Pink Me

Blue Chameleon by Emily Gravett - review

Let's just get this right out of the way: Emily Gravett earned my undying devotion long ago, with Monkey and Me, and she's never let me down since. So - no surprises - I am going to gush about this book. Get ready.

Chameleon, who is drawn using the most vibrant colored pencils on the roughest paper I've ever seen, is sad. All that throaty texture and voluptuous color is for nought - he is nothing but blue on the inside. So, gamely, he tries to make friends.

He turns himself yellow and curvy to try to fit in with his potential new friend Banana. No dice. Turns orangey sunset gold and blub-blub-blubs at his potential new friend Fish. That fish's expression is priceless, as is the green grasshopper's when Chameleon hops after him in pursuit of companionship.

Poor Chameleon. He has all but given up, faded whitely into the page, when a there's a tap on his tail.

 

Look! Someone who shares his appetite for fun, his bangin' dance moves, AND his fashion sense! The other chameleon, I mean - I'm sure it was just a coincidence that this book arrived the day I wore my new purple suede cape embroidered with multicolored flowers over a green and blue striped sweater.

This is your storytime: you read the book, then we all get to do our best imitations of bananas, snails, socks and rocks. And at the end, we strike our most fabulous pose! Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! And if you live in Baltimore, join us Sunday at The Chameleon Cafe to eat the amazing small plate creations of chef Jeff Smith (the man who taught me how to carve a pig head) in support of The Neighborhoods of Greater Lauraville! 4pm to 7pm, $40 prix fixe.

 

Blue Chameleon also reviewed at The Bookbag, Kids Book Review, and Waking Brain Cells.

Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld - review

 

Cloudette. Cloudette is a little bitty soft white cloud. A friendly little cumulus cream puff whose name, as I say, is Cloudette. I could say that all day: isn't it satisfying when you come upon something that is that just-right and self-evident? "Yes," you think. "Of course her name is Cloudette." It's so clever - not show-offy clever, just cute clever. Clever like putting bacon in a chocolate bar. Anyone could have thought of it. But you know what? Tom Lichtenheld thought of it.

And since Tom Lichtenheld thought of it, he got to write a story for Cloudette, too. It's not a very complicated story. It's got a status quo, a note of dissatisfaction, crisis, venue change, and resolution. That's a nice arc, and in Lichtenheld's hands it has balance and excellent pace. It's a story that's built like a brick... rainbow.

Press Here by Hervé Tullet - review

 

MAGIC.

When an idea is so simple you can't believe nobody's thought of it before - and to my knowledge, IN the whole history of books, which is a pretty long damn history, nobody has - and when that idea works SO well that everyone who encounters it, from age 3 to, well so far I haven't discovered an upper limit, gasps at its cleverness... well, that's magic.

 

(Contrary to what the tag line of this video avers. Screw you guys, I know magic when I see it!)

Press Here is a book that's been compared to an iPad app. Simple instructions ("Press here." "Rub the dot on the left." "Clap once.") create the illusion that the reader is rearranging a series of dots, causing them to multiply, grow, change color, etc. But I'll tell you - don't worry about the iPad app comparison. I've shown this book to plenty of people who've never touched an iPad, and they are charmed and blown away, just as I was the first time I saw it, at ALA Midwinter in San Diego.

This is the rare picture book that I feel compelled to carry with me wherever I go. Delightful, simple, and everyone who sees it wants to show it to someone else, to share the magic. Best of all, it invites imitation. If it weren't French, I'd expect Hervé Tullet to win the Caldecott Medal for it. Bravo. And thank you to Chronicle Books for sending me a copy.

Nonfiction Monday: Journey into the deep: Discovering new ocean creatures by Rebecca L. Johnson - review

 

What does it take to suck a kid into a book of nonfiction? You can't use a drag net, or barbed hooks. Robotic arms cannot scoop a child into a lucite barrel, and very few children old enough to read are small enough to pick up with two fingers and stuff into a test tube.

But those are just a few of the methods that scientists use to collect marine specimens for study. Rebecca Johnson tagged along with the Census of Marine Life on several collection expeditions and had a chance to observe firsthand all the going and the getting and the looking and the recording. She does an amazing job describing the research activities - clearly, economically, accurately, using sensory details to extend the you-are-there impression that begins with her use of second person narration.

And the spectacular photos of fantastic-looking creatures that accompany these descriptions - those are the seine nets, the robotic arms, the probing fingers that snag the kid reader.

Bob Staake's Look! A Book! - review

 

Here is a fun exercise in creativity: 

1. Think up a three-item list of rhyming nouns. A screw, bamboo, Anne Hathaway saying "WOO!"
2. Draw a giant complicated colorful scene incorporating these items. NOTE: your scene can include anything you like, but your three rhyming nouns must be on the right-hand side of the page
3. Fold your picture in half like a greeting card
4. This is the tricky part: make holes in the left-hand side of the picture opposite your three rhyming nouns, so that, when closed, your nouns peek out.

Yay! You have made a simple version of the super-cool spreads that populate this masterful visual feast from Bob Staake.

Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers - review

 

I have this friend who really loves film. He's all Day for Night this and Satyajit Ray that, and he thinks I'm the same way, probably because I used to live in New York and I've read some Thomas Pynchon. But it's a lie, what he thinks about me. Just because I can use the word 'Satyricon' in a sentence does not mean I want to go see Synecdoche New York. "I thought Philip Seymour Hoffman was really great in Twister," is how I try to explain things to him, but he never seems to entirely believe me.*

Which brings us to Oliver Jeffers's newest picture book. Yes, it does.

Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney - review

 

 

Andrea Davis Pinkney is well known for her biographical picture books, biographies, and historical fiction. She does terrific research, mining family as well as archival sources so that her books assemble themselves around the reader like comfortable clothes. When she writes about Duke Ellington, you can tell that she was listening to Live at the Blue Note the whole time.

Bird in a Box is a more purely novelish novel - although Joe Louis's 1937 World Championship boxing match provides a backdrop and a connection point for the novel's characters, the book is not about the fight.

The Night Owls by the Timony Twins - review

 

You know, there is so much right with this book, I'm just going to cut to bullet points.

• Single-page comics that work separately but legitimately hang together as a book-length arc. No, legitimately. I'm serious. Like a season of really good TV. And, like a season of really good TV, there are mini-arcs and single-pagers interspersed between and nested within the larger arcs. Comic books have always done this, but not all comic books have done it this well.

• The mashup of the supernatural and the Roaring Twenties is fun. Al Capone goes up against a guy with an enchanted lead pipe. A chorine in a Marx Brothers show is haunted by her dead husband. The Pied Piper of Hamlin is gigging at the Cotton Club (making him the Pied Piper of Harlem?).

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain - review

 

Aaaand... this is a different type of YA novel. Another type that I like. There are no superheroes coming to terms with their newfound powers in it (except metaphorically), we are not living in a dystopic landscape (except metaphorically - the setting is mostly Paris), and there is no grief (not even metaphorically).

Instead we have an introverted, buttoned-down teenage boy who meets a fierce, wild-eyed girl, falls instantly in love, and is swept along by her insane momentum until he finds himself dog-bit, tattooed, guilty of criminal trespass, and listening to unfamiliar music.

The Freak Observer by Blythe Woolston - review

 

This is not a great YA novel. Sure it won the William C. Morris Debut Award for YA novels, up against two of my very favorite, most cherished YA novels in recent years, Lish McBride's Hold Me Closer, Necromancer and Karen Healey's Guardian of the Dead. Sure I'll urge every teen I see at the library or pass in the street to read it.

But The Freak Observer is not a great YA novel. The Freak Observer is a great novel, period.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger, audio version by Recorded Books - review

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Unabridged Audio CDs)

When you were in sixth grade - think back - did you have questions? Were there conundrums? Navigational issues? Did gym class make you cry? Was there a kid who wouldn't quit buggin' you? What about that embarrassing nickname you couldn't seem to shake?

And who can you go to for advice? Mom and Dad are nice, but a little out of touch; and teachers - well when the teachers aren't busy enforcing all those those weird arbitrary rules (can you really get detention for eating chalk?) they're spouting aphorisms that either everyone already knows or nobody can understand.

Sixth graders need Yoda. Wise, cryptic, all-knowing Yoda.

Reader Advisory at Christmas time

Ok, listen. I know I have something of a reputation for being able to find a book for any kid, but it's not like I'm some kind of genius. I ask them what they've been reading and what they've enjoyed and I try to come up with a book that's kind of like what they say they like, and when all else fails, I give them one of the Lunch Lady books. (Preorder Lunch Lady and the Bake Sale Bandit today!)

Simple!

My usual question to a reader, adult or kid, is, "What's the last thing you read that you really liked?"

If the grownup says, "Oh, I really enjoyed Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter," I give them A Short History of a Small Place.

You got a kid who says, "I liked Who Shrunk Daniel Funk?" you can give that kid Oggie Cooder.

If a kid says, "I liked the Molly Moon books," I recommend The Pig Scrolls. Yeah that's tracking sideways a little, but I've seen it work.

But I asked a sweet little brown-eyed first-grade girl last night what was the last book she read that she really liked, and she thought about it a little and said, "I guess it was that biography of Neruda."

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy DuBurke - review

Yummy looks at you from the cover of this book and you can't help but stare back. His glare is impenetrable, challenging, blank, hostile. The coldest stare you've ever seen.

Yummy's eleven, and he was a real person, and that cover picture is a faithful reproduction of his mug shot, the only known photo of him. It's almost impossible, meeting that gaze, not to want to break it, not to want to find something that is not hard, not injured, behind those eyes. No eleven-year-old should seriously look like that. He ought to be playing, with that look.

Nonfiction Monday - Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Brian Floca - review

Last night we took our kids to a concert of choral music, and right in the middle of the program, one of the second grade mommies from our school stepped to the front of the ensemble, opened her mouth, and let loose with some of the purest, most accomplished, happiest music I have ever heard a human being produce. We had no idea.

Such moments are revelatory. To see a person stand at the intersection of discipline and imagination and bring forth something as unexpected as art... well it blew my mind, I can tell you. What could you do, what could any child do, what could any child not do, with an idea and hard work and desire?

Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen - review

What god of publishing comes up with these illustrator pairings for Joyce Sidman's books? It's extraordinary. I honestly thought nothing could match the pair-up of Joyce's precise word choice and Beckie Prange's precise art in Ubiquitous. The work of both women managed to be scientifically accurate and lyrically lovely at the same time.

But in Dark Emperor, Rick Allen uses an old-fashioned medium - linoleum-block printing - to illustrate the mystery and fascinating life of the world at night, and the synergy between the images and the poems is just as perfect.

There's something about a woodcut. The organic texture of the printed ink and the shape of the gouged lines will always  invoke early illustrated books. Compositionally, because the block of wood already has a shape, woodcuts almost always have their own frame, even if it is only implied, and even if that frame is broken, as it is in many of the prints in this book. This formal quality tends to lend the images a little extra authority.

Anyway, all that gallery talk jibber-jabber aside, these illustrations are just gorgeous. I can only guess how many layers of printing Rick Allen piled up to make such sophisticated color blends and juxtapositions. Each picture is a world one could sink into.

 

Isn't that amazing?

And the poetry, shouldn't I talk about the poetry? About the mushrooms:

they spread their damp

umbrella tops

and loose their spores

with silent pops.

"Silent pops." Can't you just see it? And smell the musty damp earth? Aren't you just a kid, scrunched down close to the ground, examining the miraculous weird perfection of a mushroom?

Well I am.

And I always love Joyce Sidman for providing a paragraph or two of prose information about the subject of each poem.

Rick Allen has this to say, in part, about the process of making the illustrations for this book:

The prints for Dark Emperor were each printed from at least three blocks (and in some cases as many as six) and then hand-colored with a strongly pigmented watercolor called gouache. There are definitely faster methods of making a picture, but few more enjoyable in a backwards sort of way.

Hail. Hail to the artist/craftsman. And to the poet/scientist.

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride - review

I read a lot of books, right? I read a lot of books that are not necessarily for me. That's what Pink Me is for - I review books for people who choose books for kids. I'm happy with this state of affairs. I wouldn't do it if I weren't. And it's not too often that I have to read something that I truly dislike.

But. Even I have needs.

So, you wanna know what I love? You wanna know what I really, really love? I mean, besides the Spice Girls (obviously), and Peter Stormare? Besides Lou Reed's voice, the Pacific Northwest, fringe on just about anything, and making fun of Martha Stewart (have you ever read her blog? Consumption hasn't been that conspicuous since the Gilded Age!)?

Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Lane Smith - review

Judith Viorst, by virtue of that book she wrote last year when Alexander and his family moved in with her temporarily and made her shiver for the fate of her velvet upholstered parlor chairs (Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months), sticks in my mind as some kind of Joan Didion character. Sharp-eyed, funny, a little uncompromising, extremely self-aware. She lives in D.C., not New York or CT, and D.C. to me implies a certain Nina Totenbergitude.

Or a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweileriness. Like she'd be a person who speaks to children directly and appraisingly, a person who has no patience for the kind of performances that adults sometimes put on in front of children, and who finds the recitations of cuteness or precociousness that children are sometimes expected to roll out in front of adults likewise appalling.

Am I assuming too much about Judith Viorst? Well, clearly. What do I know? Maybe she speaks baby talk to grocery clerks and wears amusement park souvenir sweatshirts every day. But nothing in her new book Lulu and the Brontosaurus would lead me to believe that she is anything but the classy, smart-alecky dame I imagine.

Mirror by Jeannie Baker - review

Two families - one in Sydney, Australia, and one in Morocco. Jeannie Baker takes us through each family's day, showing us warm domestic scenes and sweeping landscapes, making subtle, everyday connections across the seemingly vast gulf of difference separating the two settings.

The Moroccan family gets around by donkey, while the Australians drive a yellow minivan. The Australian kid wears a red t-shirt and jeans, and the Moroccan kid wears his jeans under a red djellaba. Both boys have a baby sibling in a fuzzy yellow sweater. Tea is poured, pets are fed. The Moroccan boy likes to draw: the Australian one writes a story. Maybe they'll write a book together one day.

MORE BEARS! by Kenn Nesbitt, illustrations by Troy Cummings - review

How many times have you been reading a picture book aloud, maybe to your own children, maybe to a classroom full of kids, maybe just to the people waiting on the subway platform or in line at the grocery store (they love that, trust me), only to be interrupted by some goldfish-cracker-eater clamoring for this or that or the other?

"When is the dragon going to eat her?"

"They should not be cooking waffles they should be cooking CANDY."

"You skipped the tizzle-topped Tufted Mazurka!"

Nonfiction Monday: Fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada, adapted by Jamar Nicholas - review

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN. It is a brutal chant of a title, a provocative confession from an avowed defender of childhood, a clear-eyed reminiscence, and a concisely laid out description of what happens to a child when violence is an accepted aspect of his social system.

In prose, it's laudable. Everyone should read it. In graphic novel form, it's a bucket of ice water to the face. Everyone can read it.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan - review

I am sure that very little has to be said about The Lost Hero. Author Rick Riordan is rightly beloved of readers from 8 to 18 and beyond - I know many moms who have read the Percy Jackson books with their kids only to become slaves themselves to the exciting plot, likeable characters, and imaginative scenarios. I myself considered buying The Titan's Curse at Target one Sunday even though I knew the book was waiting for me at the library and I could pick it up when I went to work the next day. I needed to find out what happened next.

But something happened at our school's Lost Hero release party that made me appreciate Rick Riordan anew. Not a big thing, but an important thing to me.

The Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett - review

Transcribed from recording made on hidden micro-spy recording device. Subject: Mao (not his real name) age: 9. File: Barnett review 10-20-19-46. Indoctrination sequence begun...

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Ok, so Mao, here we have the The Ghostwriter Secret, the second of the Brixton Brothers books by the perilously undershaven Mac Barnett and compulsively undercapped Adam Rex.

Mao: Who?

YNL: The guys who wrote and illustrated the first one (ooh, new paperback cover). And Guess Again! What did you think of this book?

M: Well I think that it's good, and the cover gives you a really good idea of how it is -- exciting, but also like kind of suspenseful. On the cover, you see them underwater in a pool with bullets coming down, and that is really suspenseful.

YNL: Because?

M: Because, well, I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't read the book...

YNL: But I have.

M: Ok well then because THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!!

YNL: The bullets raining down on them in the pool.

M: Yes!

YNL: And that's important to you because...

M: Kids do not usually get shot at in kids books! That part was great!

13 Words by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Maira Kalman - review

Bird. Despondent. Cake, Convertible. Mezzo-soprano. And eight more. Write a story using these thirteen words. It doesn't have to make sense. Nope. In fact, it might be more fun if it didn't. (If you can wedge a song into your story, do it.)

I would read this book to a class and let them come up with guesses about how it came to be. I myself am guessing. For all I know, Lemony Snicket startled a pigeon one day and it flew up and hit him hard in the head and when he came to, he only knew thirteen words, so this story came about as therapy. Could be. You don't know that guy's life. Neither do I.

Maira Kalman is at her very best here, layering thick pasty paint in ultra-saturated colors, adding lots of interesting details that could be the result of her own random-word assignment. Tambourine. Porcupine. Pocket square. Nap.

I'm going to come right out and call this a classic. If it were published forty years ago, New York Review of Books would be republishing it right now. That kind of classic.

Storytime books for styley babies

Here is good news: My friend Cara has opened a shop! All the stompin' sweet Coney Island tattoo-inspired, graffitiesque baby and toddler clothes (plus a few toys, accessories and books) that she has been selling online at Urban Baby are now available for fondling in a bricks and mortar space. I stopped in last week and now I need all my (younger) friends to start having babies so that I can buy them Milkshake-inspired raggedy tutus and baby-sized Carhartts-like coveralls.

Anyway, Cara was talking about maybe doing a storytime in the shop, and wondered if I had any book suggestions. And you know? It's something I have always wanted to do - compile a list of picture books that are ALL hip and illustration-y and design-y. Picture books for art school graduates. Picture books for people who listen to college radio.

BUT. While it is not too difficult to quickly I.D. the books that make design consumers go "ooooh!" I want to be sure that Cara's storytimers have books that work out loud. Not too much text, art that reads from 6 to 10 feet away, and the opportunity to bust out funny voices or do some singing. There's a science to this stuff, you know.

 

So! Let's get down to it, boppers:

The Tree House by Marije Tolman & Ronald Tolman - review

 

Here is a little song for Lemniscaat Books:

I don't know if people here buy your books
With their luscious touch and high-class looks
But please keep making them
Because...
Your European illustrators communicate like Turkish waiters
Wordlessly supplying me
With nuts and sweets and strong coffee
Ink, pastel, collage, and then
I turn it over
And start again.

 

Just Too Cute, and other adorable stories for horrible children, by Mike Reiss, illustrated by Johnny Yanok - review

ZOMG! Check it:

The Oyster
What is moister
Than an oyster?
Grandpa's Pamper
Can be damper.

And that's not the worst of it! In three stories and a bunch of poems, Simpsons writer Mike Reiss deploys gleefully subversive wit to merrily bash the stuffin' out of cute fuzzy animals, exposing them for the gluttonous freeloading nonconformists that they really are. Hee-YEAAAH!!

Think http://www.fupenguin.com/ for the grade-school set, kind of.

I LOVE THIS. I mean, I do not mind funny middle-grade books that rely on farts and pratfalls, dumb insults and dumber adults - but it is a special kind of joy to find someone writing real wit for kids.

Johnny Yanok is a great choice to illustrate this festival of irreverence, adding detail and furbelows to already well-described scenes, pumping the page full of pattern and hot midtone colors. His style, a kind of modified mid-century geometric thing, will be familiar to Cartoon Network viewers and the kind of kid who watches the Pixar shorts that come as bonus features on the DVDs.

That's going to help get this book into the right hands - even though it's shaped like a picture book, this thing is clearly for middle grade readers, who sometimes balk at picking up anything that looks like it's for younger kids. So art that scans older is a plus.

Hipster aunties and uncles, take note. This is just the kind of thing you're going to really enjoy watching the nieces and nephews unwrap come holiday time. Thank me later.

With all your power / what would you do?

Is it just me, or is this The Year of the Superhero in middle-grade and YA books?

I'm all up in the Michael Owen Carroll right now of course, having just reviewed Super Human here on Pink Me; and The Rise of Renegade X is sitting on my to-read pile; I just finished Michael Grant's The Magnificent 12: The Call last night: plus we're listening to Mike Lupica's Hero in the car, and holy god - not since I took one for the team and listened to The Da Vinci Code have I been more appalled by an author's lazy writing, glacial pace, disrespect for the reader...

...oh wait, where was I? Ahead of myself, that's where. That's what happens when you try to write book reviews while listening to The Flaming Lips. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", off At War With The Mystics, is what inspired the title of this post. By the way, if you have food issues, don't click that link, just watch them perform on Letterman, below.

 It is also apparently The Year of Superhero Books Written by Guys Named Michael. Weird. Take that, trend trackers.

100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days by Bruce Goldstone - review

100 things I like about this 100th day book:

Ok not. What, come on, do you really need a hundred? Would you even sit still to read a hundred? Yeah one would think not. One would need to have written a book as appealing and clever and also thoughtful as Bruce Goldstone's new book in order to get a reader to actually sit still to read 100 of virtually anything. Or so one might think...

Ergo. A few things I like about this 100th day book:

Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan - review

I am not sure I even need to write about this book, given that title. You are either going to think that's the funniest thing that has ever entered your house, or you are going to think that's appalling.

Wait, I have 4 elementary school boys around my dining room table right this second. Lunchtime poll:

YNL: Look at the cover of this book. Would you read this book?

Secondo: No.

YNL: No? Too scary?

Secondo: No. I just won't say yes to anything you ask me ever.

YNL: Always suspected as much. Zhou?

Zhou: Yeah, sure, I would read it!

Prime: Looks good to me!

Mao: Ehhh... I'd rather read LEGO Star Wars.

YNL: Like, not right now... would you read it ever at all?

Mao: I've already read it and it's really funny.

 

Well that wasn't very satisfying. Maybe I'll ask a followup question.

YNL: If you were to eat whiny children, how would you prepare them?

Secondo: With pepper and salsa - a lot of salsa!

Zhou: I would bake them and then I would put them with a little bit of bacon, one egg, and all the materials for making a burrito except the tortilla.

Prime: I would probably chop them up, donate them to a restaurant, go to the restaurant, and order something good.

Zhou: With them in it.

Prime: That's what I mean.

Mao: I'd put them in a burrito with salsa, a lot of cheese, and some beef.

Zhou: But that makes you fart.

Better! Me, I would braise those whiny children. I like a slow braise. But there is no actual cooking in this book, although the oven does get preheated preparatory to baking the whiny children in a cake, which doesn't happen because somebody spills the flour. Sorry if I gave away a plot point. I thought it was maybe important to note that no children are actually consumed in this book. You'd be surprised what parents sometimes don't take for granted. Although, come to think of it, almost anything can happen in a picture book. That one book that I thought was about classroom manners and turned out to be about sexual abuse of a child? I have never gotten over that book. And this book is written and illustrated by a New Yorker cartoonist, and some of those guys have an odd sense of what is funny. There was a whole Seinfeld episode about that. And in fact, the guy who wrote that Seinfeld episode wrote this book. Huh.

Endpaper bonus: funny endpapers.

The Big Big Big Book of Tashi by Anna and Barbara Fienberg, and Kim Gamble - review

Zhou, rising 2nd grader, seven years old: So what's up, Mom?

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Tell me about Tashi.

Z: Tashi is a book for boys and girls, and it's kind of a fairy tale. It has fairy-tale creatures and not-fairy-tale creatures in the same book. I love how there's the big actual story, which is this little elf man called Tashi comes to a new country after he's been sold to this really mean warlord by his parents for some reason, and then Tashi meets Jack, his new friend, and this Jack has his own garden and when he goes up the tree he tells stories, at lunch, and he tells Jack stories, and Jack tells stories to his mom and dad, and his dad is all worried about socks in one story. That's why dad is kind of funny.

YNL: So there are multiple stories in one book, and some of them are told by Tashi to Jack and some are told by Jack to his parents.

Z: Yup. It's very common to see parents telling a bedtime story but in this one it's the parents saying, "Tell me a story! Tell me another Tashi story!"

 

The Enemy by Charlie Higson - review

It happens to just about everyone. Sometime in your early to mid-teen years, you wake up one day and realize that, gradually, every adult you know has become a stranger to you. You have begun to understand the fears, jealousies, and appetites that really motivate grownups, and you are appalled. They in turn suddenly do not recognize you as the child they have harbored lo these many years. And so your life becomes a series of surreptitious forays punctuated by skirmish - if your paths cross, there will be conflict, so you do your best to skirt their presence, to avoid their taint. You forge alliances with your friends or toughen up and go it alone, hoping against hope that you will make it.

Hmm. Maybe I'm overstating it. It's been a while, after all - all I can remember is being truly freaked out when my father threw my Kings of the Wild Frontier LP down the stairs because, I think, he was afraid I was on drugs. And my own kids won't be prompting me to mystifying moments of violence for a good 5 years yet.

Charlie Higson certainly sees adolescence that way, though. In The Enemy, all the grownups have turned into zombie-like cannibals. Some plague or something. The kids live in fortified big box stores and send out foraging parties to look for food and weapons. Yup. It's excellent.

Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill, illustrated by Bryan Collier - review

You are going to want this book.

This is a rare story, beautifully told, illustrated with power, and it has ties to things that children can touch and do.

What, you want more?

Heh, just kidding. Of course you do. How about you want a story that will help educate children about the time when slavery was legal in the United States, that does not flinch from the tragic inequities of that period, but which nonetheless is not unremittingly bleak? A story that celebrates a person whose skill and artistry transcended status and transcends time? Now you know. You want this book. I knew you would. 

Kindergarten Diary: as told to Antoinette Portis by me, Annalina - review

Check out this quote from Kindergarten Diary:

We are Room 2K.
We are fine!

Assertive. Clear-eyed. Defiant-like. Almost... anthemic. And, written as it is beneath a drawing of three little kids hanging upside-down, big smiles on their faces and their belly-buttons showing, "fine" begins to assume a whole bunch of meaning:

• First kid (subtext): "Not only are we 'fine,' we are happy and fine!"
• Second kid (subtext): "And we're just going to get fine-r!"
• Third kid (subtext): "Not only did we have nothing to worry about, you parents can quit your hand-wringin' too!"

Guys Read: Funny Business, edited by Jon Scieszka - review

Guys Read: Funny Business, edited by Jon Scieszka, with stories by Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo (admitted to the clubhouse on the condition that her contribution be epistolary in nature), Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo

Hummunah-DANG that is some lineup of writers, huh?! And each has contributed something that will make a modern boy laugh right out of his tighty-whities. It's like an old-fashioned hippie potluck, but with a big sack of Halloween candy where you'd expect the tabbouleh salad to be. But JEEZ I have been having trouble writing this review! I start off all right, I'm all, "Oh, I love guys, don't you love guys? Yeah, guys. Guys are gonna love this book," but then I get into having to give examples of why they're gonna love this book and all of a sudden the thing sounds just APPALLING.

So I'm not going to give any examples. Nope. Ok, here: in Christopher Paul Curtis's story "Iron John," the title character tricks his young children into thinking that he is so cold that his nipples have frozen, and he pretends to rip them off. And then his oldest son eats them.

See?

The Chicken Thief by Beatrice Rodriguez - review

I had to check the copyright date on this suave wordless sliver of an epic tale over and over again. You see, like many French things (and it somehow seems important to point out that when I use the word "French" I always pronounce it "Fronsh" because of an ancient mocking nickname my friend Jaime and I once habitually applied to a perfectly nice person - the nickname now seems absurd and petty, but my inability to say the word "French" without sounding like a spastic drunk lives on, which only proves my point about French things), uhhh, like many French things - Fronsh things - The Chicken Thief, with its timeless one-joke story, well-crafted loosey-goosey pen and ink and watercolor art, and enigmatic title... could have come from any age.

A lot of French pen and ink illustration (and Belgian) has a gestural quality, a breezy confidence that works particularly well with energetic stories. Think Asterix. Spirou & Fantasio. Bob de Groot. And this story, being wordless, is told entirely through action and expression. The arc of a smile is just a tiny line, 5 millimeters, but in that 5-millimeter line, Beatrice Rodriguez tells us whether her character is smiling in triumph or embarrassment, with joy or with anticipation.

I love it when something so brief and easy is treated with respect, and this edition is printed on good paper, in a binding size that is fairly common in Europe but less so here. The Chicken Thief goes on my list of superior wordless books for a child to savor.

Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley - review

Dear Internet,

I thought you were looking out for me! How have you not forced me to read Scott Pilgrim before now?

I ask again: HOW has someone not held me down, pried my eyes open, and shoved Scott Pilgrim into my face?

SEASONS by Blexbolex - review

You are familiar with this creature Blexbolex, non? This French illustrator who works in line and silk screen?

Me neither, and Oh My God how have I missed this guy? But wait - I see that he did the illustrations for the recent edition of I Know How to Cook, and that was one big honkin doorstop of a cookbook (and it is French) but I almost had to have it anyway, because of those illustrations.

boom! by Mark Haddon - review

Mark Haddon gets the best book designers ever, doesn't he? The cover of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was plain red with that little silhouette of a dog upside-down, and that told you that the book was possibly old-fashioned but definitely unexpected on the inside. The cover of boom! is the friendliest orange linen, with big lower-case letters spelling out the title and the author's name, and a cute lil' rocket done in nice thick lines. You just want to pick it up and put it in your pocket. Of course, I said the same thing about Mac Barnett after meeting him at BEA, so maybe I'm just a sucker for a linen jacket. (Parenthetically, does Adam Rex every go anywhere without his bag strapped across his chest? What's he got in there?)

The Amanda Project Book 1: invisible i, by Melissa Kantor

Let's dispense with the disclosure right away - Melissa Kantor, the author of this, the first Amanda Project book, is an old friend of my husband's. Am I letting that influence my review? Absolutely not. Did that influence the fact that I opened this book in the first place? For sure.

I am guilty - more than most - of judging books by the cover, and this one has a cover that I might not have been able to get past. It's hot pink. There's a picture of a slender white girl on the front, her back to the camera. Yes, it's the faceless girl again.

On the other hand, the typography and illustrated doodads on that cover are original and hip. A key, a bird, some vine-y floral stuff - despite the fact that it seems like EVERY teen girl novel is embellished with vine-y floral stuff right now, the vine-y floral stuff in invisible i manages to look classy and fresh. That, as it turns out, is because it was drawn by a young man by the name of Brian Floca (Moonshot, Lightship).

And this, dear friends, is the crux of my review. You can put together a book whose premise has been done before, load it up with ancillaries and gimmicks, clothe it in hot pink and put a faceless girl on the cover, and if the writer is amazing and the web designers are the best and the illustrator is multi-award-winning Brian Floca, you will have a fantastic book.

The Amanda Project shows us how it's done.

Dark Life by Kat Falls - review

Oh my heavenly biscuits, I haven't been grabbed by a book the way Dark Life grabbed me in I don't know how long. I am going to give you an excerpt and let see for yourself:

I slammed the entry button. Like a dilating eye, the hatch opened and seawater filled the small chamber. Plunging into the air lock, I whirled to see sharks streaking toward me from all sides. I hit the interior button whole-handed. As the hatch clinched shut, the sharks plowed into it like mini torpedoes. From inside, they sounded like Death pounding at the door. I slumped against the chamber wall and grinned. Nothing put a buzz in my blood like escaping predators.

What do you say? Exciting enough for you? For your child aged 8 to 13? Heck, just those verbs would make me a brand-new fan of author Kat Falls - Slamming! Dilating! Plunging! Whirling! Whew!

BEA (no longer so) brief recap

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian with some of the guys of Guys Read: Jon Scieszka, Adam Rex, and Mac Barnett. David Lubar is lurking off to the right.

Wow. Was this a great show or what! I am still a little breathless, not least from hauling the giant bag of great books away from the Javits Center. And I swear, I only took the great ones, or the ones I expect to be great, or the ones I really want to know about. I didn't take any random stuff, and still there's got to be 30 books in there.

Everything from Charlie Higson's new book The Enemy, which I find especially intriguing because it intrigues my 15 year old friend N, who usually restricts his reading to game guides... to David Ezra Stein's Interrupting Chicken. The title alone tells you that this book is going to be a mega hit at storytimes for preschoolers on up. My son Zhou read it to us this morning - it's a star!

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest - review

Oh, screw Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- give me airships and gasmasks and zombies! (Seriously, is anyone but me getting sick of that stuff? Classic literature - Now Enriched with Humorous Gore! - it was funny once, maybe twice. I've never seen a better argument for maintaining the copyright on great-granddad's novels than The Undead World of Oz: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Complete with Zombies and Monsters. Ooo, cranky on a Friday, aren't we?)

So, here is the thing about steampunk - for such a teeny little genre, it is over-defined to the point of suffocation. People who say they like it seem to know EXACTLY what it is, and what it is has more to do with its material culture - its brass, leather and rubber artifacts - than the usual elements that define a genre. Steampunk can be written in any style or mood: but it seems there really must be goggles.

Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors, poetry by Joyce Sidman, illustrations by Beckie Prange - review

When she was a kid, a woman I used to know wrote a song about a lizard for a science report. I haven't seen this woman in 25 years, but that song sticks with me:

I don't wanna (clap clap) Be an iguana (clap clap)
They have long nails
And spiny tails.
I don't wanna (clap clap)
Be an iguana (clap clap).

I don't wanna be an iguana, by Amanda Bailey, submitted in partial fulfilment of the elementary science requirement at Little Red School House, Greenwich Village, NYC, sometime in the 1970's.

Amanda, wherever you are, I hope you get your hands on this new book of poetry by Joyce Sidman. You'll like it: there's a gecko on the cover, his tail curling around the spine of the book, crunching on some unfortunate winged insect. If you're like me, and you were in 1985, you approve of poetry with a body count. And check this out:

She Thief by Daniel Finn - review

The obvious and inevitable comparison that this book will invite is to Vikas Swarup's Q & A, aka Slumdog Millionaire. So let me just get that out of the way. If you enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire, if you were not so distracted by its images of radiant children amid filthy squalor and nearly hopeless generational poverty that you were unable to enjoy the story, you will appreciate this book.

That doesn't look right. I guess I should say I loved that movie, love Vikas Swarup. I love India, and I didn't think that Slumdog Millionaire was about poverty. Not that poverty isn't an important subject. Sigh. I give up. Why don't I just review She Thief.

She Thief is the story of Demi and Baz, boy and girl, best friends, orphans, about 11-12 years old, living in the slums of a hot, crowded Latin American city. I was thinking São Paulo until I realized they called people Señor. So, B.A.? Bogotá? Quito? Like that.

The Thingamabob by Il Sung Na - review

I have to admit, Il Sung Na's illustration style gives me almost physical pleasure. I feel that it's important for me to say that her delicate, powdery sprays of intense color underlaying the sweetest, finest scratchy ink lines are like getting my hair brushed by a small child. One of my small children, of course - I may be a little odd but I don't actually solicit random children to brush my hair, come on!

 

And then I open the book. No, seriously, I'm still talking about the cover here.

 

The endpapers made me gasp. Eighteen colorful, patterned umbrellas, in brilliant but transparent watercolors, simple and gorgeous. If they were tiles, I'd have the backsplash for my kitchen.

 

There is an elephant. There is an umbrella. The elephant doesn't know what the umbrella is or what it does. The elephant follows several reasonable paths of inquiry - asking his friends, experimenting with it in various ways. Modeling excellent investigatory behaviors. And then it starts raining.

 

Love!

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher - review

What is it about Incarceron? Oh, there's all this hype about it, it's the big new series, gonna be (((""THE NEXT HARRY POTTER"" ARG I can't even bring myself to TYPE that phrase without air quotes and a vicious eyeroll and some sort of intricate rude gesture))) according to numerous sources. That kind of guff generally makes me run run run away. Makes most of my friends - grownup and kid - run run run away too.

 

But. I liked a few of the phrases I read on the flap. "Eagle tattoo." "Crystal key." "Dystopic future." Most of all, I was hooked by "Vast metal prison." Just a little darker than many YA fantasy novel settings. I sensed that here there would not be dragons.

Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton and Tom Lichtenheld - review

SHARK VS. TRAIN!!!

 

Ok, the best way to read this book, which proposes contests between a vicious scary shark and a powerful locomotive towing six cars and a caboose, is to pretend that Samuel L. Jackson is in your head.

Shark vs. Train
Who will win?
Well that depends on if they're...
in the ocean
or on railroad tracks.
It depends on whether they're bowling...
shooting baskets...
or going off the high-dive.

 

You hear that? The way his voice goes up really high on "railroad" and how he draws out "bowling"? Yeah. They really should hire me to do more voice casting. If Samuel L. isn't available because he's making Snakes on a Plane II: Snakes in Paradise, they could get Patrick Stewart. Or the guy who used to promote the monster truck shows on the Spanish language radio in Brooklyn. "Sabado sabado sabado! Monster truck showdown: Destrucción Total!!"

 

Because you need depth and gravitas in order to wring every ounce of giggle out of this super-silly, brilliantly fun story. Or you need menacing, over-the-top, computer-aided hysteria.

 

Tom Lichtenheld's illustrations give us some priceless expressions - Shark looking a bit guilty after having chomped a grand piano; Train well pleased with a fiery belch - but I think it's the tiny comments of Shark and Train that crack me up the most. "This is why you guys have a bad reputation," remarks Train as Shark eats the bowling pins. At trick-or-treating, Shark is showered with candy when he informs the terrified homeowner, "The clown is very hungry."

 

 

 

Their rivalry, like the rivalry of all best friends, playmates and siblings, is bone-deep and bitter. Think Arthur and Lancelot, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, Gene and Finny. Ok not Gene and Phineas. Because Shark and Train know when to say when, as the challenges become more perilous and difficult. For example, neither of them can manage to keep from getting shushed in the library (HEY! We do NOT shush people anymore!), and when they find themselves swordfighting on a tightrope, they both would rather be somewhere else. As they perform a terrifying motorcycle jump (leaping a truck displaying a very clever joke for all you grownups out there), they agree it's time to take a break.

 

Funny and sweet, great for storytime. Just make sure you bring your BIG voice.

Farm by Elisha Cooper - review

Believe it or not, sometimes I get a little tired of picture books. The tiny little morality plays, the brightly-colored cartoon children and their brightly-colored antics... I only read about twenty of these things a week, you'd get a bit jaded too.

But then Elisha Cooper comes out with a new book (or Marla Frazee or Oliver Jeffers or Linda Smith or Lane Smith or...) and I am starstruck again, savoring every word, staring deep into the witty detail of each drawing, and, in Cooper's case, kind of wondering how the heck he DOES that - that thing with his pencil, how a little wavery line is a cat, or a kid, or a cloud, or a tractor.

Let me back up. This book deserves a little perspective. Lord knows Elisha Cooper has employed it - about half the pages in this yearlong portrait of a family farm are long, lean landscapes, full of sky, with an inch of flat earth at the bottom of the page. Have you ever been out in the true Midwest? It is a marvel to me that such an astringent landscape can be so luxurious in color and texture, as if the sky has to put on a better show to compensate for the lack of earthly features. It suits Cooper's style - in books such as A Good Night Walk and Beach, his large, clean forms kept his little wiggly details from ever looking fussy, and the little wiggly details kept the large volumes from looking too austere.

Barn : bean as Big : little.

Not to slight the text. Cooper is as talented almost as talented a writer as he is an artist, and his narrative choices reflect the same little/big aesthetic as his drawings do.

After a storm, the farm swells with sound. The corn rustles. The cattle bellow. A tractor echoes in and out. Birds quarrel. Bugs hum. Their hum is constant.

This language is plain and calm but never boring. There's too much going on for it to be boring: the boy throws tomatoes at birds, the cattle poop. The imagery - "The rows look like wet hair just after it's combed" - is beautifully apt, domestic and understated, and above all, authentic. Very authentic: the family loses a rooster in September, the farmer uses pesticide and fertilizer, and some of the chipmunks don't make it across the road. You almost expect a little sketch of the farmer meeting with a banker.

To sum up, here are some of the things that I love about this book:

• clouds
• the cats that have names
• skinny wavery green beans
• hay bales like a crumbling ziggurat
• a rooster, seemingly deep in thought but really just standing there
• the girl reading in the barn
• dust

  

¿Quieres algúnos libros bilingüe?

I've got two, both courtesy the Rayo imprint of HarperCollins, and, honestly, they're both so great that I don't even have much to say about them.

Muu, Moo! Rimas de animales / Animal Nursery Rhymes, selected by Alma Flor Alma and F. Isabel Campoy, English versions by Rosalma Zubizarreta, illustrated by Viví Escrivá.

Once Upon a Time: Traditional Latin American Tales / Había una vez: Cuentos tradicionales latinoamericanos, by Rueben Martínez, illustrated by Raúl Colón.

There is no reason any school or public library should be without these two books. Yeah, I said it. The beautifully textured and colored illustrations are of the highest quality, made in paint and pencil by artists who invest their work with detail and thought. The selected folktales and nursery rhymes - some new, some traditional - are interesting and unusual and have a lyrical quality in both languages, good for reading aloud. My hat is off to Harper Collins for putting this kind of investment into bilingual picture books this year.

The Hidden Boy by Jon Berkeley - review

I have this shower curtain that I love. Stay with me. At first glance, this shower curtain is merely a lacy, toile-y, silhouette pattern of old-fashioned clip-art (what used to be called cuts or spot illustrations) of animals and plants. Like one of those Dover books barfed all over my bathroom (Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Silhouettes if you want to know which one).

But if you spend any time gazing at my shower curtain, which, let's face it, sometimes might happen in a bathroom, you begin to notice details. There's a rabbit playing a bugle. A Bambi and a Thumper staring out at you with decidedly malevolent eyes. An empty birdcage that has apparently been the scene of some violence. Bees are gigantic, while bears are tiny. The petals on some of the flowers are ladies' legs. And the goats rowing a fancy gondola - something about those goats freaks me right out.

The slightly alternate world that Irishman Jon Berkeley has created for his new series The Bell Hoot Fables is a lot like my shower curtain. The elaborate treehouses that make up the village of Bell Hoot are in the midst of an old forest, not far from a still lake and a rushing waterfall. Bees hum, flowers waft their fragrances, the sun warms the leaves. It's a good book to read in springtime.

But undercurrents of tension and strangeness run through the community, and through the forest, as young Bea, who has come to Bell Hoot along with her family for reasons she does not at first understand, quickly surmises. In the first place, her little brother Theo appears to have vanished on the crossing from our world to... wherever Bell Hoot is. Then there's the pale daughter of her host family, Willow, who appears to be wasting away. Thornbushes are planted below everyone's window, and the treehouse ladders are pulled up at night. Conflicts among the families of Bell Hoot are coming to a head, and - not surprisingly - Bea discovers that only she may have the resources to save the day.

The residents of Bell Hoot use a kind of natural magic they call Mumbo Jumbo. Some have incredibly sharp eyesight, some can influence objects with their minds, and some have analytical skills reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. Bea's Granny Delphine predicts that a man will buy a razor on Friday by combining her observation of the man's poorly-shaven face with his reaction upon learning that he is to be paid on Friday. That's neat stuff.

Throwing extraordinary skills into the mix can hurry a plot along nicely, and is fun wish-fulfillment for young readers. Too often, however, the new skills come too fast to be processed by the character and integrated into his or her personality. Not so here. Bea discovers her newfound communication skills in a more meditative manner - it's quite nice, and we feel the character gain confidence as she begins to trust and act on her instincts and reasoning.

As happens sometimes in fantasy-adventure novels, I feel like the ending came on somewhat rushed. Motives are a bit weak. Mind you, this beats the heck out of those protracted wrap-ups you see sometimes, in which every character has to be back-storied and tied up and tucked in... but The Hidden Boy is only the first of a series.

I am quite lucky that "Berkeley" comes between "Aguiar" and "Collins" on the library shelf, as I will be handing this book to readers of The Lost Island of Tamarind and the Gregor books.

And true to the mysterious nature of the forest surrounding Bell Hoot, I have never been able to find that shower curtain for sale again. Someday it will wear out, and I will have to replace it with Christ of the Andes, or Edward Cullen, or something mundane like that, and my bathroom will become just that little bit less interesting.