Children's Books: Week of 7/31/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 7/31/2006

Picture Books

This circuitous tale from the creators of It's Hard to Be Five opens with a series of questions: "Is there really/ a human race?/ Is it going on now all over the place?/ When did it start?/ Who said, 'Ready, Set, Go'?/ Did it start on my birthday?/ I really must know." Cornell quickly livens up the proceedings, however, with a spread of newborns lined up in a nursery, suggesting clues to their futures. One sunglasses-sporting infant holds an Oscar statuette, another chews on the tassel of a graduation cap. The relay race metaphor plays out as Cornell pictures a diverse spectrum of people dashing about madly, and the narrator poses more questions: "Is the race like a loop/ or an obstacle course?/ Am I a jockey,/ or am I a horse?" After asking why he is doing "this zillion-yard dash," the lad observes that if we don't help each other, we're all going to "crash." Switching to the mother's perspective, the narrative emphasizes the importance of taking one's time, trying one's best ("that's more important than beating the rest") and making the world a better place "for the whole human race." Curtis's message has merit, yet its singsong delivery seems muddled. Yet fans of this duo may well be carried along by Cornell's bustling, whimsical art, overflowing with quirky particulars that celebrate the diversity of people everywhere. All ages. (Sept.)

Man's best friend doesn't necessarily have to be of the pooch persuasion—at least, according to this tale of a man and his dapple-gray steed. Stein's straightforward story traces a journey that ends right where it began. At the start, the text sounds almost like Hemingway in its realistic, simplistic language ("They rose before dawn and woke the cows. The day grew hot.... At noon they drank from a cool river"). Ink-and-watercolor illustrations mirror the desert landscape, spare in detail. The story takes on more energy (and a fictional direction) when Andy the horse sets out to find a birthday cake for Cowboy Ned's special day. The animal encounters a cast of critters, each of whom reveals his or her own strength yet is not able to assist him. From the cricket alone with his song, to the owl quietly observing all, the creatures reinforce the desert's stillness. Only when Andy meets a banjo-playing cowboy, "as old as the hills," is he reminded of something he knew all along: "The best thing to have on your birthday is a friend to share it with." This quietly uplifting tale will remind readers, too, that oftentimes one need not travel far to find what one is looking for. Ages 3-6. (July)

This follow-up to Dog Show is even more fun than its predecessor, thanks to a clever plot twist. Once again, the basset hound Fred and his beloved owner, Harvey, are at odds. Harvey has been appointed chairman of his town's 250th anniversary parade, and he wants Fred to have a starring role, "dressed as the founding dog of Bonesport." But Fred—with his long-suffering, poker-face visage—isn't biting: "The last time Fred was in a parade, someone put a baby on his back, and someone tied a flag to his tail, and... someone blew a horn in his ear. Fred couldn't hear for week," writes Winthrop, whose wry reportorial prose makes this a terrific read-aloud. Is Fred willing to let the parade pass him by? The answer is yes, and fortunately so: with everybody else marching, Fred is the only spectator—and it's a job that he embraces with brio. Ulriksen (whose work has appeared on New Yorker covers), is a stylish, ironic painter, but he's clearly put a lot of heart into his work here, too. With a comically florid palette and witty framings (he has an unerring sense of where the focus of a composition should be), he conveys Fred's hipster stoicism, Harvey's geeky enthusiasm, and the come-what-may love they have for one another. Most important, he makes Fred's ecstatic viewing-stand performance a visual punch line worth waiting for. Ages 4-9. (Aug.)

This volume of three linked tales marks Dormer's children's book debut; an editorial illustrator, he adds a patina of hipness to Ries's (Super Sam!) sweet-natured, understated storytelling. The book opens as narrator Ben and his father head to the pet shop. The boy weighs the pros and cons of several candidates, as the pet store owner asks if each is the pet for him ("I think. A mouse would run through a tube. A mouse would sit on my hand. A mouse would hide in my pocket. But a mouse might get lost. 'I do not think I want a mouse,' I say"). The charm comes through in the space between what the boy thinks and what he actually says, the silence filled with Dormer's panel illustrations. Ben picks a cute puppy he names Aggie. In the next tale, Ben tries to bond with Aggie by mimicking her behavior; this experiment comes to an abrupt close when Ben spots Aggie drinking from the toilet ("I am done being a dog"). The final story finds Ben and Aggie working out their mutual bedtime fears. "There is nothing scary," Ben coos on the final page as he snuggles his dog. "Just me and Aggie." Dormer's watercolor-and-ink drawings possess a schematic edginess and a sophisticated sense of framing. He pitches his pictures at just the right level for his audience, and skillfully keeps the visual pace percolating by interweaving broad humor (e.g., the toilet scene) with vivid action (in one frame, Aggie seems ready to leap off the page in pursuit of a ball) and moments of authentic tenderness. It's an impressive and original effort, and bodes well for a sequel. Ages 4-7. (July)

When Mom announces Cousin John is coming for a visit, the story's protagonists—a boy and his cat—experience a series of flashbacks and premonitions straight out of Grand Guignol. Unbeknownst to Mom, Cousin John is a bully par excellence. So while she's talking up the visit (hers is the only voice heard in the book) with bubbly exhortations such as, "for the whole weekend, we'll do just what you boys want to do," the heroes recall with horror the time John dangled them over an alligator pond, and gird themselves for upcoming games of pretend pirate play in which John will force them to walk the plank into a pit of porcupines and barbed wire. All seems lost until Mom reveals Cousin John's Achilles heel, which inspires the heroes to hatch plans of sweet revenge. The premise of clueless-adult-meets-evil-spawn-relative begins to wear thin about midway through the book. Readers may find themselves growing a bit numb to Cousin John's crimes, even when the visual litany is broken up with a few scenes of the underdogs triumphing. But readers will likely be won over by the hip, edgy and slightly sinister rendering style of debuting illustrator Lilly. His button-eye, expressive characters and humorous attention to detail recall classic comic-strip characters. Broach's (Wet Dog!) chirpy, keenly observed text acts as an effective comic foil to her collaborator's vision of an all-in-the-family near-apocalypse. Ages 4-up. (July)

Copiously illustrated with wacky cartoons, the debut Hot Dog and Bob caper introduces a normal kid named Bob, who discovers a talking hot dog in his lunchbox. The wiener explains that he is from the planet Dogzalot, where Big Bun commands superhero hot dogs, dispatching them on missions "whenever there's big alien trouble on another planet." Because his memory is murky, Hot Dog needs a partner and tells Bob he's the boy for the job. Before Hot Dog can explain his mission on earth, Bob's teacher morphs into Cheese Face, an "evil mutant alien pizza person" (oozing melted mozzarella from every pore). After she turns most of the students into walking, talking pizza slices, Hot Dog flies out of Bob's lunchbox to save the day but can't remember "the plan" and has forgotten that he neglected to relay it to Bob. Pushing buttons on his bun, Hot Dog emits streams of mustard and other condiments, drowning Cheese Face in a "sick sea of slime." But—gasp!—she resurfaces, only to be defeated in a fittingly kooky finale. Those who relish the zaniest sort of slapstick will eat this up and dig into the second helping—Hot Dog and Bob and the Particularly Pesky Attack of the Pencil People (ISBN 0-8118-4464-1)—due the same month. Ages 6-10. (Aug.)

In this launch of the appealing Melvin Beederman, Superhero chronicles, Melvin has just graduated from Superhero Academy. He looks spiffy in his red cape and is a whiz at math. Leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, however, and stopping speeding locomotives are not easy for him, and "that whole x-ray vision thing—it brought nothing with it but guilt. Everywhere Melvin looked—underwear." That's an apt reference, since Captain Underpants–esque humor abounds in this fun, flighty caper, presented with a bit of Airplane-like deadpan delivery. Melvin is assigned to L.A., where he begins "catching bad guys right and left," watching TV cartoons and eating junk food between tasks. When he brings his muddy cape to the cleaners, they inadvertently swap it with a cape belonging to Candace Brinkwater, a girl starring in a Little Red Riding Hood play. While Candace soars through the air wearing the superhero's cape, Melvin can't get off the ground (even after 642 attempts). But Melvin fashions a brilliant solution—and saves the day with a bit of assistance. Slyly sprinkled with borrowings from superhero tales ("Holy slow poke!" says capeless Melvin) and packed with kid-pleasing yucks, this copiously and comically illustrated tale is sufficiently full of baloney to fly. The spoof continues in The Revenge of the McNasty Brothers (the title suggests the return of Melvin's nemesis), published simultaneously (0-8050-7929-7; paper 0-8050-7837-1). Ages 7-10. (July)

In her first book for young adults, Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) delivers a romp through space and time with an intrepid 11-year-old heroine, Silver Rivers. The story opens with "the first of the Time Tornadoes," which merges a contemporary school bus and a pharaoh's chariots on the River Thames. It then moves to the 16th-century rambling house that had been Silver's family home before her parents and sister disappeared four years ago. Now Silver lives there with her greedy "aunt" who is helping an ageless and sinister alchemist, Abel Darkwater, find the lost Timekeeper. A prophecy states that this clock, to be found by the Child with the Golden Face, controls the most precious commodity of all—time. Silver discovers she is that Child, with the help of the underground people called "Throwbacks," who help her travel across the universe and back. Winterson playfully peppers this journey with references to John Harrison, the Einstein Line, Schrödinger's cat, quantum physics, Black Holes and Egyptian deities. In Silver's quest to fulfill the prophecy, she teams up with her special Throwback friend, Gabriel, to take on Darkwater and his nemesis Regalia Mason, leader of a powerful corporation for centuries into the past and future. While the text may be somewhat fragmented and overworked in places, the sheer exhilaration of the adventure and the many fascinating historical and scientific allusions will keep readers engrossed through to the satisfying conclusion. Ages 8-12. (Aug.)

In a foreword to this compelling fictionalized biography (appropriately subtitled, "Being the True and Fictional Account of the Most Valiant Marshal in the West"), Paulsen debunks the myths surrounding some of the Wild West's most celebrated figures. ("All in all, poor stock to consider when looking for role models from our frontier," he writes). As a dramatic alternative, he introduces Bass Reeves as "a man who truly qualified as legendary and heroic," a claim that Paulsen's tale easily supports. The young slave of a drunken rancher, Bass runs away after an altercation with his master (whom he calls "the mister")—the man was cheating in a poker game against Reeves in which the captive's freedom were the stakes. Paulsen's lilting prose weaves in colorful details (e.g., a "Jesus stick," two sharpened sticks fashioned into a cross, used to kill rabbits or hens) and historic events, such as the Alamo and the establishment of the Indian Territory. The chapters covering Bass's time among the Creek Indians moves almost too swiftly, but set the stage for the man's later work. (After the Emancipation Proclamation, Bass becomes a successful cattle rancher and, at 51, is appointed a deputy federal marshal, charged with "clean[ing] up" the Indian Territory.) Frequently confronting racial prejudice, Bass nonetheless never draws his gun first, killing only 14 outlaws. Effectively conveying Reeve's thoughts and emotions, the author shapes an articulate, well-deserved tribute to this unsung hero. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)

In alternating chapters, Newbery Medalist Cooper (The Dark Is Rising) tells the stories of 11-year-old Molly, a contemporary homesick Londoner transplanted to the U.S. because of her mother's remarriage, and Sam, also 11, a 19th-century ship's boy aboard the HMS Victory. Sam also has a new home—he's been pressed into service by the Royal Navy and assigned to kitchen duties on Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson's battleship. Initially, the connection between these two children, disparate in time, circumstance and locale, seems tenuous—tied only by a biography of Nelson that Molly buys from a bookstore. But when Molly finds a historical artifact hidden inside the book, she begins having strange visions about Sam, his ship and the brutal sea battles of the Napoleonic Wars. These images resurrect lost memories of her late father, whose plane plunged into the Atlantic years earlier. Cooper tells Molly's story in present-tense, third-person narration, then switches to past-tense, first-person for Sam's chapters, a stylistic choice that makes the stories distinct but the shift between them jarring. While Molly's upheaval is emotionally rendered, Sam's tale bogs down in period detail about the workaday grind of seamanship. The resolution relies on an improbable coincidence to bring the two stories together, but provides a hopeful future for Molly. Ages 9-12. (July)

There is snogging and sparring aplenty in Manning's (Guitar Girl) appealing if rather overwrought launch title in the Diary of a Crush trilogy, which started as a fictional column in a now-defunct British teen mag. In her diary entries, 16-year-old Edie bemoans her family's recent move; she feels like a "socially dysfunctional freak of nature" at her new college. Yet her "spiritual self shift[s] into orbit" when she locks eyes with gorgeous, 19-year-old Dylan, whose "face was all hard planes and angles, cheekbones and jawline softened only by these pillowy lips." Those pillowy lips become quite familiar to Edie, who presses her lips to his and becomes obsessed with the guy—despite warnings about his many past dalliances. Dylan's aloofness between kissing sessions rankles Edie, who begins dating an attentive, sincere classmate on the sly. Edie's emotional roller coaster ride hits high and low points on a school trip to Paris, where she finally issues Dylan an ultimatum ("I want everything or nothing"). Dylan agrees to everything—yet the title of the second installment, Kiss and Make Up (ISBN 0-14-240642-2), hints at more ups and downs to come (and the third, Sealed with a Kiss, ISBN 0-14-240648-1, suggests—a happy ending?). Despite the tale's repetition and ample melodrama, readers with a fondness for romantic soap opera will find these smooching characters quite entertaining. Ages 14-up. (July)

From the Bible we know Noah as a dutiful servant of God, a father, a farmer and a ship builder. But was he the first person to discover felt? According to Lunge-Larsen's fanciful tale, the answer is yes. With jaunty pacing and a contemporary conversational style, the author characterizes the Ark captain as faithful, hard-working, stressed and not always certain of his path. As Noah follows God's plan to ride out the great flood with the animals in the Ark, he notices something unusual about the coats of the sheep on board. All the jostling and humidity the woolly animals endure on the vessel results in a flat, strong and smooth cloth-like coat, which Noah shears from them. The felt (as we now know it) comes in handy—in the form of winter-wear—when Noah and company finally land on the snow-capped Mount Ararat. The playful liberties Lunge-Larsen takes with a familiar story may not be for everyone. But her inclusion of source notes and suggested additional reading are sure to spark curiosity and exploration. Trueman's stylized mixed-media compositions, often framed with wooden borders, provide a variety of perspectives and create a sense of the Ark's motion and noisy, close quarters. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

In this powerful and lyrical picture book inspired by Jewish legends called Midrashim, Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) imagines the viewpoint of the white ram that plays a key role in the Bible story of Abraham and Isaac. On the last day of creation, God places a white ram in the garden of Eden, telling it to wait until God calls him. Years pass until the summons finally comes, and the ram must fend off the tricks and temptations of "the evil one" exclaiming as he travels afar, "I must save the child!" The white ram reaches Abraham just in time, offering itself as sacrifice instead of the boy—a bargain God wholeheartedly accepts. The ram's selflessness doesn't stop there, however. Among other things, it offers its horns as the sacred shofar, whose sound reminds all people of God's love and his forgiveness of the sins of "Isaac and his children and his children's, children's children" at each Rosh Hashanah or New Year's Day. Gerstein achieves a striking, textured medium using a sunny palette and a blend of pen, ink, oils and colored pencil. His depiction of a craggy and truly sinister-looking evil one, and formations of clouds and sky that suggest the hands of God, will have young readers repeatedly poring over these pages. Ages 6-10. (Sept.)

What's in a name? The young narrator of this chipper picture book attempts to explain, as he expresses thanks for his own name—David—the first gift his parents gave to him, and which honors his late great-grandfather. Using the biblical king as example, the narrator offers that "His mother called him Davey... His brothers called him Useless... His harp teacher called him Genius... His people called him Your Majesty... his son Solomon just called him Daddy." Readers are then reminded that Adam was charged with naming all the animals and creatures of the new earth and that families in different cultures and countries give their children different names. Though the text does not address name meanings or specific origins (aside from stating that many people are named for figures in the Bible), this book celebrates what a special possession a name is. Lafrance's (Mind Me Good Now: A Caribbean Tale) creamy acrylic paintings feature fluid, elongated characters and dreamlike background scenes with folk-art-style motifs. A note on Jewish naming customs is included. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)

In this gorgeous, poetic picture book, Weatherford (The Sound that Jazz Makes) depicts Harriet Tubman's initial escape from slavery and her mission to lead others to freedom as divinely inspired, and achieved by steadfast faith and prayer. The author frames the text as an ongoing dialogue between Tubman and God, inserting narration to move the action along. On the eve of her being sold and torn from her family, Tubman prays in her despair. In response, "God speaks in a whip-poor-will's song. 'I set the North Star in the heavens and I mean for you to be free.' " The twinkling star encourages Tubman: "My mind is made up. Tomorrow, I flee." The book's elegant design clearly delineates these elements—Harriet's words in italic, God's calming words in all caps drifting across the pages, the narrator's words in roman typeface—and makes this read like a wholly engrossing dramatic play. Nelson's (He's Got the Whole World in His Hands) finely rendered oil and watercolor paintings, many set in the rural inky darkness of night, give his protagonist a vibrant, larger-than-life presence, befitting a woman who became known as the Moses of her people. His rugged backdrops and intense portraits convey all the emotion of Tubman's monumental mission. A foreword introduces the concept of slavery for children and an author's note includes a brief biography of Tubman. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)