Children's Book Reviews

This welcome sequel to the Caldecott Medal title The Hello, Goodbye Window knowingly describes a child's conflicting personalities. “Sometimes I'm Sourpuss,” a multiracial girl admits. “And sometimes I'm Sweetie Pie.” Her grandparents, Poppy and Nanna, accept her dueling dispositions, but when she visits they like to know whom to expect. “Poppy, it's me, Sweetie Pie,” she promises, keeping her alter ego at bay. She does acknowledge her mercurial moods (“Sometimes you can go from Sourpuss to Sweetie Pie so quick,” she admits, in a six-stage Hyde to Jekyll transformation), and her grandparents gently tease her (“Pleasant dreams, girls,” they joke at bedtime). Both the sunny moments and the tantrums will ring true for readers of any age. Raschka (see Peter and the Wolf, below) devises competing motifs of light daubs and glowering smears, pairing Sweetie Pie's upbeat sky blue, gold, cantaloupe and pink with Sourpuss's grumpy scarlet, mucky green and purple-blue. Sweetie Pie's balletic, floaty postures contrast with Sourpuss's dramatic scowls and defiant stances; the two personas appear virtually side by side for maximum effect. A keeper. All ages. (Oct.)

As in his interpretation of John Coltrane in Giant Steps, Raschka now turns Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf into poetry and pictures. The illustrations present the story as a theatrical performance (action unfolds alternately in freestanding illustrations and on an elaborate stage), but without an orchestra. As Peter cavorts, calmly but boldly opening himself to the climactic encounter with the wolf, Raschka conveys the mounting suspense in lilting words, swerving zigzags and curves. Carefree Peter is supported by an animal chorus in sound poetry, including a blue bird who speaks in stutters and rhyme, and of course the predator, who swallows the duck with a panting, “Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme... GULP!” Raschka's pictures—of characters venturing close to the wolf's bear-trap jaws, of the cat's enormous face looming over a tiny Peter—gain extra energy from geometrically shaped color blocks on the same spreads; each character is assigned a certain spectrum—e.g., red for the wolf—like the solo instruments in Prokofiev. His book best rewards patient readers capable of linking the continuous dialogue and amped-up visuals in the action spreads with scenes viewed within a complex, 3D cut-paper theater. One reading will not be enough to appreciate the artist's keen attention to detail. Ages 3–7. (Oct.)

This most recent picture book about a 2008 presidential candidate (see Reviews, Aug. 11 for more books on the subject) could serve as an object lesson in haste: the publisher has said that Winter (Frida) turned the text around in two weeks and, unfortunately, it shows. Known for his clarity and lively prose, the author punctuates this biography with clichés. Barack Obama's life is framed as a “journey” through a complicated childhood to “unimaginable heights” (Winter doesn't specify those heights until an endnote, which centers on Obama's presidential campaign). At first Winter depends heavily on existential questions (“Where do I belong?” “Who am I?”), but these are poorly suited to the target audience, and some of his answers are glib. For example, discussing Obama's biracial background, he writes: “So what did that make Obama? For Caucasians, it simply made him 'black.' For some African Americans, though, it made him less African American.” Debut artist Ford deserves credit for executing more than 20 paintings in only months; however, his figures are often distorted or strained. Ages 4–7. (Oct.)

Newbery Medalist DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux) joins forces with the formidably talented Bliss (Diary of a Worm) for a series of ripping yarns about a chicken who just can't stay down on the farm. By the time the book reaches its fourth and final chapter (and that word is used more to evoke the book's swashbuckling scale than to indicate a preponderance of text), the indomitable Louise has seen it all and done it all, from escaping pirates on storm-tossed high seas to joining the circus—and she's been envisioned as a tasty dish by just about everyone. Not surprisingly, while Louise relishes her wanderlust, she also experiences Weltschmerz —here's the hen contemplating the circus: “Safe in a clown's wig, hidden beneath his hat, Louise thought of the henhouse and what a quiet, spectacularly lion-free place it was.” DiCamillo's brisk, comic narrative crackles with read-aloud savoriness, and her respect for Louise makes the book all the funnier. And where lesser artists might have packed lots of visual nudge-nudges, Bliss creates a thrilling sense of place and puts his wide-eyed heroine front and center. An enlarged format does justice to the details in the art—and to the grand sweep of the storytelling. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Set in an anonymous kingdom of long ago, Strauss's (A Fairy Called Hilary) tale satisfyingly combines favorite story elements. When Hanna's tailor father enters a competition to sew the princess's wedding dress, the stakes are high: if he wins, he becomes embroiderer to the princess; if he loses, the family goes to the poorhouse. Family tradition dictates that each member put at least one stitch into every garment crafted in their workroom, and after Hanna's turn, she notices a tiny stain. Her daring, creative solution for fixing it—so clever, but so risky—will have readers of all ages holding their breaths. Laugesen's (The Blessing Box) animation-style illustrations—aerial and long-distance views mingled with closeups of wide-eyed faces—are rendered in oil crayon and linseed oil on colored paper, creating a nearly tangible, saturated texture. Presented in a consistent layout—a framed full-page image bleeding onto half of the facing page, alternating from left to right—the pictures keep step with the well-paced tale. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

In his first children's book, Farooqi (translator of the Indo-Persian epic The Adventures of Amir Hamza) spins a dainty, droll fable about fashionable insects. A deadpan narrator explains, “The closets in ants' houses were once full of shoes,” then launches into an equation that will make readers giddy: one ant having six feet to needing three pairs per occasion to having at least five occasions means “in short, thirty shoes. All this for one ant alone.” From this math-rich premise, Farooqi builds scenarios ripe with comedy, including quarrel-filled “after-party shoe searches.” Then the cobbler, made rich by the ants' fondness for footwear, abruptly retires, and how are his clients to fill the breach? Yelchin (Who Ate All the Cookie Dough?) contributes decorative initial caps and a modish Jazz Age aesthetic; his spiky-looking ant flappers and dandies sport ritzy top hats and beaded caps, tailored and fur-collared coats, monocles and, of course, elaborate footwear. White negative space, framed in a pencil-thin line, leaves the glamorous setting for readers to visualize and lets them focus instead on the fruits of Yelchin's abundant imagination. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Priceman (How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World) fires up the oven for another fanciful baking–cum–geography lesson. Her aspiring young pastry chef, jaunty pinafore and straw hat in place, embarks on a nationwide search for utensils as well as ingredients when she finds the local cook shop closed. First stop, New York, for a taxi ride to “the corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio”; “Then find the closest coal mine” (used to make steel, and thus a pie pan). Ship, plane, train and bus are among the other modes of transport that carry our heroine from sea to shining sea and beyond, to Alaska and Hawaii, landing her home for pie preparation on the Fourth of July. Like a series of playful postcards, the gouache scenes feature recognizable landmarks (Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, oil wells), with the girl's loyal Airedale in on the action, too. Fans of the first book will cotton to this second helping, even though it's slightly less spontaneous. And the pie recipe is a welcome extra. Ages 5–8. (Oct.)

Sukkot is one of those Jewish holidays that never get a fair shake, literary-wise. But Kimmel and Krenina (previously paired for The Castle of the Cats) go a long way toward remedying this situation with a lyrically rendered tale of charity rewarded. In ancient times, two brothers—stingy, rich Eben and generous, poor Ezra—are each dwelling in a temporary shelter known as a sukkah, as is customary during the seven-day celebration. A disheveled-looking trio, who are actually Abraham, Isaac and Jacob down from heaven in search of a few good menschen, visit the brothers in turn, testing their hospitality, offering parables and pronouncing judgment with a phrase—“May this sukkah's outside be like its inside”—which quickly proves to have a double meaning. Krenina's stylized, harvest-toned acrylics and thoughtful, dark-eyed characters evoke a world where the everyday and mystical are intertwined, and righteousness is clear-cut. As usual, Kimmel takes an expansive, grandfatherly tone, offering a lesson wrapped in a reassuring hug. Ages 6–10. (Sept.)

Stone (Elizabeth Leads the Way) gives top billing to a minor but well-chosen aspect of Alexander (Sandy) Calder's distinguished career in a biography that kids can easily connect with. Her Sandy has not yet invented the mobile, but has combined a documented love of making things with a two-week stint drawing the Ringling Brothers circus for a New York paper: the next year, 1926, in Paris, his circus of miniature moveable performers is born. The author gracefully communicates the artist's resourcefulness and sense of play: “His huge hands worked with tiny pieces of wire, cork, cloth, buttons, yarn.... He twisted and shaped and curled and cut and curved until... Sandy was ready to put on a big-top circus show!” Kulikov (Fartiste) experiments with proportion and scale. Elements are often shown in black-and-white, as if sketched out and superimposed on full-color paintings. Spreads bring readers eye to eye with diminutive circus actors as Calder's gargantuan-seeming hands reach out from the shadows to control them. A classical muse, paint palette in hand, floats over scenes of a giant, suitcase-toting Calder tromping between the shrunken black-and-white skylines of Paris and New York City. Suggestive of Calder's whimsy. Ages 6–up. (Sept.)

The premise of Margolis's (Fix) effervescent story—a girl uses the techniques from a dog-training manual on boys—has been seen before (e.g., Sandra Dee in If a Man Answers), but rarely has it been so well grounded and developed. Right before the start of sixth grade, Annabelle returns from sleepaway camp to move into the house that her single mother and her mother's sensitive if geeky boyfriend have just set up. Their surprise gift of a puppy, Annabelle realizes, is their attempt to “bribe” her into liking the new arrangements, but she loves the puppy anyway. School, on the other hand, is a battleground, especially because it's Annabelle's first time going coed. Margolis gets the details of middle-school boy behavior just right: the boy sitting behind Annabelle torments her with endless kicking; her two lab partners hog the equipment; others play keep-away with her homework. When Annabelle does connect the dots between puppy training and communicating with boys, her breakthroughs come across as genuine. The story lines—melded household, moving, boys as dogs—coalesce naturally, giving girl readers a thoughtful story along with, just possibly, some substantive boy advice. Ages 8–12. (Sept.)

This year's answer to 2007's Before I Die, this first novel written by a 23-year-old Brit likewise features a young narrator with incurable cancer—and, while it doesn't entirely escape the conventions of the dying-child novel, it skirts easy sentiment to confront the hard questions head-on, intelligently and realistically and with an enormous range of feeling. Sam, facing his third recurrence of leukemia at the age of 11, keeps a journal, and among his entries are facts, questions and lists: “Questions Nobody Answers No. 1 – How do you know that you've died?”; “True facts about coffins”; “Why does God make kids get ill?” Sam starts out with a buddy, another terminally ill boy who shares Sam's sense of humor and who with Sam is taught by a visiting teacher (“No dying at the table, Felix,” she tells him in the opening scene when he is mocking melodramatic portrayals of “the poor, frail child... struggling bravely”). How Sam and his family cope with Felix's death and Sam's own inevitable decline—ultimately, with humor, grace and generosity of spirit—will bring on tears; more impressively, it will also help readers address the hard questions for themselves. Ages 9–12. (Sept.)

The seventh-grader version of a Raymond Chandler PI, Matt Stevens coolly navigates the mean streets (okay, the mean hallways) of Franklin Middle School in a first novel with an ingenious premise: junior high noir. Matt's classmate, the once-bullied Vinny Biggio, commands a whole “organization,” complete with hit men, in this case boys and girls who use loaded squirt guns, stealth attacks and their peers' predictable responses (choruses of “Jimmy peed his pants!”) to ensure their targets' permanent and total ostracism. The plot has to do with the spectacular takedown of one Nicole Finnegan, aka Nikki Fingers, the school's most feared “trigger-girl,” that is, until her recent retirement from Vinny's operation. Just who ordered the hit on Nikki, and why? Twists and curve balls keep readers guessing; extended jokes like one about a petty thief's desperate need for cash (“On the surface, Peter was a happy-go-lucky model student, but underneath, he had a dirty little secret: He was a Pixy Stixer”) will keep them laughing. With crisp prose and surprisingly poignant moments, Ferraiolo's debut entertains on many levels. Ages 10–14. (Sept.)

Put two titans of kids' books together for the first time, and what do you get (besides the urge to shout, “What took you so long?”)? The answer: an instant classic. Fox's (Time for Bed) text works off the simplest premise: babies around the world, even those who seem like polar opposites, have the same 20 digits in common. But there's real magic at work here. Given their perfect cadences, the rhymes feel as if they always existed in our collective consciousness and were simply waiting to be written down: “There was one little baby who was born far away./ And another who was born on the very next day./ And both of these babies, as everyone knows/ had ten little fingers and ten little toes.” Oxenbury (We're Going on a Bear Hunt) once again makes multiculturalism feel utterly natural and chummy. As her global brood of toddlers grows—she introduces two cast members with every new stanza—readers can savor each addition both as beguiling individualist and giggly, bouncy co-conspirator. Ages 3–5. (Oct.)