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Checking out the picture books

Late this summer an entire library of books was delivered to a new school in Baltimore. I should know - I picked all 2,254 of them. It was what you might call a labor of love. Emphasis on the "labor". Actually, emphasis on the love.

As we shelved what amounted to thirty thousand dollars worth of brand-new beautiful books, one of our parent volunteers said, "I bet you've read half the books in this room!" I did a quick scan of a few shelves and admitted that actually, I have read probably upwards of 75% of them. Most of the fiction, all of the picture books, and one heck of a lot of the nonfiction. Wow. I am either really really sad or really really dedicated.

You may hire me to create or maintain your school library collection, and I will certainly not object, but I thought it might be nice to share some of the lists I created. I'll do a series of about a dozen posts, at least the nonfiction, starting with the 000's. This will be my own version of School Library Journal's Series Made Simple issue (which is a great resource, by the way).

The 000's are kind of a weird little miscellany area of a school library. Every school should have a set of the World Book, and please do buy an almanac every year, but if you have the bucks, try to get a few "strange but true" reference books in there. Some kids really respond to Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Guinness World Records. Books like these have a sneaky added benefit - the indexed entries introduce kids to a nonlinear method of approaching a book, important when they're doing real research later.




Gee, Joshua. Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying Truth About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, & More. A kind of weird book to start off with, but, as the kid says in Beetlejuice, "I myself am strange and unusual."

Teitelbaum, Michael. Bigfoot Caught on Film: And Other Monster Sightings!. The 24/7: Science Behind the Scenes series from Scholastic is... it's ok. Little niblets of info, good for hooking readers, but it's nice to have something with a little more depth to back these books up, in case your readers do get interested in the subject. I picked carefully through this series and selected just a few titles.

Prieto, Anita C. B Is For Bookworm: A Library Alphabet. These alphabet books from Sleeping Bear Press are a bit uneven. This one is pretty dry, but I wanted to fill out a small suite of library-themed books. If you're tempted by the ABC book for your state, or about a particular subject, be sure to get your hands on it and read it through first. Some of the words can be awfully obscure.

Ruurs, Margriet. My Librarian Is A Camel: How Books Are Brought To Children Around The World. How people live around the world is a particularly important theme in this school, and one that I personally find important. Kids find the juxtapositions fascinating, too. The pictures in this book are very nice.

Farndon, John. Visual Encyclopedia (DK). I keep buying and buying this book, and they keep loving and loving it until they love it to pieces. I'm not the world's be-all end-all fan of Dorling Kindersley - I don't think they fact-check hard enough - but this single-volume encyclopedia + elementary school kids = LOVE.

Aronson, Marc. For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever. Frankly? I bought this on Jon Scieszka's recommendation. More graphically interesting and up-to-date looking than that other "dangerous" book, which I swear was written for parents.

Farndon, John. Do Not Open. Irresistable, full of fun facts about freaky stuff, several activities and suggestions for bringing the info in the book to life. Worth the few extra bucks. My 8 year old got a copy of this for his birthday and was enraptured. His little brother is learning to read just as fast and as hard as he can so he can have a turn with it.

Macdonald, Guy. Even More Children's Miscellany: Smart, Silly, and Strange Information That's Essential to Know. Same stuff, but for smaller kids.

McDonald, Megan. Stink-O-Pedia: Super Stink-y Stuff From A To ZZZZ. I like Stink Moody. I like him better than his sister, Judy. I buy Judy Moody, but I buy Stink too. He's funny, he's good-hearted, he's a 'second chapter book' for boys who think fantasy is pointless. Stink reads encyclopedias in his spare time, so I thought I'd offer his fans Stink's very own encyclopedia.

Murrie, Steve & Matthew. Every Minute On Earth: Fun Facts That Happen Every 60 Seconds. I never can seem to find enough books about time. Time is hard to explain. So when this book arrived at the public library, I snatched it. I stood and read it between customers at the information desk and I figured if I was fascinated enough to read it all the way through, surely somebody in that school would be too.

Mark, Jan. Museum Book: A Guide To Strange And Wonderful Collections. This is Baltimore, baby. We've got a light bulb museum and a teeth museum and we used to have a dime museum. We are to strange and wonderful as Paris is to lovely and inspiring.

Marcus, Leonard S. Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture-Book Teams Go to Work. Marvelous funny anecdotes, lots of illustrations showing all steps of the creative process, a very nice introduction to the concept of collaboration. Terrible cover though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lives of the The Great Artists by Charlie Ayres
Brilliantly laid out, beautifully printed, brightly written, and augmented with activities, web resources, and fun facts, this book will hook young readers of every type.

Twenty European artists are profiled, arranged in chronological order. Each entry begins with a summary and a portrait, and then the reader is dropped into the artist's life. We accompany J.M.W. Turner as he sells a painting, and wait with Goya for the Spanish royal family, who are coming for a portrait sitting. Facts about each artist's life, technique, and importance are skillfully blended into these present-tense vignettes.

The narrative is written in the present tense, which gives it a fictionalized "feel," but the bulk of the events and feelings described are based on correspondence or other documentation (although such support is not cited in the book).

The works of art chosen to represent each artist are heavy on the drama and detail, resulting in high kid appeal and interesting captions. In some cases, sketches are included. The book's design merits special mention: each artist's entry has its own color palette, drawn from the works of art used as illustrations, and despite the multitude of sidebars, layout is clean and clear.

Back matter includes chronologies of the artists, locations of major collections of each artist's works, a glossary, and catalog entries for each work of art.

Unfortunately, this graceful, thoughtful book is badly marred by a garish cover that not only fails to represent the rich content within, but also fails to acknowledge the author's stated scope - European artists of the past seven hundred years. There is no such qualifying language on the cover, leading to the unpleasant - and offensive - impression that the book is declaring that the only important artists are European.

Antony Mason's A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the Twentieth Century takes a more encyclopedic approach to this subject and would make a good companion volume.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or... that's me lying again.

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Manjiro: The boy who risked his life for two countries, by Emily Arnold McCully
Beautifully illustrated. Packed with detail. A suspenseful story. I'm not too sure what else to say, except that it's a shame all of the preceding phrases have been completely leached of meaning by overuse, like a beautiful cotton kimono that has grown faded and fragile after six months on the back of a teenage Japanese fisherman stranded on a rocky island eating albatross eggs and drinking rainwater to stay alive.

Detail. Suspense. Beautiful illustrations. More information. I'm gonna find something to nominate it for. Wow.

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Magic Trixie by Jill Thompson
Oh, I love Halloween. It's got to be my favorite time of year. The weather is getting nippy but not too cold yet, and there's nothing more satisfying to me than kicking though the dry leaves on the sidewalk. Plus, the iconography is exciting and adaptable - black cats can be adorable or scary, witches can be gruesome or slinky, spiders can be big and hairy and icky... or tiny and delicate and fascinating. Let's not forget the color scheme. Does not orange and black beat red and green any day? Christmas takes one tone: heartwarming... while Halloween has endless variations. Your Halloween might be all naughty nurse-y; Martha Stewart's Halloween is classy; and my Halloween is... well, it's different every time.

Which might be why I loved Magic Trixie so much. Jill Thompson has drawn up a set of monsters, witches and ghosts that are hip and fabulous, from Trixie's grandma Mimi, with her green fishnets, peacock-feather broom, and wide purple snakeskin belt cinching her coy black minidress... to Trixie's goofy school friend Stitch, who looks just like any cool second-grade boy, with unruly black hair and long cargo shorts, except for the fact that he's stitched together from parts of corpses and can unzip his head and show off his brain when it's his turn for show and tell.



(Or it might be the pink hair.)

This first book in the Trixie series glories in introducing these characters. There's a nice little plot involving Trixie accepting her baby sister, but the real joy is in learning about spitfire Trixie and finding out what fresh visual fun is waiting on the next page. Jill Thompson, a multiple Eisner winner, knows her craft. Page layouts flow seamlessly, making this one of the smoothest graphic novel reads I've ever seen. Colors balance, with Trixie's wild orange / pink hair and acid green hatband contrasting beautifully with her black clothes and generally subdued backgrounds.

And every page holds a treat, whether it's a glimpse of Grandpa's dragon tattoo or Trixie's fly backpack.

I am delighted to find that Trixie has her own blog, full of extra pictures and Trixie's own observations.

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Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin
Feeling picked-on and underappreciated in your own family? Surrounded by people who don't understand you? What you need is a one-inch-tall identical twin brother. Really!

Daniel lives with his three sisters, his mom, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother, and he feels a little overlooked. One day, he shrinks to the size of his fourth toe. Yes, he does. He grows back to normal size, though. Perplexed to say the least, he turns to his great grandmother, Granny Nanny, who reveals that the tendency to shrink is a well-kept and little-understood family secret. Another secret is Pablo, his twin, whom even his mother has never known about. Granny has been raising Pablo in secret all these years. She suspects it's her goulash that makes people shrink.

Pablo, or "The Pablo" as he calls himself, is The Bomb. Nobody can hear him, so he is free to make wisecracks about the women of the house. He can give voice to the opinions and comments that Daniel would get SO beat up for. He can pick and choose what he wants to learn about - Granny homeschools him, but he hitches a ride to school with Daniel whenever Daniel's class is studying something interesting. Pablo can watch TV in the daytime. Pablo has lots of good ideas about how to have fun.

This is a super-funny, super-cool book for kids at about a 3rd grade reading level. The illustrations are slouchy and hip, and the cover is a can't-miss. So glad it's a series!

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How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest by Adrian Forsyth
What an interesting book! Forsyth, a senior biodiversity researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, explores relationships between animals and plants in rain forests throughout the world. He draws examples from his own travels and experiences, doesn't dumb down the botany for the young reader, and contextualizes his facts in a friendly, accessible way. The book even uses some of Forsyth's own photos.

What a shame about the design, though. Textbook-y and choppy, the design actually makes the photos and text appear to be generic, like placeholders. You'd have to be pretty committed to even give it a try.

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The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
I just finished this book, sitting on the front porch drinking lemon soda and giggling out loud. Summer is so great.

The Willoughbys is a tour de force. In this short novel (174 pages, and that's including the glossary and bibliography), the estimable and thought-provoking Lois Lowry presents her own idea of a nice activity for a fine summer afternoon: she fires up the grill and roasts the living crap out of some of the most ludicrous and unpalatable tropes of classic children's literature.

• She takes the baby left on the doorstep, shears its angelic curls, and pawns it off on a neighbor.
• Her brave orphans are neither orphans, nor brave (at least at first).
• The long-lost relative is not particularly missed.
• The Swiss are by and large insufferable.

At least none of the characters manage to convince a wheelchair-bound pal to get up and walk again. That's one plot nugget too awful to be rehabilitated, even with barbecue sauce and hickory smoke.

And what emerges from the smoke, caramelized and juicy, is a story as lovable and appealing as it is wry and twisted.

The Willoughby children (there are four of them, plus two more that they pick up along the way), who are old-fashioned yet unsentimental, remind me of the kids in the Nurse Matilda stories. Or the Penderwicks. Roald Dahl will also come to mind. The children themselves frequently cite classic children's literature. But despite all these references and echoes - some explicit, others deliberately implied, and at least one sniffed out by a perSnickety fellow author - The Willoughbys stands on its own.

Will there be parents who recoil from the Willoughby children, who wish their (hilariously) detestable parents dead? "I'm wondering," Jane said, "would a crocodile eat a person in one gulp? Or in chunks?" Or who recoil from the Willoughby parents, who are indeed detestable (though hilariously so)? "Two tourists were eaten in huge gulps but it was not sad at all because they were French." I hope not. Because, you know, "hilarious" means "just joking, you dolts!"

My kids are off with their aunties and uncles splashing in rivers and having scavenger hunts in the woods. But when they get back, I am reading this book to them as soon as possible. And as long as Bob and I don't run off on a vacation of our own and try to sell the house out from under them, I won't worry about them getting any ideas!

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Ah! We are back from two weeks in various cities and beaches in the American Southeast, and did we have time to read? We did!

I read:



So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld
Loved it! The whole "cool hunter" thing is a bit nineties, but you gotta love a good mystery, and a good mystery that is full of cool stuff is even better. Also, Westerfeld's examination of the co-opting of youth trends for mass consumption is straight out of Commodify Your Dissent, a compendium by the folks at The Baffler that every teenager should read before cracking that next can of Monster Mixxd Energy Juice.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
(reviewed while I was on vacation in New Orleans, thank you very much)

Farthing by Jo Walton
Technically a grown-up book, I would recommend Farthing to any young adult reader interested in speculative fiction, history, or mystery. It's an illuminating "what-if" novel set in an England that has accepted Hitler's "Peace with Honor" - disguised as an old-fashioned English country house mystery: Gosford Park meets Brazil. There are many discussions involving sexuality, i.e. who is homosexual and who is not, but no sex.

The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony Bourdain
Essays by the author of Kitchen Confidential and The Bobby Gold Stories. I recommend the crap out of Tony Bourdain - but not, typically, for kids. There's the language, not to mention the extremely frank talk about sex and drugs. There are some teenagers, though, especially the ones considering restaurant careers... hey, they should know what they're getting into!


My rising 2nd grader read:



Black Lagoon adventures, books 1-7 by Mike Thaler ; illustrated by Jared Lee
The kid is giggling to himself as he goes through and then reading passages out loud to his younger brother. I'm taking that as a thumbs-up.


My husband read:



How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
Recommended road trip reading. At every state border, as we hollered out "Good-bye, Georgia!" and "Hello, Alabama!" Bob would have some anecdotal treasure to relate about battles, topography, bureaucratic snafus, and the duplicitousness of Virginia. Luckily, he kept most of them to himself. (I kid! I kid!)

Also, he read The Economist. Also the newspaper. On the beach. I swear, one of these days I'm going to strap him to a chair and force Robert Ludlum down his throat. Or... eww.


On audio:
Our faithful minivan transported us a grand total of 2875 miles. And did we listen to books in the car? We did!



We spent most of our time in the car with Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. We got through The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Titan's Curse.

My boys, who are 5 and 6 years old, now know the traits and attributes of all the major Greek gods and a fair number of the minor ones. They cried out for "more Percy" every time we got into the car. Unfortunately for my husband and I, the narrator, Jesse Bernstein, is... well. In addition to a gritted-teeth Queens accent that would make Archie Bunker proud (shtreet, frushtrated, firmiliar, foward, bedgeroom), the guy continually misplaces the emphasis in sentences and phrases. Also? A word to audio book producers? When your narrator encounters the word "ichor" and pronounces it "icker"? Stop the tape and look it up. He does animal voices really well, though.


And at bedtime:
Since the boys share a room, I can read to them both at bedtime, usually a long chapter book, while they fall asleep in their beds. I have read Nurse Matilda, The True Meaning of Smekday, and A Hat Full of Sky in this way. My Boov voice was irresistable, as I predicted, but the Nac Mac Feegles nearly did me in.



On the road I started reading the second Skulduggery Pleasant book, Playing with Fire. I am pleased to report that it is starting out just as sardonic and action-packed as the first book, and I am proud to say that I am working Skulduggery's deep velvet voice almost as well as Rupert Degas, who read that first book so amazingly well that we replayed sections again and again.

Here's to beach chairs, lounge chairs by the pool, couches in shady living rooms. Anywhere you get a chance to just sit and read. That's vacation, baby.

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Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the Target gift card. God knows she can use it. A Staples gift card works too, or one from Amazon (heh heh). But in our family, we always give a book. Each of the books on this list works well as a tribute to the man or woman who has sacrificed economic prosperity (and probably his or her immune system) so that your child's mind may have been properly cared for and nurtured this year.



Ms. MacDonald Has a Class by Jan Ormerod
Just what it sounds like, a reworking of "Old MacDonald" set in the classroom, with happy children dancing and creating and taking a field trip to a farm. Anyone who likes kids (as teachers, we hope, do) will enjoy Jan Ormerod's beautiful, spunky, active drawings of the multicultural kindergarten kids.




How the Tiny People Grew Tall by Nancy Wood
I came across this "original creation tale" in Daedalus Books - I don't think it's in our library. The title makes it an obvious choice as a gift for those brave individuals whose job it is to foster the intellectual development of our children, so I was kind of expecting a tiresome hammer-and-nails fable. But when I opened it up, I was pleasantly surprised to find an entertaining, thought-provoking, good-looking story about how new experiences and generous guides create brave, thoughtful, resourceful, smart people. A sparkling, clever, good-hearted gift - not too much text for kindergartners, enough to think about for maybe up to 4th or 5th grade.




I Will Make Miracles by Susie Morgenstern, illustrated by Jiang Hong Chen
Reviewed by me earlier, this book is a sumptuous gift. Not that expensive, but large and wide, it's a slab of toothy board saturated with deep inky color. A pleasure to hold. And as a gift, it's not just about the miracles the child might accomplish, but it's also a tribute to the incremental miracles that the teacher performs with every kid, every year. I'm hoping to get a tear out of the first grade teacher with this one.




To Be Like the Sun by Susan Marie Swanson and Margaret Chodos-Irvine
Reviewed earlier by me. The seed-flower metaphor is used (a lot) in the educational context, and I might hesitate to drag it out one more time, if it weren't for To be like the Sun. There is the potential encapsulated in the tiny seed, then there is the nurturing sun and rain and human helper, yeah yeah, but in To be like the Sun, we see the plant grow and produce its own seeds, which the little girl saves over the winter to plant in the spring.



Magic Beach by Crockett Johnson
An uncompleted manuscript by author of Harold and the Purple Crayon, Magic Beach has been published with all the pencil lines and erasures intact. It's a lovely story. Two bored little kids wander along the beach wishing they had a snack. They soon discover that they can conjure up whatever they want by writing its name in the sand - when the waves wash away the words, the words are replaced by the real thing.

This is strong stuff about possibility and dreams and actuation and the power of words. Suitable for teachers of upper grades, for graduates, as a wedding gift, and it's even a great book to read to kids.

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I read this book some time ago. December it was, yes, December 27. During jury duty. They showed a Queen Latifah movie in the jury waiting room. Also half of The Devil Wears Prada, and ever since then, I have had this nagging need to find out how it ended. Not enough to Netflix it though. I have a feeling that post-transformation, it all goes downhill and probably comes to conclusions that I would Not Agree With, based on assertions that are ridiculous.

Anyway, the book. I had some problems with it, and I wasn't going to review it, because, while I have in the past been known to boldly trash books that everyone else likes and call down the wrath of authors who actually go out looking for their reviews, well... why pick on Stephen Hawking?

But just in the past week, two different friends have mentioned that they listened to it on audio and just loved it.

Now, George's Secret Key to the Universe, I have to say, does a very bold thing, integrating astronomy and physics into the story - and not just as sidebar information, though there is plenty of that, plus an insert of full-color photos just as if it were a Karrine Steffans memoir. (Everything in these pictures is real, though, unlike those pictures of Ms. Steffans with her shirt off.) (I approve of sidebars, by the way. When I was a kid, they were just starting to appear in textbooks, and, when available, they were all I read.)

In this book, however, George goes on adventures in space and solves problems, all the while learning about and using elementary astrophysics. Given the disastrous state of science knowledge in this country, I would really like to be able to thrust this book into the air and yell, "Science! Story! No reason they can't go together!"

But. God, it really pains me to pick on this. Ok. George lives with his parents in a somewhat ramshackle house in the suburbs. His parents are major crunchies, environmentalists who seek to live as much 'off the grid' as they can. Candles, nettle tea, home-grown food. Fine so far. But the parents take the very unusual stance that technology, because it enables consumption, is bad. They won't have a computer in the house and are suspicious of science.

I have two problems with this. First of all, I know a LOT of environmentally-conscious people, in all shades, from old-fashioned communal hippie to new-fangled Prius-driving vegan. And I'm not sure I've ever met a single one that was anti-technology, or who denied that science can help decrease our mis-use of natural resources. Solar power, anyone?

Secondly, I feel like the authors are setting up a conflict that doesn't have to be there. George is going to get in trouble, because this is a children's book, but does part of the trouble he's in have to be for defying his parents? An evil villain is after him, and he has to avoid being sucked into a black hole at one point. There's no reason his parents couldn't be supportive. Except for, oh yes, they're retarded hippies who hate computers.

There is a rapprochement at the end of the book between the parents and the scientist next door who has been mentoring George in his explorations of space and science. Both factions come together at an environmental rally, and the parents see the error of their reasoning. Well, of course it's erroneous reasoning! Nobody actually thinks like that! Oh, hell. Maybe they do in England. I'm probably just making a big deal out of nothing.

But there's one other thing: George's "secret key to the universe" is the ENTER key on a sentient laptop named Cosmos. Does that bother anybody but me?

Hello?

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Gosh, it seems like I've just hated everything I've read lately, doesn't it? Peter and the Starcatchers got the big raspberry, I got all kvetchy about Peak, and The Name of this Book is Secret just didn't ring any bells for me. I haven't even put up my review of The Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson, and just as a preview? it's not 100% positive either.

All of which is kind of funny, because the two books I've got going right now? Sweet! I'm reading Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, and we've been listening to Skulduggery Pleasant in the car.

And I am here to tell you - LOVE the SKUL. The characters are broadly drawn, yet precise - like Chinese calligraphy done with a big fat brush. The dialogue is snappy, and the plot is just twisty enough.

But the real revelation here is Skulduggery Pleasant himself, a several-hundred-year-old living skeleton working as a freelance detective. He's urbane. He's competent. He's noble. His wit is very, very dry. He puts me in mind of James Bond, if Clive Owen had gotten the job. Or Indiana Jones.

It's fairly unusual in contemporary children's literature to find a leading man per se: that is, an adult male that carries the book. Adult males are villains (say, Voldemort), or guides (Dumbledore), or surrogate fathers who aren't around much either (Sirius Black), but it's usually the eleven-year-old orphan who is the center of attention. Skulduggery Pleasant is written from the point of view of its main female character, an eleven-year-old girl named Stephanie Edgely, but it's Skul who drives the action. He's more than a mere guide for Stephanie. It's interesting, and I think it's because Derek Landy's background is in screenwriting rather than children's literature. My guess is that nobody told him.

A word about the audio edition - GET THE AUDIO EDITION. It's read by Rupert Degas, and the chapter "The Troll Under Westminster Bridge" should win this guy the audio book Grammy all by itself. Rupert Degas is apparently a voice superstar in the UK, but this is the first I've heard his voice. Voices. He reads an Irish tween girl as convincingly as an adult woman from London, and he has a whole range of deep, hoarse, whispery, creaky, etc. to personify the magicians and accomplices throughout the book. Plus two insane voices for that troll. We've played that chapter about a hundred and sixty-seven times, and it KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME!

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Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
I've never read this book, or its sequels, before now. "Whaaat?" you gasp. "Fantasy adventure based on familiar characters in children's literature, and YOOOU haven't READ them?!"

Ah shut up. I know what these books are without reading them. So do you. And I know the kid who reads these books - or who will at least give them a try with very little need for wheedling or booktalking. That kid is not, as we say, a discriminating reader. That kid will read very long books regardless of whether they're terrific or not, because that kid likes to read. When that kid asks me for book recommendations, it's not because he or she has trouble finding books that appeal to his or her taste, it's because that kid has READ EVERYTHING ELSE.

So when the response to everything I suggest is “Already read it,” I start suggesting books I haven't read but have heard are good, and the Dave Barry Peter books are in that category.

I always meant to though, and when I saw that the audio version was narrated by the great Jim Dale, I snapped it right up for our Spring Break road trip. Let me tell you, this book made the long hours bombing up and down Virginia interstates go by quickly for my young boys. Even my husband was hanging on every word, although there was a dreadful chapter somewhere at the end of the first third of the book that was SOLID EXPOSITION. Even Jim Dale was rushing through that one.

Now that we've finished the book, I have to say that my opinion of it has not changed. It's a galloping adventure that follows a familiar arc, populated with half a Magic Kingdom's worth of good guys and bad guys. But it's almost as if the lead character could be any of the eleven-year-old orphans that litter children's literature. Peter Pan is nowhere in sight. Now, I recognize that Peter and the Starcatchers is a prequel to Peter Pan, and so Peter is not yet Pan, thoughtless and amoral, uncivilized, illiterate, pure id – but the Peter in this story? His behavior is beyond reproach. He is loyal, brave, caring, and smart. He's a hero almost from the first page. He is fabulously dull.

No wonder the authors felt compelled to feature not one but two villainous sea dogs, each with a comic-relief henchman (Smee, of course, assists the proto-Hook), and not one but two tempting and resourceful female sidekicks (I do wish to thank the authors for a neat explanation of mermaids). And by the end of the book, it felt as if we were going down a checklist of story elements that had to be in place. Hook loses a hand? Check. Tinkerbell? Check. Peter can fly? Check. Crocodile? Check.

And I missed Pan - surly, solipsistic, charismatic, somewhat dicky Pan.

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The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
Two kids, not popular at school, become unlikely allies in their quest to solve a mystery, foil creepy villains, face peril, etc etc yes we know.

More than anything else, this book reminded me of Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett. The main characters are more prickly than appealing at first, and maintain their less-pleasant quirks throughout the book, which is nice to see, for a change. Often, authors will drop that stuff once they've established the character as an “individual” and the plot takes off. There are lots of riddles and lots of abstruse knowledge, in this case about people with sensory differences, especially synesthesia. A pretty unusual topic to find in a kids' book, and hey! I'm all for interesting information tidbits tucked into the plot.

My kids thought it was just as funny as could be, and the plot was straightforward enough for them to follow. I wouldn't say that it was one for my all-time favorite list, but eh, it'll appeal to the funny mystery lovers.

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“Is that Amy Lee from Evanescence?”

“That’s straight up Amy Lee from Evanescence, playing the guitar and singing about cartoons! What? Who? Where? What portal did we walk through this time?”

“It’s a LadyStar Video Alert! I got Talitha-chan to find us a fun video to put up so we could have a video alert like Acey-san!”

“Yeah it’s a LadyStar video alert. You savvy?”

“Ha! We’ve gone officially out of our own tree!”

“Heheheeee… see? We can do videos just like Gamepowa ’cause we got Talitha-chan and she’s super-smart about computers just like Acey-san!”

“That is just too cool for words. Rock on, Amy! Rock on, Professor! Rock on, LadyStar Video Alerts! We are OUT!”

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