Half-Minute Horrors

edited by Susan Rich
HarperCollins 2009

Billed as a "collection of instant frights from the world's most astonishing authors and artists," Half-Minute Horrors lives up to its title by presenting super-short sudden fiction to middle grade readers who like a little creepiness. Just a little, not too much. A set-up, some sort of mystery, and an unsettling cliffhanger of an ending are the norm here, almost all of them short enough to read in the promised half a minute.

And when I say a little creepiness that doesn't mean they can't be somewhat disturbing. There are implications of cannibalism, creatures laying in wait to swallow you whole, disembodied hands that come calling while you sleep... but all stopped right at the moment of impact so that the reader can quickly turn the page if necessary. Because the engagement is so short there isn't enough time to plant too strong a mental picture to disturb. Yeah, if you think about some of these stories long enough they can really delve into truly terrifying territory, but the reader interested in horror is going to feel cheated if the author or the story pulls its punch too much or too quickly. Many of these stories plant their final, fatal twist in the last line for maximum impact so that even the seemingly odd story suddenly can turn on a dime.

There are also some illustrated stories - I hesitate to call them comics, but some do take that format - which perform the graphic equivilent of their narrative counterparts. Perhaps only "Worms" by Lane Smith, a visually retelling of the gory old rhyme "The worms go in, the worms go out..." goes the furthest with its graphic depiction of life pre- and post-humus. Still, all good creepy fun.

One of the things this book reminded me of was a series of books I had as a boy called "One Minute Mysteries" which would set the reader up with a drawing room situation and some details that would allow a reader to guess what had happened. Only I could never guess correctly and instead of enjoying the mystery I found the books frustrating because they made me feel stupid. I suppose the idea of a minute mystery was meant for boys like me who (at the time) were struggling with reading, but that book sent me the wrong direction. Perhaps the lack of character and emotion was the problem, but I never really got into the mystery genre as a result.

There's no similar problem here with Half-Minute Horrors because the stories clearly spell out the (pending) doom, leaving the reader to invest as much emotion as their own fears permit. The various authors are all top-notch – M.T. Anderson, Adam Rex, Sarah Weeks, Holly Black, Jack Gantos, Jon Scieszka, Avi, and Lauren Myracle to name but a scant few –and include some generally regarded as adult writers, like Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem, delivering on a wide variety of themes.

I realize this comes too late to incorporate into Halloween lesson plans, but I would hope that the audience for this kind of thing sees this as more of an evergreen title. I think for the reluctant reader the ability to whiz through dozens of stories at one sitting will make the book feel much shorter than its 130 pages, and for other readers the shortness of these stories can serve as a sort of palate cleanser between much larger books, a sampler platter of ghoulish delights.

Yuk, did I just write that last semi-blurb-worthy sentence?

Anyway, lots of gory fun.

Punch and the Magic Fish (with video bonus)

A Grimm Brothers' Tale Retold
by Emanuele Luzzati
Pantheon / Random House 1973

Luzzati's retelling of the Grimm's "The Fisherman and His Wife" get overlaid with the Punch and Judy comedy of the hapless hunchback and his shrew of a wife. Not as opulent as some of Luzatti's other illustrations, the story melds the two stories fairly well until the end when it veers a little and the magic fish from the original ends up in the frying pan.

I've done coverage on the original Grimm story long ago when I was doing that sort of thing more often with my Grimmoire series. Basically, Punch the fisherman finds a fish who, in exchange for his freedom, grants the fisherman a wish. His wife Judy sends him back repeatedly to upgrade the wishes even though Punch is perfectly happy with his life at every stage of the story. Finally the wife goes one wish too far and the fish returns them back to their poor life with a family of hungry kids.

Luzatti is usually very bold with his colors, but here everything is set against open fields of white and it doesn't work for me the way his other books do. Still, the mix of torn paper collage and sketchy marker give it that whimsy that I like about his work.

As an added bonus, I was able to find a video Luzzati made around the same time that features Punch and the music of Rossini. It isn't "The Fisherman and his Wife" but it shows another side of this illustrator's work. The darker elements of a traditional Punch and Judy story are here - the beatings, Punch's journey to hell - but I think this could still work for kids today. Some kids. Anyway, enjoy.

See and Say

a picture book in four languages
woodcuts by antonio frasconi
harcourt, brace & world, inc 1955

Until just this moment when I looked up the publication date I would have sworn this book was 15 to 20 years younger than it is. This multi-lingual abecedarian groups words and images at random throughout with each object named in English, Spanish, French and Italian, including a pronunciation guide as well. The words and images are common items independent readers would know, allowing for this book to be a beginner's guide to learning common words in four languages. On the last page there is a list of common phrases, a sort of beginner's phrase book for world travelers of the picture book set.

Another book checked out more for the pictures than the content, Frasconi's woodcuts are bold and simple graphics that use layering and the texture of the wood grain to good effect. The use of four colors (and black) is done in a very modern way, and the lower case font I think is what initially threw me in terms of guessing the book's year. Despite its age, the book is still serviceable (though I believe it is no longer in print).

Out of curiosity, I was curious to see when Mattel first produced the See n' Say, a toy where children would line up a pointer to an illustration of an object on a clock-like face, pull a string, and hear a stirring voice say something like "The cow goes.. moooooooo!" These simple analog learning toys were quite the rage in the 60s (and still in production under the Fisher-Price name) work well enough for the pre-reading set, but are limited to a dozen objects and quickly are abandoned. The book See and Say, which predates the toy by a decade, contains at least 60 words and their variants in three other languages.

My point? That even today, there is more value to be had in a book than an expensive toy, that simplicity doesn't mean limitation. Once a child has learned to match an image with a name and a sound, what more is there? What prompts the child to want to explore more? With See and Say there is the opportunity to not only learn the name of things, but the similarities and differences in names across cultures. There is an open door to sound out new words, and the possibility to excite the love of languages in young minds when they are most elastic and available to learn second, third, and fourth languages.

In the 1950s, when See and Say was published, the post-War world embraced travel abroad and the idea of learning more than one language was a bit of cultural capital that was also a high point of education. Today, with English having established itself as the international language of commerce, it is no longer necessary to learn another language in order to travel and breeds a sort of arrogance that other nations and cultures resent. It is not unusual to find Europeans who know three or four languages, including English, but in the US a polyglot is seen either as a learned scholar or a show-off. I hear kids marvel at how well foreign students speak English and know several languages while they struggle to master their own native tongue.

So while I was drawn to this book for its art I realize that things have changed in the past half century in picture books, because I don't know how popular a book like this would be today. We live in a country where English-only ballot initiatives underscore just how intolerant we've become, where instead of learning other languages we now suspect those who speak foreign tongues might be terrorists out to get us. We might do well to consider the generations coming up and looking at the books we give them as a way of fostering tolerance and understanding.

Or we can let publishing get taken over by electronic devices and continue to insist that our cultural arrogance is everyone else's problem.

Wow, how'd I get way up here on this soapbox?

Messing Around on the Monkey Bars

and other School Poems for Two Voices
by Betsy Franco
illustrated by Jessie Hart
Candlewick Press 2009

I have this thing about poetry for children. Basically, it has to either be incredibly clever or exceptionally executed and preferably it is both. Kids who read poetry for fun do so because they still have a love of language, because they haven't had poetry units that have diluted their joy of words and wordplay. And kids are smart. They can recognize good poetry even if they cannot explain why. So I tend to feel that any children's book that traffics in poetry and rhyme needs to be impeccable.

Messing Around on the Monkey Bars collects original poems intended to be read by two voices, or in some cases groups. Which means these poems are mean to be read aloud. There are instructions at the beginning for how each reader knows when to read – regular and bold for the individual voices, italic bold when both reads speak at the same time. Fairly straightforward. Then come the poems.

When reading poems aloud the reader will quickly come to rely on the cadence of help them. The sound of the words and meter will stand out more than when a reader has the chance to read at their own pace, silently hearing the poems in their head. Out loud, minor flaws and imperfections stand out; worse, they will trip up readers who expect a rhythm that isn't maintained or is inconsistent.

Most of the poems in this collection fail this cadence test. Just to test them out I had my daughters read a couple out loud. Some were okay in the beginning, then tripped them up when there was an off meter or change in the patterns, some didn't work out of the gate. Poems that are expressly meant to be read aloud shouldn't cause the readers to stumble the way these consistently did.

As for content all the poems are limited to the experience of school which I am beginning to suspect is more detrimental than good in children's poetry. Here's what I'm thinking; I'm thinking that when poetry focuses on the school experience then the experience of the reader is that poetry is about school. And if poetry is about school then there is no reason to go exploring poetry outside of school, which makes poetry a school-only activity. This in turn eventually turns off readers to poetry altogether. I also suspect that when the subject defines the poetry, when the poet is confined within the limits of the school experience in this case as Franco is, then the poems themselves suffer from this inability to explore beyond the walls of school. School and poem then become a sort of prison that the reader can feel.

Whew, that's harsh. Okay, there is one poem in this collection that, had the entire book been of this quality, would have made it an instant classic. "Anatomy Class" runs through a list of items found in a classroom pointing out their humanly-named attributes. "The chair has/arms. // The Clock,/a face." and so on. It's clever, the rhythm is just right for both reading silently and aloud, and it doesn't have the faintest whiff of feeling forced. This poem is often featured in reviews, and is reproduced on Amazon (if you're interested) which doesn't surprise me, but might surprise the unwary if they expect the rest of the book to be this good.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

retold and illustrated
by Emanuele Luzzati
Random House 1969

I don't remember when I first heard the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but I'm guessing it was originally from a Fleischer Brothers cartoon. Maybe it was a retelling with Popeye the Sailor. I know it wasn't the only place I heard it, because it was one of those stories that was sort of assumed with popular culture. Everyone knew the story of Ali Baba tricking the thieves out of all their loot, stored in a secret cave opened by the words "Open Sesame!"

But kids today don't know the story, not as far as I can tell. They know Aladdin but certainly not Alāʼ ad-Dīn of the "original" Arabian Nights tales. They might not even know The original Arabian Nights stories, or think Scheherazade (or more properly Shahryar) is a rapper, and there's some question as to whether or not Ali Baba even belongs with the other stories from ancient Persia. Still, some knowledge of these old tales no matter how bowdlerized or maimed would be better than nothing, yes?

Here we have an ancient example, circa the late 1960s, of a loose retelling of the tale. In it we have a lazy Ali Baba cut from the same cloth as Tom Sawyer in that he possesses smarts but would rather lay about. One day, from a secret vantage point, he spies the thieves entering their secret lair and once they've left, Ali avails himself to all their loot. Once home, he proceeds to practically give away the spoils of his adventure until the day the thieves come calling to Ali's town. They figure out he has their trinkets and gold and devise a couple of plans to get their money back.

They are armed cutthroats, why are they even messing around?

Anyway, Ali Baba tricks them and steals away to the life he once had, living carefree and poor.

From a modern day adult vantage point, after surviving the PC wars and all the other cultural baggage of the last 40 years, it is hard not to look at this depiction of Ali as a layabout and wonder if this isn't some form of racism, or cultural insensitivity at the very least. I suppose this happy-go-lucky demeanor offsets the generic evil of the thieves but it seems an unnecessary detail. Perhaps it also softens up the dubious morality of a story where stealing is viewed as okay, so long as you steal from thieves and then give it all away.

Should I cut Luzzati some slack because he was better known as an illustrator? I'm going to have to say no here because the choice to make Ali a sort of lazy trickster character was all in his retelling. He could have made Ali Baba more of a simpleton, but the core of the story is that he outwits the thieves and gets away with it. There are other details, fantastic details, that would have been just as interesting to expand on, if they didn't make the book longer than it is. Like the fact that Ali shows his brother Kassim the cave, where he later returns without Ali only to be hacked to bits. Now, I know that's not exactly picture book friendly but it's no less grim than some Grimm tales, especially when Ali has his brother sewn back together by a town tailor so they can give him a proper burial without making the town suspicious.

That would make for some fun explaining on a parent's part! There's also a slave girl in Kassim's house who helps Ali and who he later marries... this story has it all!

I did pick up the book for reasons other than story – more for the art by Luzzati, which has the thick, dark outlines and bold colors of a stained glass window – but unfortunately even they cannot blind me to the problems of the telling. Luzatti was also part of an animation team and a few years later made a short animated cartoon of this story. There are a number of Luzatti cartoons on YouTube, but unfortunately not Ali Baba. I'd be curious to see how it translated.

In the event that anyone from Random House is out there, if you still own this property you might want to consider having someone use these illustrations as the basis for another author's shot at retelling. Disney has recently been having contemporary writers retell their versions of classic fairy tales using concept art from the movie adaptations, this would be no different. A little more cultural sensitivity, some nicely rephotographed layouts, and I think you have a great little reissue.

I might even know a certain MFA candidate who would be willing to give the story a go. Just let me know.

As a final footnote, what is interesting here is how the term Ali Baba is being used today. According to the keeper of all knowledge, Wikipedia, US military forces in Iraq currently the term Ali Baba as derogatory slang to describe looters. Ironically, Iraqis also use the term for thieves as well. It is perhaps the one thing both sides can agree upon. It would be interesting to know just how much of the original story both sides really knew, or whether they received all their knowledge of Ali Baba from a cartoon or a badly retold picture book.

(I realize the cover shown above is slightly different than the US version. I couldn't get the copy I borrowed to fit on the scanner, and there weren't any other versions available in the Internet.)

Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek

A Tall, Thin Tale
(Introducing His Forgotten Frontier Friend)
by Deborah Hopkinson
picture by John Hendrix
Schwartz & Wade / Random House 2008


If in 2007 a book appeared by a 90 year old author claiming to have been a boyhood friend of JFK, relating an experience where the two as boys nearly drowned in the Charles River of Boston one summer day, where the author saved the young JFK's life and thus played an important role in our nation's history (who would have defeated Nixon in 1960 if JFK weren't even alive?), and there was no one alive who could refute it...

Did it really happen? And would we tell the story as a picture book?

Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek tells a similar story concerning Abraham Lincoln's Kentucky neighbor Austin Gollaher, about how the the two as young boys attempted to cross a creek, and how Austin rescued Lincoln which allowed him to live and, eventually, become our 16th president. The book attempts to tie up this story with the moral that "what we do matters, even if we don't end up in history books."

That's all well and good, but who's to say it happened? Hopkinson sites at the beginning of the book two titles that quote Gollagher from 1898 and 1921 and a third from 1922 that confirms the story, probably taken from the same sources. Given all the biographical scholarship on Lincoln done in the past 90 years it seems odd that more recent references couldn't be cited.

Unless the story couldn't be proven to modern standards.

Here, again, we see another recent example of the "storyography," the biographical recounting that place story before biography and, in this case, the anecdotal above the known. Hopkinson covers her bases by saying "The events described in this story, so far as this author can determine... did, in fact, take place..." Yes, well, short of Lincoln's personal account, or a third party's account, what we have is, as the subtitle indicates, a tall tale concerning a real individual from history. And since it is a tall tale is there really any reason to lend the story a level of legitimacy by pointing out sources? Does the fact that Lincoln is a character require this level of explanation?

And, as always, shouldn't this information be spelled out to the reader in the text and not placed in tiny type on the Library of Congress page intended for adults who won't be as nearly confused about the legitimacy of the story as the intended reader?

Actually, Hopkinson does attempt to alert the reader in the text that the story contains some questionable details. At the point when Lincoln falls into the creek a giant, incongruous caution warning splashes across the illustration announcing "I want to make sure we get this right. Because maybe it didn't happen like that." The narrative then proceeds with an alternative version of the event in question because, as Hopkinson later suggests, "For that's the thing about history – if you weren't there, you can't know for sure."

Ah, I see. Because we were not there, because the source of the story is perhaps an interested party who could profit from the attention of having been the late president's boyhood friend, because no one can say for sure it didn't happen we can proceed to tell this story as if it did.

A book is a powerful thing. It represents the labors of a lot of people – writers and illustrators, editors and publishers and printers – and when presented by adults like parents, librarians, and teachers takes on the weight of authority in a young reader's eyes. They would not have gone through all this trouble if the story weren't true, would they? When a child is handed Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek and reads the text only, do they have any reason to doubt the story happened as described, or at all? Do we teach young readers how and when to question historical events and to vet them for accuracy? No, of course not. They accept what they are given because they trust adults to be honest with them.

That said I do not suggest that Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek should not have been written, and that other books that attempt to tell historical anecdotes from the childhood of historical figures cannot be retold, only that it be clearly and directly related to the reader that such stories might not be factually accurate. There should no question in a reader's mind about the story they have just been told, nor should they confuse that story for history if there is any question.

I have an unusual perspective in this area, having been researching Lincoln's life from the period just after the events in this book. Earlier biographies contain second and third hand accounts of events that do not hold water in biographies written after the 1920s. In fact, I could write a few similar picture books concerning the pre-teen life of Lincoln that, while entertaining, would not be considered accurate by modern Lincoln scholars.

For the past decade we've seen a number of biographical picture books that seem to escape the rigor and expectations we would apply to books intended for older readers. This is a mistake, because (and I think I've said this many times before) that this young age is when we do the most damage in terms of misinformation. Children today STILL have heard the story of Washington chopping down a cherry tree when we now know that the story was a fabrication of Washington's childhood neighbors, told to their children as a morality story, recounted to biographer Parson Weems as gospel truth. It is not true and yet the power of this misinformation still courses through our national psyche.

Accuracy should not suffer at the hands of entertainment, not in the books we present to picture book readers. "What we do matters."

Exactly.

Legacy

by Thomas E. Sniegoski
Delacorte 2009

At the risk of repeating myself, and stating the obvious, I cannot fathom for the life of my why anyone would seek out a superhero novel. Movies have made the idea of superhero stories vogue, and comics have long perfected and delivered the superhero story in an economical and vibrant format, but I am still unconvinced there is any sort of hue and cry for superhero fiction.

Lucus is a high school drop out in a dead-end desert town working the auto shop. His mom works the local diner. They live in a trailer park. After work he drinks himself drunk and sleeps it off.

The day after he miraculously and instantaneously heals from a knife wound inflicted by a local thug Lucas is visited by a mysterious man claiming to be his father. More, this mystery man who needs a cane to walk turns out to be billionaire Clayton Hartwell, and the old man can kick his ass in a fight. Turns out Lucas is his long-lost deadbeat father and...

Wait. I have to pull this joke: "Lucas, I'm your father! Search your feelings and you'll know this to be true!" Love the George Lucas/Luke/Star Wars reference. Really makes me want to take things seriously. Okay, where were we.

Oh yeah, so dad drops in to say (a) he's dying, (b) that he's a famous superhero named The Raptor and (c) that it's Lucas's legacy to take over. Lucas refuses and wants to confront his mom, but the minute she admits that it's true the trailer park is under attack and, after a fiery inferno takes the place down but leaves Lucas unscathed, he finally accepts who he is and is drugged into a deep sleep.

So we get the billionaire crime fighter with a secret identity, a mansion full of high tech gadgets, a flying suit... he's like Ironman and Batman rolled into one. But not just any Batman, but the Dark Knight who must be convinced that Seraph City (seraph = angel, so I'm guessing Los Angeles) is worth saving. Then again, Hartwell is a little like Ironman's Tony Stark who has decided to use his money and access to technology for good, so he's a conflicted Raptor.

Anyway, once Lucas accepts his fate, or legacy, or whatever, dad puts him through rigorous training whith I have to say is a bit sadistic. Seriously sadistic in some cases. Actually, every life-or-death struggle Anakin puts Luke.. er, I mean that Hartwell puts Lucas through is a pass-fail exam where success is measured by not getting killed. In the end Lucas has to decide whether the old man has gone bats, and whether he's going to take over the family businesses, and be the upholder of vigilante justice in the name of a city he never really loved the way his father allegedly did.

Here's where comic books get superhero stories right and novels, especially novels for teens and middle graders, get things wrong. In comics there is usually some crime and action scenes establishing the superhero and maybe a brush of backstory along the way toward catching the bad guys. Once the comic is established, and the readership solidified, they'll take a breather and give the superhero origins story. By then reader interest is piqued and they want to know who this person is and how they got there. But in novels you don't get several (dozen) stories to build a readership before giving the backstory, and as a result the superhero novel always has to begin with the origin, which slows things down, is tedious, and basically isn't why the reader has picked up the book in the first place.

The reader wants action, and battles, and an evil that must be fought, and they don't want a bunch of inner dialog and pondering to get in the way. With Legacy we even get something worse: an entire novel-length origin/rebirth story. This might make a good story ten or so issues in on a comic line, but in novel form it's just deadly. I kept thinking "Okay, once we get past this father-son ordeal we can get into the nature of crime fighting, or the problems of having to sort out the subtleties of good and evil when you're only 18 years old, but no. Just dad torturing son who he keeps threatening with the old "not good enough" guilt trip line.

What surprises overall is that Sniegoski is a comic book writer as well as an author, and I would have expected him to know better than to recycle a bunch of tired tropes and types that are easily identifiable. If the argument that the book is intended for a younger, less-familiar audience then I find that insulting. Sniegoski is also the creator of the Billy Hooton, Owlboy series aimed at a middle grade audience, another title that suffers from this misguided notion that kids go into bookstores asking for books about superheroes they've never heard of. Newsflash from a former bookseller: they don't! Not only that, the boys who do mention superheroes as an interest are looking for comics and give booksellers the stink-eye if you pull one of these titles on them.

Given the lead time on books I'm going to be optimistic and hope this is just one of the last entries in the superhero bandwagon that publishers jumped on a few years back. Yeah, that's it. Once the economy tanked and they looked at sales they realized that there's just no way Barnes & Noble is going to install a Superhero section in their stores and have stopped accepting new superhero manuscripts. Probably one or two more like this and the "genre" will be officially dead.

Lets hope.

When It Rains.. It Rains

by Bill Martin, Jr.
with pictures by Emanuele Luzzati
Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1970

Much like last week's Martin/Luzzati collaboration, When It Rains.. It Rains is another small book that deals with repetition and familiarity to hold a young reader's attention. It didn't occur to me before, but these small books with their childlike illustrations and simple texts were precursors to the board books of today.

Here the pattern is established in the title. Each spread deals with a different type of meteorological event like rain, snow, and fog before moving into the emotional territory of age and temper. There is more of an attempt to bring in images of non-white children which speaks to its age, though their representation tends toward the Small World variety of stereotypes: a white-turbaned Indian boy beneath a palm tree in the heat, a Mexican boy in a sombrero and blanket poncho. Nothing too egregeous for the modern age, but as with Whistle, Mary Whistle, probably enough to keep it from ever being reprinted.

But, again, my draw to these books was the illustration. The pictures contain the same innocent qualities of another Martin collaborator, Eric Carle, with a warm use of vibrant color. Luzzati, along with Nicolas Sidjakov, The Provensens, Mary Blair, and M. Sasek all have that mid-century modern look illustrators had that I'm just a sucker for. Inky outlines and loose crayon against solid blocks of color. There are a few modern practitioners (who might be surprised to be considered part of this group) like David Ezra Stein and... well, now I'm drawing a blank. I think Jeremy Tankard is doing some great work in digital that is along the same lines in terms of boldness of color and naivete of spirit. And there is an artist I've been following since she was a student in animation school (on her blog, I'm no stalker!) named Lorelay Bove who has landed a job illustrating Disney's newest Golden Books and whose work reminds me so much of Mary Blair.

What was I saying? Oh yeah.

Taking a couple more looks at this it slides in nicely alongside Bill Martin's other books. No more and no less sophisticated than Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and its ilk.

DWEEB

Burgers, Beasts, and Brainwashed Bullies
by Aaron Starmer
Delacorte 2009

Denton, Wendell, Eddie, Elijah, and Bijay have been framed for a theft they never committed by Vice Principal Snodgrass. Rather than turn them over to the police with mountains of manufactured evidence the boys agree to follow Snodgrass into the basement of Ho-Ho-Kus Junior High where they are to study for the Idaho Exams. A more unlikely bunch of misfits could not be assembled, yet they realize that the only way out of this nightmare is to figure out what is going. Quickly they learn that above ground things have changed radically and realize that there is something darker afoot. With skills that would rival a Bond film, and action only a TV hero could achieve, our dudes will win the day and save the world from a fate they could never have imagined.

Starmer's debut carefully spring-winds the plot with the opening chapters by focusing on each of the boys. When they are taken to the basement and shut out from the world there is a palpable sense that they have been not only cut off from the world but from any hope of ever understanding how they got there. By following a different boy with each chapter Starmer is able to spend some time on each of the characters while propelling the story forward, a tricky and mostly successful endeavor. At times it can be difficult to follow the timing of the actions, and sticking with one character while plans and actions take place "off stage" feels a little like cheating at times.

But middle grade readers won't care. The story moves at the pace of a cartoon and the actions are relatively believable. One of these days the video gamer won't be able to hack into any computer system, and the kids won't all be smarter than the adults, and the world won't be saved at the last moment by an unruly bunch of boys. And that book will be a masterpiece all for the originality. Until then, readers who harbor fantasies that school administrators have the power to rule the world and that jocks are the ultimate bullies will eat up fantasies like this with a spoon. Double helpings, if you please.

Harry and Horsie

by Katie Van Camp
pictures by Lincoln Agnew
Balzer+Bray / HarperCollins 2009

Here we have the promise of some truly bold retro graphics marred by a weak text with the faint whiff of celebrity, second-hand by-association celebrity at that.

Late at night, while she should be sleeping, Harry sneaks out of bed and grabs his Bubble Blooper down, a 50s space gun that shoots large bloopy bubbles. The bubble are large an sturdy enough to pick up toys from Harry's room and send them airborne. But when a bubble takes Harry's stuffed Horsie it's superhero Harry on his rocket into deep space for a rescue.

The star here isn't Harry but the art, that look like a cross between block prints four-color offset comics. Seriously, if I could, there are a few pages in here I'd love to own prints of and have framed. They certainly don't suffer from a lack of 264 digital color process, with bold blue-black outlines and deft use of spot color.

The story? Eh.

Van Camp holds the distinction of being the former nanny of a boy named Harry who really does have a Horsie and happens to be the son of Late Night impresario David Letterman. Yeah, that's the second-hand celebrity connection. The story itself is fairly light – typical hero-to-the-rescue night-journey stuff – with no real peril, no real growth involved. It isn't necessarily a bad story, but the art is much stronger that the text and that only highlights the disparity.

Whistle, Mary, Whistle

an old jingle adapted by
Bill Martin, Jr.
with pictures by
Emanuele Luzzati
and handlettering by
Ray Barber
Holt Rinehart, and Winston 1970

Yes, as a matter of fact, there are some books I do read for the pictures.

One of the lasting after effects of wanting to grow up an be an animator is that I still keep an eye open for blogs and news about cartoons and animation, especially from the pre-digital era. It's also no secret that I hold a fondness for mid-century modern illustration, and anything else that feels like my childhood. So when these things all come together in one place, or in this case a book, my curiosity is piqued.

Emanuele Luzzati was an illustrator, animator and graphic artist whose work has a very familiar look that carried a lose, childlike feel to it. When coupled with Bill Martin Jr. in a small picture book the hook is irresistible. But what we land when the hook is reeled in is a bit odd to these adult eyes.

"Whistle, Mary, whistle, / And you shall have a..." is the text on the verso page, with the last word being an object promised to Mary id she will whistle. On the recto Mary offers up her reason why she cannot whistle, surly a made-up excuse, which always rhymes with the first part of the verse. It's a fairly typical call-and-response sort of text whose repetition takes on the sing-song qualities of a playground rhyme or an old folk song.

But the punchline is that the thing that makes Mary whistle.

"Whistle, Mary, whistle,
and you shall have a man."

Tweet, tweeet, tweeeet, tweeeeeeeet, tweeeeet,
I just found out I can."

Uh, yeah.

This was 1970? Was this Bill Martin holding on to the traditional verse, or Bill Martin holding onto Victorian ideals in an age of budding feminism? Obviously this book would not pass muster today, and I don't believe it's been in print since originally published.

Visually, Luzzati's work had a playful joy to it that I would still like to see in books today; it's loose, playful, and childlike in a way that is inviting to young children. I find many books today with computer generated images have fine texts but are otherwise cold and sterile. The inclusion of hand-drawn letters (and a title page credit) is something I think would be welcome over the font choices made today. Even when alternative fonts are used today they too often feel like the office temp making posters for the employee kitchen using Microsoft Word. Cold images, cold fonts... reading should be a warm and inviting experience. If this makes me sound like a crusty old man, so be it.

The Devil's Storybook

by Natalie Babbitt
FSG 1974

Ten little short story gems concerning the Devil himself and his inability to corrupt good souls or fully control bad ones.

I stumbled onto this (as with many older titles these days) in an sales alcove at my local library. Discarded, withdrawn, and donated books are in constant rotation, and with prices between twenty-five cents and a dollar it's impossible to resist. I'm always so surprised when I stumble on a title I haven't come across before, or an author I recognize but not the book in question. Just another one of those reminders about how much is out there to discover, how there will always be hidden gems to be mined with careful eyes.

These stories fit a type of tale that I know there is a name for, but can't quite recall. In each, Old Scratch has decided to adopt a disguise to trick the unsuspecting into performing an act of evil, or has co-opted the innate evil of certain individuals for his own purposes. His ruses never work, and his plans always fail, which is as it should be.

But what a delight to see such a classic form of evil as the main character in a collection. On the one hand it seems novel to take a character who is usually an antagonist and make them the butt of every joke, but then the devil always gets his due just as if he had once again been outwitted in someone else's story.

Rarely do I find story collections so even that it's hard to pick a favorite, but the one that stays most with me is the last story "The Power of Speech." In it, the Devil has a fondness for goats, and one goat in particular, but the goat is wearing a bell and this is somehow like garlic to a vampire (who knew?). The goat's owner is no dummy and will not remove the bell, so the Devil grant the goat the power to speak. What a mistake that is! A more whiny, grumpy, cantankerous goat you'd never heard! Realizing what a pain this new talking goat is she decides to remove the bell and send him on to the Devil. Once in Hell, the goats incessant chatter drives the Devil crazy, and while he is able to grant the power of speech he cannot remove it. Finally he turns the live goat into a stuffed one and returns him to his previous owner.

Babbitt writes with the breezy charm and economy that mirrors classic folk tales (and who know, perhaps these are folk tales I'm unaware of) and there's something secretly delicious in wondering if Satan's really going to finally have something go his way. They read like a cross between something Carl Sandburg might have cooked up if he were reinterpreting some Grimm tales. The characters are vivid, well drawn in such little space, and the stories feel much more full then their page counts would have you believe.

When I finished this book I thought my 11 year old would like the stories. "Oh, yeah, I already read those. They're good. I think there's a second book of Devil stories as well." Turns out she's right, there is. I had the wind taken from my sails that I couldn't spring a new-old title on her, but at least I was correct in thinking she'd enjoy it.

The Eternal Smile

by Gene Luen Yang & Derek Kirk Kim
First Second 2009

This graphic omnibus collects three shorter illustrated stories that are bound by the common thread of illusions that people tell themselves to survive.

The first story, "Duncan's Kingdom," at first seems to be a fairy tale fantasy, a dark Grimm-like tale where two men are to battle the Frog King to win the princess. The twist comes when Duncan comes to realize that the sage who has been guiding him is also protecting him from a secret that reveals his true self. The choice forces Duncan to decide whether to remain trapped in his fantasy or to face the cold, hard reality he has been avoiding.

"Gran'pa Greenback and the Eternal Smile" begins as a parody of the old Disney Scrooge McDuck comics where greed is good and celebrated until a mysterious smile appears in the sky. Greenback decides to take advantage of the apparition and establish a cynical religion designed to fleece believers until a competitor sets up camp offering something a little closer to faith. The twist here is that the world of Gran'pa Greenback is actually a television program that built a Disney-like empire by employing animals with digital implants designed to make them perform. Another opportunity for choice, this time for the frog forced to perform: can he escape his fate and return to a normal life in the pond?

In "Urgent Request" we find Janet, a lonely computer programmer who is so desperate for contact that she responds to an email request from an unknown Nigerian prince to send him funds to help him preserve the fortune he is about to lose - the Nigerian scam that frequents many an email inbox. Mousy shy but otherwise intelligent, Janet gets sucked in deeper and deeper until her bank account is drained. When she insists on a face-to-face meeting with the "prince," and then hunts him down, she finds a college student using the scam to fund a questionable online venture he's dreamed up. Janet's choice is what she will do from here out, and the impression is that she'll start standing up for herself.

The theme that everyone has a choice to make between fantasy worlds and facing reality might be novel for less experienced readers and could provide some "teachable moments" with compare-and-contrast discussions. As I have read in other reviews, I found none of the plot twists surprising, nor where their outcomes difficult to guess. Taken together this collection would make for a good starting point for middle grade and YA readers who might suspect that all comics are superhero and that graphic novels have nothing to offer them. Nowhere near as engaging as Yang's American Born Chinese or Kim's Good As Lily, but still entertaining.

Andromeda Klein

by Frank Portman
Delacorte Press 2009

Tedious. That's the first word that comes to mine when thinking about the title character to Frank Portman's follow-up to King Dork. And self-absorbed and self-important. Unfunny and uncharming. Manic, but not in a pixie dream girl sort of way. Did I say tedious?

At the core of this book is a teen girl who views the world through a prism of tarot and dark magic. When she loses her best friend and partner in magic, Daisy, and her boyfriend in the same week she is convinced the universe is sending her messages. More specifically, Daisy is sending her messages from the great beyond via her cell phone. It's a puzzle – what is Daisy trying to tell her? – that only the most egocentric of people would assign magical properties to. Steeped as deeply as she is in the teas of the occult, there isn't a moment that doesn't in some way echo back with acridity to Waite or Crowley or her tarot misreadings. There are numerical coincidences, and concordances with books in the library in which Andromeda works, but in the end the Great Mystery from the great beyond is little more than a prank that may have once had altruistic origins but has sense gone off the rails.

Portman's portrayal of Andromeda reads like an avatar for his own dissemination of arcane knowledge more than an enriched character portrait. Andromeda suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease that causes her bones including those in her ears to be fragile, allowing her to mishear conversations right and left. This coupled with her constant analysis and regurgitation of the arcane reduces the storytelling to a lurching train of words coupled, at times, to mind-numbing lengths. Portman's third-person narrator slips conveniently (or sloppily, depending on your read) between a distant observer and a voice so close it might just as well be Andromeda's subconscious. There are writers out there who could make this work, and to great effect, showing the reader how messed up Andromeda is in a way that would make us sympathetic. Portman isn't that skilled and the result is a bit of a slog to read.

With a story so deeply invested in various rituals and magik you would hope that the journey through its 400-plus pages would reveal something quiet and reaffirming about the confluences of life's various streams. Instead we find Andromeda the butt of a joke so base that police action is inevitable, but not shown, rendering the intricacies of following the girl's journey virtually worthless. The biggest cop-out comes in not following through on the aftermath, which would have been far more interesting than a good chunk of this book's flabby middle.

Nope, sorry. It's been a while since I had a book make me regret the time I spent with it.

The Day-Glo Brothers

The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand New Colors
by Chris Barton
illustrated by Tony Persiani

The picture book biography of the two brothers who developed, by accident mostly, the process by which hippies were able to enjoy black light posters and the military was able to signal aircraft from great distances. Okay, that's a bit flip, but while the subject is unique what is more fascinating is that, as far as I can tell, this is the first biography on the Switzer brothers outside of a self-published book written by a Swtizer family friend. I am hard-pressed to think of one other biography written specifically for a picture book audience that wasn't based on secondary source material; Barton's book reflects his own primary research.

Not realizing that at the start I found myself feeling like the narrative was missing some details about the brother's early lives. But, of course, if the only way to tell the story is by interviewing the Swtizer's living relatives and colleagues then of course background is going to be limited. We know how they came to discover and then develop their daylight fluorescent paints but was it really just as simple as picking up some books at the library and playing around in the basement? Wasn't anyone else working on something similar somewhere else in the world? Had the military never considered developing something similar prior to the Day-Glo brothers? My curiosity is piqued with Barton's book, but unlike other biographies I have nowhere else to go for such answers without doing the research, and possibly writing my own book.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great book on a fascinating subject that I think would have a lot of appeal, especially for boys. And I know the limitations of a picture book might be part of the problem here, but I'm left wanting more. In a good way.

Owen

by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow Books 1993

Here we have another one of those picture books that on its surface appears to be about one thing but has a truly odd undertone running through it.

The issue at hand appears to be another version of childhood separation anxiety, this time with a baby blanket. Owen is on the eve of entering school and it is time for him to put away the blanket he has loved since he was born. But how to separate Owen from his Fuzzy is a delicate issue, and no matter how much they try nothing seems to convince Owen that it's time to give up his friend. In the end his mother comes up with a solution where Owen can have his fuzzy with him at all times... by converting his blanket into a dozen smaller handkerchiefs.

Well, that's all very nice, but there's an odd catalyst in this book in the form of a nosy neighbor named Mrs. Tweezers. She's there on page one looking over the fence at a happy Owen playing with Fuzzy, with a glance that can be viewed as either concerned or disapproving. A few pages later when she reappears we know which look it was when she says "Isn't he a little old to be carrying that thing around?" And with this illustration the faces of Owen's parents register concern. A concern they never had before. A concern that suggests perhaps they might be bad parents for not addressing the issue sooner.

Mrs. Tweezers suggests the Blanket Fairy, a ruse designed to help separate Owen from his blanket through trickery. But Owen's attachment to his blanket allows him to unwittingly outwit his parents by hiding the blanket. When he tells his parents the fairy didn't come they attempt to shame him for it by suggesting that Fuzzy's torn, dirty, rattiness are the cause.

Fuzzy continues to accompany Owen until Mrs. Tweezers once again leans over the fence and meddle in her neighbors affairs. "Haven't you heard of the vinegar trick?" And once again Owen's worried, concerned parents feel neglectful for not having heard how to properly raise their son. When dipping Fuzzy into vinegar doesn't work Mrs. Tweezers once again meddles, this time making it personal.

"Haven't you heard of saying no?"

Saying no, without an explanation or any attempt to reason with Owen, has the expected outcome of creating a greater anxiety in Owen. This is when Owen's mother suddenly has the brilliant idea to turn the blanket into handkerchiefs. And in the end, Mrs. Tweezers approves with a wave of her own hankie.

What a horrible message. Listen to your meddling neighbors tell you how to raise your child? Get your child to conform to someone else's expectations? If you can't separate your child from their security blanket through trickery simply say "because I say so" and leave it at that? What really irks me about the Caldecott Honor book is that it seems to send the subtle message that conformity begins in the home, and only bad parents don't know or realize this.

I think we all want to raise children right, however we define "right," but not at the suggestion of a neighbor (who, despite being married, shows no sign of having raised any kids herself). Blanket issues are huge, and I can see the value in a book that deals with them openly, humorously, but not like this. Owen is never told why he cannot bring a blanket to school, never fully prepared for the separation, and seems too ready to accept his blanket begin cut where most kids even resist allowing it to be washed, much less cut.

And all of this is for what? Mrs. Tweezer's approval? She's there on the first and the last page, so clearly she is as important as Owen. So pay attention, children! Your nosy neighbor is a force to be reckoned with. She can manipulate your parents and get them to raise you according to her standards. And without her approval who knows what might happen. She and her chicken-legged house might carry you off to the forest and...

Sorry, got a little carried away there.

Are You a Horse?

by Andy Rash
Arthur Levine / Scholastic
2009

Our in the old West, cowboy Roy receives a new saddle as a birthday present. "What is this thing?" Roy asks, and he's instructed to 1. Find a horse and 2. Enjoy the ride. Roy is one clueless cowboy to not recognize a saddle, and he continues his clueless way through the picture book asking every animal, vegetable, and mineral he sees if they are horse. The absurdity is compounded by the impossible (a crab? a sloth? a zebra?) until Roy finds what he's looking for. With a final page turn readers are given the twist that is a natural combination of Roy's cluelessness and the reader's natural assumptions.

Are You a Horse? is saved in that final page turn. Up until then it has meandered its way across the pages like an updated version of Are You My Mother? and despite reinforcement on every page that Roy is as dense as black hole the reader is never clued in that Roy's instructions aren't specific enough. I seriously almost wrote this book off as derivative and unfunny until that last page, and then recognized the rewards of seeing a book through to the end (hey, it's only a picture book, no need to abandon it) and chuckled (sort of) at my own blind spot.

Having watched new readers page through picture books it would be easy for them to skip along and think they know what's happening without actually reading it first (on their own, kids will often read a book's pictures first, then go back and read the text) and on the visual level the story works just as well. Where most pages are full-bleed illustrations, the page with the sloth is drawn out across the spread in a series of panels that slow the visual reader down to appreciate the sloth's slow response.

My one lingering question – and this is mostly a personal question and nothing to fault the book necessarily – is how and why cowboys endure as lasting icons of the imagination. It's an era full of images that seem isolated from the rest of the world, almost like a fantasy world or the fanciful imagining of a pirate's life. Growing up, I remember thinking that the whole world went through an Old West phase, that somehow people went from dark suits and stove-top hats of Lincoln's day, to wearing chaps, then back to suits in the same way that the disco era's polyester leisure suits briefly supplanted traditional sartorial styles on either side.

But what is it about this particular era in American history that fascinates so? Why don't we see picture books set in, say, the Jazz Age or even the beloved Disco Days? What makes the West so special, what sets it apart and gives it appeal? Is it simply that so much of its imagery is iconic? The hats and the boots, the cactus and the unspoiled prairies? But then, couldn't we convey similar messages set during the Flower Power days with long hair and bare feet and psychedelia?

Sometimes I wonder whether these icons and images persist because we keep feeding them to children, or whether there's something larger that children would be drawn to without the extra reinforcement.

Getting the Girl

by Marcus Zusak
Arthur Levine / Scholastic 2003

Cameron is a multiple anomaly in the world of teen fiction about boys. He's sensitive, quiet, sweet, poetic, searching, and longs for a girl beyond his reach. I take that back, Cameron reads like the cliche of a sensitive teen boy caught in the shadow of his older brothers and the rough-and-tumble streets of his working class neighborhood. As Cameron drifts along from scene to scene, it is quickly clear that what he longs for and deserves he will get, and the title confirms the inevitable.

So the question is, if we learn all this quickly going in, what's to hold us long enough to care?

Zusak's language. But just barely.

The only way Zusak can pull this off is by having a main character insightful and erudite enough to convey what would be beyond the scope of most teens his age. He presents himself as awkward, but it's the shambling awkward of a teen who hasn't realized he's a king in disguise. The reader sees (and is supposed to) that Cameron is worthy of so much more than his current station in life, and all he really wants is Octavia, the one girl his older brother Ruben has cast aside (as he is wont to do every couple of weeks). But like a pauper sage, Cameron must spend time living the horrible doubt of an artist, looking at his working class dead-end family and wondering if he's good enough for something more.

All along the way we see Cameron's poetic notes that he takes, an attempt to capture an emotional photograph of each transition as he experiences it. His father lives for the gruntwork of plumbing, his brother for occasional fight that has made him top of the trash heap, his sister the secretive photographer who may be his spiritual equal, and through it all Cameron serves as Frederick, Leo Leoni's picture book mouse whose gifts only bloom in the dead of an emotional winter, when it may be that he's lost the girl for good. The old Yiddish expression is that sometimes people need a story more than food; for Cameron, his words are food that keep his soul alive.

And the metaphors. I have author Varian Johnson to thank for pointing these out at a recent lecture at VCFA. Water, water, everywhere, and Cameron is there to swim in it, drown in it, ebb and flow with it. But the water is Zusak's/Cameron's metaphor for his desire, his lust, his longing and hopes. Octavia is the ocean he longs to swim in, to touch and be consumed by. It is compelling because Zusak manages to keep making references to water without downing the reader in the obvious. The metaphor is clearly Cameron's, and its in these moments that Zusak succeeds.

But when a book so clearly telegraphs its message early on and shows no hint at veering off track, then both me and the teenage boy inside me begin to get antsy. The pacing is so deliberate that it frustrates, and Cameron's poetic notes verge on the precious. With few scenes and sparse-but-poetic handling this book's 250 pages could be cut in half and not miss a thing. The first-person narration so eloquent in its observations they make actual prose-poems in Cameron's hand inserted between the chapters redundant. There is a perfect novella – the size and shape of which would attract more boy readers – trapped in this conventional-length novel, one I would have been hard-pressed to find fault with. But as is the story drags, the inevitable seems less a prize for having been held at arms-length for far too long.

The Hating Book

by Charlotte Zolotow
pictures by Ben Shecter
HarperCollins 1969

Another book that has the familiarity of being from my childhood, though I'm not really certain I actually did read this before. It feels familiar, which is to say that it taps the same areas of nostalgia that other books from the late 60s and early 70s leave me feeling.

I hate hate hated my friend.

The book opens with this line, and clearly this hate will be examined and ultimately resolved. The girl who utters this statement feels she has been and is repeatedly snubbed be hr best friend and cites a number of examples of proof. Her mother suggests early on that she ask her best friend what the problem is, but the girl simply comes up with a bunch of probable reasons that reinforce her negative thinking. In the end she finally does ask and her friend mirrors her feelings, that their mutual hate was borne of mutual misunderstanding.

The feelings are natural and well-centered in a child's mindset, and the resolution is fine, I only wish that the solution hadn't been fed to the girl by her mother. That the mother makes the suggestion at the beginning is fine, but she repeats the suggestion twice more (the rule of threes) and so finally she does it. So we go from hate-hate-hate to sudden recognition of misunderstanding with little reason or understanding in the transition. And while children do suddenly change and shift allegiances and friendships there is little sense of a lesson learned in the process. Perhaps this book can provide an avenue for that reflection.

The book is very reminiscent of the the Janice Udry and Maurice Sendak book Let's be Enemies which I think might be the better of the two in dealing with the idea of children processing negative emotions. They both come from the same decade, the golden age of the 1960s, and make for a nice matched set of boys and girls dealing with gender-based relationships.

Fariste

An Explosively Funny, Mostly True Story
by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer
illustrated by Boris Kulikov
Simon & Schuster 2008

I had such great hopes for this story, but in the end the book fails me due to a pair of fatal miscalculations.

The story of the Joseph Pujol, known also as Le Petomane, is a natural for kids though perhaps mostly boys. we are talking about a man whose notoriety and (yes) fame came from his ability to control his lower abdominal muscles in such a way that she could produce, on demand, posterior winds to such effect that he could "whistle" tunes and perform feats of skill.

The man could fart. On command, with precisions, and with such control as to be able to play recognizable tunes. And he did it on stage for paying customers.

This alone is enough to attract a readership, and Pujol's story is a fascinating one to tell, which is why it is odd that the authors decided the book needed to be told in rhyme. This is it's first great mistake, because in choosing to make the story fit its rhyme scheme detracts from the impact. When Pujol makes his way to the stage of the Moulin Rouge for his debut we get this set of verses:

Up on the stage was this tall dashing guy–
Long red coat with tails, white shirt and a tie.
His black satin pants had a very strange shape,
With a hole in the back for the air to escape.

Solemn and calm, not a sign of stage fright,
Joe fired off noises most impolite
Announcing a sound, with a face oh so serious,
Performing it straightaway – Mysterious! Delirious!

Somewhat clever, if flawed, the verse sells the audience short by falling back on rhyme to make an already interesting story seem more interesting. Its as if the authors were afraid that telling the story seriously would somehow turn away an audience. Comedy is a very serious business, and this act is a novelty that is all the more funny for the seriousness with which it was presented to people – on a stage, in front of the well-dressed, treated as a true talent – loses its humor to cloying rhymes.

The second miscalculation comes in the end notes. Now typical of picture book biographies, the authors give a full accounting of Pujol's life as a way of perhaps legitimizing the story they have just presented. The problem here is that the straightforward narrative is far more interesting than the book's actual text. It would have been a much better book, to my thinking, to have illustrated the details in the end notes that were left out of the story. The origin of his nickname, for example, or the true story about how he discovered his talents rather than the oblique and slightly deceptive version that opens the book.

Both miscalculations I think condescend and it is unfortunate because otherwise I think this could have been a great book. It's a natural (or unnatural as the case may be) subject of interest for readers and sad to see it treated so poorly.

Don't Forget to Come Back

by Robie H. Harris
pictures by Harry Bliss
Candlewick 2004

Okay, this book sort of freaked me out.

First, this is one of those books that gets shelved with the "other issues" books that parents use as object lessons they'd rather not teach themselves. You know, rather than talk to kids about how to deal with bullies or first-day-of-school or other traumas of modern childhood, parents sit their kids down with a book and say "Here, read this." Only here we're talking about the separation anxiety that comes from parents going for a night out and leaving the child alone with a sitter.

But it's more specific than that. It's about the anxiety of a single child who has no sibling to rely upon for comfort and otherwise might be a bit more demanding of parental affection or attention. It's also a child whose parents can afford to go to the theater (as witnessed by the Playbill on the kitchen table) and have framed paintings on the wall. It appears, to me, the anxiety of privilege.

I think what freaks me out is that the child is alternately too young or too old to manifest all the behavior shifts included. It's a sort of Kubler-Ross collection of stages of anxiety as their little "Pumpkin" tries to prevent her parents from leaving for the evening. There's anger, guilt-tripping, bargaining, denial, depression, and finally acceptance as the sitter turns out to be permissively silly. It isn't that kids don't run through different emotions when their parents are taking a night out, it's that more often they are less rational than Pumpkin, and there is no realistic depiction of the type of true meltdown that kids go through before entering into the more "mature" phases of bargaining.

While I can see the point and purpose of showing picture book readers that it's perfectly alright to feel anxious about their parents leaving them, the fact that the book's illustrations feel more representative of the white, upper-class experience rather than a more middle-class parents-struggling-for-a-single-night-out-once-every-couple-months-before-they-go-crazy that would typically arouse such behavior.

(pauses to take a breath after that last sentence.)

Also, though Pumpkin survives the ordeal and is pleased the next morning to find that her parents didn't forget to come home, her feelings aren't addressed directly. Her parents seem very blase about her threats and promises to the point where I imagine it comes from familiarity. They have dealt with Pumpkin's little tantrums and emotional blackmail before and are immune, but then how does that help the reader to see such detached parents in the face of such anxieties? Is the reader supposed to say "Gee, she's acting silly!" and then turn that around and say "You know, I've been a bit ridiculous myself of late, perhaps I ought change?"

Perhaps there is something else at work here, something else that irks and makes me uncomfortable. it may have something to do with the idea of the picture book as so heavy a "message book" that it takes the fun away from reading. Which is not to say that books cannot or should not include valuable lessons or messages for the reader to take away, but that there is a line where message overtakes the story. There is a difference between eating something healthy and eating something that's supposed to be good for you; one you do and reap the benefits, the other you do begrudgingly because it's the right thing to do whether or not you like it. A book with message over story feels a little like that to me, and less like reading for pleasure.

The Girls' Guide to Rocking

How to Start a Band, Book Gigs, and Get Rolling to Rock Stardom
by Jessica Harper
Workman Publishing 2009

I'm really torn over this book. On the one hand, this book is a perfect tonic for all those girls (like the author) who were told or felt that the world of Rock & Roll and all it has to offer is a secret club populated by boys who insist that "Stairway to Heaven" is be-all, end-all in rock. To every girl told that their hands are too small to play bass, or that girl drummers aren't powerful enough, or that girls just don't know how to rock, this books sets out not only to dispel these notions but serves as a how-to guide for overcoming all obstacles. Grrl Power! Rawk out!

On the other hand, if I saw a book like this directed to boys I would worry about the viability of Rock & Roll as having any relevance in the world. It's not necessarily a gender thing but a recognition that a particular era in popular music had reached a point where it can be sanitized and taught to tweens and teens in the same way one might package a book on puberty or hygiene or on dealing with peer pressure. It takes some of the spirit out of rock's rebellious nature to say "Here, a step-by-step guide on how to be a rebel! Urgh!"

Hopper gets off on the right foot by focusing on the instruments, with clear nuts-and-bolts information on everything from how to shop for gear to how to achieve specific sounds from the classic instruments. There's a nod to playing what you know, meaning that any instrument (except perhaps the tuba) can rock, and that a good part of what's involved is attitude and experience. It isn't written down in an insulting way, just straightforward here's-what-you-need-to-know-to-get-started.

The next sections cover putting a band together and learning how to gig, how to move on to recording songs, the basics of playing live, and the business end of things including how to book tours. The appendices include a list of influential artists of both genders, movies centered around music, and some basics for using GarageBand software. It's a well-rounded package that could yield some decent results if taken to heart.

My hesitation is two-fold. First, there's no way for me, as an adult male, to actually follow this book and gauge its success. Second, a good deal of what makes Rock & Roll is the drive and desire that cannot be taught. And worse, in today's climate where over-produced, flaccid American Idol-style pop rules the airwaves, when a package deal like Hannah Montana is a role model for girls, it's difficult to believe there are many book-reading girls who might be driven to start something as quaint (they might say 'antiquated') as a Rock band. Besides, why go through all the trouble to pay for equipment and lessons, taking the time to form a band and struggle with that dynamic, spending years to stand in front of an audience to rock out badly when all you need to do is invite a few friends over and have them watch you flail on RockBand? Why spend months, maybe years, learning how to play classic rock at someone's backyard party when you can wail within minutes?

Still, as I remain conflicted, The Girls' Guide to Rocking does provide a solid foundation in the fundamentals and includes a lot of inspirational sidebars about the women of rock who have made their mark over the past 40-plus years. For some girls it might just be the sort of eye-opening they never realized they needed to see beyond the commercially-produced haze of contemporary music.

Lunch Lady

...and the Cyborg Substitute
...and the League of Librarians
written and illustrated by Jarret J. Krosoczka
Alfred A. Knopf 2009

There's evil afoot, and Lunch Lady is there with her trusty hair-netted sidekick Betty to thwart it. Whether its a league of librarians who plan to intercept all the new video game consoles coming in fresh off he boat, or the mild-mannered teacher who created a robot army to replace the other teachers so he can become Teacher of the Year, Lunch Lady and her never-ending arsenal of modified food service devices will be there to save the day.

These graphic novels aimed at the emerging reader has just enough story to keep them moving along and plenty of action to retain the attention of the fussiest readers, but little else. They have a look and feel reminiscent of the the Babymouse series, though they lack that series more rounded characters. The trio of kids - the Breakfast Bunch - are convenient shells for explaining story elements and become useful only when they fall into danger. Lunch Lady (and Betty) should be the focus and we should know more about what makes them tick.

Similarly, this series also makes a play for the Captain Underpants crowd with the wackiness of superheros but are neither as clever in their humor or as gross as they could be. We are talking about cafeteria food here, a prime area for exploration, and it feels little like an opportunity lost that crime if fought only with the utensils. Also, superheroes have backstories that explain and infuse character. Captain Underpants himself is funny because of how he becomes who he is, but with Lunch Lady the reader is supposed to accept her antics simply by virtue of lunch ladies being somewhat off.

I appreciate the idea of producing more long-form comics for this age group but I feel that with kids a certain standard has to be met. I'm not suggesting that the stories can't be fun and frivolous, but that they be delivered with the same expectations that would fall to a work of fiction aimed at the same level. What makes Captain Underpants work with readers isn't that it has underpants in the title, it's that the characters are distinctly drawn, the text is clever and funny, and the story would be almost as funny without illustrations. There's a whole load of possibility in the concept of a superhero Lunch Lady but it's all lost on just-in-time gadgets and one-dimensional characters.

I found that the moment I closed the book I had forgotten most of its story. The same thing happened on rereading them. There is so little to latch onto that they are as immediately forgotten as the empty calories of a celery stalk.

To steal from Douglas Adams: relatively harmless.

Mudshark

by Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books / Random House
2009

Is it me, or does Gary Paulsen seem to be ripping through a very fertile period? These past few years he's released, it seems, two or three books a year and they always slip in under the radar where I find out about them by accident.

I was actually trying to remember the title of a book of his I read and liked and came across this as I was scanning the shelves. Being in the mood for a light read, and with a promising flap summary, I took the bait.

Lyle Williams is Mudshark, a kid we are told is cool. Cool not so much because he is hip but because his demeanor is calm and detached. When things go missing or problems need to be solved everyone – including adults at school – know to go to Mudshark. So notorious that the day someone tags his locker with a sign proclaiming the Mudshark Detective Agency he simply smiles in acknowledgment.

Small problems plaque Mudshark's fellow students - misplaced gym shoes and lost homework folders - but with his keen eye and memory he is able to resolve cases quickly. Larger problems loom as chalkboard erasers go missing, foul odors come from the faculty lounge, and a gerbil has escaped is cage and at large. Complicating matters is a new school pet, a parrot, who appears to possess a psychic ability that threatens Mudshark's place as the school mystery solver. In the end, Mudshark must debunk the parrot, find the missing erasers, and tie up every other mystery in order to retain his title, and his cool factor.

Paulsen's pacing is odd. The book seems to meander for the first 38 pages (out of 83) as he sets up all the bits and pieces that will eventually come together in the end. They almost read like vignettes, and yet when the story finally kicks in there isn't a sense that everything actually is tied together, or that it ever will. It isn't that Paulsen is being crafty, its this feeling that none of it matters. The only clear conflict is that Mudshark is going to be replaced by a parrot, and solving that mystery almost gets lost in the shuffle.

The mystery to me is why people aren't more upset with Mudshark for his abilities. He is able to find lost items and answer mysteries only because he witnesses them. Which begs the question: if you see a kid drop his homework folder, why not tell him he dropped it? Why wait until he realizes its missing and then play at being a detective when really all you're doing is withholding information until it makes you look good? To that end Mudshark isn't cool, he's manipulative and his powers rely entirely on luck, not skill.

Withholding information is key, because Paulsen does that as well. The mysteries presented cannot be solved by the reader (or at least by a smart reader) they can only be solved when Paulsen/Mudshark explain them. Setting up all these careful mysteries at the beginning leaves the reader hoping there's a great puzzle to be solved, but then before clues can be revealed the mystery is solved. Highly unsatisfying.

Paulsen does write with a breezy clarity that makes him a first choice for reluctant boy readers, but this wouldn't be one of my first choices.

Bobby Vs. Girls (Accidentally)

by Lisa Yee
illustrations by Dan Santat
Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic Books 2009

Bobby and Holly are friends and have been for some time, they just aren't friends in front of other kids. Because everyone knows that boys and girls cannot be friends, Bobby and Holly have tried to keep their private friendship separate from their school freinds, but things get complicated (and confusing for Bobby) when Holly aligns herself with queen bee Jillian and begins to actively hate Bobby. Or so she'd have everyone believe.

For Bobby's part, he does what you'd expect a fourth grader to do, which is to bumble his way through misadventures that threaten both his friendship with Holly and his standing as a boy in the gender roles that the kids feed into. The centerpiece of the story is election for student council representative that pits boys against girls, specifically Bobby against Holly. Amid the boy/girl tension Bobby also has his former football star turned stay-at-home dad embarrassing him, he gets himself stuck to a tree on a field trip to a botanical garden, and then there's that run-in with static cling involving underwear stuck to his shirt. Also, Bobby longs for a dog, but he's allergic to fur, so he tries to teach his pet goldfish to do tricks to compensate.

Good stuff for the younger middle grade set, and a good starting point for discussions about boy/girl friendships. It does end with a note of hope that boys and girls can be friends but it won't be an easy road ahead.