Children's Book Reviews: 10/15/2007

DePaola (the 26 Fairmount Avenue series) has frequently mined his childhood to create memorable tales; here he taps into his 35-year-plus residency in northern New Hampshire. Organized by seasons, these homespun vignettes are flavored with a North Country accent, but they feature dePaola’s characteristically folksy pictures. The cast, mostly amiable, includes a few comically ornery locals, among them a soap-shunning fella whose ripe aroma sends a family of skunks scampering. Elsewhere, a “big-boned” gal related to the Bunyans meets her husband while working as a cook in a loggin’ camp, where she makes flapjacks for the “lumbahjacks” on a griddle fashioned from an old saw blade; and a friendly man invites two unsuspecting newcomers to “set” with him and his wife on Saturday evenin’ after suppah, a pastime that, apparently, entails sitting silently while listening to the tickin’ of the clock, the cracklin’ of the stove and the sizzlin’ of doughnuts frying. This last scenario, where the wide-eyed guests have no idea what they are in for nor how to react to the settin’ session, epitomizes the volume’s wry humor (“Thanks fer coming,” their host tells the visitors the next time he sees them. “Maude and I was sayin’ that Saturday was one of the best sets we ever had”). Comics-style panels interspersed between sections lampoon tourists and locals; it’s hard to predict which camp will enjoy this sunny book more. All ages. (Oct.)

Terpsichore-inspired poultry drive this genial counting book. “Five chickens put on five grass skirts,” writes Elliott (And Here’s to You!)— this being a G-rated book, the hens all wear bikini tops—“Then they hula/ and they hula/ and they hula/ till it hurts.” No genre seems immune from the chickens’ dance fever: Long portrays them doing ballet, ballroom, swing, jive and even the shimmy. The digital illustrations lack the sweetly manic quality of Long’s work for Mañana, Iguana—the colors from his agreeable sherbet palette lack depth and characters feel a little too neatly contained. But a dancing chicken is always good for a giggle, and very young readers will undoubtedly appreciate the direct order, proffered at book’s end, to get up and dance with the rest of the henhouse “till the cows come home.” Ages 2-5. (Oct.)

The exquisite illustrations in this story about a first snowfall will delight young readers. When Danny, pictured as a rabbit, ventures outside after a heavy snowfall, the landscape surprises him: “All the trees, bushes, and grass were gone. And who were these new friends?” Gore’s (The Sugar Child) intricately textured acrylic and pastel illustrations isolate the “friends”: Danny hops over a chick (a tiny snowdrift), a prickly hedgehog (a small bush caught in snow) and even an ostrich (a taller bush). Eventually, Danny becomes alarmed by the larger forms, imagining them as wolves. Gore’s snow creatures are just scary enough without being overwhelming, and when Danny remembers his mother’s advice (“When you get scared, run!”), his run home becomes the most suspenseful part of the book. The gentle denouement, as Danny slides down a “sleeping elephant,” leads in to a snowy-soft bedtime ending. “Now do you know what snow is, Danny?” asks his mother, and Danny answers, “Yes, Mommy. I know what snow is today,” he says, “but I can’t wait to see what it will be tomorrow!” Gore achieves remarkable shapes and surfaces, with green pines transformed into bears that gradually melt away as the day advances. His illustrations show what the text need not explain: that ordinary snowflakes can transform the familiar into a world of wonder. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)

Originally illustrated by the author, this 1982 Sydney Taylor Book Award winner receives spectacular new life by Kulikov (Carnival of the Animals). Like the story, Kulikov’s illustrations are beguiling, witty and filled with enough details for dozens of readings. Julie’s grandparents tell her about coming to America and falling in love, their versions competing in narrative counterpoint—her grandmother Rose gives her the facts (“Grandpa came on a boat, like I did. It was terrible”) and her grandfather Sol exaggerates (“But what a welcome I got when I arrived. President Theodore Roosevelt rode his horse through a blizzard of ticker tape to greet me. 'Hello, Sol,’ he said. 'Mighty glad you could come’ ”). The book riffs on the difference between the stories the two grandparents tell while at the same time showing how much Julie loves both grandparents and both types of “true.” Kulikov never fails to amuse, whether he’s rendering a faded sepia photograph of Sol’s pushcart or the buttons Sol imagines he sold—“buttons carved from diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.... Buttons you could use as sleds in the snow.” His painting of Rose being watched by her five brothers (so “nobody [could steal] her away”) is especially irresistible, as is his homage to Chagall as the two young lovers float in the air behind their babies who ride down Hester Street in “hand-carved golden baby carriages.” Not to be missed. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

Frank (The Tomb of the Boy King) and Sylvada (Yatandou, reviewed below) travel the globe to celebrate fishing, and the resultant pairing of Turner-esque seascapes and tight, lyric language promises to both intrigue and challenge readers. Describing deep-sea fishing in Kona, Hawaii, for example, Frank writes, “We strap on steady harnesses/ and brace ourselves in bolted chairs/ to angle for a fish whose size/ can dwarf gigantic grizzly bears:/ blue marlin”; in Sylvada’s painting, the blue marlin rears up over the water, towering over the fisherman in the moment before it begins to thrash. Elsewhere the author and artist take in ice-fishing in the Arctic, cormorant fishing in Japan, logboat fishing in Namibia. Reverent, intelligent verses smoothly juxtapose metaphor (“rags of morning mist” and “turns as patient as a watch’s second hand”) with localized fishing jargon (“spinnerbait,” “fishwheel,” “slack our reels”); various rhyme schemes subtly govern the rhythms. Watery oblique, vertical and horizontal lines converge and edges blur in these dynamic, sensual oil paintings that emphasize the power, motion and mystery of the sea. Muted figures of men, women and children lean alone, in pairs or in groups over variable waters. Rendered in gradations of warm colors applied with thick strokes, the paintings highlight the allure of fishing and the patience required for this humbling activity shared across cultures. Even those who have never held a fishing pole could easily be hooked. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

Applegate (Animorphs series; Home of the Brave, reviewed Aug. 13) journeys into the picture book arena with this richly descriptive verse narrative about a girl on the Oregon Trail. Afraid only of thunderstorms, Hallie embraces the trip’s challenges with pluck, inspired by a close bond with a grandmother who stays behind (“I am old and this is home,/ but I’ll be with you just the same”). In language loaded with metaphor and simile (a creek is “swollen with rain and looking for trouble”; a herd of buffalo stampedes “like a black ocean surging”), Hallie relates suspenseful events and her vacillations between fear and bravery. Colloquialisms enhance the naturalness of the protagonist’s voice, for example, “I’m not afraid, I told a skittering lizard./ I couldn’t say the truth of it,/ not with the clouds so low and fierce.” A quilt her grandmother wrapped her in during thunderstorms and bestows as a going-away gift makes several appearances (as do other unifying elements, like storms and buffalo), tying up the story a little too conveniently. Ormerod’s (May I Pet Your Dog?) textured watercolors and pastels employ billowy swaths of color to suggest the vastness of the setting. Often, Hallie or the wagon train appears as just a small spot against a dramatic natural backdrop. Vivid imagery makes this lyrical tale an accessible, fresh addition to the children’s pioneer genre as it tackles themes of change, courage and home. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

Meticulous illustrations and a daredevil tiger for a heroine make this aviation story stand out. Sadie, an unflappable pilot with orange eyes, welcomes dangerous missions. She takes inspiration from never-say-die rhymes like “No wind, no rain, no cold or flu,/ Can stop the Air Mail getting through!” Air Mail HQ operates from a multicolored, vertigo-inducing skyscraper built with rooftop runways for its fleet of shiny antique planes. Its autumn-red interior resembles the girdered structure of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the rich palette of deep red, forest green, honey gold and gravy brown emphasizes the book’s 1930s aesthetic. The air-mail Chief, a tough-talking elephant, gestures at a map of South America; he sends other aviators—including an ostrich, anteater and bear—off to Lima, Santiago and Córdoba. Despite an unenviable delivery route to Knuckle Peak Weather Station, Sadie gamely shrugs on her jacket and yells, “Chocks away!” She pilots her single-seat, fire-engine-red plane “over coffee farms and banana trees.” Rocky cliffs rise all around, macaws fly nearby and a river meanders through a tropical jungle far below. By contrast, icy Knuckle Peak lives up to its name, yet Sadie’s luck and perseverance win the day. Strøm’s hyperbolic paintings are equal parts Rio, Hong Kong and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; his feline Sadie has the brashness of Katharine Hepburn and Amelia Earhart. Readers will be hard put to glance away from the intensively detailed, panoramic views and Sadie’s feats of derring-do. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)

Yatandou, the eight-year-old narrator of this lyrical first volume in the Tales of the World series, spends long days at work in her village in Mali. As she pounds millet kernels with a stick, she daydreams about going to school, where she might “learn book secrets like my brother did,” and about the day the village women save up enough money to buy a machine to grind the millet. National Book Award winner Whelan (Parade of Shadows, p. 61) introduces some local vocabulary (“I cover myself with my hawli, my scarf, so the bird won’t see me”) and hews to a poetic tone (“A water jug has had its little journey on her head”). Although Yatandou seems more like a vehicle for presenting a remote culture than like a real girl, the narrative does give readers insight into her way of life. The text is set on a rich brick-colored background that evokes the ever-present red sand (“The desert lives with us,” says Yatandou) and that successfully counterpoints the luminosity of Sylvada’s (A Symphony of Whales) impressionistic paintings. Fields of yellows—for the morning sky, the stretches of desert, onion fields—suggest the inescapable heat, and the very air seems to undulate. Sylvada also shows Yatandou mastering the unyielding setting: in his first view of Yatandou, she appears engulfed by the landscape, but as the story progresses to a hopeful conclusion, the pictures grow more intimate, culminating in the touching close-up portrait that concludes the book. Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

Similar to the Japanese haiku, the Korean sijo packs image, metaphor and surprise into three long (or six short) lines with a fixed number of syllables: “Lightning jerks the sky awake to take her photograph, flash!/ Which draws grumbling complaints or even crashing tantrums from thunder—/ He hates having his picture taken, so he always gets there late.” Newbery Medalist Park’s (A Single Shard) sijo skip lightly from breakfast (“warm, soft, and delicious—a few extra minutes in bed”) to bedtime (about bathing: “From a tiled cocoon, a butterfly with terry-cloth wings”), with excursions to the backyard, the classroom, and the beach (“Are all the perfect sand dollars locked away somewhere—in sand banks?”). The sijo’s contours are clean and spare, qualities echoed in the blue-gray, black and white architecture and crisp shadows of Banyai’s (Zoom) digital illustrations. In the spirit of Park’s experiments with this verse form, Banyai’s miniature children bounce through a series of imaginative leaps unencumbered by the rules of the real world. They sleep in teacups, grow wings and fly among the flowers, snip mathematical equations to bits with gigantic pairs of scissors, and wreak havoc with bottles of ink. Park wants readers to try sijo for themselves, and in an extensive author’s note she offers history, advice and encouragement; her own sijo and Banyai’s cheeky images will supply the motivation. Ages 9-12. (Oct.)

In this amusingly quirky chapter book, the late Horse (the Little Rabbit series) tracks an oddball expedition to find polar bears at the North Pole. Comprised of letters a grandfather sends to his grandchild, the story starts aboard a creaky ship (the Unsinkable), which carries him and his opinionated talking dog, Roo, from Aberdeen to the town of Walrus. Grandfather’s missives describe storms at sea, a malfunctioning engine that Roo inadvertently fixes and Roo’s farfetched yarns about her own seafaring grandfather (“She told us one in which he was swallowed by a whale and lived inside it for two years,” writes Grandfather. “He at last escaped by climbing out of the blowhole, and swam all the way back to his ship. He later got a medal for it”). On land, the two encounter drunken wolves, a loner who makes animal sculptures from snow and an Arctic-dwelling penguin whom Grandfather adopts—all before the bear-seeking mission begins. Horse’s droll wit extends to his delicate pen-and-ink illustrations, which keep the spotlight trained on the emotive Roo and her animal co-stars. Ages 6-10. (Oct.)

Persistence, patience and teamwork are the themes of this novel based on the boyhoods of the Barber twins (Teammates). The future NFL stars begin middle school with considerable trepidation: for the first time, they will be in separate classes, and they are among the scrawniest students trying out for the football team. (On the first day of practice, in one of the narrative’s occasional clichéd exchanges, a tough-talking older player taunts them, “You’re dead meat, Wimpy.... We eat seventh graders for lunch.”) The twins are devastated to learn that they’ve only made third string (“They were sick to their stomachs, and had a bitter taste in their mouths—a taste even Mom’s chicken soup couldn’t cure”). But unsurprisingly, Tiki and Ronde get field time during a game against their toughest rivals. Even as the game races to an expected outcome, the swift action delivers genuine tension. Lending noble, if sometimes stiffly delivered, moral dimensions to the story are the twins’ mother, who spearheads a campaign to keep a factory out of their neighborhood; an older player; teachers; and the coach. All drive home variations on the message, “You’ll both get stronger if you work as a team.... In class, and in football, too.” Ages 8-12. (Oct.)

Set in Washington State in 1946, Sullivan’s thoughtful first novel is narrated by a feisty 10-year-old. Anna, staying with her grandmother while recuperating from an emergency appendectomy, entertains herself with imaginary visits from President Truman, but her conversations are serious: Annie urges him to find her father, an Army Air Corps pilot declared missing in action, and she complains to him about her 19-year-old Uncle Billy, who has returned from the war surly and hardened. “Something so terrible must have happened in that war that an imposter had come back wearing Billy’s skin,” she says. After Billy barks racial slurs at Gloria, a black woman to whom Grandma has rented an apartment, Grandma throws him out of her house. Annie struggles with her anguish over her father’s disappearance, anger at Billy and confusion about the racism she witnesses, which extends to a cross burning in front of Grandma’s house (“The flames climbed higher and higher upwards until they lit up the night sky like some kind of evil Fourth of July prank”). Credible characterization and dialogue help readers absorb the lessons Annie learns from wise Grandma and caring Gloria, that “most folks are basically good people.” Ages 8-12. (Sept.)

Once again, National Book Award winner Whelan (Homeless Bird) whisks readers to another time and place to experience history in the making. In 1907, Julia, a sheltered British 16-year-old, accompanies her father to the Middle East. Julia’s father often travels abroad “to get or trade or give away bits of land and sometimes whole countries” for England’s Foreign Office, and he views the trip as drudgery, but Julia considers it an adventure. The heroine gets far more excitement than she has bargained for when she and other members of her tour group—all of whom have hidden agendas and differing political views—are placed in a variety of dangerous situations. Besides exploring magnificent landmarks and cultures in Istanbul, Damascus, Palmyra and the deserts in between, Julia learns to see thorny political problems, the corruption of officials and the questionable motives of her fellow travelers. The author wisely refrains from passing judgment on various factions represented by characters. Instead, she remains focused on Julia’s widening perspective and her struggles to determine whether her loyalties lie more with her conservative father or with a radical Young Turk. Rather than providing pat answers, this meticulously researched novel, denser than some of the author’s previous works, raises questions about conflict resolution, rebellion and oppression. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)

Ten distinguished authors each write a chapter of this intriguing novel of mystery and family, which examines the lives touched by a photojournalist George Keane, aka Gee. The first chapter, by Linda Sue Park, begins with Gee’s death and how it affects his granddaughter Maggie, who ponders the cryptic gift he has left for her: a box of seven seashells and a note reading, “Throw them all back.” Several chapters follow Maggie and her stepbrother Jason; others are flashbacks that return to subjects of Gee’s photographs—a prisoner who created Maggie’s box (Deborah Ellis), a girl with a mysterious illness (David Almond) and a Japanese soldier who lost his legs to a grenade (Ruth Ozeki). Margo Lanagan’s contribution, set in the future, offers a magical, world-altering explanation for how Gee has seemingly led multiple lives, as Nick Hornby hints at earlier. In Gregory Maguire’s conclusion, an elderly Maggie reflects on her grandfather’s influence (“He wanted us to see.... Jason took the camera and took off—his life took off.... I took the shells and I took off too”). The authors’ distinctive styles remain evident; although readers expecting a more straightforward or linear story may find the leaps through time and place challenging, the thematic currents help the chapters gel into a cohesive whole. Royalties benefit Amnesty International. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

First-time novelist Kizer launches a projected YA series with this occasionally witty tale of 15-year-old Gert Garibaldi. She’s a Brain (smart kid) struggling to fit into her high school world filled with Pops (popular kids), Giggles (trendy kids), and Things (bad boys/jocks). Best friend Adam serves as Gert’s lifeline and confidant, until he meets a cute boy and drops her like a hot potato. With no one to help her cope with some cringeworthy parenting and two burgeoning crushes, the sarcastic Gert flounders before pouring her heart into a diary. Titling entries either rants or raves, Gert’s writings on random topics humorously showcase her angst. However, these entries crop up somewhat abruptly throughout the narrative, often breaking its flow. The author also endows Gert with a fascination with sex and her body, which at first makes her seem real and representative of the target audience, but later goes too far, so that Gert sounds almost fixated. When appraising her appearance in the mirror, Gert says in a panic, “Mts. Everest and Kilimanjaro squished together are less conspicuous than my ass…. I have the world’s largest tush. I require a UN escort for international travel. Maybe even NATO.” Younger teen readers will relate to Gert’s insecurity and to her typical troubles, but even they may tire of her self-obsessed ramblings. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)