Blackout

by John Rocco  
Disney / Hyperion 2011

On a hot summer night New York City encounters a blackout, bringing out the best in people. A far cry from the blackouts a few decades back!  

All the little girl (or long-haired boy) wants to do is play a board game with her family. His/her sister is too busy talking on the phone. His/her dad is up to his elbows in oven mitts in the kitchen. His/her mom is on the computer, all of them too busy for a game. Then the lights go out, everywhere. Without electricity the boy/girl is frightened but soon realizes there is nothing to be afraid of. They head to the roof where they discover the stars, almost always obscured by city light, as well as people bringing their hot summer lives to the rooftops. They head down to the streets where others are taking advantage of free ice cream and opened fire hydrants. In a single moment the city is turned from sweltering misery into a massive block party.  

When the lights come back on everyone returns to their normal lives, but not everyone: keeping the spirit of the blackout alive the little boy/girl's family leaves the lights off and plays a board game together by candlelight.  

There is a grand tradition in picture books to address and capitalize on childhood fears. Being afraid of the dark is common, but by focusing on a blackout this fear becomes much larger. After all, a child afraid of the dark can be placated by a nightlight or an open door with hallway light streaming through. But to have an entire metropolitan area go to totally dark could seem like the end of the world. Rocco minimizes the fear by highlighting all the better parts of what can happen in this scenario -- after all, if a blackout meant the neighborhood ice cream shop starts giving away ice cream, as happens here, how bad could things be? In fact, given the positive experience I could see some readers anxiously awaiting summer for the hope of free ice cream and game night with the family. Also, if the book gives some parents pause in considering the need for an emergency kit, all the better to be prepared.  

As with a true blackout there is also a sense of out-of-sight, out-of-mind involved here. The particular block in Brooklyn depicted here will likely enjoy a much better blackout experience than those neighborhoods that might be more economically depressed. But then, with the blackout, who would know? Televisions wouldn't be transmitting reports and aside from a few battery powered radios (do people own radios anymore?) the blackout people experienced would be the only blackout people would know.  

I don't fault Rocco for giving us a rosy picture of a blackout, or for the message that younger readers should not be scared of such things. My only hope would be that it doesn't take this book, or a similar event, to trigger a family to consider more quality time or better appreciate the stars obscured overhead.

Aliens on Vacation

by Clete Barrett Smith
Disney / Hyperion  2011 

When Scrub is shunted off to his Grandmother's for the summer he discovers that her Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast is more than a name... 

Scrub just knows his summer is going to suck. Having to spend his summer helping his grandmother run her Star Wars hippie-decor B&B in the middle-of-nowhere Washington was bad enough, but knowing that his best friend Tyler was going to be doing basketball camp and tournaments across the country was killing him.  There is no way Scrub would ever make the seventh grade all-star team next year, not with Tyler gaining the coach's favor three times a week in practice and in games on the weekend. But with his parents called off on last-minute business trips, and no way to convince them he could take care of himself at home alone, there is little Scrub can do but suck it up and stick it out the best he can.

Initially he assumes Grandma's business caters to the sci-fi nerds after meeting with one of the guests, a tall man with loose, ash colored skin.  With a better understanding of the House Rules ("Two arms, two legs, one head" and "No harming the natives" in particular) Scrub begins to realize that "Intergalactic" is more than just a name for Grandma's establishment; she truly is catering to visitors from other planets!  But the resort only works as long as the "guests" can remain unnoticed while on vacation, and it falls to Scrub to help Grandma keep her hostel/travel portal a secret. 

Naturally, there are suspicious locals, including Sheriff Tate who is certain that Grandma is up to no good, and Amy who suspects there's a connection between the B&B and life on other planets. And then there's the little issue of the intergalactic transporter shutting down leaving vacationers trapped on Earth. It's only a matter of time before the carefully hidden truth is about be be exposed, right there on the lawn in front of the B&B with world media attention.  But if Scrub saves the day and can protect Grandma and her guests his actions will not only get the Sheriff fired but cause him enough ridicule to force him out of town... taking his daughter (and Scrub's only real friend) Amy with him.  Is there any way Scrub can make the right decision for everyone?

Among all the book's characters I do have a favorite and that's Mr. Harnox, the aforementioned tall guest with ashen skin who happens to be stuck on Earth. Throughout, Mr. Harnox is constantly making discoveries about his new home (a description of cacti sounds delicious) while at the same time applying the lessons Grandma has tried to instill in all her guests, ("Everything deserves a second chance"). Alternately comic relief and an alternate viewpoint on the world, his loopy wide-eyed innocence coupled with his unusual diet creates a character that wouldn't be out of place in a Charles Addams cartoon.

Smith gives readers a solid everykid in Scrub; neither nerdy nor geeky nor uber-hip.  He's just a kid, an easygoing vehicle for dealing with whatever gets thrown his way, which ends up being quite a bit, actually.  There isn't any mystery what Grandma is up to, or that Scrub will figure it out, so much as a question of what is the right thing to do in any given situation, and can Scrub handle it.  What's interesting is how adept Scrub is at his various care-taking duties – helping the aliens prepare to look human before leaving the B&B, shopping for excessive amounts of ammonia and aluminum to keep one long-term guest fed, and even mitigating conversations between the guests and locals to quell suspicions. Scrub finds, as many kids do, that fluid middle space where they are maleable to any given situation and it becomes an empowering thing for a kid to find they are both needed and capable when it comes to being responsible. There's a strong thread of compassion woven throughout though Smith doesn't draw any undue attention toward it. 

Which is not to suggest Aliens of Vacation is a dry "message" story.  It's a solid, plot-driven middle grade book with heart that will have readers longing for distant relatives with intergalactic transporters in their homes.



Full disclosure: Clete Barrett Smith and I were students together at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program and I received my copy of the book from his publicist.

Carter FInally Gets It, part two

by Brent Crawford
Hyperion 2009

In a phrase: strangely compelling meets fiercely flawed.

Will Carter, freshman, has Attention Deficit Disorder (or so he says) and the pressing desire to no longer be a virgin. He's got his sights set on Amber Lee, the untouchable hottie, but it appears he's destined to hook up with the previously chubby Abby who's body spent the summer moving all her baby fat to her chest.

Because Carter has ADD he finds himself easily distracted. It doesn't prevent him from joining the football team. Or being one of the area's top swimmers. Or from trying out and landing the lead in the school musical, all because his particular ADD requires Carter to maintain focus.

Along the way Carter and his crew find themselves at parties where houses are routinely destroyed by drink kids, cars are driven wildly by drunk teenage occupants, and are physically menaced by older psychopathic teens among the general population at school.

Oh, did I mention Carter has ADD?

Let me get this off my chest right now. Carter saying he has ADD doesn't make it so. He has problems staying on track, occasionally has to write things down on his hand, makes a lot of unfiltered comments that lead to hurt feelings... but it reads more like average teenage boy to me, not ADD. Additionally, Carter and his friends refer to friends, enemies, and each other as retards and faggots just as often as Carter calls himself ADD. In my experience, kids will adopt an affectation or self-diagnose themselves as a way of communicating to others that, what might seem like unusual behavior is in fact them working out who they are. A kid who refers to himself as psychotic or demented isn't necessarily either of those things, and what we look for in determining whether these characters are truly what they say they are in fiction is through their behavior.

So as Carter claims his disorder his behavior does not support this. His school has culled some of the more violent kids and placed them in special classes where their violence can be modified, and you would suspect the school would have learning specialists as well for kids with disabilities, but Carter has regular classes and goes about his life with everyone treating him normally. That isn't a bad thing, except that very little of Carter's issues are specific to ADD. He has difficulty with behaving or saying appropriate things, but hormones and dietary issues could just as easily be the cause. At one point later in the book, Carter is instructing his best friend EJ on how to pick up girls, a lesson his older sister has given him out of a shred of kindness and perhaps a recognition that her kid brother is a little different. When he tells EJ to ask questions and act disinterested, his best friend takes this instruction literally and combines the two to ask insulting questions of a girl who runs away in tears. Isolated from the rest of the book, a reader would assume EJ was the kid with problems, not Carter.

Putting that aside, I nearly gave up on this book a half dozen times. What starts as a series of vignettes about freshman life eventually begins to coalesce around a hundred pages in. It's around this time that I realized that Carter Finally Gets It is a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl story trapped beneath all the excess baggage of a modern YA novel. The problem is, the story only works because of these excesses. If Carter and his nemesis Andre weren't both on the football team and the swim team, if Andre didn't steal Abby away from Carter, if Carter and Abby didn't wind up as leads opposite one another in the school play... man, that's a lot of 'ifs' piled up there.

Additionally, I'd hate to assume so calculated a move, but this and a few other books I've seen this season seem to rely on horny, raunchy boys to appeal to its audience. The argument that "this is how kids talk today" doesn't work here. Hanging around and listening to a bunch of teens talking at a pizza joint may be authentic, but it doesn't actually provide us any insight into their personalities. Aside from verite reportage, steeping a story in the language of teens without making each voice equally unique smacks of a certain level of pandering. Also, don't we have enough problems with boys objectifying and badmouthing girls based on looks? Do we really need books to be so "authentic" that they continue to perpetrate and reinforce chauvinistic behavior?

You would think after all this that I would hate Carter Finally Gets It, but I don't. There is a level of bumbling boy comedy here that I really enjoyed, that haplessness that is the providence of teen boys who just haven't yet figured out how clueless they are. Scenes of Carter riding everywhere on his bike because he's too young to drive slayed me for a variety of personal reasons, not the least of which was because of how close to home they hit. And the cruelty of girls who use the unwitting Carter as a foil for getting around watchful parents is a priceless bit of chicanery that Carter, unfortunately, deserves.

Like I said, I could have dumped this anywhere along the way in the first hundred pages – and that's an awful lot to ask of a reader to go along with – but following that I had a hard time stopping. As flawed as it is compelling, the book should neutralize itself but somehow manages to tip the scales toward readability.

Others have found this LMAO funny and don't seem to have the same problems I have with the book, so proceed accordingly.

Carter Finally Gets It, part one

by Brent Crawford
Hyperion 2009

It depends on what the meaning of the words 'it' is.

Tomorrow, part two: A more in-depth look.

DInosaur Versus Bedtime

by Bob Shea
Hyperion 2009

Roar! I am a dinosaur! ROAR! Nothing can stop me!

A pile of leaves, a playground slide, a bowl of spaghetti, all met with the little dinosaur's fearlessness and a mighty trio of roars as this simple picture book progresses toward the ultimate showdown against bedtime. Following each battle "Dinosaur wins!" sets up the reader for the turn when baby dinosaur meets his match.

Shea's use of playful, childlike illustrations, bold colors and collages, and expressive typeface give this simple story the extra edge it needs. It's a bedtime book that honors and recognizes that settling in for the night doesn't begin quiet, just as baby dinosaur's day begins with yelling and action and progresses toward the inevitable.

I am not a huge fan of the bedtime book as a rule. For the most part they are books designed to calm and prepare a child for bedtime, they serve as child modification devices for adults. There are books for children about grieving, books about potty training and books to explain "issues" like bullying and divorce. This need to find a book to explain or frame specific situations on behalf of adults creates an illusion that books have all the answers, that unpleasant business can be handled with a book, and trains young minds to view reading a book with skepticism. Like medicine, where is the joy of reading if it's presented as an aid to a symptom. Stories should be told for the joy of the story, not as a means to an end.

Shea's book takes the bedtime book and turns it on its head. Instead of quiet good-nights to items in the room or lullabies from animal mommies to their babes we have a rambunctious baby, a dinosaur baby, roaring right and left, fighting and defeating inanimate foes. The subversion in this is that young readers are easily lulled into thinking this books will end in a victorious dinosaur winning against bedtime. But after a bath and brushing of teeth the roars get quieter and even dinosaur can't win against sleep. And the lesson: even raucous dinosaurs need their sleep.

And so, for his second birthday, my nephew is getting Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime, as well as Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and The Nutshell Library.

Literacy wins!

Big Plans

by Bob Shea
illustrated by Lane Smith
Hyperion 2008

He's got big plans! Big plans (he says)! Over and over and over...

Last year author Shea gave us some New Socks to play with, and they were good. Just the one image of that a chicken, with glasses, using a sock as a phone was enough for me. That's how kids are, that's how they play, I'm good. I think that for a certain age level picture books ought to try and capture that sense of childlike whimsy (claiming they're the biggest thing in the ocean, for example) and New Socks did it.

Shea's back, tugging illustrator Lane Smith for the ride, and things don't roll so smoothly. We start with a boy facing the corner of his classroom, obviously on punishment, the chalkboard full of all the "I will not's" he's most likely committed. From this single opening spread we learn that this boy rolls his eyes, schemes, laughs when others speak, isn't nice, proves the teacher wrong, considers himself the boss of the class, and announces that what he says goes.

I hate this kid.

I hate this kid so much that everything that follows better show me in some way that he is charming or in some other ways undeserving of this punishment in the corner, otherwise this book is really going to piss me off.

This book pissed me off.

He's got big plans, he announces, and he screams these words in 240 point type across most of the book. He's going to shout at the yes-men in the boardroom, take on the mayor, verbally assault the president. He's going to wear a skunk as a hat (because the only thing that stinks worse is this kid's attitude) and march all over the world shouting down everyone and everything else with his big plans. He's going to take over a losing football team (with his yes-man mynah bird) because losing is not part of his big plans. He'll order people to do this and that, and when he goes to the moon he'll order the rocks be moved so they can be read from Earth announcing his big plans.

And in the last spread we see that all his planning and scheming were a direct result of all the things surrounding him in the time out corner. There's a map of the moon and a book of presidents, and his snide little smirk that says "Yeah, they can put me in the corner, but I'll show them one day."

I never want that kid to leave the corner.

You know how it is when you get an email from someone who doesn't realize that writing in all caps reads like shouting? This book feels just like that, only worse. It's a bossy kid with a microphone hooked up to the Who's loudspeaker system shouting about his big plans at 160 decibels ten feet from your face. Did it have to be so loud, Lane? Couldn't the kid be less of a schmuck and more of a dreamer? Couldn't there be something in this kid that would make us want to root for him to take over the country and fly to the moon and be the star football player?

Not cute, not endearing, and please, let no one read this to boys at story hour unless they want an army of bossy boys shouting down adults and thinking they own the world, or a dozen time-out corners in need of occupants.

The Pigeon Wants a Puppy

by Mo Willems
Hyperion 2008

Well, I think the pigeon has jumped the shark.

I know, I know, there are many out there, legions of you perhaps, who feel that Mo and his beloved blue bird can do no wrong. To be fair, it isn't a bad book, it's just that the pigeon seems to have... changed.

First, we're seeing more facial expressions in the pigeon, and many of them seem rather feminine to me. Nothing wrong with the pigeon a boy or a girl, or gender neutral, but this time around it feels more pronounced. That in and of itself isn't a problem. But the punchline is that the pigeon doesn't know what a puppy is and is frightened when it finally meets one and, well, it acts a bit too girly in its fear. It isn't that a boy can't be frightened of a big dog, or that kids don't like the concept of a pet more than the reality, it's that when the expressions leading up to the reveal feel feminine, a stereotypical girl reaction leaves a bad taste.

Am I off base, reading too much into this? Relax, old man! It's just a picture book for kids, I hear you say. I still say the pigeon has some other problems.

We began with a pigeon who wanted to drive a bus. Well, that's just silly, and as much as it pleaded with us we wouldn't let it drive the bus. There was a great little hint that we were supposed to talk back to the pigeon because the bus driver told us not to let anyone drive the bus.

Next, pigeon finds a hot dog, which had a cute little ducky to act as a foil, asking all sort of annoying questions. I couldn't help thinking about a bird eating another animal's meat, but that's the kind of thing only an adult would worry about. Still, the pigeon's antics amuse and entertain in keeping with our previous experience.

Then the pigeon wanted to stay up late, which is a common problem among children and adults. The pigeon uses every trick in the book and there's a creeping sense that perhaps the pigeon isn't so unique. Yes, kids want to drive the bus, but they cannot, but pigeons should even less so. And kids are always finding things on the ground to put in their mouths, but a pigeon and a hot dog are a wacky combination. Not wanting to go to sleep? That feels a bit to pedestrian for the pigeon. You could have substituted a character from any other book and it wouldn't have made a difference.

Now the pigeon wants a puppy. It has some unrealistic ideas about what puppy ownership means - watering it like a plant, riding around on it bareback -- but this doesn't feel odd enough. Of course, the punchline of this book makes more sense and I almost would have preferred the book start there.

But there's something else going on here, something a bit more strange. The pigeon is acting like it has an awareness of itself that goes beyond the book. It's a hard thing to explain, it's almost as if the pigeon is aware of its popularity in the world and has become spoiled like a star. There's a lack of innocence, almost as if it's playing for the camera. These closer, more expressive (yet still simple) line drawings are showing us a pigeon who knows its being watched. The coy cuteness is more Actors Studio than playground, the anger is studied. The bird is veering dangerously close to self-parody inviting young readers to say "Okay, we know you're going to get what you want, I guess we can put up with all your mock protesting to find out what happens when you get it."

If you read Mo Willem's blog on a regular basis you will see the sort of adventures kids propose for the pigeon as he posts some of the choice ones he gets from time to time. They capture the absurdity of the pigeon books, which is what bothers me about ...a Puppy. Don't Let the Pigeon Punch Himself sounds a whole lot more fun!

I know adults and children can't get enough of pigeon, and I was among them for a while. I don't think the franchise has capsized just yet, but that bird is going to have to pop off with something truly unexpected next time or else it's time to abandon ship.

Thoreau at Walden

by John Porcellino
from the writings of Henry David Thoreau
with an introduction by D.B. Johnson
Center for Cartoon Studies/Hyperion
April 2008

Moving to New England a few years ago I felt compelled to finally be a good citizen and read Walden. It was one of those books assigned to me back in high school that I never go around to because I could never get into it. Thoreau was not approachable to me then -- not as approachable as Cliff Notes, for all the good they did me -- but time and experience and an open mind have helped. I found myself nodding and agreeing with appreciation, and recognized instantly how much misery in life and thought Thoreau could have saved me had my mind been ready for it when I was a teen.

The idea then of taking Thoreau's key ideas -- the man did ramble -- and converting them into an accessible graphic novel format seems almost too easy. The man goes into the woods and builds himself a home trying to remove himself from the trappings of his 19th century materialist society. The man gets off the grid before there really was one. For two years he observes and meditates and tends to his navel gazing through his diary. In the end he returns to the world he left, his experiment over, hoping to report back to the world what he has learned and gained from the experience. No one really cared at the time but History and English teachers have since come to his rescue and changed all that.

The way Walden is presented here a young reader might surmise that a poet went into the woods one day to commune with nature, occasionally to journey into town, he had various and occasionally profound insights that still ring true today, and then rejoined society and hoped to spread the word.

It's Walden Lite and among it's sparse illustrations one might glean what it is Thoreau is all about, but most likely not. It is precisely Thoreau's verbosity that is at issue because in streamlining his thoughts into what can be illustrated Porcellino jettisons the process by which Thoreau comes to his conclusions. Short scenes where a cartoon philosopher view nature from the lake or while crouched in the forest convey a certain mise en scene but they also reduce Thoreau to a mere back-to-nature lover and fail to connect with what he draws from these moments. Thoreau lived in a house he built in the woods, stated in this graphic novel in a single panel showing the cabin, but in Walden Thoreau makes much of how he came to the land, how he chose the spot for the cabin, how he built it, what his supplies cost. It's the details that underscore what he's going on about, the idea of living by the labor of his own hands, and sadly we are shown none of it here.

The book does try to cover the topics most relevant to Walden -- befriending a rat, the night in jail, communing with nature -- but, again, as illustrated we are treated to panel after panel of minimalist drawings which fail to engage precisely because they contain so little information. In one panel an illustration of Walden Pond is rendered so generically it's inclusion almost seems an embarrassment. There are ways to suggest place and to present visual information using the barest of lines -- think of the portraits of Al Hershfeld -- but what we have here suggests a cartoon landscape drawn without a point of actual reference. Porcellino may have gone into the woods at Walden, as have I a year or so ago, but I don't recognize that place in these drawings.

Interestingly, the forward is by another artist who has tackled Thoreau himself, and I believe rather successfully. D.B. Johnson has three illustrated books for the picture book crowd that turns Thoreau into a bear and isolates specific moments from Walden to illustrate their point. Henry Climbs a Mountain takes Thoreau's night in jail and makes it easy enough for a child of six to understand, and it's more sophisticated than the way Thoreau's words are illustrated in this graphic novel. Its unfortunate because up to this release I have been excited by the books coming from The Center for Cartoon Studies. I'm going to chalk this one up as a miss and hope for more forthcoming titles along the lines of Satchel Page and Houdini, The Handcuff King.

In the meantime, if you need a shortcut to Thoreau, Cliff Notes and their ilk are readily available.