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Toppling. by Sally Murphy. 2012. Candlewick. 128 pages. ISBN: 9780763659219

John is in fifth grade, and he loves dominoes. He doesn't play games with them; instead, he likes to line them up in complicated patterns, then knock them over to watch how they topple. His hobby becomes a metaphor for a precarious situation in his best friend, Dom's life, when John and his classmates learn that Dom has cancer and may die.

This book is very nicely done. It looks at a serious situation from the masculine point of view, and portrays all the complex emotions associated with childhood cancer without becoming maudlin. Though John worries about his friend's future, he remains hopeful and positive in a way that I think shows the resilience of real kids. He and "the guys" show real compassion for Dom, and the ending, though uncertain, sounds a real chord of hope and happiness. 

Kids are naturally curious about serious situations, and I think this book will appeal to that curiosity. Though the main focus is how John reacts to Dom's diagnosis, there are also plenty of great details about classrooms and childhood interactions that make the entire world of the story very vivid. I was reminded, at certain points, of the Calvin Coconut series, where Calvin's classmates and classroom also come to life in unique ways. I think kids will also appreciate the open-ended ending to the story, which allows them to decide for themselves whether Dom will beat his illness.

I enjoyed Toppling much more than Murphy's previous book, Pearl Verses the World. While Pearl's story left me feeling very sad, this book infused a sad situation with enough good humor to make me want to keep reading. This book was originally published in Australia in 2010 by Walker Books with a slightly different cover illustration. Readers who enjoy Toppling might also like Julie Sternberg's Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie and Like Bug Juice on a Burger and Eileen Spinelli's The Dancing Pancake and Summerhouse Time. Though these books are not about cancer, they focus on kids dealing with difficult emotions and finding ways to cope. 

I borrowed Toppling from my local public library. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat. 

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Escape from Silver Street Farm. by Nicola Davies. March 26, 2013. Candlewick. 80 pages. ISBN:  9780763661335

Karl, Gemma, and Meera are excited for the opening of the farm that has been their dream since kindergarten. There is just one problem - their sheep and turkeys have escaped!  While Karl and the farm's new caretaker, Scottish farmer Flora McDonald, track the sheep to the nearby grocery store, Gemma and Meera must gather the clues that will piece together the unlikely events that happen to the missing turkeys.

This book has so many things in it that kids just naturally love: kids taking charge, animals in silly situations, a sense of suspense and mystery, and a happy ending. Though the characters are definitely older than the average age of the target audience, the tone and humor are spot-on for the early elementary reader. Animal lovers will be pleased by the occasional passages written from the point of view of the various animals, but even kids who are less thrilled with animal-centric stories will engage with the characters and their detective work instead.

The design of  the book is also very appealing. The illustrations at the start of each chapter hint at events to follow, and they show the racial diversity of the characters that is not explicitly discussed in the text. Katherine McEwan's tiny lines and cartoonish faces remind me of drawings by illustrators like Matthew Cordell and Marla Frazee. I especially like the way McEwan shows the animals' personalities in their faces. Another appealing aspect of the design are the little footprints along the bottom of each page. In the chapters focusing on the search for the sheep, they are hoofprints, and in the turkey chapters, they are little turkey prints. This is a nice visual cue to help kids keep track of the switch from one part of  the story to another. I also think those are nice touches to have on pages that are otherwise nothing but text.

There are so many books for kids about animals, but this series stands out for me because the author is an actual zoologist with firsthand knowledge of caring for animals. There are no talking animals in this book, but the animals have realistic personalities and minds of their own that give them a more active role in the story than in many books about kids and  their animal obsessions. The Silver Street Farm series is a perfect read-alike for the Lulu series by Hilary McKay, also imported from the UK by Candlewick Press. For more suggestions for readers who like animals, check out my lists about kids and their dogs  and farm animals.

I received a digital ARC of Escape from Silver Street Farm from my local public library. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat. 

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Luke on the Loose. by Harry Bliss. 2009. Candlewick. 32 pages. ISBN: 9781935179009

Luke on the Loose is a TOON Book - a story for new readers told in comic format by Harry Bliss. At the park, Luke gets tired of listening to his father’s boring adult conversation with a friend. Unable to take it any longer, he takes off after some pigeons, calling out “Yaaaaah!” as he goes. While his dad enlists the police to track him down, Luke knocks over a bicyclist, interrupts a marriage proposal, and finally climbs onto a roof to take a nap, creating a frenzy at every point on his journey.

Luke on the Loose is one of the best and funniest easy readers I have ever read. It captures not only the boredom of a child waiting for his parents to stop talking, but also the explosion of happiness associated with freedom from that boring situation. “Yaaah!” is the perfect sound for Luke to make - it tells us everything we need to know about his feelings, and it’s great fun to say out loud. All along the way, subtle comments from animals and people alike add to the humor of Luke’s wild run through the city. Pigeons call him “Coo Coo.” A cat peering out the window thinks to himself, “I’ll never let my kittens chase pigeons.” A mouse even suggests that Luke is just another city pest. These deadpan statements perfectly juxtapose the slapstick humor of the illustrations, making the laughs come that much faster.

Luke on the Loose reminds me a lot of Nina in That Makes Me Mad. Both celebrate the individuality of children, and celebrate their independence and emotions. Just as kids relate to the things that make Nina mad, they will relate to the fun of Luke’s sprint through the city and they will be comforted by his safe return to his parents in the end as well. Recommend Luke on the Loose to little ones with lots of energy, and laugh along with them!

I read the TOON Online Reader version of Luke on the Loose on the TOON Books website.
 
For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.

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Remembering Mrs. Rossi. by Amy Hest. 2007. Candlewick Press. 192 pages. ISBN: 9780763621636

Annie lives with her father, Professor Rossi, in New York City, where the two of them are mourning the loss of Annie’s mom, Mrs. Rossi, who was a sixth grade teacher. The mourning process is very difficult, especially for Annie, who finds that her dad just doesn’t do things the way her mom would. Both Annie and her dad find solace, however, in a book created by Mrs. Rossi’s sixth graders in which they share their memories of their beloved teacher.

Thanks to Jennifer’s review at Jean Little Library, I recently learned that Letters to Leo, which I previously reviewed, is actually a sequel to this book! Remembering Mrs. Rossi provides the backstory about Annie’s mother’s death, and her fondness for her teacher, Miss Meadows. Though Letters to Leo made perfect sense without this background, I enjoyed fitting the pieces together and getting a better sense of Annie’s personality and circumstances. I also thought it was interesting that each book incorporated documents. In Letters to Leo, Annie writes letters to her dog; in Remembering Mrs. Rossi, Mrs. Rossi’s students write notes, essays, and stories for Annie and her dad.

I think the greatest strength of Remembering Mrs. Rossi is its portrayal of Annie’s emotions. We understand Annie’s grief and longing for her mother, but we also see little glimmers of hope as things begin to settle into a routine once again. We even see moments of happiness as Annie remembers her mother. The story is gentle in its presentation of each emotion, and kids who have lost a parent will no doubt appreciate those careful nudges toward healing much more than any heavy-handed preaching.

My only complaint is about the way the book is divided. The first portion of the story is straight prose from Annie’s point of view, while the second part is the entirety of the book the sixth graders write about Mrs. Rossi. Since Annie reads and rereads the tributes to her mother throughout the story, I thought it might have been a better idea to mix the two segments of the book together, so that the reader could see directly how Annie’s thoughts and actions are influenced by memories of her mother. It was still interesting to read this way, but it wasn’t especially cohesive, and I started losing interest towards the end.

This is an excellent book to recommend to kids who have lost their mom, and also a nice way to inspire kids to help friends or classmates who might be going through a similar loss. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to read this first book in order to enjoy Letters to Leo, kids who like to know the whole story will definitely want to read both.

I borrowed Remembering Mrs. Rossi from my local public library. 
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Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm. by Megan McDonald. August 14, 2012. Candlewick Press. 176 pages. ISBN: 9780763634513

Judy Moody has a lucky penny. At first, it brings great luck - prizes from The Claw machine, a lucky number of marshmallows in her breakfast cereal, and ten dollars among her Crazy Strips collection. Unfortunately, though, her good luck runs out before the class spelling bee and she is not selected to represent the third grade in Washington, DC. Now her only chance to go on the trip is to accompany her classmate, Jessica, and babysit Jessica’s pet pig, Peegee Weegee. Will her luck hold out long enough to keep Peegee Weegee out of trouble, or will more bad luck follow her to Washington?

This book fits in nicely amongst the others of the series, but it did give me pause. Why would someone bring her pig all the way to Washington, DC for a spelling bee? And why hire a third grader to watch him? I haven’t read all of the previous Judy Moody titles, so maybe this is just par for the course, but this storyline seemed especially unrealistic to me. I also noticed that the characterization of the Moody family, and even of Judy herself, seemed stronger to me in the most recent Stink book than it does in this one. I found that surprising, since the Stink books are a spin-off from the Judy Moody series, but it might also be that the Judy series is just more well-established so readers need fewer reminders of who everyone is.

The idea of a good luck charm is a nice choice of topic for a chapter book, because I think a lot of kids wish for magical objects, or at least pretend everyday things like pennies and rocks can grant them wishes. I also like the fact that Judy ultimately learns that her good fortune comes from her own actions and not from magical outside sources. Finally, I think this book fills the need for more pig-related chapter books for Mercy Watson fans looking for what to read next.


Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm will be published along with Judy Moody's Mini-Mysteries and Other Sneaky Stuff for Super-Sleuths on August 14.

I received a digital ARC of Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm from Candlewick via NetGalley.

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Ruby Redfort: Look Into My Eyes. by Lauren Child. March 27, 2012. Candlewick Press. 387 pages. ISBN: 9780763651206

Ruby Redfort is known to fans of the Clarice Bean series as the heroine of Clarice Bean’s favorite detective series. Now, in her own story, Ruby Redfort has the chance to take center stage and show readers just how she came to be such a genius code-cracker. With the help of Hitch, her family’s butler, and with no help whatsoever from her clueless, superficial parents, Ruby becomes a member of a secret society called Spectrum and finds herself in pursuit of a truth others have died trying to uncover.

I have read all of the Clarice Bean books and almost all of the Charlie and Lola books, but I feel perfectly confident saying that Look Into My Eyes is Lauren Child’s best book book to date. The previous books have all been quirky and fun in their own way, but whereas Charlie’s and Clarice Bean’s voices sound very similar to one another, Ruby stands out as a truly original character. It really impresses me how Child was able to take the few throwaway details Clarice Bean mentions about Ruby and build a full-fledged universe from them.

I think it was a great decision to tell Ruby’s “origin story.” I loved seeing her acquire the various gadgets Clarice Bean so envies, and it was neat to see how Hitch and Clancy Crew figure into the equation. I also think Child did a great job of portraying an American character. I caught maybe one or two Briticisms, but otherwise, it seems like she got a handle on how Americans talk. By the same token, though, I didn’t see this as a purely American book, and that was a good thing as well. I liked how much it reminded me of James Bond (and the Austin Powers parodies of the Bond movies) and enjoyed being immersed in the wry, spunky tone and somewhat hyperbolic atmosphere of Ruby’s world.

Not only is this title a great read-alike for Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls books, it will easily reach beyond that audience and might even attract boy readers as well. Ruby isn’t an especially girly girl. At no point in this story does she become bogged down in all the stereotypical middle grade topics - catty girl fights, boyfriend drama, school issues, etc. She exists entirely outside of those situations, and instead deals with real issues of life and death. She also has a great collection of tee shirts bearing smart-alecky phrases, which is a detail I love, and her parents are these wonderful caricatures, whose every move is ridiculous and entertaining.

Finally, I was pleased to see the complexity of the codes and mysteries in this book. The reader has an opportunity to solve a code early on in the story, and I’ll admit I spent probably a good hour on that alone! The narrative also works in a lot of important clues that savvy readers are able to catch before Ruby even realizes they’re there. I always think the best mysteries are the ones the reader can solve along with the main character, and this one does an especially good job of making that possible.

Recommend this book to readers who enjoy Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger (also a 2012 release), the Gallagher Girls series, as mentioned above, and of course, Nancy Drew.

I borrowed Ruby Redfort: Look Into My Eyes from my local public library. 
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Judy Moody's Mini-Mysteries and Other Sneaky Stuff for Super Sleuths. by Megan McDonald. August 14, 2012. Candlewick Press. 96 pages. ISBN: 9780763659417

This summer, Candlewick will publish not one but two new Judy Moody titles. While Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm (which I will review next week) is a regular Judy Moody story which follows in succession after Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, this book is something a little bit different. It’s Judy’s guide for detectives, complete with puzzles, activities, and a set of short Encyclopedia Brown-esque mysteries for readers to solve.

What makes Judy Moody's Mini-Mysteries and Other Sneaky Stuff for Super Sleuths stand out for me over other activity books of its kind is how much emphasis it places on reading. This isn’t just an opportunity for kids to fill in a few blanks and move on. Rather, readers have to read carefully to solve mysteries, answer simple logic puzzles, and learn Judy’s various detecting strategies. Just like the rest of the series, the book is heavily illustrated, so new chapter book readers can feel confident trying it out, and the various puzzles would be as much to do alone as with a group, whether that is a child’s family, scout troop, or class.

There are only two drawbacks to this book. One is that it relies on some of the earlier Judy Moody books for hints and clues to some of the puzzles. I can see kids being frustrated if they buy or borrow this book but don’t have the others on hand. Sure, the publisher wants to encourage kids to read the other books in the series, but I hadn’t read Judy Moody, Girl Detective, and it annoyed me that I couldn’t understand some references because of that. In the same way, the book also devotes a good number of pages to Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew is a great character, and kids should definitely discover her, but if they haven’t yet, a pretty sizeable chunk of this book is lost on them.

All in all, this is a book mainly geared toward fans of the series who have read the other books and will appreciate the tie-ins with various plot points. Kids who fancy themselves spies or detectives will love the tips they find here, and they’ll gain confidence from solving Judy’s mysteries right along with her.

I received a digital ARC of  Judy Moody's Mini-Mysteries and Other Sneaky Stuff for Super Sleuths from Candlewick via NetGalley. 

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Clarice Bean Spells Trouble. by Lauren Child. 2006. Candlewick. 189 pages. ISBN: 9780763629038

I love Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola picture books, so it seemed only natural that I would also enjoy Clarice Bean. Interestingly, I did not enjoy Utterly Me, Clarice Bean, the first chapter book in the series, but came back for more anyway. And it’s a good thing because this book is a thousand times better!

Clarice Bean Tuesday begins this book with an ominous hint toward something terrible she’s done, then flashes back to tell the reader the whole sordid story. The situation involves an impending spelling bee, certain to embarrass Clarice Bean beyond her wildest imaginings, the class “bad boy” Karl Wrenbury, whose behavior continue to escalate the longer his father is away, a class production of The Sound of Music, and the wisdom of Ruby Redfort, Clarice Bean’s favorite literary character, about whom a movie will soon be released. Based on Ruby’s advice about friendship, Clarice Bean does something to help Karl, which in turn lands her in hot water, but also somehow makes her a better person and more likeable character.

What I like so much about this particular book is that Clarice Bean isn’t a perfect goody two-shoes, but she also isn’t an inherently “bad” kid. She falls in that in-between area where I think so many kids would place themselves. She tries to obey authority, but finds it difficult when an authority figure is unfair, and her empathy for a friend keeps her from being able to ignore his feelings. She is kind of a combination between a character like Junie B. Jones, who also has a lot of smart-mouthed things to say about her experiences at school, and Just Grace, whose quests to save her friends from disaster often end in unexpected ways.

Whereas Clarice Bean sounded a lot like Lola in the first novel, in this one she has her own voice, which is filled with great phrases like “nosy parker” and a strong sense of humor. I also found the Ruby Redfort references to be far less annoying in this book, possibly because they related more closely to the plot.

All in all, this is a fantastic chapter book that exposes American kids to a slightly different writing style and use of language. Kids who have grown up with Charlie and Lola and the Clarice Bean picture books will ease right into the chapter book series, and fans of other spunky middle grade girls will also take to Clarice Bean right away.

I borrowed Clarice Bean Spells Trouble from my local public library. 

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Same Sun Here. by Silas House and Neela Vaswani. February 14, 2012. Candlewick. 288 pages. ISBN: 9780763656843

Like Dear Mr. Henshaw and P.S. Longer Letter Later, Same Sun Here is an epistolary novel set in 2008, which is told entirely in correspondence between two randomly assigned pen pals - Meena, an Indian immigrant living in New York City, and River, who lives in Kentucky, where his father is a coal miner. Though different in many ways, Meena and River find that living beneath the same sun gives them lots in common - including their love for their grandmothers, their love of writing, and their willingness to open their lives to one another. River turns to Meena for support when mountaintop removal threatens his hometown, and Meena, in turn, confides in River about her family’s illegal living arrangement and their efforts to become citizens. Ultimately, though they never meet face to face in the book, the two become best friends, demonstrating the ideal that our differences can bring us together rather than keep us apart.

For the most part, reading this book was really enjoyable. I have always loved stories told through documents and letters, and I like the deep level of character development that comes from this format. The characters know nothing about each other, so every letter gives a little more insight into their unique personalities, which helps the reader get to know them, too. I also learned a lot about immigrant culture in New York, rent control, mountaintop removal, Appalachian culture, and Indian language, food, and customs. It was interesting to see how the introduction of each new idea helped to shape and reshape Meena’s opinion of River, and his of her.

My criticism, though, is that this happens too easily. Meena and River are at times irritatingly good kids, whose minds are always open, and whose every mistake is immediately corrected. At times, they do fight in their letters, but they are both portrayed as so level-headed that it doesn’t take much time - at least not in the narrative- for their friendship to bounce back. I also had a hard time understanding why they thought of each other as best friends so quickly. I thought part of the point of the story was going to be that over time, two different kids can become best friends because they come to a mutual understanding of each other’s backgrounds and beliefs. Instead, that close friendship came on suddenly, and the deeper level of understanding came later on. That just seemed somehow backward to me.

The value of the story, though, is that it undermines the instant gratification of modern technology and argues for the relevance of writing meaningful messages to one another and waiting anxiously for the replies. In a world where friends text more than they talk face to face, it’s important for kids to see the importance of those deeper conversations that bring unlikely pairs closer together and help each of us understand, on the larger scale, how we’re all connected by our experiences as humans.

This book obviously has an agenda and a particular political point of view, which promotes activism, criticizes government, and laments society’s unfairness toward marginalized groups. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that except that sometimes - especially in the latter half of the book - the agenda overpowers the story. River performs an act of defiance that puts him suddenly in the spotlight in a way I found irritating, and from then on, his story takes center stage, while

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Recently, I read all six Mercy Watson books. As is often the case when I finally get around to reading a popular series, I discovered that some of my preconceptions about this one were completely off-base. Here is what I now know about the Mercy Watson books:

• Mercy is not a talking pig. She is a “porcine wonder,” as her owners, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, often say, but she is a pet living in the real world, and as such, she does not have any magical powers that make her talk. We are privy to many of her thoughts - most of which involve her love of buttered toast - but even these are related in the third person and do not resemble sophisticated human thoughts.

• Most of the human characters in the series are not children. The story is set on Deckawoo Drive where the Watsons live, and the most involved characters are the Watsons, their elderly next door neighbors, Eugenia and Baby (so named because she is the younger sister), and the various emergency personnel involved in rescuing Mercy from her various adventures, including a police officer, two firemen, and an animal control officer. Each of the characters often behaves in a way that is very child-like, but they are all grown-ups, with the exception of two children who appear briefly in a couple of the books.

• The language in the books is very rich. Kate DiCamillo has such a distinct voice, and I hear it loud and clear in these books, in the same way that I hear it in Bink and Gollie. The sophistication of the vocabulary she uses, and of the way she puts together sentences makes it hard to categorize these books. My previous library had them in easy readers; we treat them as fiction in my current one. But neither category is a perfect fit because the books are just so unique. No one else writes like this, and Cynthia Rylant is the only other author I can think of who writes about adults as her main characters.

• Mercy Watson is living in the 1950s. The references are very subtle, but they’re there. The convertible which Mercy accidentally drives in Mercy Watson Goes For a Ride is obviously old-fashioned, and the Watsons’ kitchen has a definite 1950s decor. Chris Van Dusen’s illustration style and color palette are even kind of retro, making the series stand out as unusual - and delightfully so - even more.

I really loved reading these books, and I’m sad that there aren’t more. The formula wherein Mercy’s love for toast gets her into trouble, but then ends with the whole neighborhood sitting down to eat toast, never gets old because DiCamillo continually approaches it from different angles. The gentle stories evoke innocence, but also keep the reader entertained, and the quirky small-town characters are the kind of people any reader would want to meet in real life. I very highly recommend these books to first-, second- and third-graders and the adults in their lives.

I borrowed all six Mercy Watson books from my local public library.