Children's Book Reviews: Week of 2/18/2008

Most jukeboxes are stocked with hits and oldies. But the marvelous machine in Merveille's bistro has something for everyone: punk, opera, hip-hop, the blues, even choral music. What's more, each play is literally transportive, zipping the customer into a poster-like celebration of the genre, with graphic illustration and typography artfully intertwined in the style of vintage European advertising. One fan imagines he's in Monument Valley, strumming a guitar that forms the “c” in the word “country.” Another is transformed into a white-suited John Travolta look-alike, his upraised, pointing hand serving as the “I” in the word “disco.” Some of the pairings have a whiff of surrealism: a single hibiscus blossom prompts the machine to play Hawaiian music, while a shadow turns into an homage to Chet Baker and his signature song, “Let's Get Lost.” Highly stylized art can come across as chilly, but Merveille's pictures are vivid and fun. Merveille lives in Brussels, and this book was first published in France; buyers take note that the illustrations reflect a distinctly European sensibility toward cigarettes. All ages. (Mar.)

Produced by a winning team, this collection of six poems celebrating universal moments in a baby's life (bathtime, first steps, a ride in the carriage) turns on the “awww” factor. Rylant's rhyming verse offers numerous expressions of love (“Baby lovely,/ Baby sweet,/ Baby so divine./ I love your pretty baby face./ Tell me you are mine”). Each poem has its own “title page”, e.g., “Baby Teeth” or “Baby Bed,” which gives the volume an anthology feel, while a slightly oversize square format makes this an excellent choice for lap sharing. Goode (previously paired with Rylant for When I Was Young in the Mountains) employs a looser line and simpler figures than usual, offsetting the sentimentality of the poems with buoyant, energetic vignettes. She creates a sense of motion with watercolor spot illustrations that flow between the text on the ample white space. Images of the dynamic multiracial cast, paired with the catchy, cooing text, add up to a can't-miss with parents and grandparents—and their babies. Ages 1-5. (Mar.)

The artist behind the camera for Did You Say Pears? delivers another perky photo-essay that blends poetry, art and elements of traditional seek-and-find books. This outing challenges readers to see faces—combinations of eyes, nose, mouth—in such everyday objects as water faucets, a mailbox or a skillet in which eggs are sizzling. Each of her color photos is accompanied by a brief phrase that helps focus the reader's attention and is also part of a longer rhyming couplet (“Looking up,/ Glancing down,/ Staring straight ahead./ On a pot,/ In a pan,/ Even on some bread”). The verse grows more abstract toward the end, and the closing image, of clouds, may throw some readers (“Look, there goes a fluffy pig... floating towards its bed”). But those who love seeing the ordinary in new ways, especially those who aren't yet ready for I Spy and Look-Alike titles, will welcome this entry. Ages 2-5. (Mar.)

A farmyard's worth of animals smile their way through this rhyming poem cum bedtime book about what makes each one of them happy. Rylant (Baby Face, reviewed above) starts off with brisk, chirpy lines: “Kitty loves a garden/ Kitty loves a rose./ Kitty loves to walk up high/ On her kitty toes.” Working in watercolors and wax crayons, in panels and vignettes, Bates (Farmer Dale's Red Pickup Truck) animates the verse with an unapologetically anthropomorphized cast of creatures: his Bunny lounges against a gardener's workbasket as it snacks on lettuce leaves; his Mousey clasps pretty leaves in its paws as it gazes, enthralled, at a ladybug overhead. It's almost as if a particularly cute stuffed-animal collection had been the models. The tempo slows down a little as the woman seen gardening earlier reappears, now indoors and holding a smiling baby: “Baby loves his mama, who will/ Kiss his sleepy head.” By the last page, the baby sleeps ensconced in his crib, with all the beaming animals arrayed in the window and along the sill: Chickie on Piggy's head, Mousey next to Kitty and so forth. A good choice for those who like their bedtime books served sunny-side-up. Ages 3-5. (Mar.)

Lyrical language and enticing gold-embellished illustrations distinguish Ray's otherwise predictable original fairytale. Resonating with echoes of King Lear and the Bible, her story is grounded in the traditional elements of the fairytale: three princesses, seven magical objects from nature, a kingdom saddened and bleak after its beloved queen's death and an aging king who gives each of his daughters seven days and seven nights to demonstrate which is most worthy of reigning after him. The two self-absorbed eldest erect lofty monuments that pay homage to themselves, but the youngest, “little and shy and quite ordinary” (and too aptly named), Serenity, is inspired by an apple pip (“seed” to American readers) that, along with a lot of hard work and a little magic, helps her transform the desolate kingdom into a warm and blossoming community. Ray's extensive experience is apparent in her well-balanced use of text and art to create a magical, yet earthy, mood and even pacing. She fills many pages with intricate, multi-faceted images, and these spill over with rich details; she also enlivens several of her customary, quasi-naïve paintings with smoothly and strategically deployed digital art. The dark-skinned, possibly African princesses nod at multiculturalism, while the happily-ever-after ending reaffirms the importance of community and the environment. Ages 3-7. (Mar.)

Returning to a familiar subject, Sayre (Trout, Trout, Trout) brings her ichthyological knowledge to bear in this primer on river ecology. “In fall, trees let go of leaves,/ which swirl and twirl/ and slip into streams.” Alliterative verse zips to the point as it describes the tiny aquatic creatures that eat the leaves and begin a consumption cycle (“Crane flies, caddisflies,/ shrimp, and stoneflies shred leaves./ Rip and snip!”). Studying this food chain, in Endle's (Bella and the Bunny) interpretation, are a boy and girl camping streamside with their dads. Mixed-media collages in autumnal hues show the pair gathering river samples and putting their large, lemon-shaped faces close to the water's edge. Endle's work is highly detailed and carefully patterned when depicting the fish and water life, but bland and static when she includes the humans. Endnotes discuss the life cycle of trout (the story seems to take a mini-detour for a three-spread overview of the topic). Tips for young environmentalists are also included. Ages 4-7. (Feb.)

Somewhere in the Midwest lies a village inhabited by genteel pigs with a flair for civil engineering, their ingenuity documented in many collections of Geisert's (Lights Out) elaborate hand-colored copperplate etchings. This time, in a series of straight-faced, deftly composed spreads, Geisert shows the village piglets playing in giant mud baths and overturning huge vats of paint. The piglets—nearly a hundred of them—must be scrubbed down, and the community maintains a gigantic machine for just this purpose, an automated assembly that wets, washes and dries them: in short, a hogwash. The etchings have no accompanying text; the pictures contain all the necessary information. Readers will be able to follow the water flowing through a sluice into the immense boiler, half-teapot, half-eggplant, and then into the wooden bathing vat that swishes from side to side (box of powdered detergent controlled by pulley and string from a control tower up top), and watch the pigs ride through the drying apparatus, also wood-fired, and onto the wind-turbine-driven clothesline—er, pigline. Every pipe leads somewhere, and all the technology looks workable. The pigs appear delighted with the whole process. Readers will be, too. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)

Frazee (Roller Coaster) salutes grandparents and slyly notes children's diversions in this breezy tale of “the best week ever.” After Eamon enrolls in nature camp, he spends nights with his grandparents, Bill and Pam, at their beach cottage. Eamon's friend James joins the sleepover, and although the text describes James as “very sad” when his mother drives away, a cartoon shows him exuberantly waving “Bye!” Humorous contradictions arise between the hand-lettered account (“Bill handed them each a pair of binoculars and a list of birds to look for. On the way home, the boys reported their findings”) and voice-bubble exchanges between the boys (Eamon, training the lenses on James: “His freckles are huge.” James: “Yeah, and his tongue is gross”). Bill tries to interest the boys in a museum exhibit on penguins; the inseparable friends (“To save time, Bill began calling them Jamon”) show no enthusiasm yet energetically build “penguins” from mussel shells. Frazee's narrative resembles a tongue-in-cheek travel journal, with plenty of enticing pencil and gouache illustrations of the characters knocking about the shoreline. Like The Hello Goodbye Window, Frazee's story celebrates casual extended-family affection, with a knowing wink at the friends' dismissal of their elders' best-laid plans. Ages 6-9. (Mar.)

As in Silk Umbrellas, Marsden introduces a child from another culture undergoing a taxing transition. Based on the boyhood experiences of Thay Phap Niem, now a Buddhist monk, the novel centers on a 10-year-old in postwar Vietnam. Tinh now spends his summer working alongside his father, fishing in their handmade bamboo boat, but he can't help daydreaming about the remote-controlled car his friends are playing with. When a brutal storm hits and Tinh's younger sister is injured because Tinh doesn't act fast enough, he feels responsible—and when he fails to protect the boat, panicking along with the others on the beach at the sight of the huge waves, his father holds him responsible. How can Tinh tell his father that he has saved the toy car instead? Facing consequences far greater than those meted out to most of his fictional American peers, Tinh learns to balance his duties and to appreciate, also, the perpetual smile of the Buddha in the temple. This novel is most rewarding for its graceful unfolding of differences—Tinh always feels a little remote from the reader—and the chance it affords to spend time in a community guided by Buddhist values. Ages 8-12. (Feb.)

Plucky fifth-grader Dorrie Meyers narrates this cheerful tale about her preparations for the Sweet Semester baking contest during the 1945–46 school year. Throughout a series of culinary blunders, Dorrie's extensive family of Jewish immigrants offers her encouragement, despite their preoccupation with locating relatives missing in Europe. Dorrie regales readers with an appealing, frank familiarity. Evolving under this lighthearted girl-talk, however, is a more sobering plot line that centers on the arrival of Dorrie's orphaned cousin, Victor, from Lithuania. Herman breezes through the dramatic story of Victor's escape without dwelling on the terror of the times, giving readers a peek at what Jews faced trying to flee the Germans, but not much more. The two layers of the story mesh neatly when Victor lends the final inspiration and missing “ingredients” that lead to Dorrie's eventual success in the baking contest. Victor's anecdotes and Dorrie's family's relief in finding a surviving relative offer an unusual opportunity to look at how Jews on both sides of the Atlantic fared during and after the war. Dorrie's girlish exuberance coupled with the dash of history make for a pleasant read. A dozen recipes, written in Dorrie's voice, are interspersed throughout. Final illustrations not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. (Feb.)

This feel-good tale about the social pecking order of tweens in rural Virginia has likable characters and a positive message, but its persistent down-home twanginess gets downright annoying at times. Jessie Lou Ferguson, a poem-writing tomboy who chops off hunks of her hair when she's piqued, secretly adores Conrad Parker Smith, the “it” boy of Cabanash County Elementary. Conrad's popularity unconvincingly plummets when he injures his leg, throwing Jessie and Conrad together. A lackluster mystery provides reason for Jessie and Conrad, plus an amusing sidekick named Quentin, to meet each day for a new adventure. Though the pervasive theme of popularity and the idea that “keeping on the right side of the crowd can be tricky and unpredictable” may resonate with readers familiar with the “in crowd,” Stone's (All the Blue Moons at the Wallace Hotel) characters don't seem authentic. Her sixth-grade girls are old enough to covet the attention of boys, yet still wear fairy wings to school before a party. And Jessie Lou's small-town Southernness (“I hauled off with a nice big old pair of scissors and cut my hair practically down to the bone.... so short, you couldn't spit on it”) comes close to cliché. Add a sluggish pace and readers may find that, like the muddy banks of the Cabanash River, this book is hard to plow through. Ages 9-12. (Mar.)

The inaugural volume in a British series, this Spamalot for elementary-schoolers introduces “the Worst Knight in the World.” Allowed at King Arthur's Round Table only because the monarch feels sorry for him, Sir Gadabout has been voted Knights Illustrated's “knight most likely to chop his own foot off in a fight.” When readers first meet him, he is competing against Sir Lancelot in a jousting tournament. As the excited crowd roars the apparently conventional cheer, “Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb,” Gadabout's decrepit horse bucks, catapulting the befuddled knight right out of his outsize armor and straight up into the air. Misadventure is the order of the day as Gadabout embarks on a quest to find the missing Queen Guinivere; Merlin helps out by turning Gadabout's none-too-bright squire invisible and lending his tart-tongued cat, Sidney Smith, to provide some brainpower. Witches, castles that stand on legs and more add to the scenery. Ross's antic line art enhances the high-energy nuttiness of the text. Eight other Sir Gadabout titles are being released this same month. Ages 9-12. (Feb.)

Connor (Dead on Town Line) treats the subject of child neglect with honesty and grace in this poignant story. Addie's stepfather, Dwight, has always been the responsible one in the family. But after he and her mother divorce, and he gets custody of Addie's two younger half-sisters, it's up to Addie, a sixth-grader, to keep order in the tiny trailer that Dwight has found for Addie and her mother. While her mother disappears for days at a time with her new boyfriend, Addie cultivates friendships with people she meets at a neighboring convenience store, but the affection she receives from others doesn't compensate for the absence of love in her home. Addie works hard to fill the void her volatile mother creates, and Addie's attempts to make things “normal” result in some of the most moving scenes: she keeps the cabinets full by putting empty boxes of food on the shelf “for show.” In such moments Connor shows both the extent to which Addie has been abandoned and just how resilient and resourceful she is. Characters as persuasively optimistic as Addie are rare, and readers will gravitate to her. Ages 10-up. (Feb.)

Fans of the His Dark Materials trilogy will get a kick from this wisp of a novel, which immediately introduces “a lean young man with a large hat, a laconic disposition, and a thin mustache”: Pullman offers up the backstory about that legendary Texan, the aeronaut Lee Scoresby, his jackrabbit daemon, Hester, and their first encounter with that other series favorite, the armored bear Iorek Byrnison. But this story reads as a stand alone, too, accessible to those unfamiliar with The Golden Compass and the rest. Bringing in his signature talents for rich scenic description and dramatic action, the story begins as Lee arrives on the island of Novy Odense, looking for work, and instead finds adventure. Notably, Pullman tells the story from Lee's perspective, trading in trilogy heroine Lyra's point of view for that of an adult man. Lee and Iorek team up to help a sea captain save his ship's cargo—unfairly embargoed by a corrupt local politician (he harbors a deep prejudice against armored bears)—and square off against the politician's bodyguard, a hired killer. Readers will appreciate this story's larger-than-life tenor, so fitting for the heroic Lee Scoresby. Kids will enjoy the extras, such as the pull-out board game Peril of the Pole (“for four to six players and their daemons”) and “newspaper” clippings. Illustrated throughout with small engravings; final art not seen by PW. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Dessen (Just Listen; see Profile) inverts a familiar fairy tale: What if Cinderella got the prince, the castle and all its accoutrements, but wasn't remotely interested? After her mother abandons her, Ruby Cooper is flying below the radar of officialdom and trying to make it to her 18th birthday, when she's busted by the landlord and turned over to social services. Ruby is taken in by her estranged sister, Cora, who left for college a decade earlier and never looked back, and Cora's husband, Jamie, the wealthy founder of a popular social networking site. Resentful, suspicious and vulnerable, Ruby resists mightily, refusing the risky business of depending on anybody but herself, and wearing the key to her old house around her neck. All the Dessen trademarks are here—the swoon-worthy boy next door who is not what he appears to be, and the supporting characters who force Ruby to rethink her cynical worldview, among them the frazzled owner of a jewelry kiosk at the mall. The author again defines characters primarily through dialogue, and although Ruby and her love interest, Nate, sound wiser than their years, they talk the way teens might want to—from the heart. A must for Dessen fans, this will win her new readers, too. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Winner of Delacorte's 2006 first YA novel contest, this thoughtful, evenly paced tale focuses on one high schooler's world and all that's frustratingly wrong in it. Sixteen-year-old Andrea Anderson begins her sophomore year feeling hopelessly average and plain, struggling to survive each school day unnoticed and to avoid her single mother's wrath. But when her homeroom teacher commits suicide in the teachers' lounge, Andrea begins to reevaluate her cautious existence. She doesn't shy away when a reclusive neighbor, diagnosed with cancer, needs help caring for her Saint Bernard and sprawling gardens. Instead, she befriends the herb-growing, pottery-making stranger and her enormous dog. Although her plot has plenty of death and abandonment, Crane shows readers about self-discovery and the importance of passion and strength. Some events seem abrupt or unlikely (popular cheerleader Ashley chooses Andrea to be her new best friend for no clear reason), and there may be some easy stereotypes, like the jocks who goose a nerdy student in assembly. But for the most part, the characters seem real and relatable, and when Andrea finally stands up to her mother, readers will empathize. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)

World Fantasy Award winner de Lint (The Blue Girl), known for sophisticated urban fantasies that incorporate Celtic and Native American myths, branches out to include Australian folklore with this tale of Miguel Schreiber, a teenager who discovers that his new Aussie girlfriend, Lainey, is something other than human. As it turns out, she and her grouchy twin sister, Em, are shape-changers—half human, half dingo. Stranger still, their birth father, Tallyman, also a shape-changer, has been sent to capture them by Warrigal, the first Dingo, who has been trapped in a fig tree in the Australian dreamtime for centuries and needs their blood to free himself. Miguel, the twins and Johnny Ward, the local bully (Em likes him), must find some way to defeat these two powerful enemies if the girls are ever to live free from fear. Featuring simplified versions of its author's signature story elements—likable, if flawed protagonists, well-developed contemporary locales and the introduction of potent mythic characters directly into our world—this novella succeeds in its own right and, like Little (Grrl) Lost, will help attract readers to de Lint's more powerful work for older teens and adults. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)

Patty's immigrant parents expect her to be a “P.K.D” (perfect Korean daughter), which means that between AP classes, violin, church and Ivy League applications, Patty gets little time—and less encouragement—to figure out what she wants for herself. When she develops a crush on a new boy and forms a friendship with him, her romantic feelings go unrequited but he does show her to think more broadly, encouraging her to take her violin teacher's advice and apply to Juilliard (her parents insist there is “no security in music”). While Patty is full-out nerdy, she has a great sense of humor, shown through interludes in which she posits her dilemmas as SAT questions or lists “how not to be a P.K.D.”: “Instead of translating Vergil's Aeneid you spend two hours talking on the phone with Susan about how cute Ben is.” Yoo (The Sammy Lee Story) writes with particular fluency of Patty's love of music. Readers will appreciate, too, that the author does not demonize Patty's high-pressure parents: they may bark “HarvardYalePrinceton” at her but their love is never in doubt. An overneat ending doesn't significantly detract from a funny story that will hit home for many readers. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)

Who better than a Cubs fan understands loss? Ryan Walsh fell for Chicago's lovable losers at the side of her beloved father, who died when she was 10. Now 15, Ryan skips school on Opening Day 2008, the five-year anniversary of her father's death, and the beginning of a baseball season that marks an entire century since the Cubs' last World Series championship. Trying to buy a ticket from a scalper, she runs into Nick, a new boy at school, and their shared Cubmania unites them in friendship, then romance. Ryan is overinvested in the relationship: she's on the outs with her former best friends, and somewhat estranged from her newly pregnant mother (who sold her late husband's season tickets to pay bills, and has married a golfer who hates baseball). So it comes as a particularly cruel blow when Nick turns out to be terminally ill. A frequent objection from non-baseball fans is the languid pace of the game. The same complaint could be levied against this introspective first novel, which makes use of baseball's many opportunities for metaphor but not of its potential for excitement. Smith is a smooth writer, and she has something wise to say about how people process loss, but this four-hanky affair may be too much even for those as accustomed to heartbreak as Cubs fans. Ages 13-up. (Mar.)

Two gay men struggling against prejudices in the rural West may conjure images from Brokeback Mountain, but this novel has less to do with unconventional romance than a teenager dealing with unwelcome changes. Bitter about the dissolution of his “normal” family after his father came out three years ago (an announcement that made his mother leave for good), 17-year-old Ben dreads moving from Spokane, Wash., to rural Montana, where his father's partner, Edward, grew up. Starting over in a small town “where gay dudes and their boyfriends don't go over well” looks impossible to Ben. Tracking Ben's transformation from rebellious city boy to hard-working cowboy, Harmon (Skate) digs beneath the stereotypes of gays and rednecks to tackle issues emerging when conservative and liberal values clash. Some of Ben's prejudices about the West prove to be true: Miss Mae, Edward's mother, makes Ben live in the woodshed until he starts obeying her; the Pentecostal next-door neighbor believes Ben's family is going to hell. But Miss Mae has surprising complexities to her character, and Ben, itching to save the neighbor's son from obvious abuse and what seems to be local indifference, has a lot to learn about appearances. Harmon coaxes readers past some far-fetched plotting (Ben saves lives and rockets to hero status) with skillful, often witty insights into human nature; because his take on people is convincing, audiences will want to believe in his story, too. Ages 14-up. (Mar.)

Signature

Reviewed by Rachel Vail

In Cabot's (the Princess Diaries) first foray into novels for kids who are still in single digits, her trademark frank humor makes for compulsive reading—as always. The first installment of a new series presents a nine-year-old girl attempting to impose rules for living on her increasingly complex world. Allie is funny, believable and plucky (of course; all girls are plucky, at least in books), but most of all, and most interestingly, Allie is ambivalent.

As the book starts, Allie learns that her family is moving across town. It is a mark of Cabot's insight to understand that, to a nine-year-old, a car ride's separation from the world she has known makes that distance as vast as the universe. Allie will be enrolled in a different elementary school, and will therefore be that most hideous thing: the new kid. To make matters worse, the Finkle family will be moving to a dark, old, creaky Victorian, which, Allie becomes convinced, has a zombie hand in the attic. Moving will mean leaving behind not only her geode collection but also her best friend. And here is where the story deepens. Allie's best friend is difficult. She cries easily and always insists on getting her own way. To keep the peace, Allie makes rules for herself, often after the fact, to teach herself such important friendship truisms as Don't Shove a Spatula Down Your Best Friend's Throat.

Mary Kate is the kind of best friend anybody would want to shove a spatula down the throat of, is the thing.

As Allie marshals her energies to fight the move in increasingly desperate ways, sophisticated readers may well conclude ahead of Allie that the friends she is meeting at the new school are more fun and better for her than spoiled Mary Kate and the cat-torturer, Brittany Hauser. Coming to this realization on their own, however, is part of the empowering fun. Told from the distinctive perspective of a good-hearted, impulsive, morally centered kid, this is a story that captures the conflicted feelings with which so many seemingly strong nine-year-olds struggle.

Ambivalence is uncomfortable. It is also a sign of growing up.

Early elementary school is all about primary colors, where rules, imposed by adults, are clear guidelines to good behavior and getting along. The more complex hues of the second half of elementary school, when complicated friendship dynamics begin to outpace the adult-imposed rules of home and school, leave many kids floundering and confused. In the character Allie Finkle, Cabot captures this moment of transition and makes it feel not just real, but also fun, and funny.

Rachel Vail's forthcoming novel, Lucky (HarperTeen, May), is the start of a trilogy about three sisters.