Children's Book Reviews: Week of 3/24/2008

Watching his tousled-haired son navigate a typical day, a father wistfully reflects on boyhood's pleasures—especially the endless possibilities presented by a big cardboard box. McGhee (previously paired with Reynolds for Someday) uses William Carlos Williams's “The Red Wheelbarrow” as a jumping-off point for the hand-lettered text: “Little boy, so much depends on…/ your starship pajamas,/ that story about llamas,/ the way you don't worry,/ the way you won't hurry,/ and… your big cardboard box.” Keeping props to a minimum in his watercolor-and-ink vignettes, Reynolds portrays the young hero at full kid throttle. Confident, independent and inexhaustible, the boy turns the cardboard box into a pirate ship, a stepladder, a spaceman's costume and a crash pad. In short, he's the very definition of Everyboy—if the computer or TV set had never been invented. Those absences suggest that the book's appeal is a nostalgic one—and that the most appreciative audience may be former boys like Dad himself. All ages. (Apr.)

A raccoon mother shepherds her toddler son through his daily routine, all the while expounding upon how she'd like to make the world even more wonderful for her beloved child. Although it may seem cantankerous to hold maternal sentiments to the highest standards of logic, some of this mother's musings seem off-kilter: “If I could, I'd rouse the sun/and make it shine/ till day is done,” she declares—but the sun already does that anyway without Mom. It's a good thing, then, that Denise's (illustrator of the Redwall picture books) acrylic-and-charcoal vignettes possess such emotional vividness; they're a warm, more traditional relative of the work of Lynn Munsinger. Any quibbles with the text soon fade in the face of scenes like the one in which the mother raccoon takes a moment from preparing dinner to gaze with quiet adoration at her plump, furry offspring, who's happily banging away on a toy xylophone before an audience of old-fashioned stuffed toys. And the tiny verbal surprise at the end leaves parent and child readers basking in tenderness. Ages 2-6. (Apr.)

There are probably not enough synonyms for “cute” to cover this survey of hypothetical smooches between animal parents and offspring—not that there's anything wrong with that. Paul (Mañana, Iguana) notes that the book was inspired by a game she played with her youngest son, and her text exudes the affectionate silliness of a beloved bedtime ritual, complete with nonsense sounds (a parrot and chick's beak-to-beak buss is “klick-a-klack, klick-a-klack, klick-a-klack, kleek”). Walker (previously paired with Paul for Little Monkey Says Good Night) gets great emotional mileage from his rounded, stuffed toy–like shapes, velvety colors, and tiny dot eyes; the characters radiate unconditional love. There's a lot to go “Ahhhh” over (the lumpy posteriors of Papa Rhino and his calf are particularly endearing), but the most winning of the vignettes also serves as the book's running joke: the slo-mo kiss between a mama sloth and her cub. As they hang upside-down from a tree, in absolutely no hurry to part, their embrace is like the Energizer Bunny—it keeps going and going and going. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)

Hall, whose editorial portfolio includes covers for the New Yorker, makes an impressive picture book debut. As Mom imagines how a variety of professions would enable her to “do anything” for her baby (and his ever-present teddy bear), Hall's radiant, double-page watercolors showcase his gifts for dramatic sweep and comic telling detail. When Mom declares, “If I were a mountaineer, I would take you to the peak/ Of Everest and Fuji, a new summit every week,” Hall creates a stunning, top-of-the-world landscape, planting cartoon characters atop mountain peaks striated in translucent ribbons of navy, rose, purple and turquoise. When Mom fancies herself a headliner in a Hong Kong stadium rock show (her skirt is demure but her boots have stiletto heels), Hall gives Baby industrial-strength ear protectors and places a burly, glaring roadie at the edge of the stage to hold back the Deadhead-esque crowd. Every one of these wry but always inviting images buoys the sometimes clunky couplets by North (also making her debut), and lifts a familiar premise far above the ordinary. Ages 3-6. (Apr.)

In Lehman's (The Red Book) latest wordless fantasy, a young urban dweller's subway excursion with her family takes an unexpected turn. Much to the girl's surprise, the train magically arrives in an idyllic countryside, where it is flagged down by a tiny, toylike figure. Hopping off (all the grown-ups are dozing), the girl discovers a Lilliputian world in need of a hero: one of their number has crashed his propeller plane into a fruit tree. The girl neatly rescues the aviator, then hops back on the train home with no one the wiser. A horizontal format supports the train theme and reinforces the visual storytelling. As in Lehman's previous works, the crisp, clean drawings and comics-style framings generate visual momentum; the author knows when to give the big picture (literally) and when to break down the action into smaller steps. Kids should enjoy following this story to the very end of the line, where the surprise on the final spreads asks readers to reconsider what they've seen earlier; and it brings an element of mystery, or at least a playful challenge, to the way readers look at the world around them. Ages 4-8. (Apr.)

Slightly edgy, highly detailed comics-style art will have readers poring over the pages of Monroe's (illustrator of Totally Uncool) latest. Chico Bon Bon, a monkey, loves to build and fix things with his tools. An early picture of the monkey nonchalantly modeling his brilliantly complex tool belt, its contents neatly labeled on white space, gives a clue to the upcoming daffiness: “screwdriver/ nutdriver/ nutcracker/ squeegee/ ouija/ planer/ strainer/ grease container.” The story itself, a clichéd affair about an organ grinder who abducts Chico and Chico's subsequent use of his tools to escape, gets its oomph from the art. Laid out in panels, some numbered, some boxed; laid out in loops; arranged as vignettes; or composed like a maze, the illustrations command a reader's attention. Chico, looks sophisticated—he's a grown-up cousin of Julius the sock monkey. Look past the jacket; not only gadget jockeys will enjoy this visually polished tale. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)

Kids may well demand to be taken to the nearest passport office after finishing this light-as-a-soufflé salute to the City of Lights. On vacation with her parents (clearly well-heeled) and little brother, a girl embraces her role as tourist, savoring all the places where one can say “Bonjour”: On a barge trip down the Seine, at the top of the Tour Eiffel and Notre Dame, in a chic boutique—or, as Kimmelman (Dance, Sing, Remember) puts it in her economical text: “Doing chores./ Eating petits fours./ Everybody bonjours!” McMenemy's (Waggle) mixed-media images, mostly full-page scenes of classic locations, are a stylish yet timeless mélange of fauvist whimsy and affectionate reportage; the days are sunny, the flowers are in brilliant bloom, and every Parisian is smiling. A bubbly, illustrated afterward offers a soupçon of additional information on each of the sites that appear in the pages. Fantastique! Ages 5-8. (Apr.)

A worthy message does not redeem the forced storyline and flat illustrations in this book about two girls, one of whom is wheelchair-bound. On the first spreads, the narrator lists the ways she and her best friend, Sarah, are alike; both are seen only from the waist up until the narrator acknowledges, “We're different in one way—she uses a wheelchair./ She rolls and I walk when we want to go somewhere.” Rhymed couplets chronicle the story of their friendship, beginning with their first meeting: “I was so nervous, I stammered and stuttered./ I might say the wrong thing, I thought—so I muttered./ I wanted to get a good look at her chair,/ but I felt like a jerk, so I tried not to stare.” Then the narrator notices that Sarah is wearing a “Rock Hound” button and she “yelp[s] with delight!” as she also collects rocks. This episode prefigures a similarly strained scene with an ice cream vendor who ignores Sarah until she notices Sarah's “I (heart) my finches” button, whereupon she announces that she owns 20 birds and is instantly at ease. This book protests too much to convince anyone. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)

Reminiscent of Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks, this novel in verse shows how an inner-city community garden brings neighbors together. A series of poems written from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, Kate, traces the evolution of a littered vacant lot into the pride of the neighborhood. The transformation requires hard work, mostly from Berneetha, a retired teacher and dedicated gardener (“She's big./ She's round./ There's a lot of her” and she shows up to reclaim the plot “looking like the Fourth of July/ and it barely being May”). Others, touched by Barneetha's efforts, help, too, among them Harlan (at first Kate sees him as a “graffiti gangsta”), whose abusive father almost runs him down in his low-rider truck (and hits Berneetha's cat instead); Dr. Arockiasamy from the neighborhood clinic (“ 'Call me Chitra,' she says,/ surprising me, but why?/ Did I think her first name was 'doctor'?”), and a firefighter who comes up with a solution when the land is designated to become a parking garage. While the trajectory of Havill's (Jamaica's Find) plot is familiar, the target audience will hear the freshness in Kate's voice as she delivers a message of hope and resilience. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. (Apr.)

Set (barely noticeably) in 1973, this relatively straightforward fantasy showcases the beloved author's gift for characterization but not, sadly, her finest example of blending magic and realism. With a father confined to his bed with heart disease and an overworked mother, 12-year-old Audrey Abbott takes solace in writing. It's a testament to Snyder's (The Egypt Game; The Treasures of Weatherby) narrative skills that readers will be intrigued rather than doubtful when a large white duck appears, “almost as if [Audrey] had been expecting it,” and guides her to a cave, where she converses with a spooky presence manifested only by its voice. On a subsequent visit, Audrey receives a bronze pen, with instructions to “use it wisely and to good purpose.” The rest of the plot revolves around Audrey's gradual realization that the pen brings what it writes into being. The resolution leaves several loose ends (Just who or what is in the cave? Where does the bronze pen come from?), and the magic only occasionally feels fully integrated with the plight of Audrey's family. Ages 8-12. (Mar.)

There's no shortage of great writing in this collection of 10 stories. Baseball unifies the entries, but there the similarities end. From Jerry Spinelli's offbeat story about a “wiseacre wet-the-bed stinky-footed ” orphan experiencing his first-ever major league game to Frank Portman's amusing two-and-a-half second journey inside the mind of ill-fated fielder Mark Pang, these entries present an impressive array of voices and styles, not to mention memorable young characters. John H. Ritter introduces Frankie Alvarez, a larger-than-life pitcher who saves his team's championship victory, a sharp contrast to Paul Acampora's Jeffrey, who earns his mother's disgust when he fails to strike out a crucial batter; meanwhile, Sue Corbett's Kirby, neither the worst nor the best, learns from the only girl on the team: “Don't think. Just react.” Whether “baseball born and baseball raised” or tepid fans of America's pastime, readers will be drawn in by the masterful storytelling. Ages 8-up. (Mar.)

Although the jacket image shows a girl at a baseball stadium, Newbery Medalist Park's (A Single Shard) Korean War–era novel is best approached not as a sports story but as a powerful attempt to grapple with loss. Margaret Olivia Fontini, named after Joe DiMaggio (“Maggie-o, get it?”), loves Brooklyn's beloved but doomed Dodgers with a passion. When a new firemen arrives at her father's station wearing his allegiance to the arch-enemy Giants on his sleeve, Maggie keeps her distance until he teaches her how to score the game, a practice Maggie embraces with gusto, believing that recording every pitch and play might actually help Dem Bums finally win. And when Jim is drafted and sent to Korea, he and Maggie write, until Jim's letters abruptly stop. Park evokes the characters and settings with her customary skill and talent for detail; she shows unusual sensitivity in writing about war and the atrocity that, Maggie learns, has traumatized Jim into silence. Readers will be moved by Maggie's hard-earned revelation, that every instance of keeping score “had been a chance to hope for something good to happen,” and that “hope always comes first.” Ages 9-12. (Mar.)

Preller, author of the Jigsaw Jones mysteries, raises his game with this perceptive group portrait of boys who play Little League baseball. The structure couldn't be more hackneyed—a championship game with everything on the line—but Preller makes it fresh with insightful sketches of each member of the (underdog) Earl Grubb's Pool Supplies team. There's the coach's kid, Branden, who has baseball's “five tools,” plus one: he forgets failure immediately. The Sweeney twins are a study in contrasts: Eamon is “ninety-six pounds of stress,” while Colin speaks in quotes from baseball movies and jibes the opposing first baseman—“I'd love to chat, but I don't think I'll be hanging around for long”—before stealing second. Sam, sidelined by a tumor in his leg, calls the game from the press box, aching to play, while Patrick Wong, “the weakest gazelle in the herd,” prays from the infield: “Please, God in heaven, don't let them hit it to me.” The outcome is predictable but the journey is nailbitingly tense. Kids will be nodding in agreement at the truths laid bare. If Judy Blume could write a book about Little League, about its players' deepest fears and secret dreams, it might come out something like this. Ages 9-14. (Mar.)

Like a funny cousin of Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery (Reviews, Dec. 3, 2007), this Irish novel introduces a boy whose thinking runs on its own idiosyncratic track, in his case because he has synaesthesia. In the opening lines, narrator Olivia is explaining to her best friend that blue is a bad color for a kite: “Think about it.... Where does a kite spend its time?” Hal refuses to answer, and later counters that the kite must be blue because Friday is “a light pretty blue. With frills.” The exchange sets the stage for the type of logic—and the dynamic—that guide these two friends as they pull a mean prank on Alec, Hal's mother's live-in boyfriend—never guessing that Hal's mother is one step ahead of them the whole time, with a plan of her own to help Hal come to terms with his father's death years ago and with Alec's presence. Parkinson (Something Invisible) knows how to bring together the comic and heartbreaking without ever manipulating readers, and her characters have a full dose of humanity at their disposal. Memorable, wise and thoroughly entertaining. Ages 11-14. (Mar.)

Hood (The Knitting Circle; Comfort, Reviews, Feb. 25) may be most recently celebrated for her adult novel and her memoir about grief, but her first YA title is a pitch-perfect comedy. Her subject here is also painful—divorce—but the narrative voice is exquisitely if unwittingly funny while true to the perspective of a child. Eleven-year-old Madeline, who assures readers up front that she's “not even a religious person,” wants to become a saint. Why? She believes that her praying has miraculously saved her father from an avalanche, and with one more miracle she can fix the unintended consequences: her father has subsequently divorced her mother, moved to Manhattan, married a chic pastry chef named Ava Pomme and fathered a baby. Hood takes no shortcuts with any of her characters, allowing them to withstand Madeline's scorn or adulation in all their complexity. Rarely has divorce been shown so astutely from a child's point of view. Ages 11-up. (Apr.)

Gonzalez's (Wings) ne'er-do-well heroine, Jane, isn't as plain or boringly normal as she perceives herself to be. On the contrary, her quick wit and quirky personality win over readers almost immediately. As this entrancing novel follows her from elementary school into high school, Jane slowly but surely transforms from an apathetic slacker into an artistic free-thinker with a style all her own. If some of her growing pains seem familiar—her not-so-secret unrequited crush on a middle school heart-throb; being dumped by her high school boyfriend for a blonde über-sophisticate—Gonzalez has a gift for infusing them with clever details. That Jane pens short missives to her imaginary enemy, Bubba (short for Beelzebub), about what's wrong in her life is funny; that “Bubba” actually writes back, in hopes of meeting face to face, is even funnier, especially with the revelation of Bubba's true identity. Gonzalez brings the same wit to Jane's competitive yet affectionate relationships with her siblings and her eccentric neighbors, and to her burgeoning romance with the shy but steadfast boy next door. Readers will get a genuine kick out of Jane's fumblings and successes, both imaginary and real. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)