the guy behind the Pearls Before Swine comic strip should also produce some fan-tastic animals. My favorite is Senor Burrito, a cat who dunks her paw into Timmy’s tea whenever he turns his head. The image of her sitting there, one paw well past her elbow in a teacup, is so good I’d rip it out of the book and frame it if I could justify the act of defacement.

When Seinfeld first came out the unofficial slogan was “No hugging. No learning.” If there’s a motto to be ascribed to Timmy Failure I may have to be “No learning. No growing. Hugs allowed.” Basically this is Calvin and Hobbes if Calvin’s fantasies were based entirely on how great he is. A step above the usual notebook novel fare, it dares to have a little bit of heart embedded amidst the madcap craziness. Timmy won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but for a certain segment of the population his adventures will prove to be precisely the kind of balm they need. Top notch stuff. A cut above the cartoons.

On shelves February 26th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

First Line: “It’s harder to drive a polar bear into somebody’s living room than you’d think.”

Like This? Then Try:

• Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg

• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

• Griff Carver: Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg

• I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President by Josh Lieb

Professional Reviews: Kirkus

Other Reviews: Shelf Awareness

Misc:

• There are games n’ such galore in connection with the book.

• I’ve been enjoying the blog for the book.  Particularly the posts by Flo the Librarian.  Such a sweet feller.  The next guybrarian who dresses up as Flo for Halloween has my undying love.

• Some info on the marketing behind the book.

• Read a sample chapter here.

Videos:

Here’s a sneaky peek.

Here’s the full-length trailer:

And here’s the author himself on the polar bear.  Actually, this clears quite a lot of stuff up.

 

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Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems
By Jack Prelutsky
Illustrated by Carin Berger
Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-201464-1
Ages 4-8
On shelves February 26th.

To non-children’s librarians the statistics are baffling. Your average poetry book isn’t exactly a circ buster. It sits on the shelf for months at a time, gathering dust, biding its time. When kids come to the reference desk to ask for titles, they don’t tend to ask for poetry unless they’ve some sort of assignment they need to fulfill. Yet for all that poetry books for kids are shelf sitters, it’s hard to find a single one that hasn’t gone out in the last two or three months. How to account for it? Well, there’s Poetry Month (April) to begin with. That always leads to a run on the 811 portion of the library shelves. But beyond that kids read poetry in dribs and drabs over the course of the year. Maybe as Summer Reading books. Maybe as class assignments. Whatever the reason, poetry has a longevity, if not a popularity, that’s enviable. Now Jack Prelutsky, our first Children’s Poet Laureate and creator of Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant is following up his work with yet another delve into (in the words of Kirkus) “iambic ‘pun’tameter”. And while Prelutsky gives us a second round, illustrator Carin Berger steps up her game to give these hybrid birds and beasts a kick in the old artistic derriere.

Forget everything you ever knew about animals. Not since On Beyond Zebra has the world seen a menagerie quite as wild as the one on display here. Step right up, folks, and take a gander at the rare and remarkable Fountain Lion. “The only lions no one dreads, / They all have fountains on their heads.” Delicious crustaceans more your speed? Then come and observe the rare Slobsters. “Their sense of decorum / Is woefully small. / Slobsters don’t have / Many manners at all.” Or for the kiddies, how about an adorable Planda? “They plan to learn to roller-skate, / To juggle, and to fence. / They plan to go to clown school / And cavort in circus tents.” With his customary clever verse, Jack Prelutsky invents sixteen imaginary animals of varying degrees of odd. Accompanying his rhymes is his old partner-in-crime Carin Berger, who has moved beyond mere collage and has gone so far to construct elaborate shadow boxes of each and every poem. The end result is impressive, hilarious, and one of the most original little poetry collections you’ll see in many a year.

The shadow box, that staple of undergraduate art projects everywhere, is a relative newcomer to the world of children’s literature. A shadow box, once you’ve designed it and filled it with cool images, needs to be photographed perfectly if it’s going to work on a flat page. That means you need an illustrator confident in their abilities to produce art that will look as good in two dimensions as three. Berger is clearly up to the challenge. A master of collage, in this book she bends over backwards to make her images the best they can be. She’s very good at conveying distance. She also conveys perspective quite well. A cut image of a bicycle makes it appear to be three-dimensional because it is photographed from above. I know the image itself is just a flat piece of paper, but the illusion is complete. Everything, in fact, appears to have been planned with a meticulous eye.

Even within the boxes themselves Berger’s job is not easy. Consider an early poem called “Bluffaloes” which combines the word “Buffaloes” with the word “Bluff”. It’s about buffalo types who are scaredy cats should you call their bluff. Fair enough. Now how the heck do you illustrate that? In Berger’s case it looks like she may have considered an alternative definition of the word “bluff” as in “a cliff, headland, or hill with a broad, steep face” since her bluffaloes look like nothing so much as little pieces of a cliff running hither and thither on newly sprouted legs. Artistic creativity is much called for when wordplay is open ended.

Of course, as an adult I’m going to be naturally inclined towards artsy fartsy styles. But this all begs the obvious question: Will kids dig it? Well, let’s stop and consider for a moment. What precisely has Berger done? She has made little boxes and put action-packed scenes within them. Who else does that kind of thing? If you said, “Kids who make dioramas for school” you have earned yourself a cookie. Yes, it appears to me that Berger has taken one of the oldest homework assignments of our age and has turned it into a book. An enterprising teacher would find a goldmine of assignment material here. What if they had their kids write their own poems in Prelutsky’s style? What if they made pairs of kids come up with the idea for the poem and then one kid could write it while the other made a diorama to go with it? Can you now say, “instantaneous original poetry project for Poetry Month”? I knew you could.

Then there’s Prelutsky. He always scans. He always rhymes. And he throws in big words that will give some children a good dictionary workout. For example, in the Sobcat poem he writes, “The SOBCAT is sad / As a feline can be / And spends its time crying / Continuously. / It has no real reason / To be so morose. / It’s simply its nature / To act lachrymose.” Nice. Of course the unspoken secret to many of these poems isn’t that they simply make clever pairings of words and phrases with animals but that they say something about certain types of people. The Planda makes eternal plans and never carries them out. The Sobcat “delights / In its own misery”. You can find many a friend and a relation found in the animals of these pages.

The pairings of the poems is sometimes key. It works particularly well when you place the “Jollyfish” poem next to the “Sobcat”, for example. There are other moments when you suspect that the layout and order of the poems was a carefully thought out process. The book begins, for example, with the titular poem “Stardines” which comments that “In silence, these nocturnal fish / Are set to grant the slightest wish.” That’s a good note to begin on. The book then alternates between animals with physical attributes that are their primary lure and animals with one-of-a-kind personality quirks. It’s interesting to see how all this ends with, of all the animals, the Bardvark. “BARDVARKS think they’re poets / And persist in writing rhyme. / Their words are uninspired / And a total waste of time.” So it is that book of poetry for kids ends by highlighting an animal that’s an atrocious poet. The final lines, “Undeterred, they keep on writing / And reciting every day. / That’s why BARDVARKS are a problem – / You can’t make them go away.” One can’t help but think Prelutsky is taking a little jab at himself here. Not a significant jab, but small enough to allow him to laugh at himself a little. Not a bad way to finish, really.

Perhaps a key at the back of the book explaining which animals and concepts were combined would not have been out of place. I found myself baffled by the “swapitis” (pronounced swap-uh-teez) and found myself wishing I knew what animal it hailed from. It looks somewhat deer-like. After a bit of internet searching I discovered an animal called a wapitis, which is a kind of North American deer. Good to know, though I suspect it won’t immediately pop to many folks’ minds unless prompted and prodded a bit. Of course having kids find the animals referenced could be a fun homework assignment in and of itself. There are possibilities there. Just no answers.

Jack Prelutsky is a staple. Folks my age still associate him with The New Kid On the Block. Kids these days have a lot more Prelutskyian choices to pick from. Berger, in contrast, is new and fresh and bright and shiny. Combine the old school rhymes and chimes of a Prelutsky with the crackling energy and visual wit of Berger and you’ve got yourself a heckuva team. Stardines may tread familiar ground once trod before, but its method of presentation is anything but overdone. Hand this one to the kid who moans to you that they “have” to read a book of poetry for school. Who knows? It may hook ‘em before they realize what’s what. One of a kind.

On shelves February 26th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Carin Berger

• But Who Will Bell the Cats? by Cynthia von Buhler

• Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein, illustrated by Ed Young

• Steady Hands: Poems About Work by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

Other Blog Reviews: Book Aunt

Professional Reviews:

• A star from PW
• Kirkus

Misc:

• Read this great little short interview with Ms. Berger at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast as she discusses how, “This seemed a perfect opportunity to reference my passion for wunderkammers and early science — and crusty old museums.”

• And here’s one shadow box that didn’t make the cut.

• It’s Poetry Friday!  Head on over to Teaching Authors to see the round-up of other great poetry books of the day!

Video:

Take a studio tour into the world of Carin Berger to see some of the fantastic art from this book.

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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.

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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!

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I know that Betsy Bird's A Fuse #8 Production has been featured here before - or at the very least mentioned.  Right now, she is intent on counting down the 100 Top Picture Books and the 100 Best Fiction for children, based on her most recent survey of school and children's librarians. 

This huge undertaking makes great reading, since Betsy not only gives her personal take on each book but a quote from one of the librarians who responded to this survey. 

Every day, Betsy will post 10 or so books from one of these lists until she gets all the way to #1.  Right now, she has reached #61 on the Best Children's Fiction list.  Some of my all time favorites have already been mentioned.   And some books I never read, too.  I like that.  I am always on the prowl for good kids' books, no matter when they were written.

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I made a discovery during my committee tenure last year about books I love.  There are books with chops where I delight in the use of language, setting, characterization et cetera, and then there are heartsong books.  You know, those books that you wax poetic about...the ones that speak to you? And every so often, these two things collide into a book that you know will remain a favourite for all of your days.

This is what Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage is to me.

"Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt." (p. 1)  Tupelo landing is where Moses (Mo) LoBeau ended up after her mother strapped her to a make shift raft during a hurricane.  She came to stay with Miss Lana and the Colonel and helped them run their cafe.  When local oldie Mr. Jesse turns up dead, Tupelo Landing turns upside down, with Mo and bestfriend Dale  smack in the middle of everything, due to a little bit of borrowing of Jesse's rowboat.

Turnage has managed to pack an awful lot of goodness into this one including a twisty turny mystery, unforgetable characters, family heart-ache, strong girl-boy friendship and memorable turns of phrase.  It is a book that will have readers laughing, wondering and feeling sad in turn.

I was lucky enough to meet Sheila Turnage at ALA in Anaheim and she said that Mo just kept talking to her.  She wanted her story told.  I'm awfully glad Turnage listened to her!

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The best books lists are abundant and here!  So very exciting, yes?  I do love this time of year, and so it makes sense to begin with the cream of the crop.  I refer, of course, to NYPL’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2012.  Split into seven different categories (Picture Books, Folk and Fairy Tales, Poetry and Song, Stories for Younger Readers, Stories for Older Readers, Graphic Books, and Nonfiction) the list has been around for precisely 101 years and is decided by the NYPL children’s librarians who go above and beyond the call of duty in reading EVERYTHING they can get their hands on.  Seriously, those folks are the best.  I tip my hat to them.

• In other best books areas, over at Tablet we have the best kids books of 2012 containing Jewish themes and characters.  How Marjorie Ingalls finds them all I do not know, but she is meticulous!  I thought I’d seen everything but there were definitely a couple titles in there that flew under my radar (Sons of the 613, anyone?).  Horn Book also came up with their Fanfare Books of 2012, and I was very very pleased to see Jimmy the Greatest on there.  Woot!  PW separated their top children’s books into the categories of Picture Books, Children’s Fiction (YA is sorta just crammed in there), and Nonfiction (only four titles?!?).  Finally there was the Notable Children’s Books of 2012 list by the New York Times which has some truly eclectic ideas.

• By the way, if you want to see other best children’s book lists in this vein, there’s a Pinterest page of them up and running.

• In other Pinterest news (a sentence I can honestly say I’ve never written before), Nicole Deming of the CBC let me know about some cool children’s literature-related Pinterest lists they’ve created and that you might want to put on your radar.  There’s Favorite Vintage Kids’ Books, Kids’ Book Creators, Kidlit Maps (maps from children’s books, old and new), and Kidlit Illustrators We ♥ .  Thanks for the heads up, Nicole!

• I don’t usually do this but once in a while you meet a new or upcoming author who just catches your attention fully.  I met a 6th grade schoolteacher in town the other day by the name of Torrey Maldonado.  Torrey’s the author of the YA novel The Secret Saturdays.  Knowing he worked in a public school I asked what he knew about Common Core.  Quite a lot, it seems, since he created an entire page on his website dedicated to the Core and how to teach his book using it.  To top it off, I’ve gotta say that I haven’t met an author with the sheer levels of enthusiasm and charm of Mr. Maldonado in a long time.  Keep your eye on this fellow.  I predict big things.

• Newsflash: Young Latinos don’t see themselves in books.  Duh.  Duh duh duh duh duh.  It’s a really weird fact, and absolutely true.  You go out there and find me an early chapter book series starring a Latino girl and I will give you a cookie.  Go on.  I’m waiting.  I’ve got all day.

• Okay. Now I’m officially depressed.  I was sorting through some books earlier today and I discovered the most recent “Amelia Rules” by Jimmy Gownley called Her Permanent Record.  I own all of the Amelia Rules books except this one so I was pleased to down it during my lunch break.  Then I went online just now to see when the next book in the series will be out . . . only to find that that was the LAST ONE.  Hunhuna?  Now that is depressing.  I’ve deeply enjoyed this series for years and years now, and to think that it’s over fills me with a kind of strange dread.  Gownley hasn’t entirely ruled out the possibility of more Amelias in the future . . . . but still, man.  It’s kinda hard to take.

• The Dudes of YA, a “Lit-Erotic” Photo Spread.  We would have also have accepted the term “The Hot Men of YA Literature”, but I suppose that would be copyright infringement or something, eh long-time readers who get my reference?

• Look me in the eye.  Now tell me this amazing new invention will not now appear in hundreds of middle grade spy/mystery novels.  A pity you can’t get them in time for Christmas.

• Friend and YA author Daphne Benedis-Grab writes an excellent article over at She Knows about raising a girl in a day and age where beauty standards have never been more impossible to attain.  It’s called Raising a girl to be more than a pretty face.  Testify!

• PW Children’s Bookshelf linked to some pretty thought provoking articles this week.  My favorite: Leonard Marcus at Horn Book talking about book jackets . . . for picture books!

• In other news, PW did a very strange bit of reporting.  It mentioned the recent 90-Second Newbery at Symphony Space, which was a packed house and a big success.  However, there is a VERY odd lack of any mention about the organizer, YA author James Kennedy.  Read the piece and you’ll have the distinct impression that it happened spontaneously and without his back-breaking work.  Reporting fail, PW my dear.

• Changes are afoot at The New York Times.  Looks like they’re separating out their children’s books from their YA fare, a move that is excellent and long overdue.  Well done, old gray lady.

• I got the following message from Jane Curley of the Eric Carle Museum and I am passing it on because it sound bloody blooming amazing: “I’m giving a talk for the Victorian Society on 19th century British picture books. It’s on Tuesday, December 11 at 6PM at the Dominican Academy, 44 East 68th St.It’s free, no reservations required, and I’ll be showing some gorgeous pictures! The link is below. Cheers, Jane http://metrovsa.org/calendar.htm“.

• Daily Image:

I ran about the internet trying to find the perfect thing for today’s post but in the end I had to come back to the washable keyboard.  The perfect gift for your favorite hypochondriac this holiday season.

Thanks due to AL Direct for the link.

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December 13th seems like the perfect day to expand my usual Thursday Three to Thirteen. Plus I have a lot of great books to cover. At the library, I bring the best picture books back to my desk to read and share. When I don't want to give it back is when I know I have a special title. These are some of the books I could barely part with over the past year.


Another Brother
by Matthew Cordell
The opening sets it up perfectly “For four glorious years, Davy had Mom and Dad all to himself.” Page turn. “But things change…” The first brother is annoying and disgusting – crying, spitting up, and needing to go potty. (All of that nicely illustrated, by the way.) But one new baby isn't enough for this story. No! He gets twelve brothers who follow him and copy him all the time... until they don’t. Davy’s not sure he likes being alone – but he isn’t for long. The pen, ink and watercolor illustrations complement the light, fun tone of book and this fresh take on the common sibling theme is done with humor and heart.

Chloe and the Lion
by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex
Bringing us into the book is the author, Mac, who introduces the illustrator, Adam, and our main character, Chloe. As the story moves on, she gets lost in a forest and instead of meeting up with a lion, the illustrator chooses a dragon. Author and Illustrator break into the story to argue and Adam plays tricks with his illustrator's power, leading to the hiring of a new illustrator who can't draw the way Mac wants - though he does get the lion to swallow Adam - forcing Mac to fire him and take over the artwork too, but he can't draw. The character, Chloe, stages an intervention getting the author and illustrator to make up and get things going so that the lion coughs up Adam and the story can finish up. Such a hard book to describe - complex, funny, clever, multi-layered, meta. I absolutely loved it. Great book trailer too!.

Each Kindness
by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis
A new girl comes into the classroom, and she is quiet and obviously poor. Our main character doesn't let Maya play with them and even turns from her shy smiles. The kids laugh about her behind her back, even as Maya keeps trying to connect with sharing her small toys. A lesson from the teacher on kindness may be too late for this child, but makes it more poignant for protagonist and the reader. Lovely, heartbreaking story is perfectly matched with the luscious artwork which adds its own emotional component. A book you won't soon forget.

Extra Yarn
by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen
A girl finds a box filled with yarn, so she knits a sweater. Finding that she has extra yarn, she knits one for her dog too. But as there continues to be yarn she knits for all her classmates, townsfolk, animals – nice Klassen nod to the bear and rabbit from I Want My Hat Back – and even houses. Her knitting creates a colorful world that attracts the attention of an archduke who wants the box for himself. It all seems to go wrong for the little girl, but good wins out. So much to love in the book - the story that goes somewhere, the sharing of gifts freely, the play in the illustrations between grays and soft colors. A wonderful book that is getting a fair amount of Caldecott buzz.

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs
by Mo Willems
Self-referential tale of Goldilocks noting the oddly convenient bowls of food and the poorly supervised little girl among other aspects of this unexpected story. Older readers will gleefully understand that the dinosaurs are waiting for Goldilocks to come so that they can eat up a chocolate-pudding stuffed little girl. But that would make a pretty dark ending, so she gets away before things go bad. Great lines make for a perfect read aloud for early elementary kids who will get the irony. Funny and clever, this is Mo Willems having fun and inviting us along. Yes, there is a hidden pigeon or two, along with some little visual jokes for the observant reader. Excellent.

Good News Bad News
by Jeff Mack
Who knew four words could say so much? As two friends prepare to have a picnic, events and their dispositions move forward a simple story of staying positive - even when being struck by lightning. Well, at least it chased off the bear! Negative mouse has the last word then which is bad Bad BAD news, finally breaking rabbit’s optimism. But friendship turns this grumpy mouse around to find good news in their friendship. Cartoon illustrations with broad strokes keep expressions front and center. Love that the mouse has a chip on his ear. Nice touch.

Happy
by Miles Van Hout
Leave it to Lemniscaat to give us another beautiful book of art that also functions as a picture book. Each whimsical, colorful fish jumps out against the black background as the opposite page describes the aquatic’s emotional state – be it curious, brave, or loving. The words are artistically rendered as well, with the background selected to accent the fish’s color while conveying a tone – red for furious, for instance. Simple in concept, the artistic execution brings this book from simplicity. Look for openings of discussion as to what makes this fish or that look proud, angry or content. Color me – like the last fish – delighted.

Huff and Puff
by Claudia Rueda
With a subtitle of “Can You Blow Down the Houses of the the Three Little Pigs?” This book brings the reader into the action. The hole on the cover is echoed through the book as a peek to the page beneath as well as an invitation to the reader to be the world. Simple text, minimal illustrations in pen and ink and watercolor and an ending surprise make this a fun book for younger readers. Love the facial expressions and simplicity of statements such as, “First pig was not happy.” Your basic three little pigs have undergone a makeover, and it looks good.

Just Ducks
by Nicola Davis, illustrated by Salvatore Rubbino
With an irregular pen-sketch style, even the font is artistic. (Cold Mountain Six, which could also be a band name.) The slight story of a girl visiting the ducks on the river is enhanced with facts about ducks, each a concise sentence. The illustrations are lovely with gentle watercolors. The colors evok the natural world with greens, browns, and grays, that pop against the white background. There are lovely details to the pictures, like the armful of toys the mom holds in the child’s bedroom or the tiny ants crawling along the grass. Simply beautiful informational book that reads like a story.

One Cool Friend
by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small
A very proper boy with tuxedo and good manners, goes to the aquarium with his father and loves the penquins who look formal like him. He politely asks his father for a penguin, and dad – looking at the plush display – agrees. Given permission, Elliot takes the smallest penguin in his backpack and takes good care of it at home with his father never noticing. When he does – and you know he will – his reaction is a nice surprise. No lesson of taking something or misunderstanding, just a clever silly story. Nice cameo of the pink-haired librarian who doesn’t even blink when presented with a live penguin on their research trip. The artwork is black and white with accenting colors – the boys red backpack, dad’s green jacket, the aquarium's checked blue walls - that really works with humor style. Lots of fun.

Sophie’s Fish
by A.E. Cannon, illustrated by Lee White
When Sophie asks Jake to babysit her fish for a weekend, he agrees. But then he begins to worry, coming up with all sorts of unlikely problems, humorously illustrated. He is sure he will back out until he sees Sophie’s smile and think “How hard can it be to babysit a fish?” But there is a nice twist at the end where the fish does turn out to be more than expected. Interesting and amusing illustrations with mixed media flair add to the older kid appeal. And I love a book that takes on childhood anxiety and does it well.

You Are a Lion! And Other Fun Yoga Poses
by Taeeun Yoo
Simple descriptions of yoga stances pair with drawings of a child in that stance, with the page turn revealing the name of the pose along an illustration of the creature with poetic phrases like: "Lion: King of the Jungle/Roaring so loud/Make the woods rumble.” The imaginative element puts the child in the scene of a jungle or field of flowers while the use of cool colors and soft tones reflects the sense of calm and peace. A diverse representation of kids add to the accessibility. Pretty, lyrical, and even a bit practical.

Z is for Moose
by Kelly Bingham
An ABC book with a excited and persistent Moose trying to get into the show and a Zebra trying to keep things in order. Moose tries for a feature with the Ice cream, Jar and Kangaroo – each time asking “Now?” The disappointment when M is reached- they decided to go with the mouse – is a great storytime moment. It leads to an angry moose, a controlling zebra, and finally a time of forgiveness. (Parallel to parenting, perhaps.) Cleverly done and very funny, especially as a read aloud where the kids will yell out where the moose has appeared or what he is doing now. A big standout in the world of ABC books.

Bonus video!

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