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You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien

2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. Did you know that? Yeah maybe the astounding array of commemorative books tipped you off. We've had books by everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Norman Mailer hit the shelves this year. Many, if not most, of these books have been inspiring and beautiful. Many, if not most, have made me cry.

But while I am fully aware of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission as a concrete example of the highest heights that can be achieved - by man and by mankind - I have wondered just how engaging this story is for young people. My own children are mystified and a little alarmed when I get all choked up reading them Brian Floca's atmospheric and detailed Moonshot or try to explain to them the unique perspective represented by former astronaut Alan Bean's paintings in Mission Control, This is Apollo.

That's why I think Patrick O'Brien's work of "speculative non-fiction" is so important this year. For my kids, and for their friend Alex, who is the model for the kid in the book (disclosure: Pat's family and mine have been friends since our 3rd-grade boys were barely walking, much less traveling through space), space travel is not something that happened on a tiny black-and-white TV set in the kitchen forty years ago. Space travel is not even the - let me take a deep breath and try to use an adjective that is not pejorative - somewhat tepid space shuttle program.

Space travel is "huge ships shaped like pine cones with lots of little sonar devices and everyone wears goggles that can switch from night vision to underwater vision to sunglasses." (I asked.) They think the future will involve "a permanent space colony on the Moon as big as Texas." "Or maybe at one of the Lagrange points!"

But ok, that's my kids. Not every kid knows that the gravitationally stable Lagrange points are good spots for a space station. But will argue that my kids are representative of many kids when they think that space travel is part of THEIR future. And Patrick has done them a service by writing and illustrating, with his usual blend of meticulous research and stunning art, a reasonably plausible conception of travel to Mars. His journey includes a space elevator up to a geosynchronous orbit point, a nuclear thermal ship that gradually accelerates to 75,000 miles per hour as it covers the 35,000 miles to Mars, and a Mars lander that bombs through the Mars atmosphere before parachutes drop it gently to the dusty red surface.

The friendly, explanatory second-person narration contrasts nicely with the giant grin on the face of the kid as he bounds across the Martian surface. The impression is that of a teacher chaperoning a really good field trip, trying to keep from letting on that she is just as excited as the kids are.

Anyone familiar with Pat's previous books (on sailing ships, extinct mammals, knights, and, er, dinosaurs in space) will know that the man researches like a maniac. Marianne Dyson, herself an author of numerous kids' books on space, picked apart every fact presented in You Are the First Kid On Mars when she reviewed the book, but revised her opinion when the author emailed her, addressing her objections and supporting his every phrase. It is really nice to know that the book stands up to that kind of scrutiny.

The artwork in this book was done on a computer, a departure for O'Brien, who, in addition to illustrating his own books, paints large oils of ships under sail. His mastery of the software and techniques involved is impressive - many of the illustrations look like they could be photos, which is important for those kids who want things to be above all else "real".

We had the delightful O'Brien family over for dinner this weekend, and after my husband's excellent fish tacos, I had the chance to ask Pat some questions about the book.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: What was your inspiration for writing You Are the First Kid on Mars?

Patrick O'Brien: My editor, Tim Travaglini, was really into the whole space idea. It was his idea to do a speculative book about going to Mars. My books usually come from my ideas, but this one came from him.

YNL: Was there anything different about writing about future science vs. your usual subjects?

PO: All of my other books were about historic and prehistoric nonfiction subjects. It is fiction, because it hasn't actually happened, but I was treating it as a nonfiction book. The reason that it’s in the second person is I read some books like that as a kid. You will go to the Moon is the one that I remember most clearly. And they had it all wrong, it’s really funny to see all that. Presumably, my stuff will be all wrong.

YNL: What was your research process? Do you regularly read science periodicals like Wired or Scientific American? Or was this a new area for you?

PO: I’ve always been a science guy, I was a biology major in college, but my son is really into space. We watch a lot of space stuff on TV. When Alex was really young, he liked real space more than the fictional movies. We'd watch NOVA together, and his toys were Apollo models, not Star Wars toys. I read a lot about space with him, and on my own.

I used the most up to date, most accurate information that I could find about what it would take to get to Mars. I went through the NASA website, books on space travel.

YNL: Is this your first work created digitally?

PO: This is the first book I illustrated on the computer.

YNL: You're such an accomplished painter though - why did you decide to do it using techniques that are new to you?

PO: Well, for fun, as a change. It was different, and I just thought it was appropriate to the subject matter. The thing about using the computer to do the art, a lot of people who don’t do it think you just push the spaceship button and you get a spaceship. You push the astronaut button, and you get an astronaut, and then you make it do what you want. But you still have to draw it, you still have to paint it. It’s just one more medium. When they invented watercolors, it didn’t put the oil painters out of business.

But there are advantages. You can make infinite changes - with watercolors, pretty much once it's down, it's there. You can make a certain amount of changes with oils, but with the computer, you can keep tweaking it until it's just what you want. I used Corel Painter X and a tablet, so it’s a lot like painting. It wasn't hard to learn.

YNL: Did you find it hard to stop making changes? Was it tempting to keep touching it, trying out variations?

PO: No. A little. I know what I’m going for, I have a picture in my mind, and when I've made that, it’s done.

There you go, folks. I made it, it's done. You will go to the Moon was, not surprisingly, on my shelf as a kid too.

If. You Liked. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. There. I said it.

I have put together this list I don't know how many times in the past couple of years, and I guess I just have to bite the bully (get it? like Twilight shoves all the other books around?) and admit that: 1) People want to read Twilight and 2) People LIKE Twilight.

I mean, why am I such a snob about these books anyway? What was I reading when I was eleven? I'll tell you what I was reading when I was eleven. No wait, read this book - Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick - and you will know what I was reading when I was eleven. And I turned out ok. Reasonably ok. Ok shut up - am I exploring my nascent sexuality with my twin brother or luring my arch-enemy into a leech-infested pool? No. I am not. That was a rhetorical question by the way.

And maybe that's setting the bar kind of low, but I think it is some kind of proof that young readers of Twilight are not going to grow up and fall in love with pale, stalker-y older men. Pale, stalker-y older men are in fact CREEPY in real life, and almost all young women are viscerally and instinctively aware of this. We can trust our girls. (Hi, Olivia! We can trust you, right?)

There's still the issue, recently pointed out by someone at the Princeton Romance Writers Conference (and I am too lazy to go looking for it so I am going to paraphrase), that these paranormal romance novels represent something of a throwback to the old doctor/nurse kind of power differential that turned so many of us against romance novels to begin with (think Mr. Rochester and his employee - Jane - in Jane Eyre). Nowadays, romance novels feature women who are just as strong as, and on equal social footing with, the men, but in Twilight et al, the male character is by definition more powerful than the girl - he's immortal! he can change into an animal! or, uh, sparkle!

But that I don't know what to do about. EXCEPT. To recommend the following pretty good books as follow up reads for people who enjoyed the romance, the drama, the imaginative world of Twilight. Some of these books feature characters with supernatural powers or are set in alternate or future worlds, but some do not. There's at least one cute boy in each, but none of them has a female protagonist as wimpy as Bella.




The Luxe by Anna Godberson. Soapy and irresistably fancy, dripping with drama. Look at that dress!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I reviewed it here earlier. Catching Fire, the next book in the series, has just been published.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater. An extremely cute boy, some psychic torment, a well-written, lovely setting, and a harp. It's all good.



Prom Nights from Hell. Stories by Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Lauren Myracle, and other writers who are all about what it is to be a girl.

Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs Evil, Book 1) by Rosemary Clements-Moore. Good-looking teens, more dramatic than it looks, snappy dialogue. I reviewed the third book in this series a couple weeks ago.



Tithe by Holly Black. Anything by Holly Black, in fact.

Margo Lanagan's Black, White, and Red books. Dark, with a side of strange, drizzled with a stylish-sexy port wine reduction.



The somewhat overlooked Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and her son, Adam Stempel. Music, magic, peril, attitude.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The first in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, about drama and magic in a Victorian boarding school.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. Ms. Klause has been writing about the allure of the supernatural boy for longer than anyone, and in this one, the boy's a werewolf. Grrr!




Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith



Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Horses, swords, special powers, a fiery heroine, and a gorgeous guy. The sequel, Fire, will be out in early October.


and what the heck... you know what else any red-blooded reader of the Twilight books will like?



Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. It's wrong. It's hot. It's so hot that it's wrong and it's so wrong that it's hot. And you just know "V.C. Andrews" is a pseudonym. Who do you think it is really? Wonder if that's what Salinger's been up to all this time.

Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young
Breathtaking. Pass-around-the-workroom-and-marvel-at-it gorgeous. Intense. Gripping. A terrific story. I seem unable to describe this book except in tiny movie-blurb phrases. It's that good.

Gazing upon the illustrations in Tsunami!, I could feel the thunder of the great wave in my chest. I felt the pressure of the silence before the wave, and I heard its hissing retreat. The two-page spread of the wave hovering over the village is the best work that Ed Young has ever done, and the story is just as strong. He depicts scale so masterfully here - the temple gate, in pieces, tiny against the crashing wave... the villagers so small as to look like confetti on the exposed beach.

I am grateful that the story is set "long ago" in Japan. If this book had been about the more recent tsunami, it would have been too emotionally wrenching for me, and possibly for younger readers too.

The Lindbergh Child (A Treasury of XXth Century Murder) by Rick Geary

It's tough not to love Rick Geary. That fussy, old-fashioned style: all those millions of parallel contour lines, his little crenellated edge lines, the beautiful hand lettering... all of it making everything he illustrates look so elegant and classy and clean. Which is so great, because, by and large, lately, Rick Geary illustrates crime.

This contrast nets the most tee-hees in the truly grisly stories - I think I remember reading The Borden Tragedy when it came out, and I seem to recall he does a nice job with severed limbs - but even absent any gore, The Lindbergh Child is an engrossing read.

I am very pleased to have it as an addition to the True Crime nonfiction shelves, and even more pleased that the lack of nudity or profanity gives me carte blanche to recommend it to anyone who can hack the history. About grade 4 and up.

South by Patrick McDonnell
The first two-page spread of this gorgeous little picture book made me catch my breath. On the left we see the top half of a tree, bare of leaves and full of little yellow birds, all looking in the same direction and each with a pair of eighth-notes hanging in the air overhead. On the right, it's the same view of the same tree, and all the birds are on the wing and flying out of sight. So minimal, but you can feel the chill in the air, hear their wings, see them fly.

The rest of the book is just as expressive, just as minimal, and displays, in a way that is probably difficult to discern in a tiny newspaper strip, just how good Patrick McDonnell, the creator of Mutts, is with a brush. Big hearts come in small packages sometimes.

Would make a lovely thank-you gift for a friend who has helped when you were in a jam, a talented teacher, or someone who has just pointed you on your way. I'll have to remember this one at the end of the school year.

Batman: The story of the Dark Knight, written and illustrated by Ralph Cosentino - review

Your Neighborhood Librarian: So, you guys, you read this book. Did you like it?
Nature Girl: Yes!
Mao: Yes!
Zhou: Yes!

YNL: What did you like about it?
Nature Girl: I liked it because it reviewed the part when he was a child.
Mao: I liked it because it had the Batcave under the house and by the seashore.
Zhou: I liked the meditating picture.

YNL: So, you guys are big superhero fans.
NG: Sorta.
YNL: Do you think that someone who's not a superhero fan would like this book?
Mao & NG: Yeah.
Mao: I'm not a superhero fan myself. ["Yeah, right!" thinks his mom.]

YNL: What did you think of the art?
NG: I liked it a lot. They put a lot of detail into it.

YNL: The colors? You like the colors?
Mao and NG: YES!

YNL: Is it the same kind of art you see in other picture books?
Mao: Not actually.
NG: It's a very unfamiliar book.

YNL: Does it look like a comic book?
NG: Sorta.
Mao: It has very shapish pictures.
YNL: And that's like a comic book?
NG: I think it's a comic book pretty much.

YNL: Did you think it was violent?
NG: A little.
Mao: Nah, I didn't think it was violent.
NG: I thought it was violent because of all the cutting and the hitting. And Two-Face has a very ugly face and that's violent.

YNL: Did it scare you?
NG: A little bit.
YNL: What part?
NG: When it was saying "There will always be a criminal to stop... a victim to save... a monster to fight... and a crook to catch."
YNL: What's scary about that?
NG: The 'monster to fight,' because it makes me think maybe Batman would lose.

YNL: What about these villains? Do the villains bother you?
NG: Well, they creep us out sorta. Yeah, like Penguin and Joker.
Mao: Catwoman makes me sort of like - eeech!
YNL: 'Eeech?'
Mao: Pretty, like, scared.
YNL: Catwoman more than the others?
Mao: Yeah. Two-Face and Catwoman.



Nature Girl is seven, Mao is six, and Zhou is five. Flip through this book before you hand it to a kid - some kids (and some parents) might balk at the sharp teeth, the lurid, energetic retro-y illustrations, and the whole BIFF! ZAP! POW! of it all.

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!

Wave by Suzy Lee
Holy wackadoodle. Masterful, internationally-acclaimed author-illustrator Suzy Lee uses a stick of charcoal and one color of acrylic paint and NOTHING ELSE - no words - and chronicles a little girl's encounter with the ocean. In just a few sketched lines, she gives us eager, curious, hesitant, exuberant, intimidated... a new expression every page. It's like the best frames from a whole day of home video, silent except for the call of gulls and the sound of waves, condensed into a slideshow to watch over and over again.

In fact, replace the seagulls with pelicans, and the little girl with my 6-year-old, and you've got our vacation. I took that video myself.

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.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Marcus is the kind of kid whose best friend gets him a biography of Alan Turing for his fourteenth birthday. A boy who spoofs gait-recognition software by putting gravel in his shoes. He's the kid who hacked the spyware-infested and adware-infested laptops the school system provides. Smart and sneaky, Marcus might as well have been born with a Question Authority bumper sticker slapped across his butt. Not the kind of kid to take five days of detention and questioning (aka imprisonment and browbeating) by the Department of Homeland Security lying down.

Cory Doctorow weaves a lot of interesting set pieces, e-culture references, and technical explanations into this tale of cyber disobedience and the power of ideas. I guarantee that any reader will learn something new. You may know what a Sailor Moon outfit looks like, and you may understand how public keys work and how to make them. You may have read about how to make a video camera sniffer using a toilet paper tube on Instructables (and in fact, that Instructable may have been written by Marcus), but... how's your Bayesian analysis? Did you know that your digital camera "signs" each shot with unique metadata - meaning your every capture can be traced back to your machine? And did you know that Kerouac wrote On the Road on a big long scroll of paper?

Well, ok, everyone knows that last one.

Little Brother is a terrific adventure. Its protagonist is resourceful and brilliant but also thoughtful and real. But what really distinguishes this book is the voice of Cory Doctorow, patiently and passionately explaining why privacy is important, why dissent is crucial to democracy, and what can happen when we forget that. Oh, and he also slags Microsoft without hesitation every chance he gets - giving the book that whiff of honesty that teens crave.

Like Halting State for teens. Like So Yesterday for geeks. Like 1984 for today (and with a happier ending). And when they're finished with this one, start 'em on Gibson and Philip K. Dick.

Sergio Makes a Splash! by Edel Rodriguez

The cutest penguin since Polly Dunbar's Penguin and Jean-Luc Fromental's 365 Penguins is Sergio, an Argentine soccer fan who is afraid to learn to swim, in this funny funny book by the gifted illustrator of Float Like a Butterfly and Oye, Celia!.

Gifted? Oh yeah. Three colors: cyan, orange, and navy. Woodblock illustration, which yields that luscious porous texture and sticky edge. And what does it say about the design of a book when a two-page spread of blank blue ocean, textureless white sky, and an orange sun the size of a pea is not only interesting but suspenseful as well?

Adult gift alert: nice for anyone embarking on a new career or life change. "Great, next time we'll swim without the floaties!".

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.

Looking for loons, written by Jennifer Lloyd, illustrated by Kirsti Anne Wakelin - review
Everybody should have a house on a lake in Maine. Everybody should be able to wake up at dawn, snag the binoculars, snuggle up in an Adirondack chair on the deck and watch for loons. Everybody's Grandma should make them hot chocolate while they wait, and everyone's mom should bring out an old quilt in case they're chilly. Their dad should get up and make pancakes and bacon while Grandpa makes a fire in the stone fireplace.

Sigh.

This book is like Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey. I always read that book with at least as much envy as admiration.

The illustrations here are magnificent. Watercolor and pencil on Arches paper, atmospheric and warm, packed with keenly-observed portraits of wildlife. If I ever had a vacation on a lake with the family, I'd get Kirsti Anne Wakelin to draw it. Since I'm not likely to, I'll get this book.

Endpaper bonus: pencil sketches of wildlife.
Minor quibble: the painting on the cover is very low-contrast and kind of busy. I don't think it serves this beautiful book very well.

Every time I sit down with a stack of picture books to review, at least one has to make me cry. Well, get a little misty, anyway - I'm not weird.

I will make miracles is a massive book. Tall and wide, with illustrations done in Chinese ink with brushes that must have been a yard long. You'd have to, just to match the power of this book's idea. A boy, continually asked what he wants to be when he grows up, decides that he will wake the sun every day. And then control the ocean. Heal all the sick. Help the police. Make the world stop fighting.

Susie Morgenstern takes the boy's ambitions far beyond the obvious:

I will stretch out our days and our nights to feel longer
So everyone has enough time to grow stronger.

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!

It's a cliche to say that all librarians are fanatic cat people. For example, I can't stand our cats. But... I have cats. I think I'd have to turn in my MLS if I didn't.

Our cats, St. John Bosco and Buzz Aldrin, are inside cats. Sisters, scavenged by Bob and me from a shelter in Brooklyn 10 years ago as Valentine's Day presents to each other. Predictably, they hate each other. When they're not binging and purging on Hill's Science Diet, they're laying around making mats of cat hair on any item of clothing that contains even a hint of cashmere. They wake up in the middle of the night to fight and hiss at each other. Not a whiff of magic realism about them, unless that's that smell coming from the mattress in the guest room.

But then, we don't live in a picturesque village "nestled between the mountains and the sea". We don't have Anne Mortimer to illustrate our home life. And I am about as good a chocolate maker as I am a welder.

Sue Stainton and Anne Mortimer have a habit of making these lovely cat books - Santa's Snow Cat, The Lighthouse Cat, and now The Chocolate Cat. And for Sue Stainton and Anne Mortimer - and especially for The Chocolate Cat - I am more than willing to suspend my distaste. You pretty much have to see this book to believe how luscious the illustrations are.

Cat lives with a grouchy chocolatier in a humdrum little town. One day, the chocolatier makes chocolate mice "with crunchy pink tails". Cat eats one, and is inspired. He delivers a mouse to the greengrocer across the street. As the grocer bites into a delectable chocolate mouse, he in turn is inspired. He visits the chocolatier, bringing his best fruits to experiment with. Together, they create delicious (and visually spectacular) new confections. The same thing happens with the baker, the florist, and the other business owners in the village. Each brings new ideas and ingredients to the creative process. Eventually, even the chocolatier becomes inspired, and the village thrives.

This is, in some ways, a "Stone Soup" story - except the result of all the pitching-in-together-ness isn't, like, SOUP (hard to get super-jazzed about soup, especially if it has turnips in it), but instead, truffles with candied violets, Turkish Delight, and "honeycomb fireworks that would sparkle in your mouth". That's what I call inspiring.

This book is pretty much the G-rated version of the movie Chocolat). Also, with its emphasis on creativity, beauty and quality, this is no gluttony book. The degree of craftmanship that goes into these creations implies that they are meant to be appreciated and savored. This message is delivered explicitly at the end:

Every now and then Cat is still given a chocolate mouse. But not very often because, as you know, you should never eat too much of scrumptious things. Because they lose their magic.

So I've just now sat down with yesterday's paper. Here's the news:

The Off Key Krooners are looking for volunteers. Finally! A musical group who would appreciate my talents.

People with bigger noses do not have superior smelling abilities. I'm sure we can all rest easier knowing this important controversy has reached its end.

The paper is running a read-along using the book The Cricket in Times Square. Who can resist that title? I've got to get this book.

More dog books on the scene--one sounds a bit like Marley and promises to be just as heart wrenching: Good Dog. Stay by Anna Quindlen.

A woman is being sued over comments she made in her blog.

I'm innocent, I tell ya! It wasn't me, it was some other blogger, yeah, I ain't no stoolie, I won't snitch.

Be careful, my cyberspace friends. But if they do throw you in the pokey, contact me immediately--I know how to bake cakes with files inside.

Title: Bad Dog, Marley!

Written by: John Grogan

Illustrated by: Richard Cowdrey

Hardback: 40 pages

Ages: 3-8

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN: 978-0-06-117114-7

Publication: May 2007

If you have ever adopted a puppy, you will quickly relate to this cute story!

When Daddy came home with a cardboard box, Cassie and Baby Louie could not wait to see what was inside.

“In the box was a squiggly yellow furball with a wet black nose and ears so big and floppy, they look like he’d borrowed them from an elephant.”

Marley was the perfect addition to their happy family…. or so they though!

They soon learned that as Marley grew and grew, so did the size of the trouble he got into. No matter what Marley did, it always ended in “Bad dog, Marley!”

Marley eats what he shouldn’t eat, drinks what he shouldn’t drink, and chews what he shouldn’t chew. Marley even came home one day with a giant pair of underwear, to which Daddy replied, “I don’t even want to know.”

It was not until Marley came to Baby Louie’s rescue that the family realized that Marley was right where he belonged, and that bad, bad dog suddenly became “Good dog, Marley!”

Illustrator Richard Cowdrey’s realistic style is perfect for this book. You can actually feel the happiness, frustration and love the family has for Marley. The pictures are big and colorful and really bring this story to life.

Children will love to read this book over and over again!

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Reviewed by Amy Seim

Amy Seim is an aspiring children’s writer who already has several papers and abstracts published in the field of biology. Before becoming a stay-at-home mom, she received a BS in Biology and a MS in Environmental Science and taught science courses at a local community college and university. Amy hopes to use this knowledge to write exciting and educational science-based children’s books.