Children's Book Reviews: Week of 1/5/2009

A read-aloud with an Aussie accent, this bouncy rhyming tale of wandering wombats delivers age-appropriate suspense as well as a countdown. Six roly-poly brown wombats stroll, single file, in a dusty desert: “They didn’t see the dingo with the hungry eye,/ 'I’ve a hunch my lunch just walked on by!’ ” One by one, the wombats bringing up the rear stop “to pick a gum nut” or listen to a kookaburra bird, and the party diminishes (“and then there were five”). Shields (Lunch Money) does not reveal their fate, and readers will suspect the worst. In sandy watercolor hues, Blackall (Meet Wild Boars) individuates the plump, bearish wombats via accessories, like a paper hat or string of beads, while the swaggering dingo favors a pipe. She lets the foxy-orange dingo’s pointy ears or long, sinister nose protrude from behind gray rocks and twisted trees; kids will enjoy hunting the villain in her offbeat, detailed spreads.A glossary demystifies the lingo from Oz. Ages 3–5. (Mar.)

Introduced in Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, the cute little fox Fletcher now discovers spring. Seeing blossoms swirling through the air—Beeke renders them as a flurry of white smudges—Fletcher becomes convinced that the snow has returned. Feeling “bouncy [and] full-of-importance,” he sounds the alarm to his forest comrades, who are not a little peeved when they realize Fletcher’s mistake. All is quickly forgiven as they revel in the glories of the season: “The animals scooped up pawfuls and clawfuls of blossoms from the ground, and covered him in a tickly shower of fluttering white petals!” The distinctly British lilt of Rawlinson’s prose should prove captivating for preschoolers. But it’s Beeke who gives this book its reason for being. Working in her signature naïf style, she gives each character a vivid personality (the steadfast porcupine and slacker rabbits are particularly memorable) and conjures up an irresistible forest: bathed in warm greens and yellows, punctuated with impish bursts of color, and just imposing enough to be a suitable setting for adventure. Ages 3–7. (Feb.)

The action in this Japanese author/artist’s English-language debut is low-key: three diminutive squirrels go sledding with their father, and Papa, initially reluctant, discovers that sledding keeps you warm in the cold. The rewards lie in Iwamura’s exquisitely rendered winter landscapes, inked with whispering lines and colored with the palest of tints. He has a talent for imagining what the world looks like to small creatures. While the squirrels’ pointy ears, fluffy tails and matching sweaters make them embraceably cute, the forest they live in is painted in noble proportions, with gigantic mist-covered tree trunks (only the lowest foot or two of which are shown, in accordance with the squirrel’s-eye view), grasses weighed down under coats of snow and delicate branches outlined in white. No detail is overlooked; even the two eyelet screws that hold the rope to the sled are clearly drawn. The single interior scene, with its squirrel-sized Japanese teapot and teacup sitting by the woodstove, repays a long look, too. Ages 3–up. (Jan.)

Poor Drool (formally known as Drew) has been orphaned—which is her dramatic way of saying that she’s having her first sleepover at Grandma’s. Of course, her situation is hardly Dickensian: Grandma, who has a wedding-cake beehive that would give Marge Simpson a run for her hairdressing money, is an ace chef and knitter, and she doesn’t mind a bit when Drool throws marzipan cake at the ceiling or decorates the breakfast table with double-caramel-sauce polka dots (“just like my dress”). Drool also has the constant, adoring companionship of Kip, the vividly imagined, overalls-wearing “house chicken.” Her separation anxiety never entirely dissipates, but by the time Drool’s parents arrive for pick-up, she’s already planning the next visit. In her authorial debut, Leijten’s storytelling could use some pruning—the book feels about four pages too long—but the watercolor and pencil pictures evince a firm hand on the glee throttle (despite the sappy title), and readers should find themselves caught up in the characters’ loopy worldview and comic earnestness. Ages 3–5. (Jan.)
 
Willoughby and the Lion Greg Foley. HarperCollins/Bowen, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-06-154750-8

Foley (Thank You Bear) scores points for unique visual presentation in this sumptuously produced, two-color book, instantly distinguished by its heavily embossed jacket. Willoughby Smith has moved to a disappointing new home, pictured in a flimsy black line on an expanse of white. One day, Willoughby sees a lion perched on a boulder. Rendered in metallic gold ink, the lion shines, its gleam set off by the book’s highly coated paper. The lion promises Willoughby 10 wishes but adds, “Unless you wish for the most wonderful thing of all, I’ll be stuck on this rock forever.” Willoughby’s first nine wishes benefit himself, from a palace shown in gold on black (it resembles a crisply engraved metal plate) to “a hot-air-balloon-submarine,” intricately diagrammed in white on gold. With every wish, the ratio of gold to gray increases and Foley’s compositions, mingling line drawings with digitally manipulated b&w photos, become more complex. Brassy layers and a sprinkling of stars imply fantastic wealth, leavened with grayscale pixels; the elegant combination of the two basic colors boosts the visual impact exponentially. The 10th wish, whispered to the lion, finally reverses the acquisitive sequence; Foley implies selflessness at last, signaled by an expansive sunrise of gold lines against pure white, and a small gold coin labeled “true friend” (a removable facsimile is stored within the interior back cover). A second Willoughby title, about Willoughby and the moon, will use black and metallic silver ink. Ages 4–7. (Feb.)

Bella is a moody, obsessed poet: “Bonnets, daisies, windows, toes—/ Secrets hide in sky, in rose,” she writes. Her best friend (and fellow mouse), Bean, is an impulsive bundle of energy, eager to show off her new striped stocking cap embellished with two daisies, and annoying Bella with her interruptions. What starts off looking like a tale of mismatched friends turns out to be, instead, a splendidly accessible exploration of the poetic process as Bella finds Bean’s words seeping into her work. Leitjen (Hugging Hour!, reviewed above) draws readers in immediately with her offbeat whimsy. Bella, for example, is first glimpsed through the window of her house, a fairytale concoction of tiny bricks, shingles and turrets nestled among the roots of a tree, with paper lanterns festooned just beyond. Letters, words and images dance about the final pages as the two friends together compose a poem that proclaims their eternal bond. Ages 4–8. (Feb.)

Patrick the penguin awakens one morning to find he’s inexplicably turned pink “from head to foot.” “Boys can’t be pink!” he declares in all-capital letters. The doctor has no explanation (none is ever offered), but Patrick’s dad points out that flamingos in Africa are pink and “at least half” are boys. Tired of being teased, Patrick swims to Africa and tries, unsuccessfully, to fit in with the friendly flamingos. Returning home, he is welcomed and respected for his adventure, and happily resigns himself to being forever pink: “Being different wasn’t so bad after all.” Although Chamberlain’s comical illustrations suit the exclamatory tone of the text, the book is loud and busy. Blurring a retro message about gender coding with a lesson about “difference,” the story fails to inspire sympathy for Patrick or offer solace to kids who might share Patrick’s feelings. Design choices don’t help; the erratic placement of text turns many pages into a jumble of words fighting for space with the images. Ages 4–8. (Jan.)

The huge lenticular cover image of pitcher Sandy Koufax in action makes this book hard to ignore; Winter’s fan-in-the-stands-style prose and Carrilho’s high-impact, editorial-style images make it hard to forget. Neither author nor artist “explain” the famously self-contained 1960s Dodgers pitcher (“Just when you were startin’ to understand him, he’d haul off and throw you a curve,” says the anonymous former teammate who serves as narrator). Instead, they capture what it feels like to be in the presence of an exemplary athlete. The obstacles that Sandy Koufax faced—physical limitations; anti-Semitism (“Some of the guys said some pretty lousy things behind his back—things I can’t repeat”)—are portrayed with zero sentiment; readers will root for Koufax because he is an engine of pure action. Debut artist Carrilho, offering texturally complex, digitally manipulated pencil drawings, has a bold, arresting aesthetic: while his harsh shadows, distorted perspectives and angular faces speak of a hardboiled reality, the baseball field itself is a storied place, rendered not in green but gold. Koufax becomes a figure of totemic strength, his eyes narrowing to black slits underneath bushy eyebrows, his body twisting as he delivers the perfect pitch. Not just a home run, this book is a grand slam. Ages 4–9. (Feb.)

Putting his powers of visual explanation to the test, Talbott (United Tweets of America) presents a staggering amount of information about the Hudson River without ever overwhelming or confusing readers. A series of watercolor spreads, unified by the image of the river flowing across each one, traces the Hudson’s role in the colonization of New York, the Revolution, the era of steamboats, the building of the Erie Canal; its fate as railroads eclipsed shipping’s importance; its environmental degradation; and its rebirth. The image of the river often doubles as a timeline, helping to organize the information and make room for extra details. Side tours explore the river’s literary and artistic history. Striking trompe l’oeil devices enliven many of Talbott’s paintings; on one page, a locomotive appears to hurtle “full steam ahead” through a bucolic river scene toward the viewer, a terrific visual pun on the railroad’s social and economic effects. Talbott makes good use of irony (the Native Americans’ stewardship of the Hudson River Valley “was great while it lasted”), but does not avoid emotion (immigrants at Ellis Island represent “another river.... a river of dreamers”). Ages 6–8. (Jan.)

Socially awkward children take heart: in his boyhood, the father of our country, says Rockwell (They Called Her Molly Pitcher), “wasn’t afraid of bears, or wolves, or the native hunters with bows and arrows... of anything, except making conversation.” Her adulatory biography offers plenty for contemporary kids to connect with: her George Washington has a temper, dislikes the blood and gore of the battlefield and, even as a general, is the first to start digging trenches. But it’s Phelan’s (Very Hairy Bear) extraordinary artwork that cements the bond with readers. As his pencil-and-gouache scenes review the events of Washington’s life up to the presidency, his scenes bristle with immediacy, dramatic tension and emotional insight. His fluid pictures impart the sense of vivid memories being conjured up, of history being re-lived in all its urgency and telling details. Audiences accustomed to visualizing Washington as the sphinx-like figure on the dollar bill will find Phelan’s dashing, steely portrait nothing short of revelatory. Ages 6–9. (Jan.)

Hopkinson’s (Sweet Land of Liberty) tribute to Matthew Henson, the African-American explorer credited as being the “co-discoverer” (along with Admiral Robert Peary) of the North Pole in 1909, retells a story gaining traction among picture-book publishers, adding a few welcome embellishments. Henson’s own descriptions of the pristine landscape and the Inuit people, who teach him about the “harsh, cold north,” are peppered throughout Hopkinson’s sturdy prose, while Alcorn’s (Yours for Justice, Ida B. Wells) characteristically stylized illustrations range from images of classic Americana to organic figures in motion against collage-like backdrops of wild weather. In one detail, sled dogs run skyward, like Santa’s reindeer, past what we can assume to be northern lights; elsewhere, wind gusts against the explorers in curling, curving lines. Though Henson emerges as idealized, Hopkinson’s description of him as “experienced, resourceful, brave” comes across as well deserved. Ages 6–10. (Jan.)

As the in-your-face title implies, the poems in Janeczko and Raschka’s collection (following their A Kick in the Head) are not complacent, although plenty are funny and some are familiar, like the irresistible “Jabberwocky” and the singsong chanting of Macbeth’s witches. Punchy collages flutter across airy white pages in loose visual arrangements; torn scraps of origami paper layer with fluid lines in tart color. Janeczko introduces the collection with the idea that “Poetry is sound,” a pleasure to vocalize and memorize. “If you’ve never read a poem to somebody, you don’t know what you’re missing,” he promises, and ebullient choices like Avis Hartley’s “Come, drum! Sound out the day!” reinforce his exhortation. All the pieces have an edge, from Janet S. Wong’s uncomfortable “Speak Up”—whose “American” speaker wants an Asian American to “say something Korean”—to Charles Follen Adams’s “An Orthographic Lament,” reflecting that unusual spellings are enough to make a person “commit Sioux-eye-sighed.” Two poems from bilingual authors appear side-by-side in English/Spanish comparisons. By the time the volume closes with Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” readers will be emboldened to join in the “song.” Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

Inventive, complicated collages and well-crafted poems focus on the activities of working people in this eye-catching book. With an observant eye, Zimmer (Sketches from a Spy Tree) captures different individuals performing work with “steady hands.” She details the “flap/ roll/ flap” of the baker kneading dough or the way a clerk performs “a ballet/ of hands” as she sorts, scans and bags groceries. Sometimes she gives the worker a backstory or views him after hours—a former lawyer prefers “the predictable company of dogs” and becomes a dog walker, while the exterminator doesn’t mind the guys at the bowling alley “calling him Roach.” Halsey and Addy’s (Amelia to Zora) hip collages combine individual cut-outs of people along with drawings, photos, textured backgrounds and designs. The aspiring filmmaker pops out of a box of movie popcorn while the tow-truck driver “fishes in the city,” literally reeling in cars. The sophisticated look should generate plenty of interest from the target audience. Ages 9–12. (Feb.)

Catanese (the Further Tales Adventures) dazzles in the first of the planned Books of Umber series by wittily subverting genre tropes. Happenstance, a boy with strange green eyes, wakes up in a cave with no memories of who he is or anything about the fantastic world in which he lives. He soon encounters Lord Umber, an adventurer who seems familiar with our world as well as his own, and his two companions—a brute cursed to be forever truthful and a one-handed artist and archer. En route to Umber’s home, they discover that Hap can see in the dark, leap many feet in the air, speak numerous languages and go without sleep. As the group attempts to learn about his origins, they’re forced to confront a supernatural assassin and secrets from Umber’s own mysterious past. Catanese packs a lot into the book: rich characterizations (Umber, who turns out to be from another dimension, suffers from depression and wishes he had his meds), well-choreographed action sequences and genuinely surprising twists at the end. As auspicious start to the series. Ages 8-12. (Jan.)

In British illustrator Cockcroft’s promising first novel, Nathan Cobbe copes as best he can with the death of his mother, hit by a bus a year earlier. But his father, Henry, will do whatever it takes to prevent her from dying, even if that means traveling back in time. Focusing less on Henry and more on Nathan’s experiences, the book successfully avoids explaining the mechanics of Henry’s time-travel, details not as important as the chaos he creates. A mysterious Beefeater appears as a kind of guide for Nathan, who eventually gets drawn into the alternate realities engendered by Henry’s actions. Humorous motifs (a dog that can be placated only by bubble gum, news reports about an Esperanto-speaking mule, etc.) leaven the situation, and Nathan himself invites readers’ steady attention: he responds realistically to the strange events, asking insightful questions and making understandable mistakes. The powerful messages—the need to accept the hand we’re dealt and not to let time slip by—mix enticingly with the lightly introduced philosophical and scientific concepts. Ages 10–up. (Feb.)

Artfully crafted characters form the heart of Stork’s (The Way of the Jaguar) judicious novel. Marcelo Sandoval, a 17-year-old with an Asperger’s-like condition, has arranged a job caring for ponies at his special school’s therapeutic-riding stables. But he is forced to exit his comfort zone when his high-powered father steers Marcelo to work in his law firm’s mailroom (in return, Marcelo can decide whether to stay in special ed, as he prefers, or be mainstreamed for his senior year). Narrating with characteristically flat inflections and frequently forgetting to use the first person, Marcelo manifests his anomalies: he harbors an obsession with religion (he regularly meets with a plainspoken female rabbi, though he’s not Jewish); hears “internal” music; and sleeps in a tree house. Readers enter his private world as he navigates the unfamiliar realm of menial tasks and office politics with the ingenuity of a child, his voice never straying from authenticity even as the summer strips away some of his differences. Stork introduces ethical dilemmas, the possibility of love, and other “real world” conflicts, all the while preserving the integrity of his characterizations and intensifying the novel’s psychological and emotional stakes. Not to be missed. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)

A romance involving a high school girl and a handsome vampire may sound a little too familiar, yet this first novel quickly bursts ahead of the pack of Twilight-wannabes. Down-to-earth mathlete Jessica Packwood is completely horrified when, a few months shy of her 18th birthday, a Romanian named Lucius Vladescu shows up on her doorstep, claiming that he and she are vampire royalty betrothed to each other since infancy—what’s worse, her adoptive parents verify the betrothal story and explain that her birth parents identified themselves as vampires, too. Fantaskey makes this premise work by playing up its absurdities without laughing at them, endowing Jessica with a coolly ironic sensibility and Lucius with old-world snobberies that Jessica’s girlfriends find irresistible. Jessica’s laidback parents serve as foils for imperious Lucius (“Can I ever again be happy in our soaring Gothic castle after walking the halls of Woodrow Wilson High School, a literal ode to linoleum?” he asks sarcastically); a scene at a steakhouse where the vegan Packwoods meet the carnivorous Vladescus is first-rate comedy. The romance sizzles, the plot develops ingeniously and suspensefully, and the satire sings. Ages 14–up. (Feb.)

Its Day in Court

The final incarnation of a book at the center of a headline-grabbing suit for copyright infringement brought by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. Entertainment, is, as its introduction states, “mindful of the guidelines of the court,” which ruled in Rowling’s favor in 2008.

If ever a book were to test the truism that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, it may be this one: an A–Z encyclopedic guide to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe, based on a popular Web site created by Vander Ark in 2000, and the center of high-profile litigation. That case settled, the question now becomes online Lexicon v. print.

Vander Ark has taken pains not to use Rowling’s “unique expressions,” as the introduction calls that writer’s words (for example, the book’s readers learn that doxies “have a poisonous bite”; users of the Lexicon Web site find that doxies “have sharp venomous teeth,” plus a reference to Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). Commentary unique to the volume follows many entries (one complaint at trial was that the proposed Lexicon reorganized Rowling’s material without adding much information); these range from etymologies to pedestrian analyses (of Harry’s reliance on the “Expelliarmus” spell versus Voldemort’s on the Killing Curse: “In the end, J.K. Rowling writes Harry as a person not of violence and murder, but of compassion and mercy—of love”). The Lexicon Web site still exists as a comprehensive, updated—and free—resource; while the print edition does differ in its content, its advantages are hard to discern. (Jan.)