Children's Book Reviews: Week of 9/24/2007

Like the story of The Golden Goose, this fanciful picture book begins with a person who attracts an increasingly large crowd until he has spontaneously assembled a parade almost certain to make viewers laugh. Against a creamy blank backdrop, Billy marches along with a doughnut that, oddly, he has tied to his belt with a string. The doughnut attracts a chicken “who fancied herself a crumb of this thing”; it lures a cat, which incites a dog wearing a girl's dress, which brings a girl who runs along in her underpants. The characters and their activities multiply quickly without compromising their delicious particularity: “Adelaide Bead, who'd been doing her hair [and] bricklayers, horn players, painters and masons.” Bond's (Just Like a Baby) watercolors are kinetic and limber, chock-full of playful details. As the parade grows, it gains ever more whimsical participants—“cloud catchers” carrying butterfly nets, “citizens... from the pages of history,” and even “Little May Pinker [with] things she had thought.” Children will have fun tracing the promenaders' progress in Bond's lively excursion. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)

Jazzy stencil shapes and five droll gatefolds lend novelty to this near-wordless story that features a mysterious croc. The pleasant but undistinguished plot is the machinery for the main attraction, Polhemus's (Daemon Hall) high-contrast, silkscreen-style digital imagery, in saturated shades of gray, royal blue and electric yellow on white. First, readers meet a silhouetted man and his pet cockatoo, strolling home with a grocery basket. The man's loose, swingy limbs and jaunty fedora imply carefree existence. Then, on a white wall, the man and bird notice a sign, “Eggs.” One square page unfolds into three panels as the man approaches an ovoid vending machine and inserts a coin. Holding a single egg, he sashays on his way, a trail of musical notes implying the cockatoo's cheerful whistle. That night, awakened by an onomatopoeic “crack crack crack crack,” the characters discover eggshells on the kitchen floor and a grinning crocodile in their fridge. Their wide eyes glow against the midnight colors, and they exchange a meaningful glance before exiting their apartment. Later, they receive an invitation to the building, now the chic Blue Crocodile nightclub. Unlike some wordless artists (e.g., Mitsumasa Anno), Polhemus produces a unilayered story, and a few readings may exhaust the linear narrative. But admirers of Richard McGuire's Night Becomes Day will see a similar aesthetic at work in Polhemus's sleek digital designs, and reward them with a lengthier look. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)

McClements (The Last Badge) combines two favorite themes—cowboys and dinosaurs—and produces surprisingly bland results. Narrator Buck Bronco, who once brought home some “loco-looking eggs,” now operates a dinosaur ranch, and promises to teach readers “everything you need to know 'bout ridin' dinosaurs.” Like a combination of Roy Rogers and Gumby with his sheepskin chaps and blue bandana, Buck lectures on such topics as “Choosin' Yer Mount” (“You'll have to decide between the speed of a biped or the comfort of a quadruped”) and “Saddlin' Yer Dino” (“Unless ya got glue in yer britches, we'll need to tack up!”), and offers tips on various “Types of Ridin'.” Mixed-media collages portray dinosaurs in all manner of goony if cheerful poses and occasional facts about dinosaurs (“Biped = 2 Legs”; “Diplodocus = 88 feet long”). However, few of the busy spreads seem to have a focal point, a problem that, in a figurative sense, afflicts the text as well. The illustrations and information are only vaguely accurate, a disappointment to dino aficionados, and the book doesn't offer much in the way of a plot; it's more of a slow trail ride than a rootin'-tootin' tale. Ages 3-7. (Sept.)

In a near-wordless offering, Hayes's (Time for the Fair) finely detailed pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations cleverly unspool a playful spin on The Three Bears. As a family closes up its lakeside vacation house at the end of summer, the compositions foreshadow what's to come: the father straightens bear figurines on the mantel and places a copy of All About Bears in the bookcase while the mother fills a large jar with honey. When they pack the car, the dad insists that his son take his oversized stuffed teddy back to his bedroom. The boy leaves the front door ajar, providing easy entry for the good-natured bear clan that immediately move in and make themselves at home. The two cubs jump on the bed with the stuffed bear, and the mama bear happily discovers the container of honey. In deep winter, the papa and a cub ice-fish (and, in a kid-pleasing turn, hook the boy's formerly missing baseball cap); all four bears go sledding in their hosts' canoe. Gaiety abounds as the bears welcome other woodland creatures to a festive New Year's Eve party, after which the revelers hibernate peacefully, awakening in time for the winter visitors to clean up (that baseball cap ends up on the boy's teddy). A progression of spreads laid out with multiple panels alternate with larger scenes, enlivening the presentation; and the more closely readers look, the more they'll find to like. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Kanninen's first children's book confidently serves up metafiction to the picture-book crowd. “Hi there,” says the narrator. “I am the author of A Story with Pictures.” But the author has made a mistake: “Ack! Where are the pictures?” she groans when a turn of the page reveals an empty square labeled “picture.” Alas, she has forgotten to give her manuscript to the illustrator, who seems to have created her own story and painted the author right into it. “She painted a duck. There are no ducks in this story,” the author objects as she meets a oversize quacker (the backpack it wears reads “What's supposed to be in this book?”). Reed's (Punctuation Takes a Vacation) mixed-media compositions expertly contain the antic action—not only the duck but cows and trolls run amok, and the narrator slips on a banana peel, all on the same page. The artist renders the characters in a childlike style, painting them with skewered proportions and in gumdrop-colored clothes, and enhances her spreads with collage elements (googly eyes, a doll troll's tresses, digitally manipulated photos). She paints the author, for example, with a distinctly carrot-like nose and a thin rectangle for a neck, and later outfits her in a ballerina's tulle skirt borrowed from a photograph. Solid-color full-bleed backgrounds unify the look and add to the visual energy. Readers will enjoy the wild ride as Kanninen and Reed entertain various outlandish possibilities for the author's fate, and they'll learn a thing or two about terms like author, setting and plot in the process. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Although Gershator (Kallaloo!) and Jay (1 2 3: A Child's First Counting Book; reviewed Sept. 3) aren't entirely in sync in this sound-driven journey through the seasons, it hardly matters, as Jay's magical and occasionally eerie crackle-glaze oil paintings furnish a visual feast. The text is built around a series of rhyming, gentle directives to attune one's ears: “Listen, listen... summer's gone. Good-bye insects, autumn's come.... Honk, honk, geese call. / Swish, swish, leaves fall.” But while Jay picks up on some of Gershator's visual cues, her pictures are more about fantastic versions of small-town life: geese flying overhead exude a Hitchcockian menace, and two cats toasting their paws before a winter's fire look so plump and sated that one wonders if maybe dinner consisted of their human owners. It sounds rather bizarre, but the richness and detail of Jay's universe will utterly captivate children. Ultimately, the real journey in this book is less about seasons and sounds than where Jay's imagination takes her and her audience. Ages 4-9. (Sept.)

When Eli and his family travel to Lithuania, he finally learns why sadness clouds their Rosh Hashanah gatherings: his great-grandmother Gussie's father and six siblings were among the 80,000 Jews massacred in the Ponar Forest near Vilnius during WWII. Vander Zee (Mississippi Morning) and Sneider, whose experiences inspired the book, use simple, direct language to follow Eli's trajectory from puzzlement and ignorance to horrific realization and resolve. As the family gathers at the site of the massacre, the prose is unsparing and unrushed, occupying several pages. “And then they fell... into this pit,” Eli's father explains, after recounting how Jews were rounded up and shot in the back. “The next day their bodies were burned.” Farnsworth (The Christmas Menorahs) freezes the action in his realistic oil paintings, an approach that makes the most of the emotionally wrenching subject matter. He portrays Eli's reaction in a stunning close-up—his face is expressionless except for his sad, wide eyes. But in this moment when innocence is lost (Eli's first response is the utterly authentic, “Were children killed too?”), a sense of maturity dawns. Eli realizes that the world is bigger than his own experience, and that each generation is entrusted with the responsibility and sacredness of memory. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

Set in the days of olde, this swift-paced, large-scale adventure centers on Penhaligon, an earnest fox, who takes on the scheming feline Sir Derek and his army of ferrets in a eerie seaside village. The nefarious Derek plots to shipwreck vessels carrying the soon-to-be bride of the crown prince and then plunder the ships' bounty—and Penhaligon is tapped to thwart him. Rogan, who grew up in Wales and now works as a school librarian in Los Angeles, adds suspense and humor to virtually every turn of the curlicue plot. Other developments include a love interest for Penhaligon in the form of a saucy vixen; a duel (after Derek's blade slashes the fox's clothing, the villain says, “You'll pay for your meddling,” to which Penhaligon replies, “And you'll pay for this waistcoat”) and, of course, numerous reversals of fortune. Slade's halftone art, sometimes presented in conventional one-page scenes but often laid out in dynamic interaction with the text, represent these robust characters in theatrical costume and with plenty of personality. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

At the heart of this inventive, far-reaching fantasy is Oyster R. Motel, an earnest 10-year-old raised in a nunnery shared by 13 nuns who have taken vows of silence—anticipating objections to a boy in a “nunnery,” the author interjects: “You can't be overly rigid about the English language. (Nurses don't live in nurseries! Novels don't live in novelties!)” But as he grows up, normally and noisily, he wears out his welcome with everyone but the nun he thinks of as Sister Mary Many Pockets, who found him as an abandoned infant (she named him for the motel towel wrapped around him). On a rare venture outside, Oyster meets a old woman who maps children's Imagined Other Worlds. She tells him of two youngsters—later revealed as Oyster's parents—who once slipped inside the map they created, traveling through the Gulf of Wind and Darkness into their imagined world, never to return. Accompanied by a dachshund belonging to the nunnery's child-hating lone employee, Oyster is soon transported through that same Slippery Map to the Other World, where the evil Dark Mouth holds his parents prisoners. In a Harry Potter–esque twist, Oyster is heralded as “the boy,” the long-awaited hero entreated to take up his parents' crusade to destroy the villain and end his cruel regime. Writing as Bode (The Anybodies), Julianna Baggott effortlessly renders an expansive, entertainingly quirky cast of creatures benign and malevolent. Her snappy prose makes the case for the story's explicit messages about the value of unbridled imagination. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

Traveling into territory more commonly associated with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Newbery Medalist Fleischman (The Whipping Boy) draws attention to the especially cruel treatment of Jewish children during the Holocaust. The “Great Freddie” is a decorated GI, an orphan who has stayed in Europe and, by 1948, has found a toehold as a ventriloquist. And then Avrom Amos Poliakov shows up—rather, takes over. Avrom Amos is a dybbuk, a wandering soul or ghost, and, by demonstrating how he might speak for Freddie's wooden dummy, Avrom Amos convinces Freddie to let him lodge within Freddie. The dybbuk makes good on his promise, and Freddie's act becomes the toast of Paris. But Avrom Amos has his own agenda, as Freddie knows. He wants to track down the infamous SS colonel who not only killed him but also tortured children, including his sister, and before long, the dybbuk co-opts Freddie's act and his interviews to spread the word about the SS colonel. The dybbuk's voice will shock some readers; he speaks in embittered, Yiddish-inflected English that drives home his point. Here is Avrom Amos giving Freddie a history lesson: “You didn't hear [that Hitler] told his Nazi meshuggeners, those lunatics, 'Soldiers of Germany, have some fun and go murder a million and a half Jewish kids? All ages! Babies, fine. Girls with ribbons in their hair, why not?' ” Fleischman inserts horrific factual details of Nazi brutality, and yet his message about bearing witness may be submerged beneath the sensational story line. Ages 9-14. (Sept.)

When 15-year-old Frannie stumbles upon an elaborately carved box bearing her name as she is sorting through her late father's art studio, she assumes she has found a birthday present that he made for her before his recent, untimely death. Inside she finds a handmade, 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle; assembling it distracts Frannie from her grief and her growing obsession with death. But sometimes, usually when she is exhausted, the connected puzzle pieces seem to pull her inside them and transport her to a foreign place where she sometimes glimpses or even talks with a younger version of her father. In deftly conjuring up the magical element of this otherwise realistic novel, Ephron (How to Eat Like a Child) explores themes about “puzzling” relationships, the process of mourning (which leaves Frannie “in pieces”) and seeing the larger picture. Frannie, an artist like her father and at odds with her more conventional mother and stepfather, feels too much pain to connect with anyone else, including her best friend. Whether or not Frannie's journeys into the jigsaw puzzle are figments of her imagination (plenty of evidence suggests they are not), her brief visits to its world have a profound psychological effect, answering some of her questions about love, art and life. Truths about Frannie's long-divorced parents emerge suddenly in a gratifying climax that forces Frannie, and readers, to reassemble her picture of her family and herself. With this imaginative and insightful first YA novel, Ephron, co-screenwriter for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, should easily capture a new audience. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Hale (River Secrets) delivers another winning fantasy, this time inventively fleshing out the obscure Grimm tale, Maid Maleen, through the expressive and earthy voice of Dashti, maid to Lady Saren. A plucky and resourceful orphan, Dashti comes from a nomad tribe in a place resembling the Asian Steppes, and is brought to the Lady's house in the midst of a crisis. Lady Saren, having refused to marry the powerful but loathsome Lord her father has chosen, faces seven years' imprisonment in an unlit tower. Initially, Dashti believes her worth is tied to her ability to care for her “tower-addled” lady until she can join Khan Tegus, to whom she is secretly betrothed. When the gentle Tegus comes to the tower, Dashti must step in for her traumatized lady, speaking to him as Saren through the one tiny metal door. Hale exploits the diary form to convey Dashti's perspective; despite her self-effacing declaration that “I draw this from memory so it won't be right,” the entries reflect her genuinely spirited inner life. The tension between her unstinting loyalty and patience and burgeoning realization of her own strength and feelings for Tegus feels especially authentic. Readers will be riveted as Dashti and Saren escape and flee to the Khan's realm where, through a series of deceptions, contrivances and a riotously triumphant climax, the tale spins out to a thoroughly satisfying ending. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

Although it begins in a didactic tone, this historical novel about New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the catastrophic Factory fire hits its stride to offer a compelling message about labor, sacrifice and the price of freedom in America. Haddix (the Shadow Children series) follows three very different girls: naïve Bella from Italy, who becomes a strikebreaker; the feisty Yetta, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who spearheads the strikes; and the socially prominent Jane, raised to marry for status and prestige. The pace and interest pick up once the infamous 1910 strike begins and the girls' experiences collide. The author ably motivates the various characters, for example, Yetta repeatedly survives beatings and incarceration for her convictions; Bella joins the strike only after learning her family has died and her landlords have stolen her savings; and Jane follows college friends to the picket line but returns of her own accord. Several well-sketched supporting characters highlight the broader effect of the struggle, such as Jane's chauffeur, who cheers her participation. The portrayal of the fire, which killed 146 workers, and its legacy memorably drives home both the bravery of girls who stood up to the powerful factory owners and the highly personal cost of progress. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

This first installment of the Knight and Rogue novels, a planned heroic fantasy series, chronicles the misadventures of a sarcastic 17-year-old ex-con and his idealistic employer, who is just one year older. Sir Michael Sevenson is a knight-errant, although, as the narrator puts it, that kind of “romantic idiocy” hasn't existed in more than two centuries. After Sir Michael saves the narrator, Fisk, from a lengthy jail sentence by hiring him on as his squire, the unlikely duo rescue an imprisoned damsel in distress from a tower—only to discover that they've freed a woman suspected of murdering her husband. To make amends, Sir Michael and his wily squire set out to capture the villainess and bring her back to trial. Bell (The Goblin Wood) fills the ensuing realm-spanning journey with magic-filled adventure and moments of downright hilarity, especially scenes involving Tipple, the alcoholic horse. While some serious shortcomings mar the narrative—characters aside from the two protagonists are essentially flat, and the world-building aspect is practically nonexistent—the fast-paced action and well-developed friendship between Sir Michael and Fisk make up for any inadequacies. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

This bold and bawdy first novel introduces Shakespeare Shapiro, whose very name seems to destine him for a life of farce (that his parents offer changing but invariably embarrassing explanations for his whacko moniker merely compounds matters). Now that he's taking the memoir-writing class required of all seniors at Ernest Hemingway High, he seizes the chance to frame his life as a darkly comedic series of humiliations, from being born on Hitler's birthday (“Whenever I did anything wrong, my father would call me Adolf”) to his father's blackmail techniques (“I'm about ten seconds away from telling you things [about our sex life] that will haunt you for the rest of your life,” his father cheerfully threatens an 11-year-old Shakespeare) to his misadventures in masturbating. Wizner knows just how to set up his outrageous jokes and how far to push most (not all) of them; and nothing seems off-limits, neither religion nor sex nor bowel movements. This author demonstrates an equally sure approach to sober themes: as his memoir assignments win him increasing respect and interest from his classmates, Shakespeare slowly realizes that the role of comic victim is one he has chosen in order to avoid challenging himself. Exceptionally funny and smart. Ages 14-up. (Sept.)

Teens bored with their humdrum surroundings and on the hunt for something (or someplace) better will be drawn to this debut novel. It's the week before boarding school applications are due, and 16-year-old Charlotte must decide whether to stay on the island off the coast of Maine with her dysfunctional family (she shoulders the responsibility for her preschool-age siblings) or to broaden her horizons. Charlotte's stream-of-consciousness responses to the applications' essay questions reveal her desires, frustrations and fears. For example, “Who is your favorite literary character?” leads to a rant about how Charlotte's unstable mother named her three children after Charlotte's Web; how Charlotte's best friend, who has just hooked up with Charlotte's lifelong boyfriend, ought to have been named Templeton, the rat; a complaint about her Scrabble-obsessed dad who has “shtupped” the preschool teacher; and a comparison of herself with Charlotte the spider (“love words” and “not instantly likeable” are traits they share). Charlotte is right about not being instantly likeable: as people keep telling her, she's condescending and snarky, and she hurts her boyfriend by hiding from him her thoughts about boarding school. Although her diatribes often sound arch or overly clever, they evoke a realistic picture of a girl who yearns for independence but secretly fears letting go of the familiar. The rest of the characters seem somewhat two-dimensional, but readers might be too consumed with Charlotte's ongoing drama—that is, their own drama writ very large—to mind. Ages 14-up. (Sept.)

Nye brings a keen curiosity and a poet's sensibility to this smooth, anecdotal collection that amplifies the notion that the journey itself is the destination. The most memorable characters are taxi drivers, such as the Syracuse, N.Y., cabbie whose conversation gives the book its title: driving her to the airport before dawn, he warns Nye that he will ask three times if she is okay, “Just to make sure you feel safe and secure. We're living in strange times, and I want you to feel very comfortable.” In other highlights of Nye's tour, she re-creates the voices of a rickshaw driver in India who tries to talk her into visiting a rug store instead of the Taj Mahal; the Glasgow driver who invites her to sit in front with him and bids her farewell with, “Okay then, be safe to the other side of the sea”; and an Egyptian driver in New York City who boasts of trafficking in counterfeit handbags. Nye muses on what she learns on specific travels and shares stories about driving other people (among them, possibly senile strangers, distinguished visiting writers and her own son). Aside from some name-dropping and some mildly self-indulgent moments, Nye's prose flows fluidly and evokes any number of different settings. She makes her case that “what happen[s] in the margins, on the way to the destinations of any day, might be as intriguing as what happen[s] when you {get] there.” All ages. (Sept.)

three little ghosties swap “big boasties” of their most frightening moments. With a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin, the first recalls scaring “ghoulsies/ sitting in their schoolsies.” The second ups the ante by sneaking up on some witches, and the third says he startled an ogre. Cantone (Pecorino Plays Ball) creates bobbing and feinting movement in her gouaches with touches of glitter, collage layers of paper and variable display type. She pictures the floaty trio as jellyfish-shaped and transparent, with squinting capsule eyes, wide mouths and blushing cheeks. For all their gleeful braggadocio, these ghosts are mere pranksters. The tables turn when they go after human children, and a boy takes over the storytelling: “They thought I was asleep,/ so they started to creep..../ I sat up in bed and shouted 'Booo!' ” Goodhart's (Arthur's Tractor) diminutives, though cutesy, contribute to a bouncy and mischievous Halloween tale. Ages 3-6. (Sept.)

Skelly, a pint-size Day of the Dead girl with pumpkin-orange bobbed hair, finds a misplaced bone and seeks its owner. Pickering's (Bubble Trouble) mixed-media illustrations picture Skelly in a black dress, white petticoat and buckle shoes, exposing an eerily wide cranium and delicately articulated hands. Readers see her arm bones, ribs and pelvis only when she X-rays herself: “Could it be a bone from me? No, it wasn't mine.” Skelly tickles “the monster under the stairs” to see whether “he still had his funny bone.” She questions tea-sipping ghosts and man-eating plants, and gets a quick entomology lesson (“Simply put, we spiders don't have bones”). In the end, a skeleton dog digging in her garden—moviegoers will recall the pup in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride—happily claims the lost item. Despite the ghoulish subtext, midnight palette and inky backdrops, Pickering keeps the mood breezy; Skelly bats long eyelashes and the dog wags a spiny tail. Like Margery Cuyler and S.D. Schindler's comical Skeleton Hiccups, this stylized tale suggests there's nothing to fear from Halloween haints. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)

With his creamy skin and blissful smile, Frankie Stein seems a delightful baby. In the Munsters–like premise, however, his evident normalcy worries his parents, a green-skinned Frankenstein's monster and his Bride. “ 'Oh my,' said his mother. 'He's... cute.' ” Frankie soon sprouts “a lock of sun-gold hair” and a clean white tooth. He practices lurching, but “his walk was more of a bounce.” His doting parents tint his hair a lurid violet, apply fake warts to his face and outfit him in clunky black shoes—ever mindful of their rogues' gallery of candlelit family portraits—but to no avail. A transparent, goofy ghost and lavender rat smilingly observe the unsuccessful makeover, accenting the sitcom humor. Schaefer (Loose Tooth) capably sets up debut illustrator Atteberry's visual punch lines, while Atteberry casts the tale with slightly bland computer-generated caricatures. Given the predictable gags, the roundish yellow typeface appears undersize and weak on the page; otherwise, the book makes the most of its cartoonish comedy without tilting into anything remotely scary. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)

For readers seeking a weird and haunting autumn read, this fairy tale by Yorinks (Mommy?) and Smith (Circus Train) fits the bill. The opening illustration alone is the stuff of nightmares. A wraithlike woman, clad in a billowing inky-black dress, seems suspended face-down from a branch in an overcast forest of leafless gray trees (she is, apparently, flying). Meet Rosina, a witch who “was powerful and evil and had all there was to have—all but one thing. A child.” Never mind Rosina's evident lack of maternal qualities. She crafts a daughter, from “straw and leaves and clumps of her own hair.” Yet her spells fail to animate the scarecrow-girl, Rosalie, whose empty eyes and limp body are uncanny in their own right, and when real children play too roughly with the doll, Rosina transforms them into thorn bushes (Smith's images here register high on the spine-shivering scale). Like Sleeping Beauty's vines, the magic shrubs enchant would-be visitors until a compassionate girl wanders in. As the visitor cuddles Rosalie, the witch flies in the window and the doll comes to life with a vengeance; in the violent conclusion, unredeemed Rosina brandishes a butcher knife but falls into the fireplace. Yorinks's measured storytelling raises goosebumps, and Smith's surreal, full-bleed images heighten the suspense. Ages 5-9. (Oct.)