Children's Book Reviews: Week of 10/8/2007

With a visual guessing game as the premise, McCarthy's first book for children challenges youngsters to look at nature through the lens of graphic design. “Look!” she writes, introducing a series of three seemingly abstract images. “What do you... [turn the page] see?” Over these several pages, she zooms out to reveal a more complete picture. Simple shapes or lines (e.g., a black circle centered on a russet field) become part of the ingenious patterning that distinguishes a ladybug, the petals of a cardinal flower, or throat and wings of a hummingbird. The final image, a vibrant garden, shows each of the starring objects in proper perspective, and underscores the point that nature teems with intricate, elegant designs. McCarthy's handmade-paper collages make striking use of the bold lines and dramatic colors that preschoolers like. Despite their beauty, however, the compositions are static, a problem exacerbated by the repeated use of the same text and page breaks throughout the book. Readers are apt to nod along dutifully, but the book feels more like an attractive lesson plan rather than a voyage of discovery. Ages 2-5. (Sept.)

Both fanciful and contrived, Kate Feiffer's (Double Pink) story about being careful what you wish for also feels labored. It begins ingenuously if wordily: “Henry wanted one thing in life. He wanted a tail. Henry was a dog with no tail. And this made him sad.” Livening things up, Jules Feiffer departs from the simple lines of his Bark, George for insouciant, loose-lined charcoal and watercolor illustrations that sprawl across the page, suggesting action even when their subject is at rest. After an introduction to the supporting cast—a Labrador, pug and poodle, all indebted to the art for their individuated personalities—the text turns to extended puns to propel an essentially quixotic plot. To buy a tail, Henry goes to a tailor, who for some reason sews up an absurdly long, button-on tail. Because his tail doesn't wag, Henry goes to a wagon maker. Although the wagon maker can't help him, Henry buys a wagon (why?), and it takes him to New York City's Battery Park, which is (of course) strewn with batteries. Now battery-powered, the tail wags Henry right up a tree, where he makes a decision: “I think my days of having a tail are behind me.” All in all, a shaggy dog story. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)

A wholly original Mother Goose book, the Caldecott-winning Dillons' (Jazz on a Saturday Night, reviewed Aug. 6) collection of number rhymes is so imaginative and playful that each reading yields something new and unexpected. A cast of humans and animals parades across the stark white pages like carnival-goers, some of them sporting elaborate Renaissance masks and clothing. The sophisticated images, however, never interfere with the simplicity of the well-chosen rhymes. Brilliantly colored numbers, letters and inanimate objects become sideshow characters engaging in ancillary action. As the king is in his counting-house and the queen is in her parlor, a knobbly-skinned alligator dressed in a Sir Walter Raleigh–esque jacket and a cat in an Elizabethan ruff peer down from the roof. Opposite, the cat curls up in a laundry basket while the alligator gazes longingly at the blackbird who has just “snapped off” the cone-shaped nose mask of a maid hanging out the clothes. Numerous minor characters populate every page, and the Dillons endow each with distinct individuality. Two “O-U-T spells out” rhymes feature a queen and her froggy king deciding the fate of a chorus line of seven worried potatoes in purple fezes and frills, while opposite, Mary is seated on a milking stool and “eating cherries off a plate.” Despite the incongruities of plot and characters' sizes, the spread is remarkable for its unifying design and execution. Inventive, artistically dazzling and full of wit, this Mother Goose collection is absolutely irresistible. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)

Actress Moore's first book for children introduces a girl “who was just like everybody else except for one thing,” which turns out to be two things: she has red hair and “something worse”—freckles. The child finds herself dubbed Freckleface Strawberry, and her peers annoy her with inane remarks: “If you got more freckles, you would be one big freckle, and that would be a tan” and “Can I smell them?” Predictably, she attempts to eradicate her freckles (she tries scrubbing, dousing them with lemon juice and drawing on herself with markers). When nothing works, she resorts to wearing a ski mask, whereupon her friends wonder aloud where she has gone. When she finally removes the hot, itchy mask, the gang announces that they've missed her, prompting her to “smile so wide, she thought she would crack open” and to conclude, “Who cared about having a million freckles when she had a million friends?” In Pham's (Big Sister, Little Sister) homely cartoons, rendered with a Japanese brush pen and digitally colored, the reddish spots covering the girl's face and arms look like a rash. With both the story and pictures presenting freckles as something of an affliction, freckle-faced readers are likely to wince. Ages 3-8. (Oct.)

In Owen & Mzee, Craig Hatkoff and his daughter Isabella told of the close rapport between an orphaned baby hippo and an elderly tortoise; here they team up with Isabella's sister Juliana and Uhlich, a board member of Zoo Berlin, to focus on another stirring, if less startling, interspecies friendship. A polar bear at that German zoo, Knut became an international media darling shortly after his birth in 2006, when his mother showed no interest raising him and zoo employees stepped in to take her place. Assuming the role of Knut's “around-the-clock foster father,” the zoo's chief bear keeper remained at the cub's side for four months without interruption, day and night, feeding and grooming him, even playing him Elvis songs on the guitar and eventually teaching him how to swim. The informative narrative flows easily, yet the show-stoppers are the color photos, culled from numerous sources. Many put the fluffy, wide-eyed Knut face-to-face with readers; others capture the celebrated bear at play (wrestling with an old boot, mouthing a deflated soccer ball) or at rest (nestled between two stuffed animals in his sleeping box). Remarkably photogenic, Knut brings home for young readers the importance of saving polar bears' natural Arctic habitat, a message stated in the conclusion and reinforced with tips on how children can help combat global warming. Ages 4-8. (Nov.)

In a startlingly graphic exploration of the horrors of war, Vitale (When the Wind Stops) first paints folk-like landscapes in his signature style, showing graceful, brown-skinned mothers cuddling their children, and birds soaring through the jungle. Then he crushes them, covers them with gray paint, or smears horrid, waxy substances over them, and collages the results—which, like the fruits of war, are the stuff of nightmares. Walker's (There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose, Smelling Me) text is equally frightening. Of a “blissful” mother and child, she writes, “They do not smell War... Marching slowly/ toward them.” She shifts into second person: “War tastes terrible/ & smells/ Bad... You could die/ While/ Choking/ &/ Holding/ Your/ Nose.” Accompanying the latter passage, Vitale shows a creature made of some unspeakable, dripping, brown and green muck, in whose depths plastic soldiers are buried and whose face has the shape of a skull. The final spread offers a view from inside a deep well. Its walls are encrusted with some brackish substance, and 11 dark faces—mothers, children, a man in a suit—peer down into it. “Now, suppose,” Walker concludes, “You/ Become War/ It happens/ To some of/ The nicest/ People/ On earth:/ & one day/ You have/ To drink/ The/ Water/ In this place.” Leaving kids feeling more aware than ever of their helplessness in the face of real and terrifying issues beyond their control, this book may be even more disturbing than a fact-based presentation. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

Brown's (Ten Seeds) magnificent watercolor and acrylic pictures are the saving grace of an otherwise ponderous story—which, despite the subtitle, is really more about cooperation than the virtues of being green. A bevy of anthropomorphized critters (prolific Mrs. Rabbit, grumpy Mr. Badger, thuggish Mr. Squirrel and so forth) who live in Old Tree discover the importance of the neighborly spirit only after their home is threatened with destruction. Together they successfully thwart two woodsmen, then celebrate their triumph with a party commemorated by an elaborate pop-up on the final spread. The prose manages to be both long-winded and breathless, and the set-up to the resolution feels cumbersome. But Brown's illustrations, which exude an old-fashioned sense of character and environment, transform the reading experience. Her evocation of the country setting and her manner of individuating each character evince a fine wit. Professor Owl, for example, cuts a Jamesian figure as he wearily stands in the doorway of his sunlit study, while Maggie Magpie's eyes shine with manic greed as she surveys her nest filled with “shiny, sparkly” purloined objects (she sports a gaudy necklace, too). The oversize format shows off the illustrations to their best advantage, allowing for plenty of action as well as attention to naturalistic details. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

This send-up of Poe's “The Raven” seems mostly an occasion to showcase the first-time author/artist's hand-dyed torn- and cut-paper collages. “One morning I woke up sleepy,/ came downstairs to something creepy,” says a small child of indeterminate gender, shown in pajamas peering through the front door at a crow perched on a fence. The child's eyes widen, vaudeville-style, as s/he notes the resemblance between the crow and the scary inhabitants of the child's imagination, all vividly pictured: a robber, a wizard and a pirate. Wandering far from the Poe original, Paul quickly abandons the project of duplicating the meter. She does a better job building up suspense visually, with tight shots of the child pulling the drapes apart, and she has even more fun with the spreads of the robber, the wizard and the pirate. Her collages favor bold compositions made up of surprisingly delicately patterned components. An enormous yellow-gold telescope dominates a view of the pirate on deck, for example, and readers will need to look more than once to realize that the roiling, white-crested waves in the picture are artfully torn paper, or to appreciate the careful suggestions of grain in the deck's wood floor. But the overall payoff is low (the child finally steps outside into the autumn morning, only to watch the crow fly off: “He was just as scared as me”), and there's little here to invite the repeat readings necessary for a close enough look at the art. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)

A mother tells her son that she loves him “higher than the highest bird ever flew, /...taller than the tallest tree ever grew.” The son responds that he loves his mother even more, and by flipping the book over, readers can see how he expresses their relationship: “I love you quieter than the quietest caterpillar ever creeped/...further than the furthest frog ever leaped.” The two versions, mother's and son's, meet in the middle, expressed by text circling a globe— “I love you more than anything in the whole wide world”—so that the book's two-in-one format becomes an embodiment of the endless reciprocity of parent-child love. First-time author Kuksta's declarations feel honest and age-appropriate; Mom's words bring to mind classic pop songs, while the boy usually expresses his feelings by comparing them to lollipops, swings and rocket ships. But former photographer Keesler's pastel artwork and “Love is…” characterizations never rise above greeting-card level, offering little reason to choose this book over the many others that share its Runaway Bunny/Guess How Much I Love You sentiments and construct. Ages 4-up. (Nov).

Inspired by a 2006 New York Times article,this poignant photo-essay taps Thompson's (Polar Bear Night) storytelling talent and Times photographer Estrin's behind-camera skill to chronicle a ballet recital given by five unlikely young dancers. The performers, ranging in age from three to seven, all have various disorders such as cerebral palsy; for them, raising their arms, holding themselves upright and maintaining their balance can be feats requiring very hard work. Thompson frames their story as one of a dream come true (the performance incorporated “When you wish upon a star...” to make the same point), and in describing the girls' work with their teacher, New York City physical therapist Joann Ferrara, the author stresses what these girls might have in common with the audience—their excitement, their delight in their tutus and tiaras, their last-minute jitters, their unmistakable pleasure in dancing. With similar effect, close-up portraits introduce the five girls, all shown beaming, before readers see full-body shots revealing their leg braces and the teen helpers who support the dancers onstage. An especially attractive design breaks each spreads into blocks of text, solid pink panels, and group and individual photos. The insightful presentation encourages readers not only to identify with the dancers, but to draw inspiration from them as well. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Ferrara's Dancing Dreams program. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)

A field trip to the zoo has all the kids so giddy with excitement that they quickly dispense with their teacher's warning “Don't wander off!” Even worse, they're oblivious to the hungry anaconda, which is doing a little wandering—and grazing—of his own. “They failed to see that huge reptile.../ open his jaws and swallow Kyle,” writes Jarman (Big Red Tub). “They didn't see that giant snake.../ make a meal of James and Jake.” Luckily, a bright girl catches the snake in the act of feasting on their teacher and organizes a rescue party. Slimy but smiling, the victims emerge from the giant snake mouth—including “a boy they didn't know./ 'Thank you,' he said, 'my name is Joe.' ” Working in bright pastels on a textured surface, Chapman (The Odds Get Even) keeps a genial silliness bubbling throughout these pages. There are lots of visual gags (perpetrated by both humans and animals), and not for a second will readers doubt that the children will prevail over the ravenous snake. And while the kid cast may have oversize heads and huge goggle eyes, their unfettered behavior seems all too realistic. Post-kindergarteners will probably find this story a bit too juvenile, but anyone younger—as well as any grown-up who's been recruited to chaperone a field trip—should come away with a giggle. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)

The uninitiated might be surprised to see a name other than Ginger's alongside Fred Astaire's, but as Orgill's (Go-Go Baby!) detailed text recounts, Fred spent almost the first three decades of his career paired with his older sister, Adele, his “one true friend.” A lengthy, briskly moving narrative chronicles the siblings' bumpy rise to stardom, from a New York City dance school to the vaudeville circuit to Broadway. The author gives equal billing to the performing duo's successes and setbacks (“Once they shared a program with a group of seals who did tricks”), and she maintains a level, steady-as-she-goes tone. Jorisch's (I Remember Miss Perry) winning, Art Deco–flavored ink-and-watercolor illustrations, on the other hand, share in some of the Astaires' eventual glamour and verve as the artist eloquently conjures early-20th-century stage life. Fluid, willowy lines depict festooned dancing frocks, packed performance halls and even an impromptu dance-off with Bojangles in a back alley. Readers glimpse Fred and Adele crying in a dressing room, and, much later, looking out over a standing ovation. In one notable spread Fred, outfitted in mauve, and Adele, in powder blue, execute twists and turns with flair in four vignettes against an olive-brown backdrop resembling a heavy stage curtain. Informative, with spry visuals, the story projects an element of sophistication with the deep wine-red hues that inhabit most scenes and the title's font, which recalls that of the New Yorker. A class act. Ages 6-10. (Oct.)

Hulme and Wexler turn the intelligent design concept on its ear in their children's book debut, a kickoff to The Seems series. The premise: everything that happens in our world, from falling in love to the weather to time itself, is controlled by The Seems—“the place on the other side of the World responsible for generating what you see outside your window right now.” Twelve-year-old Becker Drane lives a double life, secretly working for the Institute for Fixing & Repair; when something goes wrong in The Seems, “Fixers” put the cosmic cogs back in working order. Becker's first mission as a Fixer is a doozy—find the glitch in the Department of Sleep that has turned everyone in the world into an insomniac. The authors use the conceit to the fullest, creating a complex and intricate world with a sometimes daunting array of gadgets, bureaucracy, vocabulary and capitalization (a glossary is included—and welcome). These details don't become overwhelming, fortunately, thanks to the book's consistently lighthearted tone (the Department of Sleep's radio station, WDOZ, broadcasts tracks like “The Hum of the Air Conditioner [Remix]” into humans' subconscious minds). The high sense of adventure and an abundance of goofball humor should appeal especially to boys. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)

Marsh, a New Republic editor making her children's book debut, reworks the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a supernatural tale about a 14-year-old boy's quest through an underworld in New York City, in search of his late mother's spirit. After introverted ninth-grade prodigy Jack Perdu is involved in a near-fatal accident, he is sent to see a specialist in Manhattan. There he meets Euri, a self-proclaimed “urban explorer” who reveals herself to be a ghost—part of a vast and complex community of people who have died in NYC. (Euri tells Jack that he might be able to find his mother if she has not completed her unfinished business in the world and “moved on” to Elysium, which is “somewhere in the Hamptons,” by her best guess.) Euri becomes his personal tour guide as they explore the city by night, when ghosts can leave the underworld to roam unseen. The pair tries to avoid capture by underworld authorities as they seek Jack's mother, in the process unraveling mysteries surrounding his parents' relationship and Jack's ability to infiltrate the spirit world. Mixing numerous references to mythology and classical literature with deft touches of humor and extensive historical details (former mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Dylan Thomas and corrupt police captain “Clubber” Williams, among others, make cameo appearances), this intelligent and self-assured debut will compel readers from its outset, and leave them satisfied as it explores universal themes of love, loss and closure. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

A crisply authoritative first-person narration and a plot line shot through with glimmers of fiercest hope make the fourth installation of the President's Daughter series a novel to luxuriate in, despite its grim particulars. The story starts about six months after the events chronicled in Long Live the Queen (first published in 1989), in which Meg Powers, daughter of the first woman president of the United States, is kidnapped by terrorists and escapes with her hand, leg and psyche shattered. When Meg begins her first semester at Williams College, the typical first-year challenges are magnified and distorted by the complications that come with being the President's daughter, her celebrity status (newly amplified by recent events), and the severe emotional and physical fallout of her ordeal. Making a welcome reappearance is Susan McAllister, the heroine of White's first novel, Friends for Life, who as Meg's resident advisor provides Meg with dispassionate guidance and, eventually, the beginnings of a friendship. Even at her most bruised and tetchy, Meg is awfully good company, and her peculiar situation with its attendant protocols is rendered in such exquisite and thoroughly researched detail that it can't help but command readers' attention. Longtime fans will welcome the chance to accompany Meg on her emotional journey, while newcomers will be motivated to track down the series' earlier books, which are scheduled for re-release in spring 2008. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)

A highly companionable narrator, 16-year-old Sam Jones has spent his life coming to terms with having been an unwanted baby—his parents married because his 16-year-old mother was pregnant, and they divorced soon after. He knows better, in other words, than to make the same mistake. But by the time he learns he's going to be a father himself, he's not even dating Alicia, the mother, anymore. Devastated about how fatherhood will wreck his future, Sam, a skateboarder, talks things through with a poster of Tony Hawk, who “answers” in quotes from his biography, which Sam has read 40 or 50 times. Sam also credits Hawk with a magical ability to transport him to his own future, where he participates in dream-state scenes that actually do occur later. Like Hornby's adult bestsellers (High Fidelity; About a Boy), his YA debut features witty dialogue, a winning if flawed hero and wry insights into the male psyche, making this book a sure bet for Hornby fans of any age. Whether Hornby will find a new audience may be chancier—the readers attracted by Sam's skateboarding talk might want more action and less absorption in relationships than his craftily structured novel offers. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

After San Lee's adoptive father is imprisoned for fraud, the eighth-grader moves with his mother from Texas to Pennsylvania. He has moved often, each time creating new identities; this time he pretends to be a Zen master. He sits zazen on a cold rock near school each morning and says things like, “Thank you for teaching me the lesson of impermanence” (this piece of wisdom comes after a foe ruins his schoolwork). As he hopes, his “uniqueness” impresses Woody, a folk-singing girl with her own family heartache. Together, they embark on a school project about Zen, volunteer at a soup kitchen, and even devise supposedly Zen strategies to help the second-string basketball team take on the starters (this includes a practice game on roller skates). Naturally, they fall for each other, although San thinks she has a crush on a mysterious stranger. Readers will know that it is only a matter of time before San is exposed as a “fake, adopted, research-based Buddhist,” but Sonnenblick (Notes from the Midnight Driver, see Paperback Reprints) gives them plenty to laugh at (in one scene, Woody calls on insect-phobic San to remove a centipede from class because of his well-known “reverence for all living things”). Mixed in with more serious scenes (San finally writes his father a letter expressing his anger), these lighter moments take a basic message about the importance of honesty and forgiveness and treat it with panache. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Recruited as a “white magician” and sent to court at the age of 16 to wait upon and secretly protect Queen Elizabeth, Mary Seymour finds herself nearly overmatched by her own cousin, the powerful and devastatingly handsome black magician Edmund Seymour, in this workmanlike 16th-century romantic fantasy. The daughter of Katherine Parr, Henry the Eighth's widow, from her second marriage, the penniless Mary could prove a rich prize to the right suitor if she gains the Queen's favor, and Edmund has determined to seduce and marry her. Unfortunately, Edmund's scheme puts Mary in great danger from Edmund's former lover and partner in treachery, the beautiful but monstrous black magician Vivienne Gascoigne. The scenes between Mary and the overbearing Edmund are generally effective, but Kolosov's (Grace from China) first YA novel fails to evoke the richness and pageantry of Elizabeth's court, despite the ample descriptions: “Two perfect tears pearled at the corner of Elizabeth's eyes, then slipped down her cheeks, and I understood why pearls were associated with the tears of the heavens.” The tale suffers from a number of anachronisms; for example, courtiers worry about the tea trade, even though the drink didn't actually reach England until nearly a hundred years later. Ages 12-up. (Oct. )

This uncommonly polished debut opens on a riveting scenario: 13 teenagers in a small town have each been designated to listen, in secret, to a box of audiotapes recorded by their classmate Hannah and mailed on the very day she commits suicide. “I'm about to tell you the story of my life,” she says. “More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why.” Clay, the narrator, receives the tapes a few weeks after the suicide (each listener must send the box to the next, and Hannah has built in a plan to make sure her posthumous directions are followed), and his initial shock turns to horror as he hears the dead girl implicate his friends and acquaintances in various acts of callousness, cruelty or crime. Asher expertly paces the narrative, splicing Hannah's tale with Clay's mounting anxiety and fear. Just what has he done? Readers won't be able to pull themselves away until that question gets answered—no matter that the premise is contrived and the plot details can be implausible. The author gets all the characters right, from the popular girl who wants to insure her status to the boy who rapes an unconscious girl at a party where the liquor flows too freely, and the veneer of authenticity suffices to hide the story's flaws. Asher knows how to entertain an audience; this book will leave readers eager to see what he does next. Ages 13-up. (Oct.)

Like a cross between Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, journalist Forman's first book for teens tells the gritty tale of five girls trapped in a “residential treatment center” run by bogus shrinks or, as one of them aptly puts it, in “a loony bin, a bogus, bullshit, behavior-modification boot-camp warehouse for unwanted misfit teens.” The narrator, Brit, thinks she's going on a family vacation; instead, her father dumps her behind the barbed-wire fences of Red Rocks, where she is told she has Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Although noticeably sluggish in the beginning (redundant descriptions of the scenery, the staff's abusive practices and the characters' pasts), the pace soon picks up as the girls scheme to shut the place down by taking matters into their own very capable hands. Each of the quintet is valiant in her own right, from Bebe, the famous actress's daughter who sleeps around, to Martha, the overweight loner who used to be a pageant winner, but Brit and V stand out for their ability to grow and eventually face their fears head-on. Brit's fledgling romance with Jed, a member of her hometown punk-rock band, is uncharacteristically sweet, and readers will root for its survival—especially after Brit sneaks out of the compound to share a clandestine moment with him under the stars. This story line, however, takes a back seat to the exposé-like preoccupation with debunking places like Red Rock, which, however engrossing, might be a case of preaching to the choir. Ages 12-up. (Sept.)

James Sveck, the 18-year-old protagonist of Cameron's (The City of Your Final Destination) first novel for young adults, is a precocious, lonely and confused Manhattanite who believes he would be happier buying a house in Kansas surrounded by a sleeping porch than entering Brown University as planned and being surrounded by his peers. “I don't like people in general and people my age in particular,” he explains, demonstrating his obsessive concern with language, “and people my age are the ones who go to college…. I'm not a sociopath or a freak (although I don't suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such); I just don't enjoy being with people.” He claims people “rarely say anything interesting to each other,” but his own observations are fresh and incisive as he reports on his exchanges at home and at work. As the novel opens, in July 2003, James's cynical older sister is having an affair with a married professor of language theory; his mother ditches her third husband on their Las Vegas honeymoon after he steals her credit cards to gamble; his high-powered father asks if he's gay; and James is stuck working at his mother's art gallery, which has mounted an exhibit by an artist with no name, of garbage cans decoupaged with pages torn out of the Bible, Koran and Torah.

James's elaborate daily entries interlace with a series of flashbacks to gradually reveal the recent panic attack that has landed him in psychotherapy. Descriptions of these sessions offer not only more fodder for James's sardonic critiques of a self-indulgent society, but also an achingly tender portrait of a devastatingly alienated young man. A single reference yields something of an explanation: James saw, at close range, the planes crash into the Twin Towers. The closest he can come to commenting is to turn to a story about a woman whose disappearance after 9/11 went unnoticed for a month: “[It] didn't make me sad. I thought it was beautiful. To die like that… to sink without disturbing the surface of the water.” With its off-balance marriage of the comedic and the deeply painful, its sympathetic embrace of its characters and its hard-won hope, this smart and elegantly written novel merits a wide readership. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)