Children's Books: Week of 6/26/06

By Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 6/26/2006

Picture Books

With witty, Victorian illustrations and droll dialogue, McElmurry (Mad About Plaid) tells the fairy tale story of a boy whose family will simply not believe that he has grown up until he has an infant of his own. Initially, the repeated formula of Leo shouting "I'm not a baby!" seems funny, but as Leo grows up, the story's gradual resolution takes on an odd Love You Forever tone. Leo appears in a Shakespeare play sporting footies and holding a rattle, and the family dresses the mustached Leo in his baby bonnet for his first day at the office. The family often reacts to Leo's utterances with three lines of comical dialogue. When Leo gets lumpy oatmeal while the rest of the family eats luscious waffles, for instance, baby Leo says, "Poopie!" " 'The baby said poopie,' said Lester. 'The baby is persnickety,' said Papa. 'Perhaps the baby needs a fresh diaper,' said Nanny Fanni." The illustrations exude eccentric charm. The nanny's red high-tops peek out from underneath her proper Victorian maid's uniform, and Leo's brother appears with a pet white mouse on his shoulder. Most children will initially relate to Leo's frustration at not being seen for who he is, and laugh at the incongruity of a grown man being taken for a baby. However, the holes in the fantasy logic (Leo is the only member of the family who is not allowed to grow up) may wear thin at subsequent readings. Ages 4-8. (July)

A husband-and-wife team spins a tale about a sock monkey caught up in a series of adventures while trying to help a friend. Readers young and old will appreciate the narrative's wry tone: "Now, Susie was a fine girl, but a bit forgetful." Oscar is more than just a stuffed toy: "He kept track of Susie's barrettes. He freshened Cottontail's water when Susie forgot. And he pulled up her blankets at night." It is no wonder then that the level-headed Oscar is destined to deliver the lost key to Cottontail's cage in time for Susie's school pet show presentation. But before readers can assign to the stuffed hero an "all work and no play" attitude, Oscar gets sidetracked by a number of distractions. Schwartz's (What James Likes Best) whimsical drawings depict a modern-day world where people go about their business, oblivious to Oscar. When he lands inside a jacket pocket, the active cityscape goes black, narrowing the scope and forcing readers—and Oscar—to regain focus. With an eventual fait accompli, the plush hero, "one ounce of cotton happiness" has a smile on his face once again. So too will readers of this charming story with a satisfying ending. Ages 3-7. (June)

With his murky green skin and fierce underbite, Ugly Fish rules the aquarium. "He liked gliding in... and out... of his driftwood tunnel. He liked eating his special briny flakes." But he hates to share. Each time a potential friend is introduced, he snarls, "There's only room for one fish in this tank—me!" He devours all interlopers, including cute yellow Teensy Fish and the cuddly duo of Stripey and Spotty Fish. In post-meal images, readers witness Ugly's pleased expression and see the victim's fin dangling from his toothy jaw; when he's lonely, he does express mild remorse ("Chasing those fish was fun. If only I hadn't eaten them"). Shortly thereafter, dark-blue Shiny Fish—so enormous he doesn't fit on the page, and with sinister dark circles under his narrow eyes—joins Ugly in the tank. Ugly acts as though he has learned his lesson, and tries to welcome the hulking newcomer. But predator becomes prey, and Shiny gets "a nice new home... [burp] all to himself." Magoon pictures the action in close-up, except for a wordless closing image of solitary Shiny, content in the rectangular tank. In this conclusion, Magoon implies the tiny territory for which the fish compete, and not least, the human hand in the fishy murders. LaReau's text, meanwhile, describes a bully's grim comeuppance. But however satisfying the vigilante justice, only a bigger bully trumps a petty tyrant. This cautionary tale shows that violence begets violence, but never suggests an alternative to the big-fish-eat-little-fish cycle. Ages 3-7. (June)

On the heels of her Caldecott Honor title The Red Book, Lehman offers an equally evocative wordless sequence. A boy in a tomato-red sweatshirt, whose dot mouth and dot eyes make him look both tranquil and perpetually surprised, arrives with his class at a museum full of modern art. When he stops to tie his shoe, he stumbles upon a room with a case displaying a half-dozen old drawings of labyrinths (a statue of a slumbering Minotaur sits in the corner). Just as suddenly, he finds himself shrunk down and standing on the faded parchment of the first maze. Lehman uses warm sepia ink for the walls of the mazes, now shoulder-high to the boy, and hatching lines to give the walls dimension; the boy makes a bright contrast as he works his way through all six. With exquisite pacing, Lehman depicts a series of panels in which the boy enters the tower in the center of the final maze. Through a keyhole, readers spy someone inside hanging a gold medal around the boy's neck as a reward for his achievement. Then the boy returns to normal and rejoins the tour. Was the journey in the boy's imagination? The very last panel suggests it was not. Young readers will find endless satisfaction in traveling through the mazes with the boy, and art lovers will enjoy identifying some famous artwork. Ages 4-8. (May)

An exuberant, can-do spirit pervades Best's (Three Cheers for Catherine the Great!) uplifting tale of a girl whose passion enables her to create opportunities out of roadblocks. Davenier's (the Iris and Walter books) watercolors initially create a sense of forward motion. The story opens with a redheaded one-year-old waving from a child's seat on Mama's bike, then progresses through the tricycle, bicycle-with-training-wheels, training-wheels-removal, seat-raising and handle-bar raising stages. In one picture, arms widespread, Sally Jean joyfully sings: "I can pop a wheelie, I can touch the sky,/ I can pedal backwards, I can really fly!" When, at eight, she outgrows her bike, the family's financial challenges become apparent—they can't afford a bike. Without a hint of self-pity, Sally Jean confronts her circumstances with ingenuity, optimism and hard work, aided by a community that finds numerous, nonfinancial ways to support her. Though she faces adult realities, whimsical artistic touches emphasize her child's world view; her toy elephant, for instance, energetically participates in all activities. Sally Jean follows her eventual triumphant achievement of fashioning a new bike with a generous act that closes the story on a heartwarming note. Ages 4-8. (May)

It's a ridiculous proposition, that a man could mistake an elephant for a cat. But French author/artist Bachelet, with droll pen-and-ink illustrations and Gallic wit, pursues the idea's side-splitting implications to their logical end. "My cat is very fat, very sweet, and very, very silly," the narrative begins, in what sounds like the usual oafish opening to a second-rate memoir. But the opening image of a sad-eyed elephant jammed uncomfortably into a tiny cat basket is sure to garner a laugh from the get-go. Nimbly drafted vignettes depict the pet curled up on top of the television with his hairy, bony tail hanging down over the weather map. As if the pictures of the elephant in the litter box and the crabby reply to the Natural History museum defending his portrait of his pet's skeleton were not enough, Bachelet launches into a magnificent series of art parodies, with his beloved elephant—sorry, cat—rendered as if by Ingres, Matisse and a host of other world-renowned painters. Since readers definitely won't be able to have a cat like this in their homes, they had better run out and get this book instead. Ages 4-8. (May)

Delessert (The Seven Dwarves) imagines King Humpty Dumpty as a pop-eyed, deluded monarch who lives a life of ease in a castle surrounded by miserable peasants. It's their discovery of his wealth, Delessert proposes, that prompts King Humpty to build the wall around his castle even higher, and his fall during its construction that the famous nursery rhyme commemorates. The formidable paintings of King Humpty's hallucinogenic gardens and the pig-nosed bunnies who wait on him provide ironic counterpoint to passages of text describing his pampered life. "After a nap, King Humpty practiced the art of archery. His crossbow had been made especially for him in Switzerland." The spread shows a row of servants with apples on their heads, cowering as the king takes aim. The story looks headed for a cheerful ending, possibly with the peasants rowing on King Humpty's pond after his demise, a conclusion younger readers might have welcomed. But these peasants are so downtrodden that even their oppressor's death doesn't relieve their misery. "The peasants, in a humble ceremony, laid him to rest on their side of the fence. Then they wandered back into their night," it ends. A fascinating exercise in imagination, but a disheartening read. Ages 5-8. (May)

Fiction

Henrietta P. Hoppenbeek provides the delightfully careening narrative in Murray's (The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley) quirky tale. After the garrulous heroine describes herself ("I'm a good wiggler, and sometimes I'm exhillperating and sometimes I'm exasperating"), she introduces her pet mice, dog, best friend and baby brother Albert, who is "only the size of a sock. Not really. He's probably about the same size as a sewing machine, only he can't sew." Sepia- and rose-toned spot illustrations in a childlike free-hand style demonstrate Henrietta's points (e.g., baby Albert within the outline of a sewing machine). She blithely announces that her role at home is to "make sure things keep happening." It is a job at which she excels. Trotting out her comically overactive imagination, the lass lists the things she can do: "I can become a dueling rhinoceros, a surf champion,... or a high-and-mighty lady singing hallelujah, praise the land of agreeable chairs" (a series of scenes depict a chair as her chief prop in each scenario) and confides that "what she really want[s] to be is an explorer" (e.g., sailing in the bathtub with her brother to the Land of One Thousand Alberts, where she drops him off "for a long holiday"). Handlettered type that swirls across the page, along with the energetic, spontaneous-looking drawings add to the whimsy of the book. Feisty, inventive Henrietta is sure to attract many fans. Ages 7-10. (June)

First-time author Zappa (son of rock legend Frank) mines his childhood fear of things that go bump in the night for this mock-memoir of a "monsterminator"-in-training, with recipes. Eleven-year-old Minerva McFearless, or Mini, as she's called, and her brother, Max, nine, stumble upon their father's secret trade—eliminating monsters. For years, they study his encyclopedic Monstranomicon, a talking, biting (female) book that contains information about all manner of evil beast and "defensive recipes" on how to defeat them. Mini also learns to speak Monstrosity, the native tongue of Grumplemisers, Glorches and the Howleewoof who relishes "children con carne." This stealthy self-teaching comes in handy when their widower father is kidnapped by agents of the Zarmaglorg, "the king of evil," who resides in faraway Castle Doominstinkinfart. With a cantankerous one-eyed coyote named Mr. Devilstone leading the way, a perilous trip to rescue Dad is on. The reptilian-skin look of the cover, Zappa's lively monster doodles and photo-illustrations of the main characters in key scenes, add kooky, creepy graphic appeal to the McFearless kids' escapades. A B-movie aesthetic keeps the narrative from being truly scary, and the repeated references to barfing, slime, blood and guts make this ideal summer reading for the crowd that's graduated from Captain Underpants. Ages 8-12. (July)

Cushman takes on many issues in this novel set in Hollywood at the peak of McCarthyism, unfortunately diluting the power of any one of them. As the book opens, narrator Francine learns that her neighbor Sophie Bowman will be joining her eighth grade class at All Saints School for Girls. The deliciously named Sister Basil the Great, the principal who doubles as their teacher, quickly singles out Sophie as the student to hold up as an example, sentencing the girl to stand in the wastebasket throughout class. Cushman draws parallels between the strict authority of the Catholic school and the constraints of McCarthyism on everyday citizens. Sophie's father, a screenwriter, allows readers to see the havoc wreaked upon his peers (one, a Jewish actor being shadowed by the FBI and pressured to give up names, commits suicide), and the Russian owners of a vandalized local store voice the irony of their situation ("That's why Petrov and I left Russia, to get away from such thugs"). Yet these connections may be a bit abstract for some readers, who will more likely respond to details of Francine's daily life—taking her younger brother past Newberry Five and Ten, ordering root beer floats at Riley's or having a crush on Montgomery Clift. The author introduces the idea of Sophie's tendency to egg on controversy but never fully develops it, and Francine remains quite aloof from the world. She is less sympathetic than Cushman's previous memorable heroines (in Catherine, Called Birdy; The Midwife's Apprentice). Ages 10-14. (Aug.)

Jolly, 14, has been told she was bought as an infant at a slave auction in Tortuga by Bannon, a pirate captain who named her after the flag flown from his mast. So when Bannon and his crew fall prey to a deadly high-seas trap, Jolly loses the only family she's ever had. She alone survives because she can walk on water. Jolly is a polliwog, a rare creature born following a catastrophic earthquake in 1692, when magic "came out of the cracks in the earth." She washes ashore on a desolate island, where Munk, also 14 and also a polliwog, lives with his parents. Trouble has followed her, however, and soon she and Munk are on the run, told that a gate to a world of dangerous creatures is crumbling, and that only polliwogs can thwart impending disaster. The 18th-century Caribbean imagined by Meyer (The Water Mirror) contains many intriguing elements—Munk uses "mussel magic" to conjure pearls out of the air, and his parents' tobacco farm is tended by vapory ghosts. But as Jolly and Munk's once-tidy lives spin out of control, so does the plot, which caroms through an exciting, if exhausting, series of swashbuckling adventures and near-misses with rival pirates, carnivorous sea beasts and perhaps too many mystical forces. This first volume in the Wave Walkers series ends at a cliff, but the continual introduction of new characters and confusing elements keeps it from standing on its own. Ages 10-14. (June)

Newcomer Varela's strange and moving novella, set in the early 1970s, takes place in Palmers Gate, a run-down bayside town in New Jersey. In the spring of Robbie's fifth grade year, Colleen moves in next door, and the entire class immediately identifies her as an "outsider." Over the following months, the two form a tenuous, secret friendship. The author hints at Colleen's deeply troubled nature when she circulates a note to her fifth-grade male classmates saying she will "strip" near a wooded pond after school (which she does not end up doing). Robbie knows that Colleen is not the "Retardner" her classmates have nick-named her, but also believes that something is very wrong. The third-person narrative allows readers to observe Robbie's conflicting reactions to Colleen, wanting to avoid but also protect her. The tension builds to a climax one summer night when Robbie does something that changes the course of both of their lives. This is a gracefully written and powerful story, made all the more disturbing by Robbie's sense that something is wrong, and his inability to figure out the danger surrounding Colleen. That she is a victim of sexual abuse is far beyond his ken, yet readers may well understand what Robbie could not. There are no easy answers here, but Varela's quietly gripping tale unfolds with excellent pacing. Ages 12-up. (June)

This collection succeeds in being truly inclusive. Editors Levithan (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, reviewed May 1) and Merrell have carefully selected young people with various identities, from gay and bisexual to transgendered, who tell their own stories through essays, poems and, in one case, photography. The candor of these tales will immediately grab the attention of readers. Narrators range from a gay Boy Scout backpacking instructor to a college student in Iowa struggling to carve out an ambiguous gender ("My problem is that I don't want this 'girl-thing' hanging over me. I'm caught between the effort of being a guy and the struggle to not forget where I'm from") to a girl finding the strength to tell her best friend that she loves her. Often heartbreaking, the stories also include plenty of difficult material, from physical abuse to homelessness, but also warm moments, such as a gay man remembering the night his older military-bound brother "telling me he loved me just the way I was." They can be funny, too (one gay student, who had always had a lot of female friends, begins carrying feminine hygiene products to school in order to show support for his girlfriends, something that "gained me the importance of a drug dealer"). The quality varies, but overall, readers will be impressed by the bravery of the young authors here, and the clarity with which they present their experiences. Ages 12-up. (May)

Hemphill borrows themes from Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and a plot point from As I Lay Dying in this impressive debut, set in July 1972. After a rift with his preacher father, 14-year-old narrator Harlan Q Stank apprentices with a local mortician. The boy's first meets his grandfather (Harlan O, just back in their north Texas town after a 20-year estrangement from his son, Harlan P) in his employer's basement. Grandfather, having suffered a fatal heart attack at a nearby motel, lies smiling on the cooling table. After learning that an inheritance of $50,000 and an Eldorado convertible await—provided that the body arrives back in Sin City for burial—Harlan Q talks Paps into driving Grandfather back—the cash inheritance to be cleansed by funding The Sunnyside Savior Church Radio Hour. A road trip in the church station wagon ensues, with Grandfather casketed and crated inside. A flat tire leads to an addition, handsome 19-year-old Warrior (aka Warren Ducklo), actor wannabe, dabbler in alternative religions and an estranged "PK" (preacher's kid) himself. Warrior and Paps's unceasing religious haranguing, while driving Harlan Q nuts, underscores his own painful, even panic-stricken quest to tear himself from his father's wrathful grasp. Laugh-out-loud scenes, a marvelous narrative voice, period details and appealingly quirky characterization outweigh the too-tidy ending, making Hemphill a writer to watch. Ages 13-up. (May)