Children's Book Reviews: Week of 7/16/2007

Money for nothing? Certainly—that’s the premise of Agee’s (Terrific) wry story of desire and excess. Antiques dealer Otis has sold all his wares and is sweeping his bare floor when Suzie Gump, “the richest lady in town,” strolls in, dressed to the nines in a gaudy pink pantsuit and walking a fashionable purse-size dog. “Now, what’s for sale?” Suzie asks. After Otis glances around the empty store and says, “Uh, nothing,” Suzie writes a fat check for it. With misgivings, but believing that “the customer is always right,” Otis puts nothing in the trunk of her waiting car. Suzie returns the next day to crow, “Nothing is wonderful!... I must have more!” When Otis decides he can’t in good conscience sell her more nothing, the vendors next door are more than willing, and crowds soon flock to these and numerous other stores that pop up to sell designer, discount and imported nothing. (“Maybe there really was something to nothing,” muses the narrator about the improbable shopping frenzy.) Fortunately for secondhand salesman Otis, “in order to make room for nothing, they had to get rid of something.” His shop is soon brimming with unwanted household objects and the cycle reverses. In illustrations that possess a timeless air, Agee contrasts cluttered, patterned spaces with airy rooms, outlines chunky, geometric areas with firm charcoal lines and tints broad surfaces with transparent watercolor wash. Whether enjoying this Zen-like book for the wacky conceit or the consumer critique, readers will readily recognize that the emperor has no clothes; this timely parable is certainly “something” worth having. All ages. (Sept.)

Scieszka and Smith (Math Curse) unpack a bin of old toys and comics for this characteristically oddball entry. Their title page, which depicts a pair of scissors beside a sheet of “Western Heroes” paper dolls and an undersea comic book, reveals the origins of Cowboy and Octopus—both are paper cutouts that pose the same way throughout this episodic volume. Blond, cinematic Cowboy wears pressed jeans tucked into fancy boots and a fringed paisley shirt suitable for the rodeo. Sky-blue Octopus, with a tangle of tentacles, is shaded with pre-digital lavender dots. After cooperating to ride a seesaw, they “shake hands, and shake hands, and shake hands” a total of eight times, cementing their friendship. Octopus wears a doily and tiara for a Halloween costume, proclaiming himself the tooth fairy (“Now that’s scary,” Cowboy quips) and attempts to tell Cowboy a knock-knock joke (“Ain’t nobody there!” the dude protests). At “Chow Time,” Cowboy cooks “Beans and Bacon, Bacon and Beans, and just plain Beans... with a little bit of bacon” for Octopus; the cephalopod, who likes neither, “licks one bean” because “Cowboy has worked so hard just for him.” Greeting-card sentiments about friendship, punctuated by classic cowboy-isms dot the text. Those who love Scieszka and Smith’s absurd humor will get the joke, but this is a lesser entry in the pair’s pantheon. All ages. (Sept.)

Rambunctious readers will easily identify with Ivan, an energetic terrier who’s sure to tickle their funny bones. With a dearth of words, a plethora of familiar storybook characters and a delicious pun in the title, Catalanotto (No Dessert Forever!) tells the story of a rowdy brown and white terrier who enters the action of the book in highly meta-fictional style. “Once upon a time there were three billy goats named Gruff,” the book begins, but at the turn of the page, Ivan appears, barking wildly and frightening the goats. The narrator shouts “Ivan!... You’re ruining the story!” Catalanotto creates no visual distinctions between the fictional characters in the fairy tales and Ivan, but the text makes it clear that the puppy doesn’t belong. The narrator doggedly tries to begin several different classic children’s tales, but after each one-page opening, Ivan disrupts, shouting his only line: “Arf! Arf! Arf!” (He scatters the three pigs’ bricks, sticks and straw, and he eats the gingerbread boy.) It’s not until he stares significantly at the reader/narrator in a humorous close-up that the narrator gives up and begins, “There once was a little dog named Ivan.” To the reader’s surprise, Ivan walks off the page and immediately curls up to sleep. Catalanotto’s watercolors show Ivan chasing off each story’s characters literally into the sunset, and the endearing puppy will make this picture book a read-aloud favorite. Ages 2-5. (Sept.)

The engagingly expressive and emotive protagonist of Llama Llama Red Pajama has another reason to be grumpy in this droll follow-up. Having survived bedtime in the earlier tale, Llama Llama here faces another childhood bugaboo: a shopping expedition. None too happy when Mama Llama drags him away from his toys, the overall-clad youngster discovers there’s little to like at Shop-O-Rama: “Yucky music,/ great big feet./ Ladies smelling way too sweet./ Look at knees and stand in line./ Llama Llama starts to whine.” Forced to try on itchy clothing and wait while Mama deliberates over food items, her increasingly disgruntled progeny decides, “It’s no fun at Shop-O-Rama./ Llama Llama/ MAD at Mama!” Sitting in the shopping cart, he furiously throws would-be purchases on the ground, creating toddler-tickling mayhem and eliciting from Mama the tale’s reassuring message: “Please stop fussing, little llama./ No more of this llama drama./ I think shopping’s boring, too—/ but at least I’m here with you.” After helping her offspring clean up the mess, Mama holds his hand as they push the cart together, finishing their shopping as a team. After Mama (in a parent-pleasing diversion) remembers where she left the car, they drive off (“Say good-bye to Shop-O-Rama”) and are then seen happily holding ice cream cones (“Llama Llama/ loves his mama”). Snappy rhythm, pleasing rhyme and large-scale art—plus the easily identifiable experience depicted—make this an involving read-aloud, one that will leave kids and parents hoping Llama has many more adventures ahead. Ages 2-up. (Sept.)

In this sympathetic sequel to Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, former toddler Trixie gains verbal dexterity and still treasures her rag doll, Knuffle Bunny. Tugging her gangly, red-haired father along the sidewalk, she hurries to her preschool’s show-and-tell, eager to show off her pale-green, floppy rabbit. “But just as her daddy kissed her good-bye, Trixie saw Sonja.” No words need explain Trixie’s distressed expression, because a turn of the page says it all: Trixie’s classmate, with a wicked smirk, is clutching a bunny of her own. “Suddenly, Trixie’s one-of-a-kind Knuffle Bunny wasn’t so one-of-a-kind anymore.” Each girl hugs her rabbit, with Trixie insisting, “Kuh-nuffle! Kuh-nuffle!” and Sonja retorting, “Nuffle! Nuffle!” Their teacher raises an eyebrow and puts both rabbits in time-out until the end of the day. Willems expertly sets up this case of mistaken identity, as each girl accidentally brings home the wrong bunny, and a late-night exchange is needed to resolve the girls’ dilemma. As in the first book, Willems creates comic-book-style panels, with grayscale photographs of Brooklyn as backgrounds for his color-illustrated characters; insiders will recognize allusions to past Willems titles too. In a satisfying resolution, Trixie and Sonja become best friends, demonstrating that two or more children can enjoy similar toys. Not a word or image feels out of place. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)

Vivi is dizzy with wanting pink.” That’s because pink stands for everything perfect in the lives of the snooty girls at school—“the Pinks”—who live in houses instead of apartment buildings and have parents who don’t drive trucks or clean buildings like Vivi’s financially strapped but loving dad and mom. When Vivi spots a “perfect pink” bride doll in a ritzy toy shop, she’s determined to make it hers, even if she has to run errands in order to scrape together the money. Then, after her parents fete her with an ingenious “all pink” idyll in the park (the picnic includes sandwiches with strawberry jam and cranberry tea), Vivi discovers that the doll has vanished from the shop window: one of the Pinks now owns it. Poor Vivi is crushed—until she realizes that having a supportive family is better than all the pink in the world. Gregory’s (Amber Waiting) tale is filled with wonderful, keenly empathic moments (“Will she say, 'You love her so much, she belongs with you?’ ” Vivi fantasizes when the storekeeper shows her the doll) and Melanson’s (Four Little Old Men) angular, pink-hued digital drawings strike an emotional chord of their own. Vivi’s change of heart may strike some as too abrupt; after missing out on the doll, she says her “heart is a stone,” but on the next page, after a harmonica tune by her father, she is dancing and all is forgotten. Even so, this heartrending reminder of what’s truly important in life will likely linger. Ages 4-7. (Aug.)

Cronin and Bliss follow up their bestselling Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider with a heroine so delightful it would be criminal to swat her. Fly, a purple girl with multifaceted green eyes, chronicles her childhood, from anxieties about the first day of school (“June 7: What if I’m the only one who eats regurgitated food?... June 8: Everyone eats regurgitated food!”) to family issues (“July 23: I visited my aunt Rita today. She’s been trapped on the wrong side of a screen for a week”). Tips on flying, such as “Leap backward when taking off,” combine with grade-school concerns and problems of discipline. Fly’s babysitter, a ladybug, can’t manage Fly and her 327 brothers and sisters (“Mom says we were a lot easier to watch before we grew heads”), so she brings a hungry green frog and sits back to read Teen Bugs magazine. Because flies “beat their wings 200 times per second,” “can see in all directions at once” and have amazing aerial powers, Fly fantasizes about being a superhero, though her friend Spider notes, “Superheroes bend steel with their bare hands. You eat horse manure with your feet.” Bemused readers may be more inclined to agree with Worm, however, who reassures Fly that “the world needs all kinds of heroes.” Cronin’s spot-on humor and Bliss’s uproarious ink-and-watercolor panels make Fly—and this third outing in the series—both irresistible and undeniably super. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

There has to be a good reason to produce yet another version of this tale, and the opportunity to showcase Blair’s stunning artwork provides it. Before her career in children’s book illustration (I Can Fly!), Blair was one of the top artists at Walt Disney Studios, where her whimsical style and exuberant palette dominated the design of many classic Disney animated features, including Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. Animators took their character and color cues from her conceptual paintings, like these Blair created for Disney’s Cinderella (1950), here paired with an elegant retelling by Newbery Medalist Rylant, which begins: “This is a story about darkness and light, about sorrow and joy, about something lost and something found. This is a story about Love.” Aficionados of the film will recognize the multi-turreted castle, the patterned wallpaper, the fanciful backgrounds and stylized flora. The haughty portrait of the evil stepmother, done in exaggerated profile, perfectly captures this imperious villain with “black longing” in her heart. Blair’s Cinderella, however, is not the honeyed version of the film, but a straw-haired waif with a downcast demeanor. Children familiar with the film may also wonder where the singing mice are. Indeed, while pint-size romantics will lap this up, the book’s greatest appeal may lie with students and fans of Disneyana. Here’s a picture book that will find its way onto collectors’ shelves, as well as onto the syllabi of college film and design courses. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)

This book, the cover announces, is “written, produced and directed” by Schwartz (A Beautiful Girl), who deserves hearty applause for her efforts on all fronts. Her art’s abundant funny flourishes are matched by a droll, perkily paced narrative. Taking center stage is an earnest, engaging hippo who “wanted to be a star.” After enrolling in theater class, Darlene is assigned her first part, playing “the Flood” in a performance of Noah’s Ark. This entails dashing onstage and throwing water on the ground, an action the director calls “simple, yet vital.” Alas, it’s not so simple: Darlene’s feet get tangled in her long blue gown and the water pours onto the front row, drenching the theater reviewer for The Daily Weekly, who, the next day, proclaims the show “a drenching, yet refreshing experience.” Spying the same reviewer in the audience on opening night of the class’s next production, Darlene freezes. When she finally manages to speak, she mangles her lines (“We will rebuild our rivers! Our cities will flow again!”); the critic gushes that the actress “used words in a way this reviewer has never even dreamed of. A triumph.” And after her next faux pas—the exhausted thespian actually dozes off while playing a dormant Sleeping Beauty—the admiring reviewer praises her for enlivening what “could have been a tired production” and proclaims “A star is born.” And with this comedic tale, Schwartz shines as well. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)

Sierra (Wild About Books) and Seibold (Olive, the Other Reindeer) install story-book characters in a retirement community for this peaceable spoof. As envisioned in Seibold’s witty digital style, B.B. Wolf occupies a condo at the Villain Villa Senior Center and sports shaggy brown fur, a graying snout, pince-nez glasses and a cane. His green stovepipe hat looks a bit worse for wear, but he updates his look with a blue tracksuit. While grouching about past-due notices that recall previous exploits (including a bill for “damage to the homes of Pig #1 and Pig #2”), B.B. opens an invitation to a storybook tea at the public library. He consults a crocodile on whether he should attend. “You don’t go to a tea for the tea,” his friend replies, “You go to a tea for the cookies.” The crocodile gives him pointers on etiquette (“Sip your tea and never slurp,/ Say 'excuse me’ if you burp”), dusts off his orange plaid sport coat and sends him off to the reading room. When B.B. enters, literary mainstays like Red Riding Hood, Bo Peep and the Gingerbread Boy look aghast. Everyone acts excruciatingly polite, but their anxiety is alleviated after too much tea makes B.B. unleash an enormous burp: “You almost blew down the library,” snort the Three Little Pigs. Later, leaving with a stack of storybooks, the elderly wolf promises the librarian, “I’ll drop by one day and tell you how these stories really happened.” Sierra and Seibold expertly tweak the tension and the levity in this story of a trickster’s golden years. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)

The title of this cornball book offers a clue that a wealth of puns will be contained within, and O’Malley (Slugs in Love) doesn’t miss a trick. Just about every pun imaginable about corn or chickens can be found in this story about Chicken’s search for a buried treasure of cracked corn. When he tells his friend George about the great pink pig under which he believes the treasure is buried, George responds, “What are you—a comedi-hen?” George gets most of the book’s one-liners, but O’Malley’s watercolor and ink illustrations provide at least half of the fun. The expressions on the characters’ faces are priceless, as when Chicken and George unexcitedly wait for the stoplight to change as the narrator says, “How did the chickens cross the road? you ask. They crossed at the light.” Chicken dances across the book jacket with corncob Rockettes, and even the barnyard horse grins at his own silly joke. “I guess this trip was a waste,” says George. “Because it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.” O’Malley’s verbal hijinks and rib-tickling artwork will provide readers with “egg-stremely egg-ceptional” giggles. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)

Jenkins (Actual Size) once again astounds with his amazing lifelike paper collage in this book about animal color and the many functions it serves. Striking spreads display a diverse assortment of wildlife, from the exotic purple long-wattled umbrella bird of South America to the more familiar purple sea urchin. Grouped by color, more than 60 animals are realistically depicted in highly crafted vignettes, their tails or tentacles often curling between the text blocks. Eye-catching layouts begin with a large, bold heading that reads, “Red says...” or “Purple says...,” etc. For example, in the case of the flashy hyacinth macaw, the color blue implies “Look at me!”, whereas it holds a decidedly different message (“Don’t touch!”) when it comes to the poison dart frog. Short paragraphs beside each creature explain the reason for its hue; for the three-toed sloth, “Green says... I don’t want a bath... algae gives the sloth’s coat a green tint... it helps hide the sloth from hungry eagles and jaguars.” Concluding pages provide facts about the animals’ sizes, diets and habitats, and answer questions like, “How is animal color created?” and “Why are mammals so drab?” Jenkins uses collage to great effect and includes clever touches—animals that can change color, such as the common cuttlefish, wrap around pages to demonstrate their abilities. The combination of easy-to-understand language and gorgeous illustrations makes this a prime choice for any young animal enthusiast’s collection. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Spiderwick creators Black and DiTerlizzi reopen the book on their popular faerie setting with this slim but entertaining meta-story, kicking off the spin-off series, Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles. Nick Vargas is in a serious funk after the death of his mother, and it’s only made worse when his father remarries and he ends up with a new sister, Laurie (who “seemed to be proud to be the lamest person alive”). Laurie is obsessed with faeries, thanks to her well-worn copy of Black and DiTerlizzi’s Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. Nick doesn’t believe they are real, of course, until he picks up a four-leaf clover—and spies a wounded nixie in his yard. The new siblings help the nixie, Taloa, back to the water, and promise to help her find her missing sisters. In their search they find the bodies of three nixies—and a fire-breathing dirt giant that appears to be responsible both for the nixies’ deaths and the destruction of a large section of the woods. Stumped about how to defeat the giant, they head to a book signing where they meet Black and DiTerlizzi (who turn out to be utterly unhelpful). In a fortunate twist, however, they meet Jared and Simon, the original series’ protagonists, who prove more than willing to help. The illustrations are as charming as always, and the text zips along; Black manages to carefully balance the terror of having a dirt giant threaten your house and the equally horrible prospect of having to share a bedroom with a girl. Ages 7-up. (Sept.)

From the start, it is clear that Edward is very special. The day his delightfully eccentric parents bring him home from the hospital, his mother places him in the arms of older brother and narrator Jake, who is immediately smitten: “His eyes are the dark mud-blue of the night sky, but there are surprising little flecks of gold in them. They stare right into my eyes.... I want to say that I love him more than anything or anyone I know. But I am only three, and when I try to talk I can’t say all those words.” Yet Jake, as this resonant story unwinds, proves to be remarkably articulate. His recollections of Edward shape a memorable portrait of a boy who, as a toddler asks to have Goodnight Moon read to him in French, insists on walking two steps ahead of his older siblings on his first day of kindergarten, never once strikes out while playing baseball and teaches himself how to throw an impossible-to-hit knuckleball. Edward’s vision extends far beyond the power of his striking eyes: he somehow knows, when his mother becomes pregnant, that this sixth baby will be a girl. “She’ll be Sabine. And we’ll have fireworks!” he announces confidently. Newbery Medalist MacLachlan brings her story to a conclusion that is both unbearably sad and uplifting, delivered, like the whole, in perfect pitch. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

This fascinating adventure taken from U.S. history begins in Brooklyn in 1862, when Tom Carroll, 13, is hired at the Iron Works in Greenpoint for a secret project, derisively known around the borough as “Ericsson’s Folly.” John Ericsson, a Swedish inventor, is trying to build an ironclad ship that can battle the Merrimac, a Confederate ship being outfitted with metal plates in Virginia. Working to support his widowed mother and ailing sister, Tom becomes Ericsson’s aide-de-camp. His insider status makes him a target of Secessionist spies, who offer gold coins in exchange for details about the ship; when Tom refuses, the bribes escalate to threats. Additionally, there’s intense pressure to get the ship finished—Yankee spies report the Merrimac is almost done—and concerns persist about whether it will actually float. When the Monitor leaves port, Tom’s aboard, safe from rebel spies, but nervous about heading into the war that has already claimed his father. The spectacular clash with the Merrimac caps this intense and action-packed account of a battle that changed the course of naval warfare. Illustrated with period engravings, this is gripping historical fiction from a keenly imagined perspective. An endnote detailing Avi’s research at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., makes this a book that could launch a thousand field trips. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

The latest from Britain’s former Children’s Laureate is vintage Wilson. Flora Barnes splits her week between her mother, who has remarried a successful executive, and her father whose situation is less rosy. When her stepfather accepts a temporary transfer to Australia, “Floss,” as she is called, must choose to spend six months in sunny Sydney or to stay with her father above his failing chip shop. At school, she’s also torn. Her best friend, the “posh and persnickety” Rhiannon, has become materialistic and judgmental; Floss can’t stand the cruel teasing Rhiannon directs at a new classmate. When Floss chooses to stay with her dad—because she realizes he needs her more than her mother does—her standing at school suffers. Her mismatched clothing, which carries the greasy spoon’s scent, makes her the new target of Rhiannon’s torments. Meanwhile, her father is losing his shop to bankruptcy and the possibility of homelessness becomes real. This tension paces a novel that contains many compelling, sometimes gritty, elements—shopping, gambling, fair-going, romance, a knife-fight and even a scary fire. All that action makes the narrative longer than usual for this age group, but Floss’s emotional turmoil should hook girls. There’s a real tenderness to her relationship with her father, fully dimensional in all his flaws, a man whose love for his daughter often clouds his judgment. A full page of Sharratt’s comic-strip–style panels opens each chapter, and “Floss’s Glossary” defines unfamiliar Briticisms. Ages 9-12. (Sept.)

Kress’s debut is a wonderful blend of whimsy and moral, with winks at the reader on every page. Alex, who lives with her uncle in the flat above their doorknob shop, is dreading the sixth grade and the stern teacher who comes with it, but on the first day she learns that a new teacher has been installed—the young Mr. Underwood (“a marvelous teacher despite being ever so distinctly odd”). He turns out to be a descendant of a famous pirate, and soon three vicious men turn up in town, looking for a map to a fabled family treasure. The map is somewhere in a stately manor house, run by the vicious old ladies of the Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society; Alex finds the map and escapes, but returns home to find that her uncle has been killed and Mr. Underwood has been kidnapped by the pirates of the ship Ironic Gentleman. She sets off to find him and has some odd encounters along the way (at one point, she meets an enormous octopus, distraught over how computer animation has wrecked his movie career). Eventually, Alex ends up on the Ironic Gentleman, face to face with the dreaded Captain Steele the Inevitable, whose identity comes as a big surprise. Kress has a delightfully simple, observational prose style that recalls A.A. Milne, right down to the frequent capitalization of Good Things and Very Interesting Things and so on. This inspired book should hold up to many re-readings. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

The latest from Newbery Honor author Choldenko is an earnest contemporary story about race, set in a California middle school. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Kirsten, the overweight daughter of a doctor, and Walk (short for Walker), son of a striving single mother, the issues raised are spot-on for this age group. Kirsten’s world, micromanaged by her overly involved mother, is battered by her parents’ fighting and her best friend Rory’s newfound chumminess with queen bee Brianna. Walk has been separated from his friends by his mother’s decision to send him to private school on scholarship. One of only three African-American students at Mountain School, his outsider status makes him approachable to Kirsten, whose falling-out with Rory leaves her in dire need of lunch-hour companionship. This under-the-microscope examination of the often cruel, always dramatic dynamics of junior high will be enough to pull many readers through to the provocative if melodramatic revelation about the real connection between Walk and Kirsten. The humor that fueled much of Choldenko’s Al Capone Does My Shirts is missing here, and her choice to tell Kirsten’s story in first person and Walk’s chapters in third person makes the narrative a little choppy. But the questions she raises about identity, race, prejudice and the true nature of friendship should provide ample food for thought. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

In Newbery Medalist Spinelli’s sequel to his 2000 novel Stargirl, readers join the eponymous heroine and find out how she is coping after being dumped by Leo Borlock. Having moved from Arizona to Pennsylvania, Stargirl records her thoughts, observations and emotions in near daily (unsent) missives to Leo, as she works to move beyond her sadness. Her entries are peppered with poetry as well as little pep talks she writes to herself whenever her spirits are low. (“You have your whole life ahead of you, and all you’re doing is looking back. Grow up, girl. There are some things they don’t teach you in homeschool.”) Stargirl spends most of her time with a talkative six-year-old, Dootsie, a grumpy girl named Alvina, and a handful of older locals with their own quirks and problems. She also meets a boy with a mysterious past; their brief romance and other events combine to lift Stargirl out of her doldrums, as she reconciles her feelings about Leo (“You be you and I’ll be me, today and today and today, and let’s trust the future to tomorrow”). Readers should embrace Stargirl’s originality and bigheartedness, and may be inspired to document their own emotional ups and downs in the Stargirl Journal, available the same month, which consists of blank lined pages with quotations from both novels. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

Grady, the teen at the center of Wittlinger’s (Blind Faith) latest novel, realizes that “inside the body of this strange, never-quite-right girl was hiding the soul of a typical, average, ordinary boy,” so he changes his name (he was born Angela) and starts living as a guy. As one might expect, he faces different degrees of acceptance both at school and at home. Grady deals with a bully who is bent on his humiliation, but makes friends with an offbeat boy writing a report on spotlight parrotfish (which also change from female to male), and attracts the attention of a biracial girl. The story has an unusual backdrop: Grady’s father is obsessed with Christmas, setting up elaborate decorations inside the house and out and forcing his family to perform an adaptation of A Christmas Carol for their neighbors. Readers can predict that something poignant—if rather unbelievable—will happen during this year’s performance (Grady has written a new version, which includes his pronouncement that “Things as they should be, Father, are not things unchanging”). Overall, though, Grady is portrayed realistically, which makes it easy to think of him as a boy. The author demonstrates well the complexity faced by transgendered people and makes the teen’s frustration with having to “fit into a category” fully apparent. Ages 12-up. (July)

Ben Wolf, 18, goes in for a routine sports physical before his senior year and learns he has an aggressive form of leukemia and a year to live. In order to enjoy the rest of this witty and wise novel, readers will have to suspend disbelief at this point, because Ben decides to do nothing. (“I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone else, but I’m not going out bald and puking.”) He also chooses not to tell anyone and threatens legal action if his doctor breaches patient confidentiality. Readers will be treated to the thrilling last year of Ben’s life, in which the 123-pounder ditches track for football so he can play alongside his brother, Cody, the team’s star quarterback. Crutcher’s oeuvre is full of plot-heavy novels; the issues crammed into this one include alcoholism, child molestation, absent/abusive parents, bigotry, teenage motherhood and depression. But the narrative never drowns in a sea of woe. With the help of Hey-Soos, a laidback confidant who appears in Ben’s dreams, he parses the dilemmas his secret produces. Ben succeeds both on the gridiron and with the comely Dallas Suzuki. (“Submit this story to an editor and it’s returned as too much fantasy even for fantasy,” he says after she asks him to Homecoming.) Ben’s voice often sounds distinctly like the author’s, but here’s predicting readers will not care one whit. The message at the core of Crutcher’s latest—“Life’s short. Do what you love.”—is delivered inside an entertaining, thought-provoking tearjerker. Ages 14-up. (Sept.)

With this haunting, wordless sequence about a lonely emigrant in a bewildering city, Tan (The Lost Thing) finds in the graphic novel format an ideal outlet for his sublime imagination. Via pencil illustrations that resemble sepia photographs or film cels, Tan depicts a man’s poignant departure from his wife and daughter. Stark stone houses, treeless streets and rustic kitchen appliances imply past eras—the man leaves home via an outmoded locomotive and steamship—but strange visuals reveal this is not our everyday world. Shadowy dragon tails trawl the sky of the man’s homeland, suggesting pogrom or famine, and when he arrives at an Ellis Island-style port (the endpapers depict passport photos of multicultural travelers), his documents are stamped with cryptic symbols. He gets aboard an unmanned hot-air balloon that delivers him to a vast metropolis with unfamiliar customs and bizarre technologies (imagine, perhaps, a Gehry-designed city). Tan offers no written explanations on this foreign space, so readers fully grasp the man’s confusion when he lands a job pasting posters, then hangs them upside-down until his employer corrects him. Readers also understand his empathy for other exiles (each with their tragic stories of immigration) and with a friendly family that invites him to a meal of the local produce, which resembles exotic anemonae. In an oddly charming touch, each person has a distinctive animal companion, reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s daemons or Hieronymus Bosch’s alchemical creations. The man receives his own creature, a creepy-cute white monster with an egg-shaped torso, huge mouth and waving, eel-like tail; initially repulsed, he slowly warms to its amiable disposition. Just as gradually, his melancholy gives way to optimism and community as, despite setbacks, he benefits from the kindness of strangers. Tan adeptly controls the book’s pacing and rhythm by alternating a gridlike layout of small panels, which move the action forward, with stirring single- and double-page spreads that invite awestruck pauses. By flawlessly developing nuances of human feeling and establishing the enigmatic setting, he compassionately describes an immigrant’s dilemma. Nearly all readers will be able to relate—either through personal or ancestral experience—to the difficulties of starting over, be it in another country, city, or community. And few will remain unaffected by this timeless stunner. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)