Children's Book Reviews

Drawing on his distinguished career in graphic design, Chwast's (The Twelve Circus Rings)visual exposé of tongue twisters teems with humor and cheek, starting with the debossed cover's inset art of a woman in a beach hat before a table's worth of shells strung with price tags. Mouths with “twisting” tongues line the endpapers, while the interior illustration for the eponymous tongue twister features that same woman, now in mid-stride away from the table, a “Sold Out” sign the only object upon it. The lines and use of color are posterlike, closer to Chwast's work for adults than to his more fluid picture book illustration. The humor can also be goofy or dark. In “Cheery chickens cooking in the kitchen,” a stoic oversize chicken perches in a cooking pot, red flames shooting up from below, a lid menacing it from above. Though many of the tongue twisters may be unfamiliar and several seem outdated (“winding wristwatches”?), the punchy illustrations capture their buoyant essence. Few will be able to resist saying them aloud. All ages. (Oct.)

Inspired by the story of Koko, the sign-language-fluent gorilla, and her pet kitten, Browne (Voices in the Park) imagines a similar interspecies friendship. His nameless signing gorilla seems to have everything he needs: a comfy chair (the upholstery looks positively Pierre Deux), a TV and a cheeseburger, but something is not right: the look on his face screams, “Is that all there is?” His ennui evaporates, however, with the arrival of a tiny kitten named Beauty. “They did everything together,” Browne notes on one of the funny, touching spreads that ensue; in this particular case, he shows that these BFFs can't be separated even when nature calls. Playing with scale and perspective, continually recalibrating the level of detail (on some closeups, the individual hairs of the gorilla's fur coat are distinct), imbuing his simian hero with a range of emotion worthy of a young Marlon Brando, Browne creates an unpredictable visual vocabulary in sync with the unlikely but enduring affection between Beauty and beast. Ages 3–5. (Nov.)

Drawn from their beds by noises downstairs, the narrator and her little brother, Tito, peer into the kitchen to find that their parents have turned dinner cleanup into a rambunctious, Latin-flavored song and dance number. Mama swishes her ruffled skirt and Papa croons into a wooden spoon (“¡Cómo te quiero! Oh, how I love you. Umm, hmm”). The performance reaches its peak with a flourish worthy of Fred and Ginger: “My mother twists, and my father catches her by the waist and bends her low,” writes Manning (The Aunts Go Marching), mixing awe with incredulity. “There is silence for a moment.” As the rounded, sculptural bodies of the couple move about the kitchen with humor and grace, the illustrations take on a cinematic sense of motion and space. This is Manning's most exuberant work yet, a winning tribute to happy feet and happy families. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)

Gracie, the four-year-old scribbler who, “like many artists... is misunderstood,” gets her big break when George—her older brother and “curator” of her gallery—realizes that Gracie has been looking into the shiny salt shaker she places on the edge of her paper as she draws. Readers can replicate George's discovery: as they pull the tab, a Mylar “magic mirror” curves, and Gracie's “scribbles” transform into coherent compositions. As Gracie's drawings materialize in the “mirror,” George provides commentary, injecting what can only be hoped is irony. For a self-portrait, George identifies the media (crayon, yarn, construction paper) before referencing Rembrandt in the “choice of subject.” Gracie's subjects and use of media (feathers, leaves, postage stamps) become more complicated with the book's progression, and George's comments might give budding artists some ideas. However, while readers should initially enjoy the visual gambit at the heart of the book, they should not expect a story. A Web site, www.graciesgallery.com, includes directions for drawing “like Gracie.” Ages 3–9. (Nov.)

When the first snow of the year coincides with winter solstice, it's a magical convergence so powerful that snow people come from far and wide to celebrate. “Hooray for winter! Hooray for snow!” cheers the crowd in a lantern-lit forest clearing, and by the time the last page is turned, even kids in the Sunbelt will be cheering as well. In his picture book debut, Jones provides an emotional and fantasy counterpoint to the quiet intensity of Ziefert's (Who Said Moo?) reportorial text. Jones takes full advantage of the book's horizontal format, varying his perspectives and infusing his pictures with a sense of bustle and plenty of detail (note the snow chef carving blocks of ice). He confers individuality upon the members of the snow people community—quite an accomplishment considering that all his characters have facial features fashioned from coal and carrots, and three-snowball bodies. Jones also adds a soupçon of delicious eeriness: the chill in the air, the normally immobile characters' shared sense of purpose, the allure of communal ritual—all these things become palpable. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

Brown's (Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers) fun-filled poems feature an unpredictable range of topics and imagery. The poet-illustrator toys with pronunciation in his “Tongue Tester” (“Stealthy thieves/ in knit wool caps/ collect antiques/ in thick cloth sacks”) and, again, in “The Egret,” the mock-doleful tale of a man who “told a secret/ to an egret,” and “got a talking-to/ from the cockatoo,/ and the cuckoo too.” He offsets each poem with one of his flat, idiosyncratic paintings; with their oddball beasts and improbable color combinations, his pictures are somewhere between surreal and folk art. For the title poem (“I'm not a fan/ of toast and jam... / or even Cream of Wheat./ A bowl of cream of broccoli, / now there's a morning treat”), Brown depicts a fellow with lavender skin smiling crookedly at pea-green broth, while someone else brandishes an ordinary takeout coffee cup. In “Painting on Toast,” an artist places some bread on an easel and composes a scene using dollops of jam and cream cheese. A smorgasbord of punditry and weirdness, this collection will remind kids that poetry and pictures can exist just for kicks. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

McMenemy's (Everybody Bonjours!) mixed-media vignettes of brotherly loathe exude her customary élan; the renderings bring to mind the playful palettes and nimble shapes of Eisenhower-era graphic design. Unfortunately, her pictures are bogged down by a pedantic story. It first seeks to assuage by acknowledging how tough life as the top banana to a “Bro-Zilla” can be. “I'd say: 'I am going to the bathroom. By myself!' ” recalls the narrator, an older brother. “And he'd say: 'Me too!' Aghhhh!” But while individual vignettes have their mild charms, they're mostly standard issue. Older siblings will recognize many of these: baby brother topples a building-block skyscraper, beheads a model dinosaur, slips his hand into his brother's. But the tone stays so even that the events blur into one another. Well before Davis (executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers) delivers the lesson—that little brothers copy big brothers as a way of expressing undying admiration—readers may drift off. Ages 5–8. (Nov.)

The Slidy Diner is one big health code violation: the proprietress wears a fly-covered sweater and “smells like rotten grill grease,” the toilet is a cesspool, “someone is usually running with scissors” and the sticky buns are scraped up off the floor. Even the people are ghoulish, with their flattened, oversize heads, blank eyes and doll-like bodies. Snyder, a debut picture book author and PW reviewer, and Zollars (Not in Room 204) serve up a wealth of Grand Guignol detail, beginning with the creepy premise: Edie, the narrator, claims she is held captive at the diner for stealing a lemon drop, and she gives a young patron the insider's tour of the joint. Most of the best jokes are visual: the poison label stuck onto a countertop; pet food tins stashed amid the staples; a slice of pie garnished as if with eyeballs. The gross-out crowd will eat this up. Ages 5–8. (Oct.)

Confirming her mastery of the middle-grade novel, Mass (Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life) combines astronomy and storytelling for a well-balanced look at friendships and the role they play in shaping identity. Three narrators take turns: Ally, who lives with her parents and younger brother at the Moon Shadow Campground and loves every tree and every rock on it, but most especially the stars above it; glamour-loving Bree, who announces to readers that she must have been “switched at birth” to explain her presence among physicist parents and a geeky younger sister; and Jack, who is helping his science teacher lead a solar eclipse tour to the Moon Shadow to make up his failing grade. The trio's paths converge because Ally's parents have sold the Moon Shadow to Bree's, and everyone meets up at the campgrounds during a major eclipse. The voices reflect the distinct personalities, and while the outcome is never in doubt—each character discovers unexpected powers of adaptability and new talents—Mass keeps the developments believable. Information about solar eclipses and astronomy is carefully woven into the plot to build drama and will almost certainly intrigue readers. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Highly imaginative, fast-paced and a bit disorienting, Sorrell's (First Shot) rich novel centers on a gangly, inquisitive seventh-grader who believes she is living the wrong life. Jessica Sternhagen doesn't connect with anyone in her boring town except Dale, who is equally an outsider. When Jessica stumbles into a mysterious bookstore, the clerk hands her a novel entitled Her Lif, a page-by-page account of Jessica's own uninspired history. But Her Lif is an erratum, a printer's error, which should have been Her Life. As Jessica and Dale embark on one chaotic escapade after another, dodging an unscrupulous vacuum salesman who hopes to take over the world, the entire book becomes filled with errata—and each of their decisions changes its outcome. Jessica must save the universe by altering present events to change the past. Sorrell presents a stew of hearty concepts, including string theory, alternate dimensions and mind control. Readers with a taste for science or science fiction will be especially intrigued, and while some ideas may be beyond other members of the audience, they will nevertheless savor the nonstop action. Ages 9–11. (Oct.)

Were Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid to be suddenly bereaved, his next diary might approximate this painful but often funny novel, written by the author of the adult work Wolf Boy and illustrated by a debut graphic artist. Keeping a notebook, 12-year-old Finn Garrett explains in an early entry that a few months before, “a giant eraser fell from the sky and flattened me.... It's been erasing me from the world ever since.” His father has died unexpectedly (in circumstances described only near the end), and Finn's black hair and pink complexion are gradually turning white (Coovert's cartoon shows a gray Finn looking into a mirror and seeing a vampire reflected back). As Finn remembers perfect moments with his father, avoids school as long as possible and compares his mother's and paternal grandfather's attitudes about death, he is made to see his pediatrician as well as a kindly school psychologist, who have their own theories about the “whiteness thing.” Precise in his metaphors and his characterizations, Kuhlman delivers a study in coping with loss that middle-schoolers will want to absorb and empathize with. Ages 10–14. (Nov.)

Wearing skirts she's made out of Mylar balloons or potato sacks, shirts she's sewed out of torn umbrellas or her absentee dad's abandoned clothing, narrator Kristi marches to her alternative high school, prepared to take on a world that hates her—she's pretty sure of it, given that she can read minds. Ryan, far outstripping the level of plotting and characterizations in her debut, Shadow Falls, turns in an exceptional second novel. Although Kristi is hostile to her mother, classmates and teachers, and genuinely nasty to total strangers, she makes herself vulnerable to readers. She is also consistently funny in a cynical, teenage way: “I live in a suburb of a suburb. I'm surrounded by the offspring of professional people who attend parent-teacher meetings and volunteer on Election Day.” Events cast doubt Kristi's mind-reading skills, but given the author's solid portraiture, readers will nevertheless want to trust Kristi, even before she learns to trust herself. Ryan works in both a romance and a divorce, and reverses Kristi's instinctive satirizing of people who care about her—and does it all with an abundance of wit. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

YA readers searching for faerie stories will be happy to find this debut novel, an accomplished take on well-loved themes. Despite her immense talent, teenage musician Deirdre fights nausea-inducing anxiety every time she plays her harp in public. Enter handsome, romantic Luke at just the right moment: a stranger, he calms her before a major competition, performs a duet with her and together they win the grand prize. Deirdre can't help falling in love—only, why do four-leaf clovers keep appearing, and why does Luke keep throwing them away? And why does Deirdre's grandmother instantly express an aversion to Luke? Along with some familiar elements—ruthless faerie royalty, unsuspecting mortals targeted for their as yet unknown gifts, treacherous bargains—Stiefvater brings to her story several layers of romance, a knowledge of Irish music and a talent for plot twists. She is also unafraid of taking plot developments to their logical outcomes, even when they mar the characters' happiness. Vibrant and potent, her writing will hook genre fans. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

Anneke Van Raalte is 14 when the Germans deport her family from Holland and send them to Czechoslovakia—because they are Jewish. Despite constant hunger, severe crowding and other deprivations, Anneke, the narrator, is repeatedly told how lucky she is to be at the concentration camp Theresienstadt, which lacks gas chambers. Her father, formerly an illustrator for a Dutch newspaper, occupies an important position in the camp and can protect the family from the worst fate, being sent on a transport “east” (she eventually learns a transport almost invariably means death). But Anneke wonders at the justness of her father's behavior, particularly when he participates in the commandant's “embellishment” program, designed to trick the Danish Red Cross when it comes for an inspection—and, when that plan succeeds, to make a propaganda film. Polak (Scarred) bases Anneke's experiences on those of her mother's; while convincing generally, her writing shies from the extremities of camp existence. What it does offer is a candid look at a father's presumed collusion, a perspective rarely seen in YA literature about the Holocaust. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

Wood's (The Napping House) first foray into graphic novels is a visual stunner. Sumo and Duffy Pugg are called out of class by their father, who insists they immediately go off with their long-lost, oddly named cousin, Mr. Come-and-Go, to visit their (also unknown to them) Aunt Lulu on Kocalaha, the island where their absent mother was born. Blunt, bald and broad as a refrigerator, Come-and-Go does not inspire confidence in Sumo, the less adventurous of the brothers, and his reluctance looks reasonable when Lulu hustles them off on a mysterious expedition, which involves entering Kocalaha's volcano as it is erupting. Wood's full-color digital illustrations vividly depict fabulous scenery—lava flows, ocean swells, lush foliage—and the muscularity of the action will impress thrill-seeking readers. The boys repeatedly face peril, including a terrifying and surreal episode in which deathly specters surround Sumo while he tries to rescue Duffy. The plot does not answer all the questions it raises: the boys' trip is eventually explained, but not why their father has sanctioned it. The audience will likely be too busy living vicariously through Sumo and Duffy's ultimately excellent adventure to mind. Ages 7–up. (Oct.)

Correction: The illustrator of Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Plum Fantastic by Whoopi Goldberg (Reviews, Sept. 29), published by Hyperion/Jump at the Sun, is Maryn Roos.