Children’s Books: Week of 8/20/2007

Wishinsky (Each One Special) and Gay (the Stella books) serve up an incisive slice-of-life tale about a high-energy girl and her more sedate older brother. Wild-haired Louise refuses to leave Jake alone: she dances into his room, plays with his toys and bounces on his bed, then stubbornly refuses to go away. Some of Gay’s wryest spreads illustrate the boy’s doorway in cross-section, the closed door a vertical line down the page, Jake leaning against it in fury while Louise pummels it with her fists or stands back, operatically invading Jake’s space with “Row, row, row your boat.” Nothing the beleaguered boy does can shake his sister, not even removing himself to the yard. After wishing his noisy sister were a dog, Jake notices that Louise has disappeared. He searches for her in vain—and then a dog bounds toward him and he pleads, “Please, Louise. Don’t be a dog…. Be my little sister again.” He worries for naught: Louise reappears, riding on a scooter with a new friend, and instructs Jake to go away. That’s just fine by Jake, who gleefully turns a cartwheel (“Okay! I’m going!”). In a final, fetching exchange Louise promptly returns, and the two—waving at each other from opposite sides of the page—amiably announce, “See you later.” Snappy dialogue and whimsical watercolor, pencil and collage art capture Jake and Louise’s distinct personalities as well as their very recognizable sibling relationship. Ages 2-5. (Aug.)

In another nimble page-turner, Seeger (Black? White! Day? Night!) toys with die-cuts and strategically paired words. She introduces a chicken-or-egg dilemma on her book’s cover, picturing a plump white egg in a golden-brown nest. Remove the die-cut dust jacket, and a hen appears on the glossy inner cover. The eggshell, thickly brushed in bluish-white and cream, also serves as the chicken’s feathers. This “first/then” pattern is repeated (“First the egg/ then the chicken./ First the tadpole/ then the frog”), with a die-cut on every other page. By flipping a page, readers see the cutout in two contexts. For instance, when an ovoid shape is superimposed on a white ground, it’s an egg; on a yolk-yellow ground, it’s the body of a baby chick. Seeger lines up the recto and verso of every sheet, maintaining a casual mood with generous swabs of grassy greens, sky blues and oxide yellows on canvas. Given the exuberant imagery, the occasional cutout (like the fingernail-size seed of a blowsy peony-pink flower) looks none too impressive. But if minuscule die-cuts seem barely worth the trouble, they do imply the potential in humble sources. Seeger’s clever conclusion brings all the elements together in an outdoor scene that returns readers to the opening: “First the paint/ then the picture… / First the chicken/ then the egg!” Ages 2-6. (Sept.)

A boy’s handmade toy boat plays the metaphorical role of a child longing for independence in De Sève’s auspicious first picture book. The text begins in simple language that lightly implies a parent/child bond: “The boy loved the boat, and they were never apart. They bathed together. They slept together.” Every day the boy sails the boat in the lake, holding onto it with a string. Usually the boat feels content, but occasionally the sight of big boats awakens its curiosity about “what it would feel like to sail free.” A sudden change in the weather occasions the toy boat’s premature adventure out of the boy’s protective grasp, described in suspenseful text and acrylics that imaginatively extend De Sève’s story. Long (the re-illustrated Little Engine that Could) shrewdly illustrates no persons other than David, even though David’s mother plays a pivotal part. Rather, the toy boat has a face (readers should look carefully at the cork holding its mast) and, as it encounters the big boats at last, each wears its own visible personality. A giant ferry occupying most of a spread bears down on the toy boat, its windows, decks and trimmings shaped into an enraged visage, complete with glaring eyes and pursed lips; the toy boat shrinks dramatically in the wake of a huge speedboat depicted as a flame-colored shark. Not until the reassuring conclusion can the toy boat again be seen from the boy’s perspective. A resonant tale with wide appeal. Ages 2-up. (Sept.)

With his heart-shaped nose, huge, faux-innocent eyes, squat yellow body, and a single-mindedness bordering on obsession, Wood’s (Silly Sally) titular hero just about sums up what can make a dog so endearingly goofy. “Mistress, kind mistress,/ please give me a bone,” he pleads, “and I’ll stay by your side,/ no more will I roam.” And becoming a homebody is only one of the promises the dog makes: he also forswears all bad behavior and offers to do light housekeeping (the pictures show him inadvertently causing messes as he performs his chores). Wood works in crayon on brown paper bags, media well suited to her simple vocabulary and knowing visual humor; her picture of the dog festooning the powder room (and himself) with tissue paper offers the cartoon canine equivalent of the classic hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression. Her text has a few oddities. The dog narrates in present tense (“What’s that? Woof!/ Could it be her car door?”) while his mistress’s speech is quoted in past tense (“ 'I’m home!’ she called”). A refrain-like variation on “If my mistress will PLEASE give me a bone!” switches the text into third person and can also bring the pleasing rhythms Wood has built to a sudden halt. Ages 3-5. (Sept.)

Opie and Wells depart from their previous two collections of well-known Mother Goose rhymes to venture to what Opie describes as “the far edge of Mother Goose’s realm” and there collect “the most mysterious fragments from our shared memory.” As if to signal the difference, the trim size has changed (it is smaller, at 9 × 9) and the paper is matte, not glossy. Despite the large fonts and the continued presence of Wells’s signature bunny characters, however, this is less a title for Everytoddler than one for lovers of rhyme and verse. Wells gives the art a more sophisticated look, trading the bright colors and bustling borders of the previous books for a more subdued palette and adding many more human characters. She riffs on designs of classic Mother Goose editions, playing with fonts and narrow frames, and she outdoes herself in ingenious interpretations. One verse beseeches a “chick chick chick chick chicken” to “lay a little egg for me”; Wells depicts a rustically dressed bunny and a chicken in the same room, each on its own telephone, a speech balloon issuing from the bunny’s receiver shows a brightly painted egg. An especially fine series of pictures features a human mother, daughter and doll, all identically dressed; sometimes only one of the trio appears, introducing jokes about scale, but the funniest include all three, as in the art for a contradictory poem about a mother who tells her “darling daughter” that yes, she can go swimming as long as she doesn’t go near the water (the look on the daughter’s face as she wades into a pond is pure imp; the doll, towed in a toy boat, mirrors the girl’s expression except for its eyes, which roll angelically heavenward). Sadly, the art suffers in the production—low contrasts leave the watercolors looking washed out. Ages 3-up. (Sept.)

Awakened by moonlight streaming through the window, young Fiona slips out of her covers and into her backyard. “The night wraps around her like a velvet coat,” gently declare the co-authors (Charest is the Newbery Medalist’s daughter; they teamed up most recently for Once I Ate a Pie). “It is silent. It is safe.” In simple, lyrical prose, the authors measure Fiona’s delight in the plants and creatures that come to life after the sun goes down: “There is a moon in the middle of the pond. All around her the frogs jump into the water, making the moon wrinkle.” Shepherd (previously paired with MacLachlan for Who Loves Me?) renders the night and its inhabitants in lush, comforting tones. Fingerpainted textures, applied both in strokes and in precise, printlike daubs, convey the dappling moonlight as well as the energy that makes the nocturnal world anything but sleepy. Off-kilter angles and extreme close-ups dominate the compositions, as befits the exotic setting, but the rich palette and heavy black outlines anchor the pictures—they’re dreamy rather than nightmarish. All in all, the night is a benevolent place: the moon smiles down on everything, and the creatures, like the orange-eyed barred owl that stares out of one of the pages, seem as curious about the human interloper as she is about them. Children who fear the dark could learn a lot from Fiona. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Johnson, whose Henry picture books encapsulate Thoreau’s philosophy, grazes the surface of Animal Farm in this barnyard tale. Here, a bipedal pig called Farmer Orvie, undoubtedly in tribute to Orwell, presides over a dilapidated, tin-roof barn; its sign, “Manor Farm,” has been changed to read “No-Man Farm.” Orvie paints his motto on the barn’s faded boards (“4 legs bad, 2 legs good”), and spends his days barking orders at a donkey, cow, goat and duck. As in another political primer, Giggle, Giggle, Quack, the duck turns out to be a troublemaker. Since she walks on two legs, she reasonably asks, “Can I be the farmer now?... You don’t pull the plow. You don’t cut the hay.” When Orvie refuses to accept her logic, Duck stages a coup by pulling a bathtub plug from the pond and draining the water supply. Never mind that real ponds don’t work this way—the convoluted tactic forces all five animals into cooperation, whereupon Duck establishes a new rule of “18 legs best.” Johnson chooses a glowing earth-tone palette of sunlit greens, orange golds and purplish browns for his fine-tuned multimedia illustrations; his cubist style, geometric shapes and flattened, hinged planes hold attention where the plot lags. Ultimately, Johnson quells the revolution and settles for a tidy wrap-up, placing Duck in the governing position. Where the Henry books deftly adapt 19th-century ideas, this story trades on a superficial resemblance to its literary model to sound a basic lesson in getting along. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

In this understated and affecting story, Aaron’s mama wants a better life for her family—“someplace clean and beautiful.” To her, that means moving the family away from the smelly, noisy city street corner where they live and operate a tire business. Aaron loves his corner and the mountain of used tires produced by his father’s work (“Dad can change a tire faster than I can say Aaron Jacob Johnson”). When his mother shows him a pamphlet with pictures of “perfect” suburban houses, he wishes he could “tear it into a thousand pieces.” Détente is finally reached after Aaron turns a nearby empty lot into a clean, beautiful place of his own-–a playground outfitted with flower gardens, a swing, a tunnel and sandbox, all built with tires from the mountain. Cheng (Marika) gracefully articulates the quiet understanding arrived at by mother and son. “Mama folds the pamphlet and uses it like a fan,” she writes. “ 'When we do move, some day,” asks Aaron gingerly, “ 'do you think we could take a tire... to make a tire swing?’ ” “ 'That could be arranged,’ ” responds Mama with a hug. At first glance, Condon’s (Sky Scrape/ City Scape) blocky paintings feel wooden in comparison with the emotionally astute prose; even Aaron doesn’t seem quite at home in his environment. But as the story unfolds, the warm colors and mural-like qualities feel absolutely right. It’s a kid’s-eye view of the world, where physical presences offer rock-solid comfort. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)

Fourteen prominent picture book creators try their hands at knock-knocks in this follow-up to Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? Each contributor gets the front and back of a page for the “Knock, knock!/ Who’s there?” set-up and punch line. Tomie dePaola pictures a tropical-themed home with “Gorilla” tapping at the door. At the call of “Gorilla who?” an ape sweeps in to hug his hirsute sweetheart: “Gorill-a’ my dreams, I love you!” In a contemporary vein, veggie photographer Saxton Freymann takes the “Lettuce/ Lettuce who?” dialogue at face value. With their black-eyed pea eyeballs, stalk noses and leafy mouths, two heads of greenery demand, “Lettuce in!” Dan Yaccarino pictures an alien astronaut asking, “Peeka who?” and gingerly opening a space-hatch to a cheerful orange monster with 17 peepers (“Peek-a-boo, my eyes see you!”); in Brett Helquist’s nursery send-up, two placid pigs get a visit from a big bad wolf named Ima (“Ima gonna huff, Ima gonna puff…”). Of his peers, Henry Cole achieves perhaps the best nonsense spirit, drawing out the “Esther who?/ Esther Bunny!” joke for six go-rounds and a dozen panels. Chris Raschka pays homage to Maurice Sendak (“Verdi who?/ Verdi Vild Tings Are!”); and Boris Kulikov answers “Amos who?” with a giant, surreally creepy insect and the reply “A mosquito bit me!” Perhaps inevitably, the book offers a decidedly mixed bag; however, pint-size comics—for whom no knock-knock joke is ever too stale—will see gems where adults find the groaners. Ages 4-up. (Sept.)

A somber picture of the legendary Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, crouched alone within the confines of a dark room after defeat, opens this lyrical biography: “In this place of fences, strange smells/ …where finally I am caught/ and cannot get free,/ I close my eyes and am home again.” With a turn of the page, readers go from near blackness to a landscape of bright sky and water, where Sioux families gather outside tipis and horses gallop in the background. In realistic detail, Minor (previously paired with Turner for Abe Lincoln Remembers) paints close-ups (e.g., of a young Sitting Bull battle-ready atop horseback or hunting buffalo), as well as panoramic illustrations (Custer’s troops overrunning a Sioux winter encampment in the Black Hills). Sometimes pictographic symbols (based on Sitting Bull’s own pictographs) float above the main scene to represent the Sioux’s visions. For example, several uniformed soldiers ride upside-down across the top of one spread, denoting a dream Sitting Bull had prior to the Battle of Little Bighorn. In it he sees Cavalry troops riding this way, which he correctly interprets as an omen of the soldiers’ deaths. The poignant final scene shows a meadowlark overlooking the empty plains (“It is all gone,” says Turner’s Sitting Bull, “and only my voice is left”); the significance of the imagery is explained in historical endnotes, as Sitting Bull “claimed to hear words in a meadowlark’s song.” Turner and Minor’s dramatic and insightful work ensure that readers will listen for Sitting Bull’s voice, too. Ages 6-9. (Sept.)

Former bookseller Urban makes a highly promising fiction debut with this sweet, funny novel, relayed in short, titled entries. Ten-year-old Zoe dreams of becoming a famous pianist (as she says in “How It Was Supposed to Be,” “A piano is sophisticated. Glamorous. Worldly”). But her quasi-agoraphobic father has one of his usual freak-outs as he attempts to shop for a piano and buys her an electric organ instead. How can Zoe possibly become the next Vladimir Horowitz if she has to play on a “Perfectone D-60”? Grudgingly, she begins taking lessons from Mabelline Person (pronounced “Per-saaahn”), who hands Zoe songbooks full of TV theme songs or hits from the ’70s (“My piano teacher was supposed to be a sweet, rumpled old man,” Zoe confides to readers. “I would call him Maestro…. He would discourage me from practicing too much and spoiling the spontaneity of my play”). But when Mabelline enters her in the Perform-O-Rama—her first contest ever—Zoe thinks for the first time that her dreams could possibly come true. Throw in an absurdly workaholic mother, a best friend who deserts Zoe for a girl with a rhyming name (Joella Tinstella), an underparented boy who blossoms overnight when Zoe’s dad takes him under his wing, and Zoe’s dad’s eccentricities, if not to say full-blown neuroses; Urban controls these exaggerated elements through the evenness of Zoe’s voice. No matter how outrageously her subjects behave, the author always sounds natural. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

An overprotected orphan, an imperious guardian who dies suddenly, a tender reunion with long-lost rustic relatives—Ryan (Esperanza Rising) opens her tween crowd-pleaser with tried-and-true material, and follows with even more of a sure thing, a horse story. The author gets the romance just right, from 11-year-old heroine Maya’s aching desire to learn about her long-dead mother and fit into her mother’s family, to Maya’s instant connection with the horses raised and trained by her great-aunt Vi. Details surrounding the care and riding of horses are both authentic and copious. Accordingly, readers aren’t likely to mind either the clichéd characters or gaps in plausibility. Nor will they blink as Ryan interweaves the narrative with segments told from the perspective of a wild mare named Artemisia (after, says Vi, the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi): “She draped her neck over his withers, reassuring herself that [her colt] wasn’t going anywhere with a band of bachelor stallions.” When Maya learns that Artemisia was once her mother’s horse, a pairing seems inevitable; Ryan exploits it for maximum effect as the centerpiece of an attenuated survival sequence that involves an earthquake, broken bones, near-starvation, bareback riding and, of course, a bond between wild horse and child. The overstuffed quality of the plot may seem like a good thing to the target audience—adventure plus horses trumps realism anytime. Ages 9-12. (Sept.)

Griffin’s (Witch Twins) goes in for ghoulish humor with this tale of three siblings who are “fruit-bat vampire hybrids” living in Manhattan and posing as ordinary children. Their parents, who now earn unexpectedly good incomes by walking dogs (“because all dogs were so obedient under their instinctive care”) and play in a rock band called the Dead Ringers, whisked them out of the Old World four years earlier to escape dangerous pureblood vampires. But Maddy, the middle child whose predatory instincts are undiluted despite her impure bloodlines, correctly suspects that their mysterious new neighbors are purebred vampires from the Old World. Readers will know within a few chapters whether they will find the story gross (Maddy snags a Japanese water bug with her tongue) or very funny (when the elegant neighbors finally trap Maddy and plan to “taste” her even though her fruit-hybrid blood will probably be too sour, they explain their need to sample her because “You are simply the most awful creature Nigel and I have ever encountered”). Meanwhile, handsome brother Hudson flies over Central Park at night and uses terror tactics to launch a recycling program at school; and superstrong older sister Lexie spouts poetry and idolizes Jim Morrison, while her best friend seems more than a little unearthly. This one will win (or lose) its audience on the sheer brazenness of the plot. Ages 9-up. (Aug.)

Brewer’s first children’s book, first of the planned Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, is like a Laurell K. Hamilton toned way down for the elementary school set. Vlad is miserable. His mother and vampire father died years ago in a suspicious fire, and he lives in a small town with his maternal aunt, a nurse who regularly raids the blood bank for him (“Could you get me O positive this time? That’s my favorite,” he nonchalantly asks her as he spoons “a big, sweet glob of half-frozen blood” into his mouth). His best friend, Henry, is the only other person who knows why Vlad is so meticulous about applying sunblock and why he brings lunch to school. But when Vlad’s English teacher goes missing (readers know he’s been murdered), the substitute teacher, Mr. Otis, seems uncannily wise to Vlad, leaving Vlad to worry that he may be exposed. The mystery and suspense angles never get scarier than, say, a Goosebumps installment, and the tone stays mostly light, with plenty of descriptions of Vlad’s diet that are to gag for. Brewer catches the wretchedness of adolescence: the hero’s crush on a classmate is dead-on in its understatement and inaction, and his friendship with Henry encompasses lots of banter and insults. The uninitiated will appreciate the ample stock of vampire lore, while the more knowledgeable will sink their teeth into the puns. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)

The legions of readers who are hooked on the romantic struggles of Bella and the vampire Edward will ecstatically devour this third installment of the story begun in Twilight, but it’s unlikely to win over any newcomers. Jake, the werewolf met in New Moon, pursues Bella with renewed vigilance. However, when repercussions from an episode in Twilight place Bella in the mortal danger that series fans have come to expect, Jake and Edward forge an uneasy alliance. The plot patterns have begun to show here, but Meyer’s other strengths remain intact. The supernatural elements accentuate the ordinary human dramas of growing up. Jake and Edward’s competition for Bella feels particularly authentic, especially in their apparent desire to best each other as much as to win Bella. Once again the author presents teenage love as an almost inhuman force: “[He] would have been my soul mate still,” says Bella, “if his claim had not been overshadowed by something stronger, something so strong that it could not exist in a rational world.” According to Meyer, the fourth book should tie up at least the Edward story, if not the whole shebang. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

Set in a world nearly identical to our own—except for the existence of Draco australiensis (gigantic, reclusive, fire-breathing dragons who raise their infants in marsupial-like pouches)—this big, ambitious novel marks a departure of sorts for Newbery Medalist McKinley, whose previous works take place either in the realm of fairy tale and legend (Spindle’s End) or the magical land of Damar (The Hero and the Crown). But fans will instantly recognize its protagonist, the tightly wound and solitary Jake, as classic McKinley. On his first-ever solo expedition in remotest Smokehill (the Wyoming dragon preserve and national park where he was raised), Jake stumbles across the single surviving newborn of a female dragon slaughtered by a poacher. Jake takes on the challenge of raising the orphaned creature, describing the process in minute and loving detail (“She was hopeless as a lapdog—the wrong shape, and she was too thick-bodied to curl properly—but she’d lie pretty contentedly on my bare feet, or behind my ankles—that’s when she was willing… to lie down at all. She went on wanting skin [contact], and she still spent nights lying against my stomach”). When Jake attempts to reintroduce the dragon to her own species, a brave new era of dragon-human relations begins. One quibble: because Jake tells the story as a memoir, some climactic moments tend to be relayed at arm’s length. On balance, McKinley renders her imagined universe so potently that readers will wish they could book their next vacation in Smokehill. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

Johnston (The Ghost of Nicholas Greebe), well known for her witty picture books, writes a compelling, sometimes harrowing coming-of-age story that explores racial tensions in small-town Tennessee during the early ’50s. All his life, motherless David and the others in his family have longed to please his father, a doctor capable of such charm that “he could coax radishes to becoming roses on their way up through the soil.” But David can’t escape his father’s hatred of “Negroes,” in David’s language, especially when his father bans his best friend from the house with a serious threat: “You ever let that nigger in, by God, I’ll shoot him.” Without drawing attention to itself or slowing readers down, the prose gracefully incorporates rich imagery (“It was an afternoon in January, and cold. The leaves on the oaks were brown and damp from the fog that crept along the ground, a cold live thing”), its delicacy sharpening the brutalities David witnesses as he grows from age nine to 13. Johnston expertly builds tension as a series of chilling events awakens David to the full horrors of his father’s—and his neighbors’—actions. This novel stands well above others on the same topic for its author’s refusal to sacrifice the humanity of any of her characters and her dedication to the complexity of their relationships. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

A Captain Underpants for the older bunch, Kraft’s (Lenny and Mel) comedic riff on male adolescence is as nerdy and hormonally driven as they come. Written like an illustrated journal of sorts with titles for each page-length entry and in often fragmented sentences, the book reads like a haphazard, stream-of-consciousness rant—one 10th-grader’s perspective on high school in a small Massachusetts town. “My last name is Mayo, and I can’t help but wonder if it were something different, would the Donkeys [the jocks] just ignore me? Maybe. But instead I’m Miracle Wimp,” the narrator reports. He comments on everything from the varieties of wedgiesand the tortures of gym class to the difference between the cool kids and the dorks, to the nerves and eventual irritation that accompany his first date, to going to (and actually having fun at) the prom. Kraft rarely dips below the surface on any of these issues, preferring instead to try to see the humor (or the pathos) in it all. While girls may not get into the narrator’s sensibility, boys who enjoy series of short takes—especially those infused with slapstick and sarcasm—will find this virtually plotless book a quick and entertaining read. Illustrations not seen by PW. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

Trent’s first novel—first in the projected Hallowmere series—borrows heavily from folklore themes used to better effect in other contemporary YA fantasy novels. Shortly after the Civil War ends, Corrine recovers from swamp fever only to discover that the illness has claimed her mother’s life. Her aloof Uncle William shelters her for only a few weeks before she breaks every rule of his household (as well as proscriptions familiar to even the most casual fairytale reader) and brings about a violent raid on his property, apparently by fairies. Promptly packed off to a “reformatory school for young ladies,” Corrine now sees visions, has strange dreams and feels haunted by “the Captain”—whoever he might be. At the school, girls have been disappearing; a classmate is possessed; servants either practice witchcraft or have second sight. Something dark is transpiring behind the scenes—but whom can Corrine trust as she tries to keep herself and the others safe? And surely she can glean some clues from the 14th-century correspondence she keeps finding (especially as it is in modern English and therefore easy for her to read). Even with so much action, the plot moves slowly, and the details slip in and out of historical accuracy. Some big loopholes in the plot (Corrine noting that she has no actual proof that her mother died, for example) leave openings for major reversals in the remaining nine installments, although readers may not wish to stick around. Ages 13-up. (Aug.)

Screenwriter, novelist and poet, Alexie bounds into YA with what might be a Native American equivalent of Angela’s Ashes, a coming-of-age story so well observed that its very rootedness in one specific culture is also what lends it universality, and so emotionally honest that the humor almost always proves painful. Presented as the diary of hydrocephalic 14-year-old cartoonist and Spokane Indian Arnold Spirit Jr., the novel revolves around Junior’s desperate hope of escaping the reservation. As he says of his drawings, “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.” He transfers to a public school 22 miles away in a rich farm town where the only other Indian is the team mascot. Although his parents support his decision, everyone else on the rez sees him as a traitor, an apple (“red on the outside and white on the inside”), while at school most teachers and students project stereotypes onto him: “I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other.” Readers begin to understand Junior’s determination as, over the course of the school year, alcoholism and self-destructive behaviors lead to the deaths of close relatives. Unlike protagonists in many YA novels who reclaim or retain ethnic ties in order to find their true selves, Junior must separate from his tribe in order to preserve his identity. Jazzy syntax and Forney’s witty cartoons examining Indian versus White attire and behavior transmute despair into dark humor; Alexie’s no-holds-barred jokes have the effect of throwing the seriousness of his themes into high relief. Ages 14-up. (Sept.)