Tales for Very Picky Eaters

by Josh Schnieder  
Clarion Books 2011  

Five short tales for beginning readers utilizing reverse psychology. This might backfire for some kids. Like me.  

Know a picky eater? Sure you do. And when it comes to getting them to eat the things we want them to sometimes a little creativity is called for. When James decides that broccoli is disgusting (without even trying it?) he asks for something else. His father offers him pre-chewed gum, dirt, and a sweaty sock. James decides that the broccoli doesn't sound so bad.

I'm not doing the book justice here. It's really very cute and, for a beginning reader, a good mixture of readability mixed with some challenging vocabulary, all in good fun.

There's a troll in the basement whose feelings would be hurt if James doesn't eat the mushroom lasagna. There's a list of the exaggerated effects -- rubbery bones from lack of calcium -- from not drinking milk. There's the ever-growing oatmeal that must be consumed to keep it at bay, else it will take over the house.  Finally come the eggs, the slimy, runny eggs. James guesses a bunch of crazy reasons why he needs to eat them but dad simply suggests he should try them because he might like them. He does.

And they were still hot.

No, wait.

So two thoughts about Tales For Very Picky Eaters, and they really don't have any effect on what I think. Mostly.

 First, I was that kid who would try reverse psychology on adults as a kid. I was once separated from a friend for talking and given my own desk as punishment. I loved that! I made my punishment look like so much fun that other kids began trying to get in trouble so they could get their own desks. Eventually our teacher, Mrs. Bridges, had to create a new row for us misfits.

Second, and this might be a little more germane to the book, I was under the impression that we were moving away from trying to force kids to eat foods? Obviously I'm not saying (and no one else is) that kids should have soda and cake all the time but that their bodies will decide what they need and will come around to eating better in time provided the options were available. Kid doesn't like broccoli, fine, find out what vegetable they do like and give it to them all the time. Then when they ask for something else you can introduce that and build a repertory menu.

Do I think kids will enjoy reading this collection of humorous tales surrounding one of the Great Child-Adult Divides? Naturally they will, and most will probably be able to substitute a food and their own reasons for why they need to eat them. But there is the potential for backlash, especially with any parent who has used similar tactics, for a reader to suddenly realize that the stories they've been told are just that, stories, and the next time they are fed okra or lima beans or something else they have problems with they may just entrench themselves deeper.

Cousins of Clouds

Elephant Poems 
by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer 
illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy 
Clarion House / Houghton Mifflin  2011 

A collection of poetic ruminations on pachyderms coupled with informational bits that might work on multiple levels for older and younger audiences.   

The second largest mammals on the planet get the poetic treatment from a variety of perspectives that describe and explain as much as they meditate and drift.  Each poem includes a bit of non-fiction that informs the reader separate from the poem's language and intent, with illustrations that underscores the many facets of elephants. 

One particular spread covers the bases here.  One one page we get "Ivory:"

Excuse me?
You want what?
Two of my teeth? I think not!
Find another souvenir.
My enemy is drawing near~
my calf and I must disappear.

This is accompanied on the same page a line drawing of an elephant drawn on top of collaged brown paper that gives the animal shades of character as it stares the reader down.  Beneath is an explanation of how elephants were once hunted for their ivory and how a boycott on ivory sales was instituted in 1989.  On the facing page we get another poem, "Mud Spa:"  

slurp!
thwonk!
splat!

Completely divine,
muddy chocolate sublime
splattered onto my skin–
better yet, I'll dive in.

The playful poem, and equally playful illustration, gives us an image we have seen before, but the accompanying sidebar text explains how elephant skins are sensitive to sunburn and insect bites, making the mud bath more of an essential element of survival more than playtime.  In these two pages we get a range of information and imagery that paints a concise picture of elephants in a way dry text could not.  

This is what made me think about how this book -- reformatted, and slightly modified -- would work equally well with an audience older than what we would normally consider for picture books.  I know there are older readers, including teens, who don't have problems reading picture books, but there are as many if not more who would find the poems and information appealing if presented differently.   

Not to suggest there's anything wrong with the collection as it is, no, no.  In fact, I'd like to see more like this, books with a melding of fiction (and poetry) among the non-fiction.  The reader with a preference for one will end up reading the other and reaping the benefits. 

Jimi: Sounds Like A Rainbow

A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix 
by Gary Golio 
illustrated by Javaka Steptoe
Clarion  2010


A picture book storyography of the 60's icon's early years told with an unusual objective that isn't obtrusive or moralistic. Or is it?  

Okay, a picture book about Jimi makes me wonder two things before I even open the book: how do you convey the sense of person who would come to change the way rock and roll was approached, and how do you deal with the fact that he died from an overdose.  On the musical front the one thing I find myself thinking is that no book is ever going to be able to fully convey the music, and this is true of jazz and country and any other genre of popular music.  And I presumed that the point of focusing on Jimi's early days was a way around dealing with, what the British might have called back then "death by misadventure."  

From and early age Jimi has got the music in him.  He's pucking out a rhythm against the rain, he's playing the mouth trumpet to amuse his friends, he's rockin' a mean air guitar to Chuck Berry and Elvis.  It's only a matter of time and fate that would land Jimi and his peripatetic father in a boarding house where the landlady's son will part with his worn guitar for five bucks.  Soon Jimi's playing songs on the radio note for note, then getting a job with bands, and finally hooking up with a low-end electric guitar and learning how to bend notes and pitch feedback.  We leave Jimi at the crest of his creative wave, ready to shower the world with his rainbow of music... then onto the back matter. 

It was while soaking in this book that the phrase bait-and-switch came to mind.  The current trend in picture book bibliographies (or storyographies, those books that don't tell a whole life but instead lean on creating a narrative tone poem) is to cover the stories that would most appeal to a young reader and then cover the bases with more complete info in the back, either to inform more curious readers or to give the adults a chance to weigh what is worth sharing to the children in their charge.  For some of these books, this back matter is a sort of "out" for playing fast and loose with the subject's story, an opportunity to lay down the facts in a straightforward if not exciting way.  But in some books, and Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow being one of them, this back matter offers an interesting perspective on the subject that underscore the purpose of the narrative's approach.  

First, we get a "More about Jimi Hendrix" spread that does the traditional birth-to-death overview that speaks in the specifics the storyography didn't cover.  Golio chooses to paint a picture of Jimi's childhood as a carefree series of musical encounters that spill over with color and sound, often making slight references to some of Jimi's lyrics.  There's almost a subliminal quality to the phrasing, as I imagine an impressionable reader one day hearing Jimi for the first time having a light bulb moment without realizing where it came from.  Then, as mentioned, the back matter that covers the bases in terms of where and when. 

But then Golio does an interesting thing with the author's note.  He dedicates this space to discussing Jimi's accidental overdose at the age of 27, mentioning the experimental drug use of the day, following it up with a sympathetic entreaty the problems of alcohol and substance abuse, including websites and reference books for further exploration.  Suddenly I find myself going back and seeing the narrative with new eyes.  Golio wasn't putting a gloss over the darker moments in Jimi's life, or deliberately sheltering readers from a harsh reality, he's showing readers that Jimi lived for the music and didn't hide within it.  There may be a presupposition that Jimi was abusing drugs at a time when there was widespread experimentation, and that the "emotional abuse, and depression of childhood poverty" was at play in Jimi's life, so while I applaud the frank and direct discussion of Jimi's death I'm a little put off at the thought of adults using this book as channel for opening up conversations about substance abuse.  Especially given that none of this emotional turmoil or depression are even hinted at in the narrative. 

And don't think that just because Jimi wrote a song called "Manic Depression" that he was writing autobiographically.  The phrase was given to him by his manager during a press conference and Jimi introduced the song as being about a guy who was frustrated because he wanted to make love to music.  Well, maybe that was Jimi a little bit, but he wasn't clinically depressed as far as anyone can tell. 

On the illustrations, Steptoe decides to go with collages made from layered plywood.  Yes, plywood.  In looking for a material that would mirror Jimi's music he went with wood, the same material used in the guitars Jimi manipulated for his art.  Chunky at times, rough-hewn and weathered-looking, I'm not quite sure it best conveys either the essence of Jimi or his music, but then I think there's always a problem in trying to show or express what is generally best left heard.

In the end, as Elvis Costello said (or Martin Mull, they're both credited but neither one is owning up to it) "writing about music is like dancing about architecture."  I think books about musicians ought to include music, especially so for kids.  You can't see Jimi's rainbow, you have to hear it.  Or as Jimi might have insisted, you'd have to experience it.

The Dream Stealer

by Gregory Maguire
Clarion 1983, Reissued by Houghton Mifflin 2002

A demon called the Blood Wolf will kill all in a small Russian town in order to gain access to a magic doll with powers to defeat the animal. Two small children see a vision of the Firebird and hunt down the Baba Yaga in order to learn the meaning of the omen. An old tale of a beautiul woman, a motherless girl and the collective dreams of a town that build toward a showdown in the Russian countryside.

That's what I thought a few years ago when I wrote it but today I think something totally different:

What a crappy plot summary!

Yes, continuing my "week of coasting on old material" I've dredged up another from an old reading log I kept. This book, however, is much better than my initial summary and in a lot of ways my favorite Maguire book.

Long before he made a name as the king of fairy tale retellings Maguire took on three different classic Russian folktales -- Vasillisa the Beautiful, the Firebird and miscellaneous tales of the noted witch Baba Yaga -- and wove them into a very compact (140 pages) and well-told tale. (If I'm wrong call me out, but I don't know of anyplace else where these tales are all interwoven like this.) I remember the shock of starting this book, expecting it to be light and fluffy, suddenly compelled by the power of the book's voice to sit right where I was standing and read the book without stopping. I can get sucked into a book like most people but I have never before been so instantaneously and summarily been zombified by a book.

The night is dark, and the wind is high and strong and smells of snow: so gather close around the fire, my little friends, and I will tell you a tale of Baba Yaga the witch.

So it begins, and like a yarn told in the quiet of the night by a fire and entire world opens up, a world that exists in folktales that may never have existed anyplace on Earth at any time. It's a tale that taps directly into the vein of historical storytelling, echoing backwards and forwards in time in ways are rooted deep in the sub-conscious. These places, these people, this interconnection between humans and animals, between what is real and what is magical, all dredged from some part of our reptile brains like an inherited collective memory. I'd like to make the claim right now that the oldest profession is, in fact, storytelling and we have the cave paintings to prove it. The need to procreate is a survival mechanism as a species, but it's the need to create stories that feeds our souls and keeps us going.

Yesterday I referred to Daniel Pinkwater as a Zen master; today I'm calling Gregory Maguire a shaman. I am sincere on both counts, without an ounce of hyperbole, and I hope that doesn't discredit me in the process.

There are two things I do not understand concerning The Dream Stealer and they have nothing to do with the story itself. First, I do not understand why this book has never been issued in paperback. Hardcover retellings of classic Russian folktales, they don't fly off the shelves because they ask a lot of a reader (or a reader's money source); mainly they make experimenting with the book a costly proposition. Release this book in paperback, cut the price in half, and you're giving your potential market an opportunity to make a better fiscal risk. I hate to put it in those terms but if publishers are afraid to reissue titles for fear of making back their costs then I don't see why the thinking can't go the other way. Why does the hardcover need to be the proving ground? Go the other way, take the chance on the paperback, I say.

Second, why can I find no one else whose heard of this book? Everyone knows Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and even Maguire's other books for middle graders, The Hamlet Chronicles but no one seems to know about this book. Am I the only cracked person on the planet that thinks it's any good, and is everyone else just too polite to tell me? Is there some conspiracy involved, or some curse surrounding the Baba Yaga that rings bad luck upon you like saying Macbeth in a theatre?

What is it?