A Joker and a Jack

Uncle Shelby's Zoo: Don't Bump the Glump! and Other Fantasies
by Shel Silverstein
originally published by HMH Publications Inc. (Playboy) 1963
HarperCollins 2008









My Dog May Be a Genius
by Jack Prelutsky
HarperCollins / Greenwillow 2008













In these waning days of his tenure as Children's Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky and his publishers (who also happen to be Silverstien's publisher) give us another of his larger poetry omnibuses. For as much as I like to pick away at Prelutsky I have to give the man credit for his consistency and his ability to deliver the exact tone of poem that children like to read over and over.

There's hardly any subject new under the sun when it comes to topics for poetry but "A Letter From Camp" sounds a bit too close to Allen Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" for my comfort. And then there's "The Underwater Marching Band" which had a cadence that, I swear, made me start humming along with Sandra Boynton's (of all people) "The Uninvited Loud Precision Band."

Rife with puns and wordplay, fart jokes and concrete poems, Prelutsky provides an ample smorgasbord for young palates.

I Thought I Saw

I thought I saw BBBBBBBBBBB
dive down into the CCCCCCC.
Could I believe my own II?
I'm not so sure, I'm not YY.

That would be eleven bees, seven seas, two eyes, too wise. As we say around the house; pretty clever, toilet lever.

Then he's got stuff that comes off like a cross between Hilaire Belloc Greek wrestling with Ogden Nash in front of the hearth, with a tip o' the hat to William Stieg's CDB:

A Bear is Not Disposed

A bear is not disposed
to dressing up in clothes,
not even underwear,
A bear likes being bare.

Indeed. Emphasize any one word in that last line like an actor's exercise for a variety of meanings.

* * *

Shel Silverstein was his own dog, so to speak. His early years were spent drawing cartoons of army life, as well as writing and drawing his observations for Playboy magazine. He also wrote lyrics to something like 800 songs that were recorded by people as diverse as Johnny Cash ("A Boy Named Sue"), The Irish Rovers ("The Unicorn"), and Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show ("The Cover of the Rolling Stone").

I point this out because I want to show off how much I know about Uncle Shelby. No! Wait! I point this out because there's something about the spirit of Shel Silverstien that comes though most of his work, that sense of the absurd married to the real. I say most of his work because occasionally that spirit is missing, for whatever reason, and in the case of the reissue of Don't Bump the Glump! I feel the spirit has left the building.

Of course, the spirit did leave the building in 1999 when Silverstein died, and I half-suspect this book wouldn't have been reissued if he were still with us. Maybe I'm wrong, because his Evil Eye enterprise renewed the copyright. It isn't that it's bad, but it feels early, like a man working out his style, and doing so on Playboy's payroll.

Most of what we have are short little poems about imaginary beasties, each with its own little watercolor illustration to go with. One that hit me like a ton of bricks is the following. I could have sworn I've actually heard a recoding of Uncle Shelby playing his guitar and singing to this. Is this a buried childhood memory, or something my synapses concocted on their own.

Slithergadee

The Slithergadee has crawled out of the sea.
He may catch the others, but he won't catch me.
No you won't catch me, old Slitherdagee
You mat catch the others, but you wo---

From the man who wrote the song "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" and was posthumously admitted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. Thanks, Shel

* * *

Check out the Poetry Friday round-up this week over at A Wrung Sponge.

Me Hungry!

by Jeremy Tankard
Candlewick 2008

Edwin the Caveboy is hungry, but Ma and Pa Cavepeople are busy (Pa is trying to figure out how to navigate a peanut with a club, Ma's got a gaggle of younger kids to deal with), so Edwin decides to go hunting for himself!

Rabbit hides, Porcupine is too sharp, Tiger is too mean, it looks like Edwin will go hungry until he comes across a Mastodon who shares his hunger and together they go in search of food. Feasting together on apples, Edwin calls out "We busy!" when called to dinner by his Pa.

Tankard knocked it out of the park last year with Grumpy Bird, his picture book featuring a bird with an attitude problem. This time around the only thing holding back my enthusiasm is that the illustrations feel a bit thin. They're lacking the density, the texture of the multiple layers. Same charming characters, same great, vibrant colors. Same playfulness. Perhaps someone suggested that the backgrounds in Grumpy Bird didn't "track well" with younger readers. I heard someone say that. I scoffed when I heard it, to the dismay of the adult scoffee.

To those who might be worried about Edwin's "cavespeak," believing it might be as horrid as the goo-goo Junie B. Jones dialect, fear not. Everyone in Me Hungry! speaks the patois of subject-verb -- adults, animals, and kids -- implying the early development of language instead of cloying malapropisms. It works, it's fun, nothing cloying about it.

Want to see a recent interview with Jeremy Tankard? You should, he's a great dude, and the Imps over at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast pull together a great one with the man. Go here, and tell them I sent you.

You can also see my interview with Jeremy from a while back here.

All Aboard: A Traveling Alphabet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pigeon Wants a Puppy

by Mo Willems
Hyperion 2008

Well, I think the pigeon has jumped the shark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Poetry Friday: my sweet old etcetera

from America At War
poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Stephen Alcorn
McElderry Books 2008

Yeah, I'm back in the Friday Poetry round-up, for the month at least. Can't let National Poetry Month drift without mentioning some sort of poetry. I'm taking the liberty this week of cross-posting two different poems from the same collection because, well, just because. Does poetry need a reason?

This collection, America At War, groups poems by the wars America has participated in one way or another. A while back I mentioned this collection and included a Carl Sandburg poem, one I'm pretty sure I had to memorize in seventh grade. This time around we have a little e.e. cummings, and despite the fact that it's about a letter from the front, I like the refrain and the subtle bawdiness at the end.

my sweet old etcetera
e.e. cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Yes, quite. Dreaming of your Etcetera. People should sign love notes to one another that way. And why not?

Check out the Poetry Friday round-up this week over at Becky's Book Reviews.
My other post is lurking over at is lurking over at fomagrams.

Keep Your Eye On The Kid

The Early Years of Buster Keaton
by Catherine Brighton
Roaring Brook 2008

I'm all about giving kids a more rounded cultural education and I think film is one of those areas where American kids are really at a deficit. I once met a teen who was planning to study film when he graduated high school who had never heard of Orson Wells, couldn't name a single film from the 1960's, didn't think black-and-white movies were any good because "they didn't have special effects or any good equipment," and told me that the best film ever made -- without a hint of sarcasm -- was Goonies. I have since run into many kids of many ages who haven't got a clue of movies made before they were born. The only solution is the same for what we expect when teaching kids about historical figures in science, politics, and other areas of cultural history: start 'em young.

Brighton's picture book recounting of the early years in the life of silent comedian Buster Keaton is a great start in that direction. Told in the first person, which I thought was neat, we get the years from Keaton's birth to his early days in movies. He starts taking a fall as an infant down the stairs while traveling with his Vaudeville parents. He picks up his name from Houdini who uses the slang of the time for taking a tumble, or a buster. Despite laws aimed at keeping children under the age of seven off the stage his parents have him doing his prats as part of the act. At a young age he discovers the modern technological entertainment of the day -- movies, just coming into their own -- and decides that's the future. A falling out with his dad causes him to light out on his own and, with a little luck, gets started on his career in silent movies.

In the back matter (is it me, or is there more back matter appearing at the end of picture books these days?) Brighton explains that Keaton was a known storyteller, prone to exaggerating or making up facts about his life. His getting sucked out of a window during a tornado and landing without a scratch, included here for example. Makes a good story, dovetails nicely with one of his most famous gags in a silent movie when a house wall falls but misses him as he's standing where the open window lands. But is it true? No one knows for sure. Does it help balance out the story arc in a technical sense? Most definitely. Does it belong in a non-fiction picture book where a young reader is getting their introduction about an historical figure? I'm not so sure. And what of the unsubstantiated partial truths -- the possibility that Houdini didn't meet Keaton until he was grown, long after he acquired his nickname? Is this merely a way of introducing Keaton to an audience who might know Houdini and can better connect this new person in a familiar setting?

Brighton's story sense and illustration style are perfect for this book. There is a certain Little Nemo in Slumberland look to the illustrations -- rich in details and physically exciting -- that rings true with the era of the telling.

Despite some of the factual misgivings, I think this book and a couple of his short movies -- One Week at the very least - would make for a fine introduction to a slapstick comedian many (myself included) feel was much better than Chaplin.

Care for a sample? Here's are the last 7 minutes of Keaton's One Week

And if you want something a bit more substantial, rent Sherlock Jr. My preference is for the restored edition with the Club Foot Orchestra soundtrack.

Daisy Dawson is On Her Way

by Steve Voake
illustrated by Jessica Meserve
Candlewick 2008

Daisy is a daydreaming little girl who can't seem to get to school on time because she gets distracted along the way. There are worms to move off the sidewalk and butterflies to hold and release. And on this particular day she finds that something strange has happened, that she can speak with and understand animals. First it's with Boom, the dog, then with the hamsters at schools, then the horse and the barn cat, all with only the slightest bit of surprise on both sides.

Daisy isn't just a talker, she's a nurturer. When the hamsters get out of their cage at school she hears them exclaim with delight as they discover yummies in someone's lunch. She lures them back to their cage with a promise of a snack from her own lunch later. And with Boom she always backs an extra him a sandwich to feed him while on her way to school.

Trouble comes when Boom disappears and Daisy discovers that he's being held by the new dog catcher, one step away from disappearing for good. With help from the other animals they go on a rescue mission to save Boom. There's a happy ending, but not one the reader would have guessed, and Daisy's world is put to right. At the end Daisy muses with her father on the ability to talk to animals and there's a suggestion that it's something children can do naturally until one day when the magic of it wears off. For the time being, Daisy is enjoying her stay in this fantasy world.

I notice that the spine of this book is labeled with a "No. 1" implying that we've got more of Daisy coming at us in the future. There's an easy-breezy simplicity to the storytelling that makes it a good fit for young readers so I'm not troubled by this being the first in a series. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel if future books are always about Daisy talking to animals because I think that can wear thin pretty fast, but if talking animals happen to feature as part of stories dealing with a young girl and the flights of her imagination then I see no problems.

The Chicken of the Family

by Mary Amato
illustrated by Delphine Durand
Putnam 2008

It is the sacred duty of the eldest child to deviously taunt the youngest sibling. If one can do so with the aid of middle siblings, all the better. It is equally the duty of the youngest sibling to both believe the most gullible lies delivered by the oldest sibling and find an equally clever, but innocent, way to get their revenge.

And so we have The Chicken of the Family.

Henrietta is woken from her sleep and told by her oldest sister Kim that she isn't really a member of the family, she is a chicken, acquired from the farm down the road. Middle sister Claire's job is to go along with the joke, the support of two people saying the same thing giving the statement the weight of truth. Henrietta doesn't believe it's true until she wakes up in the morning and finds an egg in her bed and a couple of feathers on the floor.

Certain now that she is truly a chicken she runs away, down the road to the farm where she takes her rightful place in the chicken yard. Henrietta has no qualms adjusting to her new life as a chicken, scratching and taking a dust bath and playing follow the leader.

Kim and Claire arrive with a directive from their parents to admit their prank and bring Henrietta home. The only problem is that Henrietta is enjoying herself too much, feels she really is a chicken, and refuses to follow. Exasperated, Kim decides to call for back-up from her parents but Claire has decided to stay -- she's broken away from her sister's scheme after seeing what fun it is to be a chicken. Henrietta and Claire do trundle on home just in time to see their older sister getting chewed out for causing this fiasco.

"Sometimes it's good to be a chicken."

Indeed, sometimes embracing your gullibility is no different than embracing what makes you unique. Accepting what her sisters have told her, Henrietta is free to discover what it means to be different. She knows she's not a chicken on some level, just as she doesn't run away to get her sister in trouble, but along the way she's learned something about herself, about another culture (if you will), and about the things others will do to control you.

Yes, this is a deeper reading that a light and fluffy picture book deserves, but it's true: sometimes it is good to be a chicken.

Trainstop

by Barbara Lehman
Houghton Mifflin 2008

On a train trip between cityscapes young girls watches as her view in a black tunnel is replaced by a vibrant countryside. When the train is flagged down mysteriously the girl notices she is the only one on the train who isn't asleep. Stepping off the train she finds a group of people gathered around a tree where a person and their plane have become lodged. What isn't apparent until she reaches the tree is that the people are all tiny, as if the remained frozen the height they were from her train window perspective. While the people are as real as the girl, the plane in the tree is one of those balsa wood planes with a rubber band powering the propeller. Once she has rescued the tiny pilot she returns to the train and resumes her ride home, out the of the fantasy and out of the tunnel, back to the city where she lives.

Out in front of her townhouse, standing in her stone yard, she looks up and sees the rescued pilot and a co-pilot flying toward her. They come with a gift of thanks, a small seedling for an apple tree that is planted in the crack in her stone yard. As a parting shot the girl sits on her stoop admiring her now-grown tree while all over the city other trees have begun sprouting up, no doubt from kindred daydreaming souls looking to return nature to the cities.

Lehman set herself an impossible bar with The Red Book a few years back and, unfairly perhaps, everything since has been measured against that amazing snake-eating-its-tale fantasy. If the impression -- mine at least -- was that her subsequent books (Museum Trip, Rainstorm) were increasingly weaker attempts to capture lighting in a bottle, Trainstop manages to stand apart from the others, on its own and with very sturdy legs. As with her previous books Lehman mines the theme of a child's daydream world, but here the idea of an fantasy taking place while the rest of the world sleeps, coupled with the message of bringing nature back to the cities, is perhaps the strongest, most direct message delivered yet. Where in previous books the children imagine or discover worlds for their own purposes and keeping, Trainstop gives us a child looking to share her fantasy with the world. It's almost a subtle environmental message, a quiet Lorax making a last call on those with eyes and ears enough to still listen.

For those unfamiliar with Lehman's work, the book is as wordless as her previous books, filled with the same thick-outlined ligne claire illustrations that are her trademark. Probably the simplest of her picture books to date, but no less engaging. I think what I'd really like to see is what Lehman can do with the long-form: graphic novels. Her sense of pacing, her imagination, I think make her an ideal candidate for an extended fantasy romp a la Sara Varon's Robot Dreams or, on a more picture book level, Regis Faller's The Adventures of Polo.

I can hope, can't I?

Hogwash

by Arthur Geisert
Walter Lorraine / Houghton Mifflin 2008

The children in Pig Village trek up the hill to wallow in the official mud hole. After their frolic they move on to the paint yard where colored liquid is dispensed onto the ground for a more vibrant wallow. As their playtime comes to an end the parents of Pig Village meet them to help supervise their collective bathing in a large agitation tub, followed by being hung out to dry on long clothes lines, and then it's all back to Pig Village, one and all.

Yes, it's wash day in hog land, or Hogwash, as the play-on-words title suggests. And as a synonym for nonsense there's probably no better title for the goings on here. Geisert's wordless picture books (not a graphic novel, mind you) traffic in these silent movies concerning the goings on of anthropomorphic pigs. He produces color etchings for illustrations, a process that renders lines a little rougher than most drawings, here giving the artwork a fussy sort of distance from being too clean.

I have to admit, there's a certain quality to Geisert's books that leave me cold, and it might be the lack of warmth in his art that counteracts the whimsy. I wasn't as impressed with his previous book Oops! because it attempted to slow down a situation -- a house falling apart -- into a book-length set of stills that made a dynamic situation stagnant. At least with Hogwash there is more of a linear narrative, and on the whole I enjoyed it.

This time around I did find one illustration that caused me to wonder about the scale of the pigs in this land. At the point where the piglets are being sent to line dry there is a wind-driven motor made with two magnets that looks like a child's science project. It's the most basic motor that can be made, and it's hooked to a power coil that appears to be copper wire wound around a wooden thread spool. Backing up, looking at the communal bath, their water is heated in what looks like a giant tea pot -- or is it a normal sized teapot?

Are these miniature pigs? Toys? If they are to this scale, these pigs would be about a quarter of an inch tall. I thought that could be an interesting reveal to first give you a world of unusual pigs and then to show you that they're smaller than insects, a world within a world as it were.

It's fun, I liked it, I just wasn't as wowed as some people get over Geisert's books.

Throwing Hollywood a Bone

I don't generally run news items but I stumbled onto this in the Hollywood Reporter. While I can see why Warner Bros might be interested in adapting Jeff Smith's Bone Chronicles I can't imagine any justice being done unless they give it Lord of the Rings treatment, i.e. a trio of movies and not a 90 minute cartoon.

We can hope, right? It is the season of hope, after all. Movie watchers demand change, too!

Delicious

The Art and Life of Wayne Thiebaud
Susan Goldman Rubin
Chronicle Books 2007

A book so luscious you want to lick it, that's my blurb for this one.

For those unfamiliar of artist Wayne Thiebaud, of any age from middle grade up, this is a great introduction. Better, it explains Thiebaud's growth as an artist and the circuitous route he took to get there, working as a commercial artist, in department stores, drawing cartoons for Disney, and farthest from his thinking was the fine art paintings that have been his claim to fame. What I like about this gentle message of an artist discovering himself is that while he always knew he wanted to do art he wasn't forced to make a decision before he was ready. As he was mentored by individual artists and made his living as a working artist he gained a lot of experience that would later become useful as a painter.

I think there are a lot of creative souls in the schools who know they want to do something with the arts but don't really understand how one figures this out. When I was in high school the idea of working as an artist, of making a living, meant what was called commercial art which primarily meant advertising art. If a high school student said they wanted to be an artist that's what was on offer, that was all anyone really understood about art. If a guidance counselor could have suggested how I could channel my interests in photography and graphics into, say, book design or children's books I think my life would have been very different. If someone could have put this book into my hand, showing me how a fine artist found his footing and did some artful floundering along the way, my life would have taken another very different direction.

So, yeah, I hold some real high hopes that this book finds some middle grade and teen readers who are interested in what the life of an artist looks like.

The book itself is beautifully put together. Chronicle really gets it right, with practically each spread featuring one of Theibaud's luscious cakes, tempting candies, or angular intersections faced with text in white set against an ever changing compliment of backgrounds. The paintings influence the color palate which, by design, give this book an appropriately artistic tone. Honest, just pick this book up and leaf through and ask yourself why all books on art can't look this good.

The gals (can call you guys that?) over at 7Imp did a much better job covering this book that I seem to be able to manage right now. Check out their review and then check this book out.

An A to Z Treasure Hunt

written and illustrated by Alice Melvin
Tate Publishing UK 2007

The English alphabet is only 26 letters. There's only so much you can do with an alphabet book. Not that people haven't found ways to make an alphabet book informative (Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehrlet), thematic (C is for Caboose, about trains, and A is for Astronaut, about space, both by Chronicle Books), and they can certainly be entertainingly clever (Sendak's Alligators All Around). The world of alphabet books even includes non-alphabet books like Seuss's On Beyond Zebra and Tony DiTerlizzi's G is For One Gzonk. So with so many good (and bad) alphabet books it does take something to stand out from the pack.

Let me hold off one second more before talking about the book at hand. I have to say that I have twice tried to pick up the Steve Martin-Roz Chast The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z! -- twice, I tell you! -- and I have yet to finish it. Somewhere along the way I find myself wondering if there's a scientific name for belly button lint, what our pets think when they see us changing our clothes, that sort of thing. I can't tell if it's intended for kids or adults, I can't get into it, I can't help wondering if it's one of those extended New Yorker gags that sounds funny as a concept but could never be executed.

So today I stumble onto this slim little paperback and wonder if the hunt of the title makes it one of those I-Spot sort of books. Before I can open it I can tell the paper is nicer that I expected, with French flaps decorated with little men using semaphore to initiate (in the front) and conclude (in the back) the hunt.

Wait a minute, who published this? Tate? Like the museum in England? Sure enough. What's a museum doing printing an alphabet book?

I'll tell you what they're doing, they're making an interactive craft book out of the alphabet. F is for flag, and sure enough there are three strands zipping across the page but only two have little triangle flags running along them. The third strand is blank and on the bottom of the page the reader is suggested to find some scrap fabric and make little flags to glue into the book! L is for leaf, which asks you to collect an autumn leaf (don't harm a living tree) and add it to the page. Buttons are collected to decorate the tops of cupcakes. Your portrait (photo or drawn) is requested to fill in another illustration. A goose's egg requires glitter and glue. A snake would like some sequins for it's scales. The King requires a playing card to complete the royalty. Every page is a small craft project that reinforces the alphabet illustration, but it also allows each book to become an artifact unique the owner. It's fun, simple, almost Montessori in its approach. Color me impressed.

It's certainly the kind of thing a museum would publish because, on one hand, it's totally impractical. Once you start adding things to this book it will become lumpy, will shed bits of glitter and whatnot, and the binding is really too tightly glued to allow for opening flat without falling apart. In fact, this may be another of those books that ultimately works better for adults because I was instantly thinking about how, instead of using real buttons and playing cards, I could use magazine photos and color photocopies of real objects to make collages out of each page. Maybe this is a good project for an artistic teen to take on over the summer as a holiday gift for a younger relative. Even if you don't ultimately agree that it's a great book you have to admit there has to be something to an alphabet book that sets the mind in motion like this.

I don't know where you're going to find this... Powell's maybe? I doubt the library is going to want to circulte such a participatory book. Perhaps the children's section of a museum store. It's worth a gander.

Oops!

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

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

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

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

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

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

about those teenage boys...

While I sincerely doubt many of you, my fine readers, get all of your kidlit news from Yours Truly it may be possible that the following bit of news has escaped your attention in the kidlit blogosphere.

Guys Lit Wire, a new site launching in June, promises to provide you with everything you need to know in the world of literature for teenage boys. Colleen of Chasing Ray has been been spearheading the effort which she described on her blog yesterday thusly:

There will be book recommendations, author interviews, literary commentary, a rant or two (I'm sure) and lots of other good stuff. The goal is to cover a ton of different types of books from across the literary spectrum so we can become a good resource to actual teenagers as well as anyone seeking to find books for teen boys. (And if the girls want to visit we are happy to have them, but boys are our target audience.)

I am happy to announce -- nay, honored and privileged -- to be participating in this new blog and sincerely hope I can hold up my end when it comes to adding my voice to the community. I haven't got a clue what I'm going to debut with but that deadline's behind a few others I have for school right now so it can remain fuzzy. But I promise you, it will be brilliant. Both my post and the new blog!

Right now the group is shy a few contributors, and we could really use a few more guys. C'mon, out of 21 of us there are only 3 males reading and writing about books for teens? That can't be right, can it? Consider this a call to action. If you or someone you know wants in contact Colleen directly (colleen(at)chasingray(dot)com). And if you'd rather just support the effort please feel free to pass this news along to others.

For my part, if any of you have ideas or suggestions of some teen-boy-reading topic you'd like to see me mangle address, feel free to get in touch via comments. Let me know if you'd rather communicate off-blog as well and we'll make it happen.

I'll keep you posted as June 1st looms.

I Lie For a Living

Anthony Shugaar
(The International Spy Museum)
National Geographic 2006

I spotted this on the non-fiction shelf in my local library teen room and thought "Yeah, that's a book a teen boy would pick up." Being a few decades removed I can still tap into my inner teen boy. I picked it up without a seconds worth of hesitation.

But what a disappointment.

It's a smartly designed book, very contemporary graphics, layout and typeface, very much in step with what attracts a younger reader. It's also in keeping with the style of the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. which is very interactive and modern as single-subject museums go.

After a brief intro about the long history of international spying we jump into chapters where spies are grouped by like: those who did it for the money, master spies, double agents, femmes fatales, and so on. Each of the spies get a full page photo or illustration and one-to-three pages about their lives as spies. And there are a lot of spies in this book. Easily half I've never heard of, most are single-page treatments (generally the non-Americans get short shrift) and they read like much longer entries that have been edited to within an inch of their lives. Many of the bios assume a large amount of understood history -- for example the bio of Allen Dulles, first civilian head of the CIA, assumes knowledge of The Bay of Pigs invasion and why it failed.

While the format of short bios on the subject of spying makes attractive reading for boys, and there's a lot of background stuffed into the pages, the book overall serves as little more than a jumping off point for further investigation in other books. Books, it should be noted, which aren't listed in the back of the book; the bibliography, such as it is, suggests books for further reading from which some of the information was drawn but it is woefully inadequate for a book that handles its information so loosely.

I've been to The International Spy Museum and they do a nifty thing where you pick up a dossier for a spy when you enter, follow their progress along the way through the exhibits, and in the end learn their ultimate fate. It ties the exhibits together, gives you a narrative to hold onto, makes you pay closer attention than you might if you were merely drifting through the space. It's too bad they couldn't bring some of that innovation to this book.

A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever

written and illustrated by Marla Frazee
Harcourt 2008

James and his friend Eamon are going to Nature Camp for a week. It's a day camp near Eamon's grandparent's beach front house where the boys spend their week. If you want to see what they did at camp all you need to read are the endpapers which are snapshots of their time at camp. Their best week ever happened at Bill and Pam's (Eamon's grandparent's) house.

Bill's a nice old guy who has traveled the world, loves penguins, and wants to talk about Antarctica all the time. The boys couldn't care less. Pam's cooking is better than anything the boys get at home, but probably because all she serves them is banana waffles. The boys stay in the basement, sleep on an inflatable mattress that serves as a fort, a trampoline, and a couch for their video game playing. They wear the same shorts all week long.

James and Eamon are boys, true boys, marginally overseen by adults, living the summer that boys dream of. Their week over, the boys look out over the ocean at night, feeling something they can't articulate. But they know what to do: they collect driftwood, small rocks and mussel shells and assemble a miniature Antarctica complete with penguins on the deck. They hug Pam and Bill and hope they can go to Nature Camp again soon.

Frazee knows boys. At the very least she knows these boys, and she knows that with boys everything is indirect. Bill asks them if they want to go see the penguin exhibit at the zoo, they boys say they'll think about it, and then they run away. They aren't trying to be rude, they're just boys doing what boys do, which is run away from conflict. I don't have a problem with this, because Frazee presents this with the same carefree attitude that boys bring with them. At the very end of their week when the boys don't know how to address their feelings of sorrow they do what boys do best: they build things, the express their feeling physically.

I'm on the fence between calling this a good picture book and a great picture book. It's heart is in the right place, the humor is dry and authentic, but I'm left feeling like their best week ever needed a little more of an anchor, maybe one or two more activities to solidify their week. Their days are taken up with Nature Camp -- which is never shown, and I'm fine with that -- but I wish they'd had more time at Pam and Bill's to build or create or invent some week-long project that could mirror the building of their summer friendship.

Will boys like it? Probably. Will they get it? Maybe. Does it matter? Nope.

What To Do About Alice?

How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy!
by Barbara Kerley
illustrated by Edwin Fotherignham
Scholastic 2008

Yes, a picture book biography about Teddy Roosevelt's tomboy daughter "running riot" in and out of the White House around the turn of the century.

“I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice." And so it is that while Teddy is attempting to lead the nation his daughter is rough-housing with boys and giving herself an education from all the books at her disposal. Being the independent spirit she is doesn't keep her from being a goodwill ambassador for her father -- though she apparently had the same pressrelated issues that follow celebrities these days -- eventually "settling down" with a fine congressman and being wed in the White House.

Barbara Kerley's name would have been enough for me to pick this up, having enjoyed her middle grade novel Greetings From Planet Earth last year, but the real draw for me are the illustrations by Edwin Fotheringham. For a decade now I've been catching the man's spot and poster illustrations and have always been left wanting more. With his self-described blotty lines his style goes beyond a retro mid-century modern -- the man's work is a living time warp,
it's the real deal, you could take most of his work and drop it into magazines in the 1950s and not know they came from the future.

That said, only about half the illustrations in this book work. I don't know if it as editorial input or if his heart wasn't into some of the spreads, but there are pages that feel a little lifeless compared to the vibrancy of others. I feel bad even mentioning it because Fotheringham's weakest illustrations best a lot of other illustrators top work in picture books these days but given this is his picture book debut I really wanted his work to knock it out of the park. I really want the rest of the world to see what I see. Not that he's having any trouble getting work...

The story itself is a tidy biography of a colorful, spunky girl who happens to have been real. I like this trend of spunky girl characters, and having a real-life character is only better. Much of what Papa Teddy sees as running riot most children and parents today would just call "childhood." This familiarity of behavior makes it accessible to kids now who might find it amusing that what is normal was once considered bad. Alice may have been rambunctious, but it would have been wrong to stifle her, and thankfully Teddy was too broken up by the loss of the girl's mother, his first wife, to discipline the life out of her. A quiet lesson in there for parents, I should think.

I think this is a great book. Double duty for Women's History Month and President's Day

Fancy Nancy: Bonjour Butterfly

also: Fancy Nancy and The Boy From Paris &
Fancy Nancy at the Museum
all by Jane O'Connor
illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser
HarperCollins 2008

What began as a cute picture book for the pink-and-sparkly girly-girl set is now officially a brand, a series, and an inferior product. This, the third Fancy Nancy book, was released the same day as two I-Can-Read titles that are trading on the Fancy Nancy name and familiarity to rake in more bucks from the market.

Let's deal with the picture book for a moment. Nancy and her best friend Bree are all about the butterflies. They're typically obsessed with them to the point that Bree is going to make her birthday a butterfly party. They plan a cake, make invitations, get their outfits ready...

Oh, no! Mom suddenly realized that it her parent's 50th anniversary on the same day! Fancy Nancy is going to have to go to her grandparent's party instead. And so she has to go and tell her friend Bree the bad news.

Up to this point the book has been pretty clunky in its exposition. It doesn't feel like a story so much as little two-page set pieces for Nancy and Bree to pose in. But when we get to the spread where Nancy is apologizing to Bree we get an interesting illustration. The text says Bree is devastated by the news but it's Nancy falling all over herself, doubled over in tears. Bree has a look that says "Yeah, like you really care. This is just like you, Nancy, you big self-centered fake!" Is this a mistake in the illustration or is Bree really just pissed that she's being dumped from the story half way.

That's right, now we have an entirely different book on our hands. Bree is history.

Nancy mopes her way through the house, stops talking to people, and generally shows off just how much a brat she really is. And her parents put up with it. They get to the grandparent's place and no sooner is she off the train but suddenly it's as if she'd never been upset. The party is great and afterward they go to a butterfly exhibit at the zoo and, wow! This wasn't such a bad trip after all!

Does Nancy call Bree on her birthday? Does she find something perfectly fancy and butterfly-like to bring back to her friend? No, Nancy finds a butterfly whose color matches the color of her proposed party outfit and thinks it's the grandest of them all.

Selfish brat.

The writing is bad, the story changes midway, and what's with all the dropping of French words and phrases anyway? Well, that, my friends, has everything to do with the Fancy Nancy Brand I-Can-Read Title Fancy Nancy and the Boy From Paris. See, in order to keep the gravy train rolling they need to milk everything fancy for all it's worth. A few French words here and there might let a girl believe she's got some fanciness to her, but now we've got a real live Parisian boy to help her build her fanciness quotient. But wait, he's just a boy, and maybe he isn't so fancy after all. I mean, he likes books about cowboys, and he isn't at all interested in all things fancy. Oh well, lesson leanred. Next!

Fancy Nancy at the Museum allows our Francofile snob to get a little kulchur and some more excuses to work in her French vocabulary. In a lot of ways these beginning readers read a bit more like outlines for possible picture books and don't stand up to the same quality (in my opinion) as many other books in this series. Again, it all feels a little too calculated to be genuine. I'm not necessarily going to fault the parties involved for wanting to make a buck, but when the only way to do it drags down what little good you had before then perhaps it's time to put on the brakes and take stock. Yes, there is a market for girly-girls, girls who like pink and purple and dressing up and sparkles. But character alone can't carry an empty plot, and there's more to fancy than borrowing some French and reinforcing snobbish stereotypes.

The first, and to a lesser extend the second, Fancy Nancy picture books gave us a girl whose fanciness was a fancy of imagination. She would dress up for a dinner out, and teach her family how to be fancy, and in the end her fanciness gave her a dose of humility. Or she would covet a fancy dog, and then take care of a fancy dog, only to learn that fanciness isn't always the best quality to look for. Nicely put lessons in both. What I'm seeing now is a girl forcing the world into her fancy box and when it doesn't fit, oh well. The lesson of Bonjour Butterfly is lost on me -- is it "dump your friends when something fancier comes along?" And as for the beginning reader books, is it really such a good idea to be dropping French words onto those readers who my be having a hard enough time with English?

I hope sales on these books tank. I hope Harper takes a long, hard look at what they are doing with Fancy Nancy and either back off or find a way to return to the quality and the original spirit of the first book.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be using the words "quality" and "original" in the same sentence as the words Fancy Nancy.