Children's Book Reviews: Week of 2/2/2009

A sure-fire hit for Mother's Day, this elegantly designed book pairs a series of poems with stunning illustrations to celebrate the bond between mothers and sons. Identical in structure, each beginning with “Mama says,” the poems appear in English as well as another language (among these are Cherokee, Danish, Hebrew and Inuktitut). The verses are prosaic (“Mama says/ To be on time/ Mama says/ Be neat/ Mama says/ To walk with pride/ And never drag my feet”)—but only until the Caldecott Medal–winning Dillons create a greater context for them; in this case, they picture an African-American mother solemnly looking on as her son, carrying schoolbooks, stoically walks past angry white protestors. The illustrations, two per poem, are well-researched and lavish, showing mothers in traditional dress lovingly engaged with their sons. A visual notation connects each entry with a glossary of languages in the back. Even with the inclusion of very general religious precepts, the Dillons' breathtaking paintings and the quiet dignity of the poems merit a wide audience. All ages. (Apr.)

Old-Auntie the hen, endlessly patient, marvelously kind, helps Little Chick deal with frustration in three stories. As depicted in Jeram's (Guess How Much I Love You) watercolor washes, Old-Auntie's feathered bulk dwarfs Little Chick, and her gestures—holding Little Chick between her wings for a kiss, bending down to peer at her when she's discouraged—are infused with tenderness. Old-Auntie helps Little Chick deal with her eagerness to harvest the carrot she planted; helps Little Chick endure the long wait until her kite finally flies; and assures Little Chick that the star in the night sky that she wants is better off staying just where it is (“I'm afraid the sky just wouldn't be the same without your star,” she says, her big feathery wing looped through Little Chick's spindly one). Hest's (Kiss Good Night) light humor and Jeram's visual charm work as harmoniously together as Little Chick and Old-Auntie themselves. Ages 2–up. (Mar.)

Lewis (Good Night, Harry) focuses on the artwork in this story, which is set into motion when the words “It's time for us to go home” send ducklings Henry and Seymour scampering in the opposite direction. Patient work with colored pencil and chalk produces densely textured areas of pondside plant life: leaves look velvety, or long and sharp and stiff, or lettuce-like. Depicted as toys, Seymour and Henry have button eyes, fuzzy topknots, overstuffed yellow bodies and enormous orange feet. The way the two crumple up when they tumble down hills (“Slippy-slidey-bump”) or shuffle into tight spaces will delight an audience of children just starting to follow a book-length story. Ages 2–up. (Feb.)

Like her Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, Fox's newest has all the marks of a lap-sit classic. In mellifluous motherese, the narrator poses a series of playful questions to a baby: “Are you a monkey with clever toes?/ Perhaps you're a porcupine, twitching its nose.” After 11 more such guesses (featuring such animal faves as the gecko, the hippo and the warthog), the narrator finally gets it right: “Wait, let me guess—Are you my treasure? The answer is... Yes!” While Fox is cooing as only she can, Jenkins (What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?) works his usual magic with cut paper. In many of his large-scale closeups—the images spill across and off the spreads—his subjects' big, expressive eyes seem locked in a gaze with the reader. Ingeniously stylized shapes (like the coils of gray paper that form an elephant's trunk) combine with sumptuous detailing that brings alive the parade of scales, fur and feathers. Ages 3–5. (May)

Johnson and Michelin (Zuzu's Wishing Cake) collaborate on this ethereal addition to Johnson's Henry series, based on Thoreau's writing. Henry the bear explores the nighttime forest, tracking an elusive whippoorwill and capturing, then freeing, fireflies and tadpoles in a glass jar. Henry begins his evening in a beech tree overlooking a dim town square. As the village bell tolls nine, he eagerly descends: “I stride off into the woods toward the rising moon.... The bird calls me to follow.” Henry's observations appear on gray-green paper scraps, superimposed on luminous images of moonlit fields and woodlands. Although Henry is alone, Johnson's blurred pictures—in fuzzy-edged shades of lichen, periwinkle and purple—convey lush silence without menace. Even when rain drenches Henry and he stumbles (“Brambles grab my hat.... Owl, I ask, am I lost?”), the resourceful bear builds a raft and pushes home through thick fog. The wilderness gives way to a cloudy, golden dreamscape with the North Star as a reference point, implying that Henry never rambled and merely fell asleep in his beech-tree perch. Despite this evasive conclusion, the naturalist's energetic curiosity for flora and fauna remains intact. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)

Who would be nuts enough to pass up a piece of chocolate birthday cake–with blue frosting roses, yet? But a stray kitten found by Leo seems to possess all the maddening intransigence of Bartleby the Scrivener. It never occurs to Leo or the adults in his tight-knit urban community that cats and cake don't mix. Instead, everyone offers Leo advice based on the parental cajoling and nagging they heard as picky-eater kids long ago—all of which is channeled by Leo to great comic effect. “It took me two hours to bake this cake, and another hour to do the frosting roses,” he kvetches to Sugar, after Jimmy the coffee-cart guy suggests a guilt trip: “All that, and now you're not interested?” While Sugar's lack of affect is well served by Potter's (The Boy Who Loved Words) flat, naïf style, the Diane Arbus–styled characters, coupled with Jenkins's (Toys Go Out) poker-faced ironies, may not play to mainstream tastes. For readers who like their humor on the wry side, however, Leo's exercise should make a precise and highly satisfying hit on the funny bone. Ages 4–8. (May)

In identical foxholes, two identical soldiers in khaki uniforms wait to destroy each other. “Every morning, I shoot at him. Then he shoots at me,” says one. When he and his enemy both light fires or suffer in the rain, the speaker does not consider their shared hunger and misery. Instead, he consults a manual with a blood-red cover that pits him against “a wild beast... not a human being.” When he desperately disguises himself as a shrub to ambush his foe, observant readers notice that a passing “lion” is his equally tired rival, going AWOL. Cali and Bloch (previously paired for I Can't Wait) establish an absurd waiting game worthy of Beckett. Bloch pairs pen-and-ink cartoons with collage elements like family photos, and gives readers a bird's-eye view from which to observe the men's similarities. The point will not be lost on readers. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)

Stylized, animation-style drawings emphasize the cartoon aspects of a fast-paced story. Meng (The Wonderful Thing About Hiccups) has fun with Penny, Polly and Molly, three free-spirited chicks who rile the rest of the barnyard with their unchickenlike ways (they don't preen, peck or cluck, and they rope roosters and peer under the hood of the farmer's tractor). Of course they save the day when the tractor's brakes fail and it heads straight for the barnyard. Suber (Milo the Really Big Bunny) excels at the cinematic portrayal of rapid movement: fence-posts shatter and the tractor gets some air as it hurtles toward the animals. There's little nuance: the animals are caricatures, with googly eyes and goofy grins, and the paisley-shaped chicks are distinguishable only by their decorative feathers. Kids will have fun with this story. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)

An escape from a burning White House opens this picture-book biography on a thrilling note. Unfortunately, the attention-grabbing anecdote soon yields to a more predictable parade of dates and facts about America's fourth president and his equally famous wife: “Dolley was born May 20, 1768, on a farm in New Garden, North Carolina. She was the third of nine children.... Future president James Monroe later described her as a tomboy.” Following the pair from their birth dates and courtship to their achievements as a political power couple, the narrative is concise and accurate, but falls short of bringing these historical figures to life. Himler (teamed with the father/son Adlers for A Picture Book of Samuel Adams) helps animate the story with his softly sketched illustrations, but their strength lies in evoking the dress, furnishings and architecture of the period. Ages 4–8. (Feb.)

Third-grader Abigail Iris describes herself as “a person who believes every second of the story counts”; this is good news for readers, who will enjoy her spirited narration. Part of an affectionate blended family beset by budget constraints, Abigail Iris envies the privileges enjoyed by her three best friends, none of whom have siblings. When Abigail Iris accompanies Genevieve on a trip to San Francisco, however, she gets a coveted taste of life on the other side. Glatt and Greenberg are spot-on in their observations, and although the story ends predictably, with Abigail Iris gaining a more balanced view of her situation, the message is softly delivered. B&w illus. Ages 7–10. (Mar.)

Animal lovers in particular will relate to Jukes's (Like Jake and Me) novel about a 12-year-old's move from rural Idaho to an old farmstead in California. Colton is sad about leaving his grandfather and moving further away from his rodeo-rider father. But his sorrow is compounded shortly after he and his mother settle into their home, when his beloved Maine Coon cat—a gift from his father—runs away. Colton is determined to find the cat, Smoke, but his search proves more dangerous than he anticipates, leading him into the path of a cougar or maybe even a ghost. Although the dialogue isn't always convincing, it may please cowboy fans: “I just got scared witless,” says Colton's father. “Scared to death you might have got drug off somewhere.” Colton's conflicts will be relevant to preteens who have struggled with unwelcome changes. Ages 8–12. (Mar.)

Drawing on centuries-old native lore, British author Llewellyn explores the mythical, now-sunken Lyonesse, the setting for the proto-legends of King Arthur. The people of Lyonesse have learned to keep their land afloat, in part by building machines, in part by reaching a truce with the monsters that swim in its bottomless wells—or so 11-year-old Idris (the Arthur figure) thinks. But when Idris turns out to be a Cross (with both monster and human forebears), he learns deadlier truths. Realizing that he can hear the thoughts of both monsters and men, he concludes that neither are to be trusted—and before long he sees that he may play a crucial role in Lyonesse's destiny. Assuming readers can get past the misleading cover art, which features a particularly creepy, shark-toothed behemoth, those with a taste for Arthuriana will find Llewellyn's versions of such Camelot characters as Merlin and Morgan engrossing; more general fans of high fantasy will appreciate the imaginative world-building. Kids will need to read closely to follow the thickly layered plot through all of its turns; those who do will be eager for the planned sequel. Ages 9–12. (Feb.)

In MacDonald's (The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green) uneven, supernatural-themed novel for horse lovers, two eighth-graders learn to cope with mysterious powers. Although Frankie, the narrator, says he's “so normal it [makes] me sick,” he has occasional prophetic dreams that emphasize specific colors. When his dad signs him up to volunteer at the Hug a Horse Farm, he realizes that his current dream, which is red and features a horse and an accident, could be about one of his friends. He also encounters the school outcast, Maura-Lee, who sees people's emotions as colors. As the two begin to bond, they discover a secret linking their pasts. Frankie is likable enough as a boy-next-door type, and his conversations with parents and friends contain believable jokes and realistic arguments. But aside from Maura-Lee, few of the other characters show much personality. The eventual realization of Frankie's dream wraps up too neatly (and without much help from the heroes), but readers might forgive the lapse for the well-done riding scenes and rural imagery. Ages 10–14. (Mar.)

In this quick-paced sequel to The Night Tourist, Marsh returns readers, and her hero Jack Perdu, to the New York City underworld. In an effort to impress his classmate Cora, Jack takes her to the underworld, but heightened security leaves them without a return route. Jack and Cora dodge underworld authorities as they track down the civil engineer who may hold the key to their escape, while piecing together a mystery involving Euri, the ghost Jack befriended in the previous book (readers needn't have read it, as Marsh provides sufficient background). The hallmarks of The Night Tourist remain: the historical trivia and humor Marsh weaves through her text (ghosts at the Bloomingdale asylum learn the limbo, as part of their therapy), appearances by notable deceased figures (Emily Post, W.H. Auden) and the influence of Greek myth. (This story takes cues from the story of Persephone, in which the goddess is abducted by Hades and brought to the underworld.) Readers should be drawn in by the complex relationships between Marsh's protagonists and Jack's continuing existential struggles, caught between the worlds of the living and the dead. Ages 10–up. (Apr.)

Attempting to mix genetic modification and global warming with intense action sequences, Brindley (Amy Peppercorn: Beyond the Stars) bites off more than he can chew, sandwiching his novel around a heavy proscience, antireligion message. Ash has grown up among the ASPs (named for the “Admittance Strictly Prohibited” sign posted outside their camp), teens abandoned as small children who formed a primitive society based on surfing and vegetarianism. But when she is kidnapped and delivered into the wild, she must deal with warlike Raptors (mutants possessed of sharp claws) and peace-loving Rodents (also mutated from humans). The nearly nonstop action doesn't hide awkward writing: “You are mine to destroy and devour”—that's Ash somehow understanding a look from a Raptor who doesn't share her facial features. A subplot emerging in the final sections that features antievolution religious zealots further destabilizes the story. Ages 12–18. (Mar.)

Alternating among the perspectives of three girls at an urban high school, Williams-Garcia (Like Sisters on the Homefront) shows once again her uncanny ability to project unique voices. Benched by the basketball coach for her low grades, Dominique is trying to bite back her rage when “some stupid little flit comes skipping down B corridor like the Easter Bunny.... Skipping. In all that pink” and walks between Dominique and her “girls,” “like she don't see I'm here and all the space around me is mines.” That's it—Dominique vows to “kick her ass” at exactly 2:45. Her intended victim, Trina—already full of herself over her looks, and pumped up because she's about to hang her latest masterpiece of art in a hallway)—does not hear, but Leticia does, and she can't wait to tell her best friend (“That would be something to see.... Trina getting stomped on school grounds”). And when Leticia's friend argues that Leticia ought to warn Trina, the plot quickens rather than taking a simple path around should-she/shouldn't-she. So well observed that the characters seem to leap off the page, the novel leaves a strong and lingering impact. Ages 12–up. (Mar.)

Based on the 1899 lynching of five Italian immigrants, this thought-provoking book draws its power from vivid depictions of late–19th-century Louisiana and little-known historical facts. Settled in smalltown Tallulah, 14-year-old Calogero and a handful of other Sicilian immigrants find themselves isolated: by law they are not “white,” but white people discourage them from mixing with Negroes (the sheriff, forbidding Calogero to attend the town school, advises him that he'd be better off uneducated than attending the Negroes' school). But social pressure doesn't keep Calogero from a budding romance with smart, pretty Patricia, even after he's almost beaten up for “fraternizing with them cotton pickers.” Napoli (Hush) sketches out some economic and political roots of racism as the white citizens' resentment of the Sicilians builds. While the author leaves some seams showing in her attempt to incorporate background information, her protagonists are convincingly vulnerable, and the violent climax will ensure that readers remember her message. Ages 12–up. (Mar.)

Mary's village has been trapped for generations by a very near, very visible menace: the Unconsecrated—insatiable, flesh-eating zombies that constantly tear at the village's fences. Yet the Sisterhood—a conventlike order of religious women charged to protect the village's survival—is as much responsible for the submission of Mary's village as the Unconsecrated. When the fences are breached and the village overrun, Mary and several others escape through gated paths and arrive deep into the Forest of Hands and Teeth, forced to search beyond it for their future. Mary's observant, careful narration pulls readers into a bleak but gripping story of survival and the endless capacity of humanity to persevere. That Mary maintains emotional distance serves to render her yearnings and romantic feelings even more poignant and powerful. Fresh and riveting. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)

This comprehensive biography–plus–activity book on the famed magician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries illuminates nearly as much about the era as about Harry Houdini. Supplying sidebars on such topics as vaudeville, Ouija boards and the Wright Brothers, Carlson (More than Moccasins) puts Houdini's career squarely in context. Her writing is detailed but conversational as she offers engrossing facts and tidbits: Houdini also worked as a spy, movie actor and stuntman, and ground-breaking aviator; his wife and performing partner once saved Buster Keaton from a fire. Readers will come away viewing Houdini as much a product of his time as of his own wits and making. The narrative seems dauntingly long, but is interspersed with explanations and diagrams of magic tricks, b&w photos and ephemera, and imaginatively chosen, decorative line art. The magic tricks are clearly explained and easy to do: make a Magic Box (it has a trick bottom) out of milk cartons, secretly pass messages to a partner, etc.; some activities reinforce the science behind many of Houdini's tricks. Ages 9–up. (Feb.)

In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks triggered the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., by refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a 15-year-old Montgomery girl, Claudette Colvin, let herself be arrested and dragged off the bus for the same reason; in 1956, Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, a landmark case in which Montgomery's segregated bus system was declared unconstitutional. Investigating Colvin's actions, asking why Rosa Parks's role has overshadowed Colvin's, Hoose (We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History) introduces readers to a resolute and courageous teenager and explores the politics of the NAACP and bus-boycott leadership. Because Colvin had been tearful in the period following her 1955 conviction, when her classmates shunned her, she was deemed too “emotional” to place at the center of the bus boycott; by the time Parks assumed that position, Colvin was disgraced: pregnant but not married. Hoose's evenhanded account investigates Colvin's motives and influences, and carefully establishes the historical context so that readers can appreciate both Colvin's maturity and bravery and the boycott leadership's pragmatism. Illus. with b&w photos. Ages 10–up. (Feb.)