Children's Book Reviews

“Every year the same thing happens. The Grasshoppers sing, the Ants work in rhythm, the crops come up smoothly, and when winter comes, the Ants turn their backs.” So claim four attorneys in Giovanni's (On My Journey Now) revision of Aesop's fable, a shrewd evaluation of the value of art. Jimmy Grasshopper hires the firm of Robin, Robin, Robin and Wren to sue Nestor and Abigail Ant. The trial begins in spring, presided over by Judge Owl and a jury of mammals, birds and insects. For all her amusing animal characters, Giovanni investigates complex issues. “Of course my clients enjoyed [Grasshopper's songs]. Who doesn't enjoy a clown?” says the Ants' lawyer. “Must everything be in the marketplace?” counters the Grasshopper, who performed without a written contract. To illustrate Giovanni's detailed and insightful prose, Raschka (Grump Groan Growl, reviewed below) creates evocative, earth-tone watercolors that suggest camouflage; his dapple-brown images set the scenes in forest undergrowth. Little litigants and their elders will enjoy mulling over the debate. All ages. (May)

Unforgettably introduced in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Willems's id-with-wings reveals that he's wanted a puppy “forever.... At least since last Tuesday” and swears he's ready to assume the responsibility of pet ownership (“I promise I'll water it once a month”). But he soon discovers that reality, well, it doesn't bite, exactly, but it has daunting teeth—and slobbers. While Pigeon is still a marvel of visual expression, Willems this time out has blunted his character's repertoire of persuasive tactics—and with the pleading dialed down, there's not much else to enjoy. There aren't enough examples of Pigeon's quick-thinking tactical maneuvers or the comic punch that comes from the cumulative onslaught. The core thrill of this series has always been offering kids the chance to experience pleading from the parental point of view—and exercise the awesome power to say no. This time, the response may simply be, “Whatever.” Ages 2-6. (Apr.)

As a train takes daytrippers from the station to the seashore, a friendly, rhythmic interrogation unfolds. Debut author Wickberg posits the first question as a kind of catchy salute: “Hey Mr. Choo-choo,/ Red, white, and blue-choo,/ Hey Mr. Choo-Choo,/ What are you doing?” Over the course of the journey, the questions get more specific (“What are you pulling?” “What are you seeing?”), and the train offers up a kind of cadenced running commentary as it chugs along: “There's a long-long-tunnel./ Got my light-light-light./ In the dark-dark-dark/ I can see all right.” Heo's (Henry's First-Moon Birthday) childlike paint, pencil and collage spreads take perspectives ranging from maplike to close up, while her approach varies from the stunningly graphic (as when the train crosses a trestle bridge that spans the walls of a canyon) to dreamy, gravity-defying playful. Even the most restless young railroad enthusiasts will find themselves glued to these pages. Ages 2-up. (Apr.)

Hooks and Raschka (Be Boy Buzz; Skin Again) charge this temperamental book with few words but ample emotion. The alliterative title alone demands a loud delivery, and each of the three key words gets a noisy spread all to itself (“Grump-/ Groan-/ Growl/ Bad mood on the prowl”). Raschka, working in loose India ink over airy, multicolored watercolor wash, scrawls a short-legged, leonine monster and its alter ego, an angry curly-haired child. The creature recalls one of Sendak's Wild Things, albeit roughly sketched with a thick brush. A zigzag blue line of teeth superimposed across the glowering monster's dark mouth in several images implies a temporary sharpness, but not permanent antagonism. Similarly, hooks's words acknowledge how hard it is to avoid negativity (“Can't stand outside/ Can't hide”). At the conclusion, the words “Just go inside,” recommend a time-out for easing out of the mood. On the closing page, “Just let it slide,” the S of “slide” becomes a chair where the once-belligerent child lounges and his inner monster naps beneath (not gone, but relaxed). With its intensity and understanding, this bad-mood book rivals Jules Feiffer's I'm Not Bobby! and Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry.... Ages 3-up. (Apr.)

Introducing Pura Belpré, the first Puerto Rican librarian hired by the New York Public Library system, this warmhearted Spanish/English bilingual story adopts the perspectives of two children who are inspired by Belpré to enter a library for the very first time. During a cold, Depression-era winter, Belpré organizes the community to hold a Three Kings' Day festival at the library. In telling the story, González livens the English text with a sprinkling of Spanish words, and chooses facts of interest to children, but streamlines biographical details so that she can focus on the characters. Delacre's inviting oil and collage illustrations cleverly incorporate sepia-toned clippings from a January 6, 1930, New York Times, turning them into architectural elements, books, furniture, etc. With this simple and affectionate story, González and Delacre (both winners of the ALA's Pura Belpré Honor Medal) broadcast Belpré's welcome message to new generations of immigrants—“Remember, the library belongs to you all,” Belpré says. “We'll blow out the storyteller's candle, and your wish will come true.” Ages 4-8. (Apr.)

Jeffers's (The Incredible Book Eating Boy) arrestingly illustrated book begins with the creation of a spare watercolor world—a single, nameless boy on a deserted beach. Quickly the story takes a surprising turn: the boy finds an airplane in his closet and crashes it on the moon. When he's joined by a similarly stranded Martian, the two strangers hatch a scrappy plan for rescue, suggesting a moral: it's good to work together. After the unusual narrative leaps at the beginning of the story, the message feels a little forced, and it's less fun than expected. Even so, a quality reminiscent of The Little Princecomes through, not just in the lone boy/outer-space setting, but in the balance between the humor in the predicament and loneliness. These two emotions are matched perfectly by the mixed-media art. Colorful figures swim in vast amounts of negative space, isolated and a bit melancholy, but their postures and faces are playful, almost comic. An odd scale and lopsided figures suggest a world off-kilter, while silly monsters and impossible feats keep things light. With uneven graphite outlines on watercolor-soaked paper that reveals the grain of the paper, the overall effect is tactile, textured and even a little childlike. Ages 4-up. (Apr.)

In a novel as tender as his acclaimed Olive's Ocean, Henkes probes the psyches of two boys facing family conflicts. Spending long, lonely days at his grandparents' lakeside home, 12-year-old Mitch Sinclair has plenty of time to brood about his parents' impending divorce and to plot against the family of “intruders” who have moved into his favorite spot, the house next door that he assumed was abandoned. What Mitch can't know is that the newcomers have been shaken by tragedy, the drowning of a child in the lake eight years ago, and their stay is destined to be short-lived. Mitch becomes friends with 10-year-old Spencer Stone, the elder of the surviving children, and as trust builds between them, the boys risk exchanging their family secrets. Tranquil Bird Lake serves as an effective setting for this reflective novel, with Henkes alternating between Mitch's and Spencer's points of view. The most remarkable aspect of the book may be the author's ability to isolate the sources of the boys' shared sense of loss and then to express, via easily recognizable and even ordinary experiences, their growing acceptance of what cannot be changed. Ages 10-14. (May)

Reinhardt artfully parallels the construction of a house with the reconstruction of a broken family in a work as intimate and intelligently wrought as her previous YA novels, A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life and Harmless. Shaken by the recent divorce of her father and stepmother and her separation from stepsister and best friend, Tess, Harper Evans jumps at the chance to participate in a summer program in a small Tennessee town, where she and other high school students will build a new house for a family whose home was destroyed by a tornado. Harper aims to bury herself in physical labor to forget about problems back in L.A., but gets sidetracked when she falls in love with Teddy, one of the house's intended residents. Weaving flashbacks of Harper's home life before and after the divorce into the romance between Harper and Teddy, Reinhardt builds a story within a story: one exploring reasons the heroine feels betrayed, the other focusing on how she learns to trust again. This meticulously crafted book illustrates how both homes and relationships can be resurrected through hard work, hope and teamwork. Ages 12-up. (May)

Murdock (Dairy Queen) reworks now standard elements of the modern fairy tale—reluctant princess, haughty prince, evil queen, portentous prophesies—for this frothy coming-of-age story. Princess Ben (short for Benevolence) is effectively orphaned after assassins kill her uncle the king and her mother, and her father disappears. Now heiress to Montagne's throne, Ben is forced into the tutelage of her aunt, Queen Sophia, with a regimen of dance lessons, embroidery and dieting, all in order to be married off to Florian, crown prince of menacing Drachensbett. After their umpteenth clash, the queen locks Ben in a tower, where Ben discovers a hidden portal, a wizarding room and a book of spells. Through her forays in magic, Ben learns that if Drachensbett's leaders can't marry their way into controlling Montagne, they will take it by force, and she will have to use her smarts to save her country. There's no new ground broken—the sardonic, witty repartee between Ben and Florian would fit right into a Shrek sequel—but the story (think poor man's Gail Carson Levine) is thoroughly entertaining. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Weaver (Defect; Full Service) launches his Motor series with this fast-paced introduction to the rough-and-tumble world of car racing. Headwaters Speedway in northern Minnesota is a struggling track desperate for some big-name racers to draw in fans and revenue. One Saturday night, when rainstorms force cancellations at other tracks throughout the state, owner Johnny Walters, a former racer left paralyzed after a severe crash, and his 17-year-old daughter, Melody, get a bigger crowd than they ever imagined. Weaver entertains readers with a motley cast: Maurice Battier, the track's fastidious flagman; Beau Kim, 16, the tai chi–loving Mod-Four racer; and Sonny Down Wind, who refuses all sponsorship offers. At times the language gets mired in hardcore automotive lingo: “He was cranking over the engine to find top dead center, or TDC, valve position.” And with 10 characters introduced in the first 50 pages, it's initially difficult to keep them straight. But in limited space, Weaver fleshes each one out enough to leave a lasting impression on readers and make them curious to know what happens next. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Kids even slightly drawn to sesquipedalianism (the use of long words) will love these logodaedalian (verbally clever) vocabulary books.

Building on O'Connor and Glasser's bestselling series, ultimate girly-girl Fancy Nancy makes vocabulary glamorous in this A–Z compendium (“That's fancy for collection”). As O'Connor explains in a foreword, “When you use [a fancy word] in a sentence, it's like adding sprinkles to vanilla ice cream!” The chosen words are generally helpful (hostess, wardrobe, understated) rather than precocious (ooh la la!), and reflect Fancy Nancy's special style. For example, to introduce the word “improvise,” as in “I wanted a canopy bed so I had to improvise. I used a sheet, a mop, and a broom,” Glasser shows the minimaven lolling in bed with bonbons and a tea tray, broomsticks supporting a canopy of perfectly ruffled gingham. Ooh la la, indeed! Ages 4-7. (May)

Designed to get kids speaking and writing with the rhetorical gravitas of a William F. Buckley, if not to bloviate (“to speak or write over-elaborately or pompously”), this title comes with a “Sesquipedalian Dictionary” plus a foldout gameboard and game pieces. The game challenges players to draw, act out, classify or otherwise define a specific word; any type of vocabulary list can be used to furnish the choices (think SAT prep). The dictionary isn't organized for stand-alone use (although it is indexed), and not all the definitions are entirely reliable in their exact connotations, but it's fun to browse, especially for the epeolatrous (“worshipful of words”). Ages 12-up. (May)

Signature

Reviewed by Sarah Mlynowski

In Mississippi Beaumont's family, turning 13 means your savvy kicks in. When her grandfather turned 13, he created Idaho. And when her brother turned 13, he caused a hurricane. At the start of Law's winning debut novel, Mississippi's 13th birthday is only two days away.

With her dad in a coma after a horrible car accident, Mississippi is convinced that her savvy will have something to do with waking people up. Along with her brothers, the cute preacher's son and his obnoxious gum-chomping sister, she sneaks aboard a delivery bus she believes is heading toward her dad, hoping to save him.

The thing about Mississippi? She's not always right. Turns out, her savvy has her hearing a whole bunch of voices—in her head. When people around her have any type of ink—say, a tattoo or a pen mark—on their skin, she can't help but read their minds.

What makes this book so engaging is that aside from the whole mind-reading thing, Mississippi isn't extraordinary. She's not excessively brilliant, incredibly attractive or overly girly. She's afraid of growing up. She prefers to be called Mibs, but the mean girls call her Missy-Pissy. She wishes she could mess up less and be more like her perfect mom. (Literally, perfect—that's her mother's savvy.) Readers, boys and girls alike, will see a bit of themselves in Mibs.

Also, the Beaumonts aren't the only ones with savvys. Normal people (the bus driver, the hitchhiker, the obnoxious gum-chomper) have them, too—they just don't recognize them. As Mibs's mom says, “One person might make strawberry jam so good that no one can get enough of it.... There are even those folks who never get splashed by mud after a rainstorm or bit by a single mosquito in the summertime.” The 10-year-old boy or the 40-year-old mom reading the book—they might just have one, too.

Besides saving her dad, Mibs's quest in the novel is to learn to “scumble”—in other words, control her savvy. She has to learn to quiet the voices she hears, and to find her own voice.

Law has definitely found hers. Short chapters and cliffhangers keep the pace quick, while the mix of traditional language and vernacular helps the story feel both fresh and timeless. And while road-trip novels tend to be more about the journey than the destination, the ending, like Momma's savvy, is pretty perfect. I wasn't sure how Law was going to manage it without going all fairy-tale, but she does the story justice, making the conclusion happy and heart-rending simultaneously, resisting the urge to tie it all up with a fancy ribbon and a happily ever after.

Law's savvy? She's a natural storyteller who's created a vibrant and cinematic novel that readers are going to love. Ages 9-11. (May)

Sarah Mlynowski is the author of the Magic in Manhattan series, the most recent of which is Spells & Sleeping Bags (paperback reprint from Delacorte due this month), and, with E. Lockhart and Lauren Myracle, the coauthor of How to Be Bad (HarperTeen, May).