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By:
Betsy Bird,
on 3/27/2012
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My Dad Is Big and Strong, But…: A Bedtime Story
By Coralie Saudo
Illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo
Translated by Claudia Zoe Bedrick
Enchanted Lion Books
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-59270-122-3
Ages 4-8
On shelves April 17, 2012
Few picture book titles come with qualifications. More often than not they are statements of strong purpose. I Can Do It Too or No, I Want Daddy. Declarative books with forthright ideas and messages for the preschool set. That’s all well and good, but sometimes you want a book that entices you to pick through its pages from the title onward. Now there is no doubt that My Dad Is Big and Strong, But… is a work of translation. From the minute you look at it it has all the signs. The drawings are fun and eclectic but they feel strangely . . . European, perhaps? And the art inside is a mix of mixed media photographs and graphite. Then there’s the story, which doesn’t end with that kooky twist we Americans almost require in books of this sort these days. Finally there’s that title that seems to float in mid-air without direction. Yes, there is no doubt left in your mind that this is a French translation, but there is also no doubt that it is one of the most charming and engaging picture books to hike down the pike in years. A story that upsets expectations but retains its heart, this is the perfect bedtime fare for any kiddo that rejects the very notion of going to sleep (and who has a sense of humor).
Our hero’s dad has many fine and outstanding qualities. He is big. He is strong. But he does have one significant flaw that’s hard to overlook. Every night it’s the same old story. When bedtime rolls around he just adamantly refuses to go. The only thing to do is to start out by reading him some stories. After two he’ll demand another but his son is having none of it. It’s straight to bed and a game of waiting until the dad’s asleep (if the son tries to go to bed early he’ll just have to contend with a wide awake dad barging into his room anyway). Finally he seems to be asleep but just as the son attempts to turn out the life he hears, “No, don’t do that! Leave the light on!” Because while his dad may be big and strong he’s also a bit afraid of the dark.
There’s an entire subgenre of picture books out there where expectations are upended to the delight of the child reader. I can think of four books off the top of my head where a character is scared about the first day of school and then turns out to be a teacher (Back to School Tortoise] by Lucy M. George was the latest). And Amy Krouse Rosenthal went to town with the idea in Little Pea (a pea refuses to eat his dinner of candy), Little Hoot (an owl wants to go to bed while his parents insist he stay up all night), and
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 3/13/2012
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Green
By Laura Vaccaro Seeger
A Neal Porter Book – Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-397-7
Ages 4-8
On shelves March 27th
Sometimes you just want to show a kid a beautiful picture book. Sometimes you also want that book to be recent. That’s the tricky part. Not that there aren’t pretty little picture books churned out of publishing houses every day. Of course there are. But when you want something that distinguishes itself and draws attention without sparkles or glitter the search can be a little fraught. We children’s librarians sit and wait for true beauty to fall into our laps. The last time I saw it happen was Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse. Now I’m seeing it again with Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Green. I mean just look at that cover. I vacillate between wanting to smear those thick paints with my hands and wanting to lick it to see if it tastes like green frosting. If my weirdness is any kind of a litmus test, kids will definitely get a visceral reaction when they flip through the pages. I know we’re talking colors here but if I were to capture this book in a single word then there’s only one that would do: Delicious.
Open the book and the first pictures you see are of a woodland scene. Two leaves hang off a nearby tree as the text reads “forest green”. Turn the page and those leaves, cut into the paper itself, flip over to two fishies swimming in the deep blue sea. A tortoise swims lazily by, bubbles rising from its head (“sea green”). Another page and the holes of the bubbles are turned over to become the raised bumps on a lime. And so it goes with each new hole or cut connecting one kind of green to another. We see khaki greens, wacky greens, slow greens and glow greens until at last Seeger fills the page with boxes filled with different kinds of green. This is followed by a stop sign and the words “never green” against an autumn background. On the next page it is winter and “no green” followed by an image of a boy planting something. The final spread shows a man and his daughter gazing at a tree. The description: “forever green”. You bet.
Can a color be political? Absolutely. In a given election season you’ll see red vs. blue, after all. In children’s books colors would historically be associated with races or countries (hence the flare up around titles like Two Reds). Green occupies a hazy middle ground here. We all know about the Green Party or green activism. However, it’s not as if you’ll find many parents forbidding their children to read this book because it pushes a pro-environment agenda. Seeger is subtler than that. Yes, her book does end with humans planting and admiring trees, but thanks to her literary restraint the message isn’t thwapping you over the head with a tire iron. She could have turned her “no green” two-page spread into some barren landfill-esque wasteland. Instead we see a snow scene. This is followed by the only silent two pages i
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 3/6/2012
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The One and Only Ivan
By Katherine Applegate
Illustrated by Patricia Castelao
Harper Collins
$16.99
ISBN: 9780-06-199225-4
Ages 9-12
On shelves now
All right, the topic is Famous Ape Books of Children’s Literature. And . . . go. Care to name any? Well there’s Curious George, of course (often mistakenly called a monkey in spite of his lack of tail). He’s the most famous but after that it gets harder. Eva by Peter Dickinson might count (also a chimp). Or a book like Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby (chimp). Gorillas appear to be much rarer, which is funny when you consider it. I would think an animal as big and impressive as a gorilla would be a no brainer children’s book hero. As it happens, Ivan of The One and Only Ivan is a rarity, and not just because his story covers ground that few other books have (with the exception of the odd Good Night Gorilla). Katherine Applegate’s title is a cry for animal rights that works on its reader in slow subtle steps. You will find no screeds or speeches or long lengthy lamentations. Instead, it’s just a gorilla living what life he can, until the day he can stay silent no longer. Thanks to its restraint the book ends up being a gem. One of the best of the year, no doubt.
Basically what we have here is Charlotte’s Web if you took that tiny spider and replaced her with a 300-pound gorilla. Which, to be frank, would normally bode badly for said gorilla. And certainly badly is how Ivan, the titular hero of this tale, bodes when you consider that he is trapped in an off-highway mall circus. Ivan’s never questioned his fate seriously, considering that he’s been there for twenty-seven years. Then one day Mack, the owner of the mall, decides that the only way to drum up more business will be to buy a new resident. There’s already Ivan and Stella, the elephant with an injured foot that doesn’t seem to be getting better. To this mix comes Ruby, a baby elephant not long captured from her home in the wild. Thanks to Ruby, Ivan sees that this is no place for a baby of any sort and he must use all his brains and intelligence to find a way to save not just her but himself as well.
It is the temptation of every author, bad or good, to simplify ethics when they write for kids. Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, and never the twain shall meet. This is particularly true of animal abuse stories. After all, who wants to go about digging up a heart of gold in a character that kicks puppies? Yet the best books for kids are often the ones that allow for at least a glimpse of the human inside the villain. It’s the reason Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s
6 Comments on Review of the Day: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, last added: 3/7/2012
Jazz Age Josephine
By Jonah Winter
Illustrated by Marjorie Priceman
Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-104169-6123-9
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now
When we try to name the biggest and best picture book biography authors out there, two names spring immediately to mind. The first is David Adler. Mr. Adler specializes in picture books that go by the straightforward titles of “A Picture Book of [Enter Name Here]“. It makes him easy to spot on a shelf. All his books look pretty much the same with stories that reduce their subjects to a couple key points. They are serviceable in the best sense of the term. They serve a purpose. They also couldn’t be more different from the works of the great picture book biographer Jonah Winter. Where Mr. Adler is all white borders and straightforward fonts, Mr. Winter’s books leap off the shelf and make a dive for your jugular. They pop and smack and wrest your attention away from the glittery fictional pack. His latest, Jazz Age Josephine, is no different. A witty and glam look at a person rarely seen in picture book bios, Winter uses his storytelling skills to spin the tale of a fine lady, never told in quite this way before.
“Well, she was born up in St. Louis, and she grew up with those St. Louis Blues / Yes, she was born in old St. Louis, and she grew up singin’ nothin’ but the blues, / She just had one old ragged dress and a pair of worn-out old shoes.” That was Josephine Baker back in the day. Fortunately, the kid had pep. She could move and goof off and her dancing was so good that it earned her some money from time to time. Little wonder that when her home was burned by angry racists she headed straight for New York City. There Josephine was able to get some roles on the stage, but the minstrel parts were particularly galling. So off she flew to Paris and once she got there, “Paris, France – instant fame! / Everybody knows her name!” And though she missed her home, she was a jazz age baby and a hit at long last.
I did a cursory check of the reader reviews of this book online and saw that some folks were a bit peeved that Mr. Winter dared to mention hot topic issues like racism and minstrel shows. I think that highlights why it is that this is the first time such a biography for kids has been attempted (there was Ragtime Tumpie by Alan Schroeder in 1989 but that just looked at Josephine’s youth). The story of Ms. Baker is more difficult than your average Rosa Parks / Frederick Douglass bio. If you’re going to talk about Josephine then you have to talk about why she left America. You have to talk about what the state of the country was at that time, and why she felt she couldn’t return there. Then there are other issues as well. For one thing, is it possible to talk about Ms. Baker without mentioning the banana skirt? Winter doesn’t talk about the costume (six-year-olds are notoriously bad at pronouncing the word “burlesque”) but illustrator Marjorie Priceman does include a subtle glimpse of it from the side in two separate pictures. Meanwhile Mr. Winter does a good job of making it clear that Josephine was sad to be away from the States but that to become a star she had to go elsewhere. Interestingly the book ends at about that point, leaving the Author’s Note to explain her work with t
Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems
By Gail Carson Levine
Illustrated by Matthew Cordell
Harper (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-178725-6
Ages 5-10
On shelves March 13th
I tend to run my bookgroup for kids between the ages of 9-12 like a gentle dictatorship. I choose the books, the kids vote on them, and so it goes. Now if the kids had their way we’d be reading fantasy novels day in and day out every single week. With that in mind, I like to try to make them read something a little different once in a while. For example, one week I might try to get them to read a Newbery winner. The next I would try to encourage them to dip into some nonfiction. One type of book I haven’t had the nerve to attempt for years, though, is poetry. Finding a really good, really interesting, really smart book of poetry for kids of that age is tricky stuff. Poetic tastes vary considerably, so it’s best to start with a book with a hook. And by hook or by crook, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It is basically the answer to my prayers I’ve been seeking all these long and lonely years. It has everything. Humor, engaging illustrations, a clever premise, potential (and very fun) applications, and a passive aggressive streak that’s nearly a mile long.
Do you know that old William Carlos Williams poem about the plums in the icebox? The one that calls itself “This is Just to Say”? When you think about that poem, I mean really think about it, it’s just the most self-satisfied little number you ever did see. Williams is clearly not sorry, though he included the words “forgive me” in there. With that as her inspiration, Gail Carson Levine has penned forty-five or so false apology poems modeled on Williams’. The rules are simple. “The first stanza states the horrible offense. The second stanza describes the effect of the offense. The last stanza begins with ‘Forgive me’ and continues with the false apology, because the writer is not sorry at all.” Mixing together fairy tales and silly situations, Levine’s poems span the gamut, from the cow in Jack and the Beanstalk taking issue with her monetary worth to a girl’s pets asking pseudo-forgiveness for enjoying her diary’s contents. Saying sorry without meaning it has never been this charming.
On the book’s dedication page read the words “To Susan Campbell Bartoletti, who led me down the poetry path.” I am currently in the process of putting in an order with FTD in the hopes of sending Ms. Bartoletti some flowers of my own. Whether intentionally or not, she has been at least partly responsible for helping to bring to this world a poet of undeniable talent. We all know Ms. Gail Carson Levine for her fantasy novels. Her Newbery Honor winning Ella Enchanted is probably her best known work. But when I saw that she had gone into the poetry business I couldn’t suppress a groan. Great. An author who thinks they can write. Whooptie-doo. Can’t wait to see what recycled trope makes its 100th appearance on the printed page yet again. Imagine my surprise then when I saw not only the idea behind the book (snarky in its mere conception, which is no easy task when you work in the world of juvenile literature) but the poems themselves. Ladies and gentlemen if I blame Ms. Levine for anything it is for denying the world her drop dead gorgeously twisted poin
This is absolutely beautiful! I can’t wait until this comes out to use it with my primary students. I see a bevy of color books being created!
What a beautiful book. And the “khaki” page is brilliant. I just watched the word emerge three times in the trailer, back and forth . . . back and forth. . . gorgeous.
I love this book. Not only will my first graders love it, my high school partner (for my book group) is using this one (and the new Abram’s Pantone book) to explore variations on a theme with her high school students!
I love her Dog and Bear books, and have used Black? White! Day? Night! with kids all ages.