Children's Book Reviews: Week of 2/19/2007

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 2/19/2007

Picture Books

My Cat Copies Me
Yoon-duck Kwon. Kane-Miller, $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-933605-26-5

Kwon's (Excited Alone!) brilliant colors, simple forms and meticulously drawn floral patterns render even common objects pleasing and gemlike in this tale of friendship. The artowrk transforms piles of laundry, newspapers and sneakers into small treasures. "My cat copies me," says the girl narrator. "We help with the laundry, and chase after flies. Smelling the flowers, or watching bugs, she always copies me." Kwon infuses the figures of the girl and the cat with a kind of magic—they play in ordinary surroundings, but strike poses that recall those of traditional tales, leaping and flying. Readers learn that the girl is timid by observing details in the scenes: although children play happily outside their window, she and her cat only sit and watch, and she is afraid of the dark. But her cat's fearlessness inspires her. "From now on," the girl vows, as Kwon paints her with green eyes that imitate her pet's, "I will copy my cat!... I won't be scared of anything!" Girl and cat crouch, poised for action. They walk outside on the street, with their hair wild and their postures taut, prepared for whatever may await them. "We'll make new friends, together!" she vows, and on the final page, she and her cat lead the children on a wild chase. Youngsters will be fascinated by the way child and pet influence each other, and impressed with Kwon's quiet powers of observation. Ages 2-6. (Mar.)

Fabian Escapes
Peter McCarty. Holt, $16.95 ISBN 978-0-8050-7713-1

Readers smitten with the soothing Caldecott Honor book Hondo and Fabian, about a sedate yellow Lab and a gray-striped housecat, may get a frisson of alarm from this book's title. Not to worry—McCarty maintains an even keel in this wry look at pets' everyday lives. Just as Hondo returns from an escorted walk, Fabian the tabby jumps out a ground-floor window. Fabian investigates springtime shrubberies ("He stops to smell the flowers/ and eats them"), while Hondo woozily cruises the kitchen table ("He stops to smell the butter/ and eats it"). The pets' similarities continue. In a breathless moment, Fabian faces three dogs on the lawn (which comically plays against the deadpan text, "The neighbors are happy/ to play chase with their new friend," followed by the pooch as victim inside—"The baby is happy/ to play dress-up with Hondo"). McCarty gives readers a suspenseful glimpse of the canine interlopers over Fabian's shoulder and a bird's-eye view of the chase. Fabian eludes them with a soaring lunge over a weathered wooden fence: "Fabian spends the rest of the day/ hiding under the porch./ Hondo spends the rest of the day/ napping on the bed." McCarty's parallel sentences and soft-focus pencil illustrations hint that Hondo and Fabian are too well-fed to stray. His characteristic pattern, one framed image and one sentence per spread, slows the pace. Yet the artist lends an enigmatic feline quality to Fabian's alert ears and confidently stiff tail, and a glimmer of mischief around Hondo's beady eyes and plush golden contours. McCarty shakes things up ever so slightly, then lets Fabian duck back in the door. "Where have you been, Fabian?" an unseen speaker casually asks, restoring tranquility with a rhetorical question. Ages 3-up. (May)

Leaving the Nest
Mordicai Gerstein. FSG/Foster, $16 (40p) ISBN 978-0-374-34369-9

Four stories about a baby bluejay, kitten, girl and baby squirrel converge in this picture-book drama. Readers follow the connected story threads via cartoon-like thought balloons to make sense out of the resulting mayhem. Initially, the characters often speak to themselves rather than to each other, and the short soliloquies can make for a rather disjointed plot, as if one were listening to four radio stations at the same time. In Gerstein's light-filled, full-spread illustrations, the speech bubbles also carry the story's narrative. Thus, several squirrels awkwardly share one bubble with a text that says, " 'What a silly kitten!' laugh all the squirrels," and the entire cast shares one that reads, " 'Baby Jay is flying!' shouts everyone." Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) cleverly includes characters who have reached different stages of "leaving the nest." Baby Squirrel is just old enough to watch the action but not to join in, and the curious kitten doesn't even know what "outside" means. The girl has left the nest but sometimes needs her mother's help, and the bluejay is too terrified to fly at first. At times the plot grows so complicated that 12 speech bubbles appear on a single spread. The format may be too confusing for novice readers, but the unfolding drama will likely hold readers' interest. Ages 3-6. (Mar.)

Chicky Chicky Chook Chook
Cathy MacLennan. Boxer (Sterling, dist.), $12.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-905417-40-7

A stylized onomatopoeic sound fest marks MacLennan's impressive debut. With bright, feathery dabs and blobs of paint, she introduces a passel of almost palpable fluffy chicks, fuzzy bees and cuddly kittens, all of whom frolic across brown-bag backgrounds to the beat of rhymes like this one: "Chicky, chicky, chook chook./ Chick, chick chick./ Chicky, chicky, chook chook,/ peck... peck... pick." The eyeballs of the rambunctious characters seem to bounce off their bodies, underscoring their kinetic energy. A sudden cloudburst puts a damper on things: "Sticky, icky chicky./ Soggy, groggy moggy./ Wet. Wet. Wet./ Crazy... dizzy... buzzer!/ How will we get dry?" But the sun soon restores everybody back to their previously adorable states—just in time for a good night's sleep. The text may go on a bit long for some grownups' taste, especially since many of the sound combinations could potentially lodge themselves firmly in the brain. But youngsters will find the zippy, percussive language good fun, and plead for repeat readings. Ages 3-6. (Mar.)

Wolf! Wolf!
John Rocco. Hyperion, $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-4231-0012-6

Ably illustrated and imaginatively reconceived, this version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" stars not the boy, but the wolf. No bloodthirsty brigand, this wolf is an arthritic has-been who's reduced to raising vegetables in a weed-choked garden. The boy's false cries from over the hill raise the wolf's hopes: could this mean a free meal? While children wonder whether the wolf will snag his prey, adults may be intrigued by the story's exotic setting. Under a canopy of wind-swept trees and cherry blossoms, the wolf sports a Chinese silk jacket of the type seen in old Fu Manchu movies, the boy wears a topknot, and the neighbors who complain about the boy's false cries sport queues and silk caps. Rocco (illustrator of Alice by Whoopi Goldberg) creates a world with internal consistency, and his deftly paced long shots and close-ups testify to his previous work in animation (including as art director for Shrek). The wolf smoothly talks the boy out of a goat ("The villagers are only going to believe you if you really are missing a goat. I can help you with that," he says) but, in a beguiling ending, he spares the goat (which has eaten the weeds from his garden). "What's one breakfast," he tells the goat magnanimously, "compared to delicious vegetables for the rest of my days?" The wolf may move slowly, but the story gallops. Rocco substitutes a series of giggles for the traditional finger-pointing moral, a welcome development. Ages 3-7. (Mar.)

Little Moon Dog
Helen Ward, illus. by Wayne Anderson. Dutton, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-525-47727-3

The team behind The Tin Forest delivers another otherworldly tale with a magical bent and a moral. Mischievous fairies, paying their yearly visit to the moon to plunder its gardens and beaches for "sticky moon candy," entice Little Moon Dog away from the Man in the Moon, a bespectacled, long-haired, elderly gentleman in checked slippers. "They taught him to pinch plums and drop them down the chimney, and to chase moonmoths across the starry sky." The furry fellow soon becomes the fairies' toy-du-jour. Anderson's surreal landscapes include lunar seas and elaborate sandcastles and, on the fairies' "nearby planet," verdant flora. The whimsical illustrations take on a quirky edge; impish pixies with bulbous noses and dewy eyes wear crazed expressions on their oversize faces, and fly to the moon aboard a double-decker jalopy of a bus. However, a soft pastel palette and the luminescent sheen that veils each spread confer an enchanting, peaceful tone. Especially heartwarming are the golden-hued scenes of the moon's wizened caretaker and his furry companion. After Little Moon Dog's troublemaking friends take him back to their planet (and soon tire of him), the Man in the Moon devises a pedal-powered flying contraption and brings his beloved canine home. Ward's lyrical, often alliterative writing ("They poked holes in the rhumoonbarb and unwound the moonbeans from their canes") will likely appeal to most readers, as will the book's tried-and-true theme about the nature of genuine friendship, set against a stellar backdrop. Ages 3-up. (Mar.)

Princess Pigsty
Cornelia Funke, illus. by Kerstin Meyer, trans. from the German by Chantal Wright. Scholastic/Chicken House, $16.99 ISBN 0-439-88554-X

As they did in The Princess Knight, Funke and Meyer once again skewer the princess stereotype. While Isabella leads a pampered life that others can only dream of—waited on hand and foot, with someone to blow her nose for her and curl her hair—it's the royal gal's worst nightmare. "I am tired of being a princess! It's boring, boring, boring!" she bemoans one day. Servants drawn with eyes and mouths clamped tightly shut further underscore a life of repetition and conformity. Funke portrays her heroine with a fiercely independent streak, in direct contrast to Isabella's two older sisters, who are horrified when she tosses her crown into the goldfish pond. Even the king's entrance does not dissuade Isabella from her wish to try out ordinary things. Much to readers' amusement, the monarch's various punishments in the kitchen or pigsty only strengthen her desire (after her banishment to the kitchen for three days, Isabella asks her exasperated father, "Did you know that cream is made from milk?"). The king, however, appreciates his daughter's spunk: a pleasing parting image depicts father and daughter leaving the pigsty, hand in hand, bound for the castle with a new mutual respect. This charming feminist fairytale illustrates that happily-ever-after can mean different things to different people. Ages 4-8. (Apr.)

Honey Badgers
Jamison Odone. Front Street (Boyds Mills, dist.), $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-932425-51-2

Odone's debut book makes a deep bow to Maurice Sendak, with its somber palette and heavily crosshatched, pen-and-ink and watercolor wash illustrations. But the affectionate, dreamy text is his own. "I get along well with honey badgers," the boy narrator begins. "In fact, I was raised by a pair—Maurice and June. They are good parents," he adds. On the opposite page June, in a warm red overcoat, holds out her arms to a naked, Sendak-style foundling. (Honey badgers are carnivorous African mammals, making Maurice and June's solicitousness particularly heartwarming.) Telegraphic sentences on the left-hand pages ("We have a small stream nearby to sip from") accompany framed pictures on the right; here, the boy and Maurice, sporting warm sweaters to ward off the chill, drink on hands and knees, surrounded by a forest of gnarled trees. Visual references to myth (empty boats), fallen civilizations (Mayan stone sculptures), and wealth and education (velvet drapes and leather-bound books) give the story elegant resonance without weighing it down. "It is late now," the boy says. "I think I'll go to bed." Maurice and June stand guard as he sleeps under an enormous canopy. Odone, tapping into a powerful vein of fantasy (what child would not rush to move into a cozy den with two gentle, furry parents?) has created the kind of book certain children will cling to, years after they abandon the rest of their picture book collections. Ages 4-up. (Apr.)

Fiction

When Heaven Fell
Carolyn Marsden. Candlewick, $15.99 (192p) ISBN 0-7636-3175-8

Marsden (The Gold-Threaded Dress) once again mingles two cultures, but less successfully here than in her previous books. The story unfolds primarily through the third-person perspective of nine-year-old Binh, who sells fruit and soda from a cart in her Vietnamese village. In the second chapter, she learns that her maternal grandmother, Ba Ngoai, has another daughter, Thao, fathered by an American soldier. To save Thao's life after the Communists won the Vietnam War, Ba Ngoai sent her to America 30 years earlier, when the child was five. Now Thao is coming to visit, and Binh and her family imagine all the presents this presumably rich American will bring. But Thao brings only several small gifts, such as a pair of bookends—put to use as doorstops since the family owns no books. While in her previous books Marsden integrated exotic cultural details smoothly into the text, here the narrative turns jarringly expository at times ("The highway was lined with the red and yellow satin banners of the Communist government. Some banners had a yellow star, others a hammer and sickle"). Still, Binh witnesses some poignant scenes, such as when Thao confides that she initially had a difficult time in the U.S., "I wasn't Vietnamese anymore... And I didn't feel American either." The characters—save Binh—may remain curiously at a distance, but Marsden brings her tale to a satisfying close. Ages 8-12. (Mar.)

Way Down Deep
Ruth White. FSG, $16 (208p) ISBN 978-0-374-38251-3

The opening chapters of this warmhearted story set in 1954 read like postcards from the holler, as White (Belle Prater's Boy) introduces the quirky residents of Way Down Deep, a town "cradled between the hills in a place that later became known as West Virginia." The central setting is a boardinghouse called The Roost, run by Miss Arbutus Ward, the last living member of the family that founded the town. Into her life drops Ruby, about age three, who turns up one June morning on the courthouse steps, unable to explain how she got there. Some of White's narrative teeters on the wobbly edge of farce: the Reeder siblings, for instance, are named Peter, Cedar, Jeeter, Skeeter and baby Rita ("Mama had run out of rhyming names, so she had to settle for a tongue twister," explains oldest sibling Peter). But as the mystery of Ruby's origins unravels, White reigns in her eccentric cast to focus on the girl's tender relationship with Miss Arbutus, and the story finds an emotional center. The ending is a bit neat, but this book brims with wise observations and beautifully realized moments, such as when Ruby explains what Miss Arbutus told her about why a fellow boarder, haunted by the mother who gave him up for adoption as a baby, sleeps all day: "God is in that place where sleep takes us. Way down deep inside, where all the answers lie." Ages 10-up. (Apr.)

At the Firefly Gate
Linda Newbery. Random/Fickling, $15.99 (160p) ISBN 978-0-385-75113-1

An air of mystery wafts through Newbery's (Sisterland) quietly suspenseful novel. Henry isn't sure how he will fit in now that his family has moved from London to a small village in rural Suffolk. On his first night in the family's new house, Henry sees a shadowy young man surrounded by glowing fireflies, waiting by the gate at the bottom of the garden. The next day, Henry meets Dottie, his neighbor's elderly aunt, and senses an odd connection with her that is also somehow linked to the stranger in the garden. Henry's dreams and visions allow him to share in the experiences of Dottie's long-ago beau (also named Henry), who died during WWII. Like a homespun cousin to the Ouija board, the Scrabble game conveys otherworldly, thematically-related messages through its tiles. More cozy than frightening, these supernatural goings-on provide a counterpoint to the day-to-day events of Henry's new life: an amusing scheme to smuggle him into the village school for the last days of term, his prickly relationship with the grumpy girl next door, and a thrilling victory for Henry and his new friends in the village's annual fete. An abundance of small satisfactions await readers attuned to this novel's gentle cadences. Ages 10-up. (Mar.)

Second Fiddle: Or How to Tell a Blackbird from a Sausage
Siobhán Parkinson. Roaring Brook, $16.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-59643-122-5

Mags Clarke narrates Parkinson's (Something Invisible) often hilarious tale. This is quite a trick, since the novel unfolds in two voices. A little detail like that is no deterrent to the irrepressible 12-year-old, who tells her own version of events, offering writing tips intermittently ("Avoid beginning by telling people what your name is"), and attributing the alternating chapters to her fiddle-playing acquaintance, Gillian. "I have had to make up her actual thoughts, and don't for one moment imagine it is easy." Occasionally, she even interrupts Gillian's account to correct impressions, giving some of Gillian's chapters a dizzying, almost schizophrenic presentation. This wise and winning story plants truths about the frailty of life, the dreadfulness of some parents and the often fractious nature of friendship. Nominally, the plot involves Gillian being invited to audition for Yehudi Menuhin, a prestigious English music school, (which Mags calls "Yahooey-Manooey"), but not having the funds to get to the audition. Mags, whose own beloved dad died suddenly a year earlier, thinks the answer is simply to find Gillian's somewhat estranged father and ask for 100 euro. Of course, it's more complicated than that, and her last piece of advice for readers is a warning that life is unfair. "We all have to learn this painful lesson. You are lucky enough to be able to learn it by reading this book." Lucky, indeed. Readers will quickly warm to this winning heroine and the quirky characters who surround her. Ages 11-14. (Apr.)

Sara's Face
Melvin Burgess. S&S, $16.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-4169-3617-6

If you want to be a work of art, you have to suffer a bit," says 17-year-old Sara Carter. Sara suffers more than a bit in Burgess's (Smack; Doing It) terrifying thriller/morality play, in which she gets the spotlight. Obsessed with both stardom and physical perfection, Sara is also accident-prone, and a face-down encounter with a hot iron seems to put a permanent red mark on her quest for fame. Enter Jonathon Heat, billionaire pop star who endlessly reinvents himself, with the help of controversial plastic surgeon Dr. Kaye. Burgess draws a chilling parallel between over-the-hill icon Jonathon Heat and Michael Jackson, in Heat's attempts to look young, and in setting up a bedroom for Sara on his posh, sprawling estate. Heat shows Sara his face (which he hides under a mask), reduced to shreds after so much surgery. Bernadette, a savvy and kind nurse, and Sara's boyfriend, Mark, provide intermittent reality checks for the outlandish situation. Sara soon begins to see apparitions of a girl with no face, and Sara and Mark discover a locked room giving off the smell of rotting meat. Burgess tells the story through the narrative of a novelist-turned–investigative journalist, alternating with transcripts of Sara's video diaries (in one spine-tingling scene, she corners the "ghost," with echoes of The Blair Witch Project). Burgess wraps his message about vanity and celebrity-obsessed culture in a nightmarish, unforgettable story. Ages 12-up. (May)

Waves
Sharon Dogar. Scholastic/Chicken House, $16.99 (344p) ISBN 978-0-439-87180-8

Gothic romance fans will eagerly dive into this eerie debut novel, which traces the ethereal connection between Hal, a British teen, and his comatose older sister, Charley. While 15-year-old Charley hovers between life and death in a hospital, her body—kept alive by machines—remains motionless, but her mind is active ("It's as though the Earth is holding me down, packed tight in gravity," she laments). Meanwhile, Hal seems able to read some of his sister's thoughts. His feeling that Charley is trying to communicate with him grows stronger once he returns to the family's vacation house, where Charley's nearly lifeless body washed up on the shore the previous summer. ("From somewhere far away, I think I can hear... her hospital breath, falling over me in waves," says he). At the same time that Hal feels a burning urgency to solve the mystery of his sister's accident, he finds himself attracted to freckle-faced Jackie, whose brother may hold the key to what happened to Charley in the sea. A series of flashbacks convey the perspectives of both Hal and Charley, as Dogar artistically parallels two budding romances. Hal's infatuation with Jackie neatly mirrors the relationship Charley had with Jackie's brother, Pete. Although foreshadowing weighs heavily on the story line and Charley's frequent bemoanings about being trapped inside her body sometimes veer towards melodrama, teens intrigued by supernatural events will likely not be bothered by the book's less than subtle aspects. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Sea of Shadow
Fuyumi Ono, trans. by Alexander O. Smith and Elye J. Alexander. Tokyopop (HarperCollins, dist.), $16.99 (464p) ISBN 978-1-59816-946-1

Only the most ambitious readers need apply for Ono's complex seven-part epic, the first volume of the Twelve Kingdoms series, which is being published in English 15 years after its Japanese debut. Apart from being a redhead in a country where everyone's hair was black, Yoko is a student at an all-girl high school living an ordinary life—until she is attacked one day by several giant creatures. An enigmatic man named Keiki rescues her and whisks her across the Void Sea to a "bizarre and fearful world," where gods interact with kings, and children literally grow on trees. Yoko became separated from Keiki as she entered this mythical province of Jhun, in a land divided into 12 kingdoms. Its inhabitants, Yoko discovers, consider her a bad omen and would like to see her dead. Yoko's quest to locate Keiki leads her to some characters with questionable motives before she meets a friendly "rat-creature" named Rakushun. From him Yoko learns that Keiki is not a man but rather a kirin, "the biggest and noblest of the spirit-creatures"—and she is herself the "Glory-King," the chosen leader of the wartorn kingdom of Kei. Drawing heavily on Asian mythology, the story moves at a sluggish pace, at times bogged down by details and terminology. Yoko does not learn much about herself until the final stretch. For those who enjoy getting lost in multilayered adventures, this epic offers dense and challenging escapism. Ages 13-up. (Mar.)

Comics

Houdini: The Handcuff King
Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi. Hyperion/The Center for Cartoon Studies, $16.99 (96p) ISBN 978-0-7868-3902-5

A single stunt from the sprawling career of the "handcuff king," Harry Houdini ("The man for whom the phrase 'kids, don't try this at home' might well have been invented," reads Glen David Gold's introduction), is the lynchpin of this brief, elegant book. But the authors intimate larger, at times darker themes (true love, arrogance, anti-Semitism) lurking around the outer edges. Houdini is an insecure man obsessed with fame, but also a faithful and devoted husband. As the story opens on May 1, 1908, he is preparing for a handcuffed jump from Harvard Bridge, chafing at badgering reporters and a flock of imitators who are stealing his tricks. Illustrations show him preparing to defeat the handcuffs, and wordless panels ultimately allow readers to witness the escape process in its entirety. Houdini himself comes off as a flawed but respectable man, whose principles make him both exceptional at what he does and difficult to be around. Several pages of historical notes fill in the details. Lutes and Bertozzi successfully offer a tiny snapshot as a way into a very large life. Ages 10-up. (Apr.)

Garage Band
Gipi, trans. by Spectrum. Roaring Brook/First Second, $16.95 paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-59643-206-2

The characters in Italian writer/illustrator Gipi's beautifully painted graphic novel may not be all that likable, but their struggle to make sense of adolescence through music comes across masterfully. Four friends have dreams of becoming rock stars: obnoxious and jaded Stefano, Nazi-obsessed Alex, long-suffering and worried Alberto and skinny, self-conscious Giuliano, whose father offers the boys use of the garage for practice and recording, on the condition that they stay out of trouble. Stefano's father gets the boys a contact with a record label executive, but before they can finish their demo, an amplifier blows, leading the foursome to commit theft. Stefano must decide whether or not to betray his friends in order to get a job with the record executive; it's a particularly powerful scene that echoes Christ's temptation (the two stand over an empty swimming pool rather than on a mountaintop). The visual style is jagged and rough, colors stray willfully outside the lines; the whole aesthetic suggests the uneasy tension that defines young adulthood. Ages 12-up. Agent: Anne Bouteloupe at Gallimard Jeunesse. (Apr.)