A Little Book of Sloth

by Lucy Cooke
Margaret K. McElderry Books 2013

This non-fiction book, ostensibly for kids, should forever change the synonym for sloth from "lazy" to "cute."

Many decades ago when I first learned about sloths and their sloth-like behavior they seemed to me a perfect insult. Calling someone a slug was up there but there was nothing that rolled off the tongue quite like "move it, you sloth!" All I knew of sloths were that they were slow, tree-dwelling, and, uh, slow.

But how slow? I couldn't tell you. And when you think of something as 'slow' there's also that connotation that they might not be as quick-witted as other creatures as well, but was that true of the sloth? I also assumed that the reason they were green was because they were too lazy to groom themselves, but it turns out that there's a very good reason NOT to groom away that algae in their fur.

Who knew?

I know now, and I think many adults will learn quite a bit from this book as they read it to their little ones.

There is a place called Slothville in Costa Rica that is a sanctuary for orphaned and injured sloths. As pictures from this book reveal, even a creature that looks like a cross between a kitten, a piglet and a hedgehog that's been stretched out can be awfully cute. They appear to be the most mellow of jungle creatures, sleeping 70% of their lives away (though no one knows how long that lifespan really is), chowing down on green beans and hibiscus flowers, and hugging, hugging, hugging.

Oh, and I now know that a full-speed they top out at fifteen feet per minute.

And the images make this book. Cooke's fondness for sloths is equally matched by their cute-overload behavior. Hugging stuffed animals, hugging each other, their odd (and equally slow) bathroom routines, and three words that really ought to become a catchphrase for something: bucket of sloth.

Sloths for the win!

Alistair and Kip's Great Adventure!

by John Segal!
McElderry Books! 2008!

"Let's build a boat and travel to distant lands," says Alistair. And so they do.

Alistair cat and Kip the dog build themselves a boat and sail down river, into the bay, onto the open seas. A storm comes up, the waves crash their boat into a whale who saves them and takes them home.

"Tomorrow, let's build a plane."

The end.

The journey is a time-honored device in literature, all literature, but usually there is something transformative in the process. The dangers and desires of a journey have to have a purpose, otherwise what's the point? The Bard of Manchester once provided one of the most succinct examples of the power of journey

I was looking for a job, and then I found a job,
And heaven knows I'm miserable now.

See, the main character sets out to do something, and then he accomplishes what he set out to do, and his life has been transformed as a result. No such enlightenment here for Alistair and Kip as they merely come home determined to do the next day what they did the day before. Might as well have a story about a turtle and a donkey who go to the grocery store, eat what they bought, then plan to go to the store the next day.

Let me look at this story again, maybe I'm missing something. Do they have a magical adventure, something beyond the pale? No, they do not. You might be tempted to believe that their interaction with the whale is something, but in order for that to be the case you would have to marvel at a cat and dog's ability to build a boat and sail the ocean. But when dealing with anthropomorphic animals that stand in for humans we aren't supposed to be surprised at their abilities any more than we would stare at stranger in public adjusting their socks. Talking animals would expect nothing less from another -- the whale in this case -- than sympathy and understanding, unless it had been established in advance that whales were something to fear on their grand journey.

Do they glean anything from their experience? That whales are nice, perhaps, but is that the sum of their adventure? No, I don't find a great adventure here. Some nice watercolor work, totally ruined by variable type sizes throughout. That's about it.

I guess my problem is that I'm seeing a lot of books this season that all seem as limp as this, a story that could have been concocted by a small child. Wait, I take that back, I've heard small children tell much more involved stories. These would be the same children a simple book like this would be aimed at. So if kids are capable of longer stories why are the shelves filled with so many empty calories?

Sometimes I wonder if picture books aren't going to cause the demise of picture books.

All Aboard: A Traveling Alphabet

concept by Chris L. Demarest
illustrated by Bill Mayer
McElderry Books 2008

Alphabet books. If asked, how many adults (outside the world of publishing or kidlit blogging) could name a favorite alphabet book they had as a child? I did ask people, casually, in a non-scientific poll and not one could name an alphabet book they loved.

"Wasn't there a Dr. Seuss alphabet book? I probably had that."

They might have been thinking about On Beyond Zebra, which goes beyond the normal alphabet in Seussian style. The fact is they don't generally remember alphabet books. The reason is that they hold such a temporary spot in our progression as readers, a mere blip on or reading radar. The reinforcement of shapes and sounds, with images to match, can't quite lodge itself in the same memory sensors as those books that hold deeper meaning for us.

Which might be why it seems like everyone wants to come out with a new alphabet book every season, because who can recall the last memorable alphabet book?

To answer my own question there is one alphabet book I do remember, and that Sendak's Alligators All Around, part of the Nutshell Library. What I remember about it is there's more story than letter reinforcement, the alliteration of letters and sounds, and the plain fact of alligators doing silly human-like things. I think what I like most about it, what I remember, is that it's less interested in teaching me as a young reader, and more about entertaining me.

All to say that while I don't necessarily hate the alphabet book, I sometimes don't understand the point of one. Some serve as a game ("can you find the letter C?") and some are about reinforcing the sounds (those alligators again) but so many seem to be designed as clever concepts for adults to enjoy. It's a bit like the way modern animated feature films include adult jokes for the those in the audience who are sitting with young ones, a way to entertain the family. But what adult needs to have an alphabet book similarly made palatable to their tastes in order for them to show an interest with a child?

Let's get around to the book at hand. All Aboard! is an alphabet book in the style of romantic travel posters. Each page features some element of travel -- the smokestack of a steam steamer, a canoe on still water, a biplane from above -- each with a letter of the alphabet worked into the design in some fashion. They also include a word beginning with the letter appropriate for each illustration, for example the word "jump" along with a fish leaping to swallow a fishing fly.

This last example is a perfect illustration for what I don't like about the execution of this concept. The J in this case is supposed to be found in the shape of the fish, the way it's tail flips to create the tail of the letter. The problem is that it isn't an exact letter shape but a general shape and as such isn't obvious from looking at the picture.

Other letters are hidden in some clever ways that make them almost impossible to find. The H in the highway illustration is made from the edge of the highway, the double yellow line down the center, and the long shadow of a cacti plant crossing both. It's not impossible to see once you know it's there, but using the edge of the highway is a sophisticated form of shape recognition that might be just outside the bounds of young eyes that are still getting used to more than 2-dimensions.

The concept of using old travel posters as an illustration style I think is great, but since this is probably aimed at adults it would have been nice if the illustrations were a bit more true to their source. A skier making a downhill run, the S in the trail behind the skis, would have benefited from a bit of something that made it look a little more... like travel poster. Instead we get a skier against a white background which, besides being dull, doesn't convey the sense of the concept. All it would have taken is an alpine ridge, a stylized mountain edge in the background, perhaps a Swiss chalet. Similarly, the previously mentioned Highway illustration would have made more sense with a retro station wagon loaded with camping gear going through the desert instead of what we do get, an 18-wheeler making a hairpin turn.

If that sounds like I'm being nit-picky remember, I'm part of the intended audience. There's little point in making the illustration resemble travel posters from the early part of the 20th century for those born in the 21st who have no frame of reference.

I find it amusing -- that is, I smirk when I think about it -- that this book as a credit for the concept and another for the illustrator. It isn't quite a writing credit, is it? And in the forward the artist talks about the challenges of working with the editor on how to fit the alphabet letters into the illustrations. So if the artist and the editor are doing the heavy lifting... is it really worth mentioning who came up with the concept?

Yeah, I've got this idea for an alphabet book. Something with letters somehow worked into old travel posters. You guys can hammer out the details, I'll be in Jamaica drinking up my advance if you have any questions...

It's a bit like a Hollywood-type saying "Let's do Die Hard on a boat!" and getting story credit for it in the movie and ten grand for each word in his pitch. Is this the future of picture books, "conceptualists" instead of authors? I hope not.

Oops!

Poems by Alan Katz
Drawings by Edward Koren
Margaret K. McElderry / Simon & Schuster 2008

Okay, once again just to make sure we're all on the same page: do not give your book a title that can be used against you in a review. You would think editors would be the first to understand the rules of making a book review-proof. Of course, it's also a good idea to make sure the content followed the same rules, not just the title.

Katz is no Shel Silverstein (he's not even Jack Prelutsky), but so much about this book feels like that's what the guilty parties were trying for. It's 179 pages of short, silly poetry accompanied by line drawings is squarely aimed at those who have worn out their copies of Where the Sidewalk Ends and It's Raining Pigs and Noodles.

All the usual topics are covered -- too much TV, failing grades, turns of phrases, wordplay -- but so much of it falls flat. Rhymes and near-rhymes have the feel of having being culled from a reference book with the rest of the poem built awkwardly around them. There are ways to break the meter within a poem, and then there are just broken feet. And some of these poems seemed designed to deliver a punchline but don't have the substance to prop them up. I think there's a picture-book's-worth of poems here that are good -- maybe a couple dozen or so -- and the rest reads like contractual filler.

I know kids in their poetry phase can't ever get enough of the humorous verse, and this will easily break up the monotony of rereading the same six or seven books for this crowd, but I don't suspect it will get the same level of repeat readings.

Question: where are the women poets who write volumes of humorous poetry? Is nonsense considered the province of male poets, and is this why boys stop reading poetry?

Today at the Bluebird Cafe

A Branchful of Birds
by Deborah Ruddell
illustrated by Joan Rankin
Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster 2007

It's all-you--can-eat at the Bluebird Cafe,
a grasshopper-katydid-cricket buffet,
with berries and snails and bluebottle fly,
a sip of the lake and a bite of the sky.

Oh, but it starts off so promising.

This collection of poems about birds could have been swell if it hadn't suffered from that common malady of uneven rhymes and herky-jerky meter.

If I'm repeating myself, forgive me, but if you're going to write rhyming poetry it needs to have a natural rhythm. I'm not going to be a stickler for meter unless you start out a poem with it but drop it when it becomes inconvenient half way through the poem. If you are going to hold to the meter it still needs to sound natural.

I call it the read-aloud test, it needs to have a read-aloud rhythm. That is, a child with reading fluency should be able to pick up the poem and read it cold and capture the rhythm. They can falter in the first line or two as they get the hang of things, but it shouldn't be catching them off-guard along the way. The fun in reading poetry for kids is in the wordplay, it's in the cleverness of the beat where they (as readers or listeners) can follow along. The words need to roll off the tongue or dance in their head.

Not sound like the equivalent of a teen driver leaning how to drive a stick.

The names we know, they know the rules and they know how to bend them. Shel Silverstien and Jerry Moss understood this, and no surprise both were also lyricists; Karla Kuskin gets it; Edward Lear even in his most forced verse gets it; Maurice Sendak, certainly; Prelutsy, Florian and Stevenson all grok the rhythm. And yet book after book of rhyming text -- poetry and picture book -- roll off the presses with awkward phrasing and broken meter and all the prettiest pictures in the world won't save them.

Why? Why, if compelled to write in verse, wouldn't a writer want to make their verse the best it could possibly be? There's no sin in striving to become classic, why settle? What is the point of the exercise if the only concern is the rhyme? What's the reason?

Seminar after seminar, listing after listing in the Writer's Market, editors beg and scream: Please! No rhyming texts! And yet, these same publishers are the guiltiest of parties. I won't place all the blame on the writers.

Another book of poems, trashed;
Another round of hopes, dashed.