Do you love Marcia Williams? I love Marcia Williams. Marcia Williams is a British illustrator and author. She writes large-format, intensively-illustrated adaptations of classical literature for kids.
Let me tell you how great this is: lots of little kids get into tales of adventure, and then their parents think to themselves, "Oh, I'll bet he would love Robin Hood!" Or King Arthur, or the story of Troy, etc. And then they ask the librarian - "I want him to read King Arthur." Whereupon the librarian is like, "Errr... you know that adultery and patricide play a big part in that story, right? Is he ready for The Sword in the Stone
) and 
), are familiar names in children’s publishing; others, like the talented 
, which is not a good example of her sweet and funny style) and 
), are relative newcomers.
versus the magic-tinged 
, for example. It might also be the only place you'll see the sincere, informative 
go up against the heartfelt-but-in-a-very-different-way 
.
will gravitate to this graphic-novel chapter book featuring an inventive kid and his talking dog.
panel at BEA last year, seated between Jack Gantos and Jon Scieszka (who is not wearing a wig) (for once).
was insufficiently reiterated in the text. In almost those words. Right? That's an oy vey moment, for sure.
, 
) will cackle over this collection of familiar tales given an irreverent twist. Rapunzel thinks the prince's request to 'let down her hair' is 'really random'. Gepetto injures his hand trying to spank his robot son after the Blue Fairy grants the wish that makes Pinocchio a real boy. Red Riding Hood's Grandma runs a martial arts academy. Cinderella rejects the lovely blue ballgown provided by her fairy godmother - she was thinking more "Anne Hathaway at the Oscars".
is a new young adult novel by 
. It's a full-length kids' graphic novel from the man who illustrated the 
and 
by 
, that song is poetry.
(god, that actress will kiss anybody, won't she?). WRONGGG:
. You heard me. Johnny Depp's. Alien Girlfriend. It's forthcoming. French author. Excellent cover. Sounds action-packed and slightly surreal and I want to read it. $17
). Her unexpected, clear colors have given books like (also Oakland-based) Gene Yang's 
a fresh look. Having teetered on the brink of non-obscurity for a while, Long Tail Kitty might actually push her over the edge.
? I liked Rapunzel's Revenge. I voted for it for 
and sunk every cent into 
. Librarian's choice.
and 
twenty years ago, and who gradually introduced me to the hard stuff: 
, 
, 
.
, with green (a good choice) and I had to confess, when I first saw the yellow in the Lunch Lady books, I kind of winced. Pee-colored accents? Really? In a book with 'lunch' in the title? Well here is me being wrong. The yellow is bright and lemony, and I asked my 8-year-old, and he said that pee never crossed his mind when he was reading the books. Which has got to be some kind of record. 
for third graders, without the Spanglish. What busts this book to a higher level is Eric Wight's extremely confident pen and ink art. You can tell that he never has to stop and think before jetting Frankie off to a new setting - "Can I draw stalactites? Oops, how am I on trucks?" Gives the whole book a sort of... muscular vibe.
kind of way). The layout is readable but less programmed than in Stinky - kids can find their own path through some of these pages. And I'm going to stop gushing about the color. I am. After this: A rainbow of mid-tones! Underappreciated purples and browns! Excellent green accents! Somebody give this book an award.
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."
, 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. 
.
, 
), 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.
for boys for a long time, and I think Dragonbreath is it - snappy, giggleworthy text and strong, coherent graphic passages telling a fun, friendly, exciting story with just the right balance of realism and fantasy. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for 
with bated breath!
is even better than the first.
by Nadia Aguilar. Age 10 and up. 
, which kind of surprised me.
series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. Age 9 and up. Not as heavily illustrated, super sense of humor. I know an entire class of seven year olds who pushed their reading ability so that they could read one of these books together, and they all loved it.
. Age 9 and up. Ok ok it's gimmicky as all get-out, with the 
, and the 
back in 1995 - you know, the book that showed families all over the world in their houses, and with all their stuff brought outside for a picture? Holy crap, we should do that with our house, and see what we can leave out on the curb. But anyway. The new book has the same lush, colorful, giant pictures, the same potent juxtapositions, and results in the same sense of insight about wealth, and health, and opportunity.
, baby. That way, if she spends it on 
, you don't have to know about it.
, for a middle school or teen girl, but I'd be afraid it'd look like I was being all preachy. If you can get away with it, you should. The book is legitimately funny and helpful and hard to put down! Who'd'a guessed?
. Also, the production values on these TOON books are so seductive! So, not trusting my own reactions, I handed it to my avid assistants, Nature Girl and Mao, both seven, and Zhou, who is five.
.
and discussed behavior modification... and as a counselor, at a beautiful hippy-dippy camp up in Maine where I taught candle-making and fencing to Manhattan preteens wearing Echo and the Bunnymen t-shirts (in 1984). And reading Chiggers took me right back to camp, especially to Maine, and I found myself trying to remember the names of the girls in my cabin: tall Allison, shy Betsy, bubbly Deenie, and a girl we called Titsy, whose personality traits you may intuit all on your own.
when it came out, and I seem to recall he does a nice job with severed limbs - but even absent any gore, 
, 
, and 
(not to mention 
, 
, etc) start to appreciate.
before they begin to appreciate 
. Ok, 
is an exception, but 
style is perfect for middle-grade boys. Our hero, Mat, and his best pal Frankie, live in Ipoh, Malaysia in the 1960's, but their poses and stratagems, gestures and uncertainties, and passion for loud music will feel familiar to boys, people who know boys, and people who once were boys.
, but you can't blame Alan Moore for everything. (Love Alan Moore, by the way. I would never have started reading comics if it weren't for 
.) It's not a tragedy that people started taking the illustrated medium seriously - no way - but along the way, as beautiful autobiographical works and creaky experiments and pustule-plagued dark junk became the norm, people stopped making comics for kids. Any superhero worth his tights gained a conscience and a dark side. Even the Spider-man strip in the newspaper isn't for kids anymore - it's just 
"graphix magazine" (and, you guys, I still have my original copies, if you ever get to Baltimore and feel like signing stuff), started making books for children - actual 
, crawling into a corner, the big one reading it to the little one. He would have read it again (he went for it again this morning as soon as he was out of bed), but I wanted to read 
together. I love the shapes of Spiegelman's characters.
books shows that he, like his 
very much, but I bet that when 
, lots of 
. Today while they tried out aaron renier's 
(well received) and John Lechner's 
(less so), I read The Clouds Above. I think 
" - esque, without being self-conscious or claustrophobic. I'd say it's the opposite of claustrophobic, in fact. There's a great love for space here, making it a calming book to read even though it's exciting.
