Children’s Book Reviews: Week of 11/5/2007

In this funny, ingenious take on the meaning of friendship, Vail (Sometimes I’m Bombaloo) and Cordell (Toby and the Snowflakes) muse upon the way that two very different feet manage to get along—a good thing, since they belong to the same person (seen only from the waist down). Lefty likes lingering under the blankets and wearing only galoshes, while Righty, an early bird, revels in all the possible shoe choices and secretly wonders what it be like to take a beach vacation without Lefty. Vail’s deadpan prose evinces a sly comic mind and a wonderfully ticklish system of logic: “Outside, Righty and Lefty race. Sometimes, Righty wins. Sometimes, Lefty wins. It is always close.” Cordell’s watercolor and ink cartoons prove he’s up to the challenge of focusing on two characters who can express their emotions only through their toes—and the occasional thought balloon. For making kids laugh, this one’s a shoe-in. Ages 3-5. (Nov.)

It’s nighttime, the coast is clear—the perfect opportunity for Little Bitty Mousie to explore, in alphabetical order, all the delights of a human household: “She climbed the dirty Dishes/ That at dinner held some stew./ She sniffed into an Eggshell,/ But she found it hard to chew.” Every four letters, Aylesworth (Old Black Fly) offers up a catchy refrain tailor-made to elicit audience participation: “Tip-tip tippy tippy/ Went her little mousie toes./ Sniff-sniff sniffy sniffy/ Went her little mousie nose.” Hague’s (The Tale of Peter Rabbit) digitized drawings combine a traditional storybook aesthetic with the vividness of photorealism, and a tall format allows for large-scale renderings. Mousie, with her winsome rodent face and her ankle-length polka-dotted pinafore, would be very much at home in a vintage English picture book, while many of the things she tastes or scampers over have an almost palpably physical presence. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)

This chipper, earnest etiquette primer for toddlerstakes off from the oft-heard suggestionthat“please” and “thank you” are magicwords. (So are “hello,” “good-bye,” and “excuse me”). After all, reason the Posts (who are co-directors of the Emily Post Institute and the co-authors of Teen Manners; see Children’s Notes), when one says to a friend, “Please have a cookie,” it can conjure up a smile, and when one says, “Excuse me” after a breach of behavior (a burp), disapproving parents are transformed into forgiving ones. Landry’s (Eat Your Peas, Ivy Louise) crisp, winsome ink and watercolor spot illustrations keep the mood light. His Emily, balancing a head as large as her torso, is first seen sporting a magician’s top hat and purple cape, and wielding a wand—but she quickly sheds the paraphernalia to demonstrate her verbal “sorcery” with friends and family.Although the Posts do little to animate an old idea, parents will welcome the useful, encouraging advice supplied in an endnote. Ages 3-6. (Oct.)

Hare is old; as Baguley (Meggie Moon) puts it, “Once, he had leaped and pranced under the magical moon, but time had made him gray and stiff and he no longer danced.” But while he may not be as nimble as he once was, Hare remains ever-alert to the wonders of his lushly depicted woodland home, especially the bird song. One feathered musician in particular touches his heart: a small robin with a “berry-bright breast” (which Macnaughton makes almost tangibly downy). Robin never speaks, but she clearly has affection for her aged friend, for when all the other birds migrate for the winter, she stays behind to serenade him. The story rather dutifully offers readers a dramatic turning point in the form of a howling winter snowstorm, after which Hare can’t find the bird (hence the title). But the incident ends up feeling like something of a red herring. What drives this book is sweetness; author and artist offer a child-friendly, understated meditation on the pleasures of unlikely bonds, and the joy that music brings to both performer and audience. Ages 3-7. (Oct.)

A woefully neglected clapboard house is at the center of this straightforward story from the creators of Ms. Bitsy Bat’s Kindergarten. Cole’s visual personifications of the aged home include drooping eyes (two upstairs windows with tattered curtains) and a down-turned mouth (the sagging front stoop). Birds, a squirrel, a tall oak tree and wildflowers in the yard try to cheer up the unhappy old house, to no avail (“I’m so empty inside,” it sobs). When a young family appears and contemplates purchasing it, the house’s friends urge it to “Stand tall!”, “Get a grip on yourself” and “Twinkle your windows!” Through his use of color and light in particular—the family, bright in clothing and outlook, shine against the house’s oppressive dourness, which is emphasized by its muddy brown walls—Cole effectively conveys the changing tenor of the tale. Readers should readily pick up on the numerous themes Edwards balances: finding value below the surface and the importance of both friendship and self-esteem. Ages 3-up. (Oct.)

This sidesplitting metafiction offers further proof of Watt’s (the Scaredy Squirrel books) extravagantly fresh, cheeky voice. Here, the exasperated author-illustrator engages in a literary tug-of-war with the eponymous marmalade puss, who has a figure like Nero Wolfe and an outsize ego to match. Chester is determined to thwart Watt’s attempts to write a nice little book about a winsome country mouse; using a red magic marker, he writes, “Then Mouse packed his bags and went on a trip very, very far away and we never saw him ever again!” underneath Watt’s opening sentence and attempts to make himself the star of the show. Volleys of creativity and red ink follow: Watt introduces a fierce dog, only to have Chester make him vegetarian; Chester begins a new story set in Chesterville (“where mice weren’t allowed”), but Watt makes it rain, washing his work away. Chester retaliates by caricaturing the author (“Hi. I am Mélanie Watt and I am very angry!” reads a speech bubble), and the mouse even enters the act, complaining, “I can’t work like this!” The closing pages seem to give Watt the upper hand (hint: a humiliating pink tutu is involved), but readers, who will adore Chester’s unbridled self-interest and blatant disregard for artistic integrity, may suspect that this is one kitty who has not yet begun to fight. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

Chen (The Magic Horse of Han Gan) is as much a master of the brush as his heroes are of martial arts, and the skillful balance of the artist’s Chinese ink-and-gouache compositions parallels the equipoise of the young hero in training. Adopted as a baby by the reclusive Master Yang, Little Eagle one night discovers that the old man practices Eagle boxing (a type of Kung Fu). After Master Yang realizes the boy has been spying on him, he reluctantly agrees to train him in both body and spirit: “To sharpen his eyes, he made himself count the stones on the hill, the grains of rice on his mat.... To train his ears, he listened to the minute vibrations of a suspended coin.” Chen’s story presses on toward a classic martial arts conclusion, in which Little Eagle fights the general responsible for his parents’ death, but loses his master (“The secrets of Eagle boxing have lived in me. It is now in you that they will live”). It’s through Chen’s use of color that the story’s emotional weight is revealed, from lime-yellow washes amplifying Little Eagle’s nighttime discovery to windswept blue summer skies underscoring the tranquility he seeks. Those attracted to the discipline and mystery of Asian fighting arts will find satisfaction here, and so will those who admire attention to detail. Chen does not set out to explain or update traditional Chinese culture; he aims solely to pay homage to it, and does so with remarkable force. Ages 4-up. (Oct.)

Sayre (Hush, Little Puppy) and Jenkins (Living Color) buoyantly approach a subject that usually receives a straight and narrow treatment. Instead of a parade of facts, the author deftly employs patterned verse to explore the standout attributes of the turkey vulture (it catches warm air currents to soar, eats carrion, etc.). ”Vultures smell the air./ They sniff, search, seek/ for foods that... Reek!/ Those fragrant flowers?/ No, no./ That spicy smoke?/ No, no./ That stinky dead deer?/ Yes, yes!” Jenkins brings his exquisite brand of paper collage to this hero of the food chain; here the vulture’s striated black and gray wings (and sometimes just their silhouettes) contrast against a brilliant cerulean sky that dominates several spreads. The artist’s exacting hand can be seen in the ultra-fine shading on the birds’ magenta heads or the carcasses (never gory in presentation) that signal dinner for the soaring scavengers. Endnotes delve into more detail, explaining such questions as why the birds can safely eat rotten meat (their bodies can sterilize decomposing food). Celebrating the majesty of an underappreciated creature, this volume should attract a wide audience both for its fascinating content and sprightly execution. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)

If David Macaulay fictionalized medieval family life in a plague year, he might produce something like this solemn graphic narrative, set in 1348. In pen-and-ink panels notable for their architectural renderings, Decker describes “one small girl in a time of great fear,” when “the gates of the city were locked to keep the Pestilence out.” The anonymous girl, a carpenter’s daughter, lives humbly, surrounded by windswept fields, sagging barns and thatch-roofed cottages. When her father falls ill and soldiers quarantine their home, the girl’s mother helps her escape, saying, “Run far, run fast.” Wandering along dirt roads, through wolf-infested forests, the girl seeks safety in fortified towns and with an enigmatic guardian, the narrator. Readers may guess the purpose of this man’s birdlike mask; several people disaffectedly display the swollen nodes that signal plague. Throughout, Decker evokes the paranoid ambience, if not the gruesomeness, of death-ridden villages. Handwritten exposition appears on the verso pages, while uncaptioned, tightly spaced thumbnail sketches on the recto pages chart the girl’s travels. But while Decker sets the stage gracefully, his drawings of people are awkward. Mitten hands and blank, oval faces suffice for secondary characters, but the central girl’s face conveys only indistinct sorrow. As in his The Letter Home, an idiosyncratic account of WWI, Decker imagines a famously horrific situation and replaces terror with unsettling quietude. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)

Richter’s (The Summer of the Pike) novella starts like a tender fantasy in which an animal offers comfort and companionship to a lonely child, but it takes a darker and more sober turn. Christine seeks out the old white cat when her teacher calls her willful and her parents scold her for laziness. “Every animal is free and strong at the beginning,” the cat tells her, “and the world is always a wonder.” When the principal punishes her with two hundred lines to write—“There are no talking cats and in the future I will come to class on time”—she feels sure “that something—a secret. a spell—would come to an end. I would lose eternity if I wrote those words.” Eventually she realizes she can omit the word “no,” and, in fact, no one notices. Gradually, though, Christine sees that the cat’s freedom amounts to an absence of pity (“It’s his own fault,” it sneers about a neighbor’s lonely dog. “He licks the hand that beats him instead of biting it”); its corrosive scorn runs contrary to Christine’s compassion. (“You must protect him,” Christine finds herself feeling about the class pariah. “He’s all alone.”) Richter has an uncanny gift for illuminating the weight of small actions; it’s not too much to read the book as an allegory of good and evil in the postmodern world. Berner’s two-color drawings, the slender trim size and the eye-catching printer-board covers confer, appropriately, a smart downtown look. Ages 8-up. (Oct.)

In another sports-themed caper featuring girls, King (Kickoff) moves onto the basketball court, where WNBA aspirant Ashlee shines as brightly as she does in the classroom. Her waitress mother is “on her case 110 percent of the time” about studying for the upcoming scholarship exam at a prestigious New York City high school. The beleaguered woman has no use for Ashlee’s sport, because the girl’s father, a former hotshot pro basketball player who “burned out spectacularly on booze and women,” left the family years before. With her father’s help and without her mother’s knowledge, Ashlee (after taking the exam) flies to Miami to try out for the junior national team. The on- and off-court action plays out predictably: despite a peer’s attempt to sabotage her, Ashlee wins a slot on the team; her mother discovers her deception, acknowledges the importance of basketball to Ashlee and makes peace with her ex-husband, who has mended his renegade ways. The mother-daughter bickering grows tedious, and there are scattered moments of melodrama (when her mother learns that Ashlee has gone behind her back and asked her father for a plane ticket, the girl realizes “she’d smashed [her mother’s] heart into tiny pieces”). On the other hand, King offers many fast-moving game scenes, and these will score big with basketball-playing girls. Ages 9-12. (Nov.)

More ambitious than many of Maguire’s (Leaping Beauty; Wicked) previous works, this novel combines the author’s taste for the fairytale backstory with explorations of the values of storytelling. A contemporary narrative frame opens the book with a setting inspired by Hurricane Katrina: after a terrible storm brutalizes the region, the parents in a strict fundamentalist family have wagered outside, leaving their three children with rapidly diminishing supplies in the care of their 21-year-old English-teacher cousin, Gage. To divert them from their hunger and their anxiety, Gage spends an entire night telling them about a “skibberee” (tooth fairy) who grows up on its own and only by chance discovers that the presence of other skibbereen. Dense with allusion, metaphor and pun, Maguire’s prose shines, compensating literary-minded readers for the slow start of the skibberee story. By the time the urgency of the skibberee story matches that of the framing tale, however, Maguire’s agenda emerges in its complexity. Each of the characters takes a different approach to Gage’s story: Dinah, the 10-year-old, needs the magic that Gage’s tale delivers; her older brother claims to need to eschew its fancy, in favor of his parents’ teachings about faith and reason; Gage needs story to exist; and the youngest, who celebrates her second birthday, needs the wish the story promises. Comic scenes, elaborate tableaux and suspenseful sequences will entertain readers who prefer more straightforward fiction, but those readers may be frustrated by the unresolved ending. Ages 10-13. (Oct.)

In this dashing and outrageous sequel to Larklight, plucky Art Mumby, his annoying and lovelorn sister Myrtle and their highly competent mother (who is simultaneously a traditional Victorian gentlewoman and a “four-and-a-half-thousand-million-year-old entity from another star”) travel through space to Starcross, “the Asteroid Belt’s Premier Resort Hotel.” They have been promised a relaxing respite from ongoing repairs to their orbital home—the resort purports to offer “the most tactful auto-servants... healthful air & the best opportunities for sea bathing in the Solar System.” Instead, however, they encounter murderous Punch and Judy shows, giant carnivorous sand crabs, time-traveling pieces of the planet Mars, and a nefarious plot by alien top hats to wrest control of space from the British Empire. (“Britons never, never, never shall be slaves, or the victims of man-eating hats,” Art tells himself when he is attacked in his hotel room.) While hilariously spoofing 19th-century imperial and colonial attitudes, various excesses of Victorian propriety, and such literary forms as the spy thriller and the space opera, this rambunctious, fast-moving tale also manages to provide plenty of thrills and excitement. This installment should easily win new readers for Reeve. Ages 10-up. (Nov.)

Cameron has problems getting to school on time and passing her classes, but she loves the fun friends from her Brooklyn neighborhood, and she and her single mom get along fairly well except for “hassles over certain things like clothes and chores and hair.” Her life changes dramatically when her mother loses her job at a nail salon and they are forced to move into the projects. Soon after, Cameron discovers that the father she has never known is black (though careful readers may guess the secret long before it is revealed). McDonald (Harlem Hustle) weaves in a variety of sources, from Othello to modern celebrities like Mariah Carey, as Cameron launches into a series of unusually believable discussions about race with her classmates, teachers, and both school and project friends (a white friend asks, “Anyway, real black people aren’t gonna think you’re black, so why try to be something you’re not?”); these frank conversations will surely get readers thinking as well. Text messages and “ghetto fabulous” dialogue inject lots of motion, even if the plot meanders some (the book is more than half over before Cameron finds photos of her father holding her as a baby). Readers will be impressed with Cameron’s growing strength, and they’ll be swept up in the exuberant writing. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)

First-time novelist Pixley crafts a disturbing tale that taps into the harsh reality of what it means to be a middle-school outcast. Twelve-year-old Miriam Fisher, who enjoys reading the dictionary in her spare time, has always been labeled an “alien” at school and tormented by the popular girls. Her older sister, Deborah, has been her one true friend—but now Deborah has transformed from an uncool ugly duckling into a popular swan and no longer has time for her kid sister. Things fall apart when her sister begins dating the guy she has an enormous crush on. In the most powerful scene, Miriam lashes out in a stunning act of self-destruction. Readers will feel her horror at what she’s done to herself: “I looked more like a reptile than a human. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and watched the naked eyes grow wide and terrified.” Only when she hits bottom does Miriam finally discover her inner strength and stand up boldly for herself and ultimately for one of her tormentors in desperate need of help. Pixley doesn’t cut corners: Miriam is not all that sympathetic. She’s quirky, monopolizes conversations and includes herself in others’ plans. But the accomplished writing moves readers well beyond easy likability. Observant and tough, Miriam’s voice has a knife edge that tears past the surface. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Playwright Ackermann makes a sparkling debut with this sophisticated adventure, starring the morally upright, startlingly mature Colm Drucker. Fifteen-year-old Colm has been the man of the house ever since his father, a chronic gambler, abandoned the family years ago. Now that his mother has remarried and gone off on a Las Vegas honeymoon, Colm looks forward to having a week to himself at home, but nothing goes as planned. A series of seemingly unrelated incidents—including the sudden death of Colm’s dog and a traffic mishap that lands a neighbor in the hospital—leads to Colm’s unexpected reunion with his estranged father, Lloyd Henry Drucker. Lloyd Henry offers his son “seventy grand,” as he puts it, to accompany him on a road trip and, in an uncharacteristically impulsive move, Colm accepts. Pitting straight-laced Colm against his roguish father during their cross-country journey in a borrowed Ford Explorer, Ackermann paves the way for some hilarious and tender scenes. Father and son prove equally endearing, and readers will find themselves frequently switching loyalties, hoping that Colm will warm up to his father and that Lloyd Henry will find a way to make up for the pain he’s caused his family. Packed with surprising turns of events, this skillfully crafted novel offers a new twist on father/son rituals. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Based on Sheth’s (Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet) great-aunt’s childhood, this absorbing, atmospheric novel opens in 1918 India, as pretty, 12-year-old Leela enjoys the pampering of her parents and the affections of her in-laws, whose house she will enter after her anu ceremony the following year. But when her husband dies of snakebite, Leela faces an altogether different fate as a widow. Because her family is brahman, Leela must relinquish all her jewelry and pretty saris, shave her head and, for an entire year, stay indoors, or “keep corner.” With encouragement from her older brother and help from her teacher, a disciple of Gandhi and his advocacy for social change, Leela finds the strength to challenge tradition as the year of keeping corner evolves. Sheth expertly weaves rich descriptions into the day-to-day activities (“Ideas sank into my mind like monsoon rain into soil”). Although readers unfamiliar with Indian history may not grasp the use of India’s independence as a metaphor for Leela’s growth, they will thoroughly identify with the heroine as she develops from a pleasure-seeking girl into an intelligent young woman: “Your inner self is like an onion,” she realizes, “you keep peeling it and a new layer is always there.”Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Wealthy, naughty and lively best friends Jinx and Liberty are enjoying the lower sixth form at an exclusive British boarding school, skipping down to the pier for drinks and incensing their sadistic former housemistress with silly pranks. But when manipulative new girl Stella muscles in on Liberty, Jinx feels sure Stella has a dark side and resolves to uncover it. This book’s characters are meant to be over the top (e.g., heavy-drinking housemistress Patricia Gunn enjoys keeping a meticulous punishments book, “a record of every punishment she’d ever dished out and to whom”), but Lawrence’s jokes can border on bad taste or bias (hotheaded, irrational Arabs; fat, ugly lesbians). Stereotypes also arise in a plot line involving the lone Asian character, a math whiz whom Jinx never realizes is actually two girls (surnamed, tellingly, Ho and Mo). Readers may also be put off by the often heartless protagonists: in one scene, a disliked teacher trips, knocking herself unconscious “with a delicious cracking thud.... None of them moved a muscle to help her, of course. They laughed and pointed and exclaimed until it became apparent she was not moving.” The nasty edge here may discourage an audience from following the cast to their next episode. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)

This hip and comprehensive rock biography captures the spirit and talent that made the Fab Four an international sensation. Spitz, who wrote The Beatles: The Biography (2005) for the adult market (from which some material in this volume is adapted), begins with the story of how a friend introduced two aspiring musicians, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “ 'I think you two will get along,’ [the friend] said to John, perhaps the understatement of all time.” A chatty but thorough narrative chronicles each member’s family life, the group’s various incarnations (the Quarry Men, the Silver Beetles), their big break with a gig in Hamburg, Germany, and the storied road that followed, through their breakup in 1970. The book does not avoid the group’s darker moments—drug use, the death of manager Brian Epstein and other controversies—although the positive notes linger. In one memorable episode, the group is awestruck when they first meet Elvis, who remarked, “If you guys are just gonna sit there and stare at me, I’m goin’ to bed.” Spitz examines how the Beatles fit into the larger rock revolution taking place, but focuses on the indelible mark their music, style and celebrity made on pop culture. A crisp, modern design and superb b&w photography support the narrative, which should easily enthrall a new generation of fans. Ages 8-12. (Oct.)

The two-faced silhouette of Benedict Arnold on the cover of Murphy’s (An American Plague) biography furnishes a telling image: one profile looks sharp and stately; the other has the crooked features and sinister frown typical of a villain. Readers will find both versions here. While tracing Arnold’s life, Murphy challenges the myths that have defamed Arnold and points to some disappointments that led him to betray the nation, in the process revealing an outspoken and oft-abused soldier who had few allies in the American Congress and who was often stymied by personal and professional disloyalty toward him. Because Arnold did not keep a diary and because his letters were burned after his death, Murphy draws on official documents and his knowledge of Revolutionary times to make bold inferences about the “real” Arnold’s beliefs. Introducing each chapter with a quotation, Murphy emphasizes Arnold’s will to persevere in the face of devastation and provides readers with the opportunity to predict, discover and reflect on the line’s meaning as each chapter unfolds. The author’s consideration of other historians’ theories and use of sophisticated vocabulary will challenge his audience to think critically and consider all points of view. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)