A Wrinkle in Time

The Graphic Novel
by Madeleine L'Engle
adaptation by Hope Larson
FSG 2012

The classic middle grade book gets a solid graphic novel treatment by award winning artist Hope Larson.

The weird thing about graphic novel adaptations is that they tend to be much longer than their source material, and they rarely convey all the details and explanations in their retelling. Graphic novels conceived as graphic novels from the beginning work to condense story where adaptations, it seems, look to open up narrative, alternately speeding along the story and slowing it down at the same time. There's a certain elasticity of time and events involved.

Could there be a better-suited book for a graphic novel treatment than A Wrinkle in Time?

Meg is an odd duck, rendered here like your typical unruly tomboyish nerd girl. Impatient and impulsive, she doesn't fit in even among her family; her mother has beauty that she envies, her twin bothers the model of normality, and her baby brother Charles is a precocious clairvoyant mistaken by those around him as a moron. Her father? Mysteriously away, subject of much gossip, though truly gone in a way the local townfolk could never conceive (much less believe) if they knew the truth.

Charles is in contact with some old ladies who live in a house in the woods most consider haunted. Mrs. Whatsit at first seems like a doddering old fool, her companion Mrs. Who speaking often in quotation, and eventually the occasionally unfocused apparition Mrs Which presents, taking the form of a Halloween witch. Together, these tree form a trinity of Star Sisters who serve as prophets, guides, and guardians for the journey about to come. A classmate of Meg's, the sensitive outsider Calvin who is better at passing as normal, finds himself drawn to the haunted house in the woods and once united with Charles and Meg they are informed that they can help bring Meg and Charles's father but that the mission involves some peril.

as always, click image to enlarge

Traveling the wrinkles in time, the sextet make it across the galaxy to the planet Camazotz where a cloud of evil is holding the kid's father as a prisoner. This evil has grown and crept across the galaxy, threatening to force the inhabitants of other planets to succumb to fear and remain orderly and obedient. This evil is controlled by IT, rendered as little more than a massive brain sitting on a pedestal in a protected tower. Utilizing their wits and few tools left them by the Star Sisters they rescue Meg's father but at the expense of losing Charles in the process. They regroup at a safe distance and discuss options for rescuing Charles, where Meg finally comes to realize that this is her destiny, and enters a final confrontation with IT using as her weapon the one thing IT wants but IT doesn't have.

I'm going to admit right here that I am as old as this book, and that I read it when it was less than a decade old. I have vague memories of images from that initial reading that have, over time, merged with images from episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Prisoner, bits and pieces from other science fiction stories (Bradbury and Clarke most likely), and special effect from the occasional badly produced movies that would end up on TV in the afternoons on weekends. Which is to say that the material read fresh to me while at the same time oddly derivative. But more startling to me was the complete mash-up of Cold War fear, Orwellian dystopia, post-war mythology, and a solid dose of budding New Age religious thinking. None of this is negative or unwelcome, as I was suddenly aware of how tame and safe a lot of middle grade fiction is these days by comparison. Talking time travel as if it were as easy as breathing, quoting classic scholars and thinkers, lumping artists and religious icons together as visionaries who have tried to explain the unexplainable... after a while it was a little like the articulation of thoughts from someone gloriously tripping on LSD. Again, not a bad thing, but odd all the same.

I applaud Larson for taking on a classic that, like movies made from books, will no doubt disappoint those who have set ideas of what the characters look like or how certain elements should be rendered. It's also no small feat to take on the telling of a story that has as its base the notion of time travel without any real explanation for how it is possible. Merely referring to "the tesseract" and giving a basic description of how travel across the fifth dimension could easily lose a reader, but the story is carried along by the strong-willed personality of Meg and her through-line desire of finding and rescuing her father.

As excited as I was to get my hands on this I had a little bit of graphic novel adaptation remorse after finishing it – I probably should have reread the original novel first and made a true comparison. But I've thought this over and decided that as much as I'd like to think of graphic novels as gateways to reading in general I sincerely doubt a majority of readers are going to read both: unlike book-to-film interest there is little evidence of a similar graphic-novel-to-book conversion taking place. We can debate and discuss this all we want, but the reality is what it is, when a kid finishes a book they don't generally go hunting down the graphic novel adaptation, and vice versa.

With that thought in mind I am glad there is this second, and perhaps slightly more accessible, graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time out there. It provides more opportunities to open up young minds and getting their heads wrapped around the notion of time travel and just what intangible is truly the most powerful weapon in the universe. Besides reading, of course.

abandoned: A Dangerous Engine

Benjamin Franklin from Scientist to Diplomat
by Joan Dash
pictures by Dusan Petricic
Francis Foster / FSG 2006

It seems impossible to make any part of Franklin's life as dull and lifeless as it is here. But I liked the pictures.

You don't tend to find newer biographies among the books available at library sales, especially about characters from history who seem to be evergreen for younger readers. Franklin's life story – even the parts he himself may have exaggerated – makes for an improbably great read, and when coupled with the loose and lively line drawings of Petricic I assumed this book would be irresistible.

Somehow I managed to resist finishing it. What happened here?

First, with a title like that, you have to open with at least a hint of either what the engine is or what the danger is. You have to. The title is a promise to the reader and when it is as concrete as this one you can't start off with a wimpy static electricity demonstration Franklin once saw. That discovery and understanding of static electricity may ultimately have lead to something that was either dangerous or machine-like, but as it stands the title is a tease that misses the opportunity to hook a reader on the first page. Or the first chapter even.

I had heard that Dash had a "flair for history and technology" (The New York Times Book Review) but I found the opening chapters a slog, and I tried to imagine what they would do to a young reader who hadn't encountered the Franklin that I had come to know through his own words. With proper guidance there is little reason for most students to venture beyond Franklin's own autobiography and published writing. Certainly not with a book that only covers half his life and yet is longer than Franklin's own account of his entire life.

That Franklin was more than one of the Founding Fathers, that he was a businessman who retired early and spent a great deal of time experimenting in science and dabbling in inventions, is certainly appropriate, but there's no reason to turn readers away at the door.

I originally suspected that I knew too much to see the book fresh, that I had read plenty of adult biographies and wasn't able to read this book without the influence of those that came before. But then that hasn't been the case in the past where I picked up biographies of figures I already knew and devoured the new angles, the new storytelling, the new approaches. And then I looked at the publication date and noticed that a book that was barely 4 years old was wedged among the discards of biographies published in the 1940s and 50s. This book had been as thoroughly ignored as books decades its senior. We can talk all we want about knowing what children should read but the bottom line is you cannot fool a kid. They know what bores them and they aren't about to check out or read a book that doesn't grab or hold their attention.

For that matter, neither will I.

The Small Adventures of Popeye and Elvis

by Barbara O'Connor
FSG 2009

A small slice of life on a backroad of South Carolina with perhaps the most passive main character I've read in a long time.

Popeye, so nick-named when a b-b gun left it's mark on his left eye, is the kind of quiet, withdrawn kid who would hunger for an adventure if he had the gumption to do so. So when a mobile home gets stuck in the gravel road in front of Popeye's house one rainy night, Popeye's heart rate nearly increases with the possibilities. The next day five kids tumble out to explore the place where they are newly struck and - does Popeye dare to disturb the universe? - an adventure is afoot. Maybe.

A boy named Elvis, about the same age as Popeye, is among the stranded clan, a fearless, cussing, adventurer of the first degree. Popeye takes Elvis to a nearby creek and together they discover small boats made of Yoohoo drink boxes with mysterious messages inside. What do the messages mean? Where are they coming from? What's further up the creek? Popeye doesn't know because he's never thought to go exploring on his own, so it falls to Elvis to drive their exploration up the river to solve the mystery. If it were up to Popeye, who marvels at every turn at Elvis's brash language and free spirit, Popeye would sit in his room and stair at a stain in the ceiling listening to a clock going tick tick tick...

In Tolstoy's world, this is a "stranger comes to town" story, and Elvis is sort of a catalyst for Popeye's sort of coming out of his shell. I say sort of because at no point does Popeye articulate what he wants beyond vague longing, and he continues to tag along with Elvis like a pathetic puppy with hardly an original thought of his own. As the adults spend days trying to dislodge the motor home - and they're about as slow to get this taken care of as an elephant in a molasses pit, a bit of authorial deus ex machina if ever there was one - there is a palpable hope in the reader that Popeye is going to break out of his shell and stop being a wimp. But the open ending doesn't suggest Popeye has really changed and that this one quiet, sad little adventure may be the highpoint of his life.

Lacking a character-driven desire or conflict, The Small Adventures of Popeye and Elvis reads like an overly long short story, a meditation on life literally off the beaten path in a world with a vague nostalgic feel to it that seems all the more sad for what it lacks. Things sort of happen, with the overall effect being "Yes, and the point of it all is...?"

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 Robot and the Bluebird

by David Lucas
FSG 2008

Author David Lucas makes some pretty unusual books. The stories are like jigsaw puzzles of optical illusions: everything seems to be in place but the overall impression undulates in a way that makes you blink. If you've encountered Nutmeg or Whale or Halibut Jackson then you know what I'm talking about.

Unusual isn't a bad thing, though it sometimes can lead to head-scratching. No, just to be clear, I'd rather wade through more unusual picture books and try to sort out their logic any day rather than trip merrily down the same well-worn path many other books follow. In The Robot and the Bluebird we don't find the most original of themes -- a useless object/person finding new use/companionship in an unexpected encounter -- so much as a sort of quiet meditation on usefulness and appreciation.

Robot is introduced to us as having a broken heart. readers understand that what is broken are his internal mechanisms, but the story is built around the idea of what it means to have a heart in the emotional sense. Of course, when a thing is broken it is discarded, and so Robot is relegated to a garbage heap to rust our his days. One day a bluebird, late in migrating, chances to nest in Robot's chest, giving him the sensation of once again having a heart. Too tired to continue on it's way, Robot completes the bluebird's migration while carrying it along. Robot exhausts his last bit of energy while telling the bluebird that "you'll always have a place in my heart." Frozen forever, other birds come seeking refuge in and around Robot's remains.

This could so easily have gone corny, or ham-fisted, but somehow Lucas manages to pull it off. I can only attribute this to the watercolor illustrations that give the metal Robot its warmth and strength and delicacy. Some of these illustrations make me want to tear apart m copy of the book and frame them.

I almost think the book works without the story, without the words, as a sort of silent movie that had a narrative attached to it. It's a little thin on its own to simply have its words removed, but as with Where the Wild Things Are so much of the story is in the illustrations after the initial set-up. I think that with a little less words and a little more story this could have been a classic. As it is, it's very, very good.

Adele and Simon in America

by Barbara McClintock
Francis Foster Books / FSG 2008

I'm not generally a huge fan of an excellent stand-alone picture book gaining a sequel but I'm going to give this one a pass because I love McClintock's illustrations.

Adele and Simon, those two early 20th century Parisian children, have traveled to America to see the country by train with their aunt. As with their previous outing, Simon is continually losing personal items as he goes, begging the reader to find the missing items among the details in the drawings. Sort of like a Where's Waldo? situation but with much finer art.

McClintock captures a certain nostalgia in her illustrations that recall Windsor McCay's "Little Nemo" cartoons, or a mid-century rendition of turn-of-the-century. The fine lines of her drawings are reminiscent of hand-painted etchings, full of fussy detailing. A true mid-century picture book would have been one or maybe two spot colors, not a full spectrum watercolor, so in that sense they are richer in tone and value. It's what I love, that mix of classic storybook style with modern print quality.

Alas, the story here is a bit clunky as a mechanism for getting Adele and Simon around the various parts of the United States, but it's all an excuse for the pretty pictures and the opportunity for kids to play hide-and-seek with Simon's lost items. If there was a way to do these books without words I think I might be in heaven. Why should David Wiesner corner the market on wordless picture books and get all the awards?

It doesn't have the fresh appeal or the natural simplicity of the original Adele and Simon, but you could do a whole lot worse in picture books these days, and many do.

How I Learned Geography

by Uri Shulevitz
FSG 2008

When his family is exiled from Poland, a young boy and his parents take refuge in nearby Soviet controlled Turkestan. Too poor to afford bread, one day the boy's father comes home with an enormous map of the Eastern Hemisphere. At first the boy is resentful of his father's actions because of the hunger, but the next day -- and many after -- the boy loses himself in the map, memorizing place names and imagining himself all over the world. In the end the boy forgives his father because he realizes the map gives back much more than the temporary fulfilment of physical hunger.

Based on Shulevitz's own experiences it's hard to figure out whether this is a personal memoir or a story about loving geography. Of course it's both, but it enters that same between world of another expat, Peter Sis, with his recent bio-memoir-picture book The Wall. The story reads like an old tale, partially because of its austere setting, but the flights of fancy also add that sense of something Old World. Shulevitz tells us a variation on the old Yiddish expression that sometimes a person needs a story more than food, the idea that feeding the mind can have greater value at times. Indeed, for a boy living the life of a refugee, having a singular point of refuge from his daily plight isn't such a bad trade-off in troubling times.

Shulevitz provides us with some biographical notes at the end, in addition to a pair of drawing he made as a boy that show his interest and development as an artist. One is a map drawn on the back of an envelope (all he had to draw on) done from memory of the large map, the other a cartoon he drew as a teen living in Paris that echoes one of the scenes from the book. The connection between his life, the influence of the map, and his drawings all come together in this bit of back matter (more back material at the end of a picture book!) and give an already strong book a weightiness it might not have had otherwise.

Good Enough to Eat

Brock Cole
FSG 2007

If this isn't a retelling of a classic fairy tale, it sure feels like one. It hits all the right notes and gets the feel of a Grimm story with a strident ease.

A poor girl with no name is called many things by the people of her town -- Scraps-and-Smells, Skin -and-Bones, Sweets-and-Treats -- because she stands around the market stalls selling what food scraps and paper puppets she can mange to get by. Whenever necessary, she begs.

The people of the town ask the mayor to do something about her but, in pitch-perfect political avoidance he points out "The poor are always with us" and the matter is settled as far as he's concerned.

One day the town is visited by an ogre who comes for a fair maiden. None of the townfolk are willing to part with their daughters but they're quick to offer up the poor homeless girl. Set outside the town wall (in a sack, along with other offerings meant to please) the ogre asks "Who goes there?" and when the girl replies by one of her given names "Scraps-and-Smells!" the ogre becomes upset and shouts back to the townfolk "Not good enough!"

They try again, sending the girl out with greater offerings for the ogre, this time she announces herself as Skin-and-Bones and the ogre once again rejects the town's offering. Finally, in desperation, the girl is offered up with swords and weapons and gold and silver. This time she announces herself as Sweets-and-Treats and, as the ogre is pleased by this, commences to gobble the girl up. But in true fairy tale fashion she uses the knife to cut herself out of the ogre's belly and leaves the town behind, taking all their gold and silver as her reward.

And she declares her new name is Good-Enough-to-Eat.

It's a subtle message about how we treat the poor, and how those we sacrifice can come back to get the last laugh, but as a picture book story it is excellent on its surface story alone. The text itself, written with a breezy feel that never drags, contains little rhymed couplets to help propel things along much like a Grimm tale. The familiarity of the text still leaves me feeling like I've read it somewhere before, but not in a bad way.

Cole's watercolor style is expressive and playful in a way reminiscent of James Stevenson. It's a little loose but in the same way that loose jeans feel comfortable. It's not flashy, it's not gimmicky, and if it's an original story then there's no reason why it shouldn't become a modern classic.

A Poet's Bird Garden

by Laura Nyman Montenegro
FSG 2007

When young Natalie releases her Chirpee bird from its cage it immediately flies to a nearby tree. A phone call brings a group of poets to help her lure her bird out of a tree. The poets in turn try different things to lure the bird down from the tree: They plant seeds and bushes, install a birdbath, tie bright string into the branches but nothing seems to work. But Claude, the neighborhood cat, is the culprit scaring all the birds and once he's dispatched the Chirpee returns to its cage all the branches are full of birds.

It's an oddly charming book that I found more rewarding on a second read. Some of the text follows a rhyming scheme and some doesn't, and that interplay eventually works in a quirky sort of way. Far from being naive, there is a certain innocence both in the story and the illustration that... just... works for lack of a better explanation.

I think the one thing I can't reconcile is why the girl lets the bird out of the cage in the first place and then is instantly concerned that it doesn't come back. I suppose it's one of those things kids do and learn about after the fact. There is never any mention of how the bird got into the tree or any lesson learned, it happens and everyone works toward a solution, and then problem solved. Making this a message book would have killed it, I'm not saying it should have a message. If any message can (and should) be pulled from this it's when in trouble, when in doubt, call a poet to figure it out.

Animal Poems

by Valerie Worth
pictures by Steve Jenkins
FSG 2007

Nearly two dozen poems about animals in this lovely collection that showcase the poet's sharp eye for the telling detail and the beauty of poetic brevity. It's so nice to pick up a book of poetry for young readers that doesn't condescend to the notion that young readers need poems that rhyme.

Snail

Only compare
Our kitchens
And bedrooms,
Our lamps and
Rugs and chairs,

To the bare
Stone spiral
Of his one
Unlighted
Stairwell

Sparse, evocative, and concrete enough for even younger readers to understand the power of good poetry. In these posthumously published poems Worth isn't afraid to make the experience personal, in this case concerning Cockroaches:

One that I can't
In the least abide
Is the cockroach: not
So much that it
Scuttles

And Bristles, and glues
Its slippery eggs in
The cracks of books, but
That it looks so clever:
As though it knows
My particular horror...

Jenkin's illustrations, in his usual torn and cut paper collages, seem almost sterile alongside the text. Not to take away from the artistry of what he does, but the mere portraits of the featured animals convey none of their spirit or expressive characteristics. It's a beautiful book, but sad when the words have to carry all the weight.

Leaving the Nest

by Mordecai Gerstein
FSG 2007

A girl, a kitten and a blue jay, each at their own level of comfort, explores their readiness to leave their respective nests.

The blue jay refuses to leave his nest, has no intention of leaving the nest, and promises his mother he wouldn't leave the nest for anything while she's away.

The kitten is pressed against the screen door, eager to leave the house and explore the interesting things the outside world has to offer her.

The girl is a seasoned pro at leaving her comfortable house and is ready to test her newly acquired bicycling skills in the yard.

And in the tree, observing it all, a family of squirrels, the youngest getting a running narration and explanation of the scenes as they unfold.

When the blue jay falls from the tree he thinks his biggest danger is the kitten but then is scooped up by the "giant" who gets off her bike to return him to his nest. The curious kitten, meanwhile, falls for the practical jokery of the adult squirrels and is fooled into getting itself caught in the tree. The girl moves to save the kitten but requires some saving of her own by her mother. The jay falls but this time swoops and flies. After the chaos has subsided and quiet order returned to the yard the baby squirrel, having witnessed it all, boldly announces "Tomorrow I'm leaving the nest".

The unique format that Gerstein gives to this group of young ones is that all their stories are running simultaneously. It's an unusual construction, to be sure, as the actual scene never changes and all the action remains within one frame. A movie analogy would seem apt if it weren't for the word balloons for each character's story. There's almost a static-dynamic tension going on as the action is happening all at once, independent and interconnected. It's like the same single panel cartoon page after page with four panels worth of information happening in each spread.

In some ways the book may be too clever for itself. The appeal of telling stories about different levels of independence -- the various stages of leaving the nest as it were -- could be lost on younger readers who may feel there's too much happening on the page. It almost feels like a picture book designed to condition younger minds to the idea of multi-tasking!

But I enjoyed it. I appreciate the idea of complex childhood interrelationships and the opportunity for discussion that would come from a book that mirrored that convolution. The one misstep is late in the book when the ladder is brought out and the orientation of the book shifts briefly from vertical to horizontal spine and back. On the one hand it does help to maintain the proportions of the scene and characters but I also felt it disturbed the narrative flow. It's a quibble, and nothing that would downgrade the experience, but noteworthy nonetheless.