Children's Book Reviews: Week of 1/14/2008

Clement makes a noteworthy picture book debut with this day-in-the-life story of a trucker, as told through the eyes and succinct words of his young son. Aficionados of the truck genre won’t find any big surprises here in terms of the shape of the story—Daddy is a skilled, unfailingly polite and conscientious driver. “Daddy’s on time,” notes the boy after his father is shown taking a coffee break at a truck stop, “because there is more work to do,” and while Daddy is up before dawn, he makes it back home in time to play a sunset game of backyard ball. It’s Clement’s visual storytelling that sets this book apart, and gives many of the images all the power of a six-cylinder, 16.1-liter diesel engine. Working in big, streamlined shapes; flat, bright colors; and shiny, airbrushed-like surfaces, he evokes a deco-esque world where the combustion engine reigns supreme and humans and trucks are closely related species. Unusual and often cinematic perspectives—a thigh-high view of Daddy gripping the gear shift, a bumper’s-eye view of a traffic jam—plunge readers into the action and give the compositions a red-blooded energy. Some kids may still find the pictures a bit chilly, especially as the face of Daddy and other people are never seen. But most will take one look at his awesome truck, his strong hands and his beefy physique, and see all the makings of a hero. Ages 2-8. (Feb.)

Mama Quack isn’t crazy about her adorable Dandelion Duckling’s desire to explore his world: “There is danger in the water, danger in the air, danger on the shore, danger everywhere!” writes Parker (Your Kind of Mommy). So like any good parent, she lets him taste independence in small doses, always hovering nearby in case he needs to escape a predator. But when Mama gets distracted by some tasty centipedes, it’s Dandelion’s chance to sound the alarm. Wohnoutka’s (Davey’s Blue-Eyed Frog) saturated, pastel-like paintings immediately draw in the audience—his full-bleed compositions, feel for action and exuberant characterizations bring to mind the golden age of animation. Better still, he situates readers exactly at the center of the action: for example, in some scenes he sets the surface of the pond as a sight line, forcing viewers along with Dandelion to look up to the mother duck; in another scene, he shows the pond almost as if it were an aquarium, with Dandelion’s submerged head fully visible as he blows bubbles underwater, his tail feathers bobbing, blithely oblivious to the hawk swooping toward him. Wohnoutka’s art invites readers into the protagonist’s role, where they can absorb his growing competence. Ages 3-up. (Feb.)

When Jake refuses his mother’s hug at the school door—“Everyone will think I’m a baby”—he just assumes it will be there to console him at the end of the day when, as Mayhew (Katie Meets the Impressionists) diplomatically puts it, “Things hadn’t gone [his] way.” But Jake discovers that hugs don’t go into a personalized cold storage, but are rather part of a kind of cuddly continuum, traveling from one needy recipient to another, ad infinitum. Nonetheless, Jake is determined to reclaim his hug (hence the title) and so launches a quest that starts at his dad (who needed a hug because his motorcycle malfunctioned) and ends in a fairytale land with a very big red dragon. Hellard’s (Yake a Kiss to School) ink-and-watercolor drawings have the fluid line, elegant air and well-heeled settings reminiscent of William Hamilton’s New Yorker cartooning; the urbane aesthetic keeps the book’s conceit from getting soggy and makes it a nice choice for bedtime. Ages 4-8. (Feb.)

Ichikawa’s (I Am Pangoo the Penguin) watercolors treat readers to splendid views out the artist’s window in Montmartre and up the hill toward the “White Dome” (the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, named only on the flap copy). Yet it is not Ichikawa’s perspective that readers share, but that of two toys, a wooden propeller plane and a stuffed dog who are best friends. Cosmos, the plane, announces that he wants to go “Somewhere” and invites Woggy to come along. After admiring a sumptuously shaded Montmartre skyline dominated by the wedding-cake-like Sacré-Coeur, the two fly through the quaint streets, attracting attention from passersby as well as people (and animals) behind picturesquely framed windows. In several spreads the text is arranged to mimic Cosmos’s sometimes circular flight path, an old trick that nevertheless works to great effect, in part because rotations of the page reveal Woggy’s expression. A chase scene involving a “cloud monster” adds suspense, then resolves in an invitingly scaled and detailed spread of the two friends perched on one of the cathedral’s gargoyles and gazing at a rainbow that arches over the sprawling city below. Ichikawa successfully navigates the thin line between sweet and treacly, soothing young readers about their fears of traveling as she reminds them of the excitement and pleasures to be had. Ages 4-up. (Mar.)

DiPucchio (Mrs. McBloom, Clean Up Your Classroom!) delivers a lively and well-timed lesson on the electoral system. Grace, dismayed to learn there has never been a female U.S. president, announces she’d like to hold that office someday. Calling it a “star-spangled idea,” the teacher organizes an election, with each student representing a different state and casting its allotted number of electoral votes. Depicted with comical hyperbole in Pham’s (Freckleface Strawberry) characteristic style, Grace’s superstar opponent is smart, popular, athletic Thomas. Shrewdly calculating that the boys hold more electoral votes than the girls, Thomas studies and plays soccer while Grace diligently delivers speeches, offers free cupcakes, holds rallies and even begins to fulfill her campaign promises (the text doesn’t comment on the other obvious difference: Thomas is white and Grace is a child of color). Not surprisingly, a boy casts the winning ballot for Grace, proclaiming her “the best person for the job.” High-spirited images include Grace posing as Lady Liberty, speaking from the top of a bunting-draped jungle gym and kissing a baby. (The don’t-miss-it picture is at the beginning, of kids looking at a poster containing the presidents’ portraits, all of them rendered to an almost photographic likeness by Pham). An endnote clarifies the workings of the Electoral College. Ages 5-9. (Feb.)

Lulu Atlantis from Sweet Pea Lane, with a baby brother and a dad off saving extinct animals like the Double-Eyed Fig Parrot, confides her troubles to her best friend, Harry. So what if Harry is a talking spider in a top hat whom no one else can see? He offers good advice, reminding a skeptical Lulu that “to find True Blue Love, you would not have to search beyond your own backyard.” It’s no surprise that the adventures in these four linked stories leave Lulu with the realization that she is already enmeshed in everyday scrumptious love—the fun percolates within Martin’s (Travels with Rainie Marie) flavorful storytelling. Lulu, responding to the arrival of the baby, takes Harry and runs away. In a woods “as bleak as a midwinter midnight,” they encounter a skunk who calls Lulu “kiddo” and “girlie”; when she asks for advice, he says, “I’m a skunk, not a magician, I don’t got all the answers”—then tells her precisely what to do. Subsequent run-ins involve three gangster bakers (Scarecrow, Lefty-Righty Louie and Jimmy Creamcheese) and Princess Fancy the diabolical cat. Martin winningly deviates from the narrative with descriptive interjections: “Please understand, Farmer Wallenhaupt’s Frog Pond was not a pond as most people imagine a pond to be. It was filled with silver water whose droplets slid about like mercury.” The scenarios are whimsical; the emotions run true. Ages 7-11. (Jan.)

In their first outing, the eponymous stars of the Floods series, a clan of reptile-eating witches and wizards, make the Addams family seem tame. When they remodel their new house, they bury their “dead and semidead friends and relations” in the backyard and train the growling front gate to keep out unwanted visitors. Their seven kids include a Cousin It–like creature with no arms, four legs and hair on every square inch of her body, including eyeballs and tongue; and blonde, perky Betty, the only offspring who looks ordinary (their mother, Mordonna, longed for a child who would dress dolls up instead of turning them into frogs).Trouble begins with the “neighbors from hell” (“not real hell, where some of the Floods’ best friends lived, but hell on earth, which isn’t actually a real place, more a state of mind”), nasty people who meet their demises quite handily. Betty transforms the son into a fridge, a deceased Flood relative reaches out from her grave to grab and devour the daughter, and so on. Australian author Thompson (The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley) careens wildly from one extreme scenario to the next, letting the Floods get away with everything—despite their appearances, they’re the good guys. Kids can enjoy the prankishness; adults can rest easy given the conventional underpinnings. Final illustrations not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. (Jan.)

Although it arrives from the U.K. amid plenty of fanfare—and to fandom here, too (see Galley Talk, Dec. 10)—this first in a planned series seems full of holes, as if its raison d’être were to set up the action for future books. The plot builds on a secret subterranean culture, a cruel, hierarchical English society that is deeply hostile to “Topsoilers.” As the book opens, the punningly named Will Burrows and his archeologist father are tunneling beneath a disused train station, as this is Dr. Burrows’s passion. Their bond established, these two major characters soon go off in different directions; as they do later, the authors lengthily follow one protagonist and seemingly abandon the others. Dr. Burrows, having discovered underground passages in local cellars, disappears after a quarrel with his useless wife; Will and a friend go after him. Encumbered by verbose and flat descriptions (“His whole being emanated evil, and his dark eyes never left Will’s, who felt a wave of dread wash over him.... {Will] was unable to tear his gaze from the sinister man, whose thin lips twisted into a sardonic smile”), the novel is nearly one-third over before the boys enter the underground Colony—where they are promptly imprisoned and tortured. The narrative at last begins to twist and turn, but the authors still have trouble tracking their cast—and because the offstage characters seem to figure so punily in the others’ thinking, readers have little incentive to stay invested in their fates. Ages 8-14. (Jan.)

A line from the movie Heathers is one of two epigraphs to this series debut (the other is Groucho Marx’s quip about refusing to join any club that would have him as a member); although de la Cruz’s (the Au Pairs series) writing lacks the wit of these sources, it has the same snarky baby-barricuda-meets-credit-card appeal of another possible inspiration, Lisi Harrison’s Clique books. Here, a trio of privileged, pretty and petty girls, all named Ashley, rule the seventh grade at Miss Gamble’s exclusive private school in San Francisco. Smart Lauren Page has been a target of their bullying since kindergarten, but now that her dad has struck it rich, she has scored a major makeover and launched a mission: “First she was going to join the Ashleys. And then she was going to destroy them.” The author lards her writing with copious references to designers, restaurants and imagined habits of the mega-rich (Lauren flies the Ashleys to L.A. on a private plane for a day of shopping). The Ashleys’ contempt for Lauren doesn’t diminish despite her blandishments; they are cruel to her and even to one another. Disappointingly, Lauren would rather be liked by the Ashleys than wreak revenge, and she has no scheme anyway. She’s nowhere mean enough to be a match for the queen bee, who hatches all the best plots even though everyone hates her; but she’s not nice enough to make readers root for her, either. Ages 9-13. (Jan.)

Launching a series of advice books for teens, this guide introduces fictional teens Jon and Jayne, “your average but xtraordinary friends.” The title notwithstanding, the focus here is mainly on platonic friendships and the associated issues of fitting in at school, building confidence, initiating conversations, and dealing with rumors and gossip. Although the narrative tries too hard to ape teenspeak, notably by shifting in and out of IM-lingo (“Things like... how to b tru to yourself seem so basic... that we might not even consciously think about them”), the advice is mostly level-headed. Sometimes the logic is circular (advice on impressing a boy includes “smile a lot and flirt a bit”), but elsewhere the writing is unusually pragmatic. For example, while the authors issue the obvious warnings about cliques (“You and your friends may be limiting yourselves socially”), they acknowledge the perks of belonging; instead of telling readers to avoid cliques, they offer more realistic strategies for managing the pitfalls. A practicing psychologist fields questions in one chapter, too. Sidebars invite readers to an interactive Web site (not functional as PW goes to press), and other elements of note include charts, computer-chat dialogue and entries written by real-life teens. Ages 12-16. (Feb.)