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Dazzle Ships: World War I and the Art of Confusion by Chris Barton and Victo Ngai - review

What's that coming through the water? Struck by the sun and reflections off the waves - what part of it is wake and what part ship? Which direction is it headed? Dazzle camouflage - the stripey, blocky, high-contrast brightly colored patterns designed to disrupt the visual processing of submarine crews - is one of the most improbable developments in the history of naval warfare. I mean, just look at this stuff:

 

    

Naturally, it caught the eye of author Chris Barton, about whom more later. But since we're talking about perception, let's appreciate this book from first impression to last, and what you'll probably notice first about this book is THIS ILLUSTRATOR. Sophisticated wavy lines weave and undulate like ribbons across the page, mimicking light on water, cloud shadows, wood grain, and billowing smoke. Colors have the startling power of a red sunset, a turquoise sky, but are never ever jarring.

 

This image is not from Dazzle Ships - clearly it's Life of Pi - but it gives you an idea of this artist's ability with water and movement, composition and line.

 

THIS is from Dazzle Ships. Look at the glare making the surface of the water opaque, but where it is in shadow, the submarine is revealed.

Then the story kicks in, and you may be blown away by the audacity of dazzle as an innovation. Instead of painting these ships with camouflage that duplicates natural colors and patterns, dazzle ships were high-contrast and largely geometric. Like giant floating carousel horses painted by Mondrian. Avant-garde drag queens of the sea. Warfare as imagined by Man Ray. And it's only after you've been distracted and dizzied by the art (which, don't let me out of here without performing some kind of obesiance to Victo Ngai - this is her first picture book but her editorial, product, cover, and advertising work demonstrates a breathtaking breadth of skill. I'm thinking of getting a new tattoo) and charmed by the improbable story of dazzle's inspiration and execution that you notice the confident and subtly playful writing.

 

So this is our Texas pal Chris Barton, whose zeal for primary research has brought us such original nonfiction as The Day-Glo Brothers and the award-winning Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions. Usually, children's nonfiction builds on or is inspired by nonfiction written for adults. Not here. If you wanted to write a paper about the invention of Day-Glo colors, Chris's book would be one of your best sources.

One thing you'll notice in truly true stories - and kids DEFINITELY notice this - is that they don't always follow the expected path. Chris is adept at riding the twists and turns of real stories rather than trying to force them into a happy-ending shape. When he encountered inconclusive evidence as to whether dazzle actually worked, it thwarted his ability to end the book on a predictable high note. "I admit that I was initially flummoxed when I realized that 'AND DAZZLE SHIPS WON THE WAR!!!' wasn't going to fly for the conclusion," he told me. Instead, in a passage that echoes the contradictory, mysterious nature of dazzle, he leaves it open-ended. Did dazzle make a difference? Maybe? But the sailors riding these giant floating cans across vast oceans, exposed to the sky and vulnerable to attack from below, must have been comforted by the effort that was taken to hide them in plain sight. It may have been handwavium, but by god it was EMPHATIC handwavium. Why would they do this weird thing if it doesn't work? 

Dazzle Ships is a rare and perfect example of a nonfiction picture book that informs and entertains and beguiles and enchants. Every facet of it reflects the audacious sleight-of-hand that characterized dazzle camouflage itself. 

 

Coming August 1 from Millbrook Press.

What do we think about the old guys? Some Writer and The Best Man - reviews

Guess what I'm doing? I'm kind of ridiculously excited - I'm participating in my first Mock Newbery! It's a bunch of grownups reading a whole bunch of kids' books that seem to be getting award buzz and then we're going to get together and eat snacks and argue about them! The books. Although maybe also the snacks.

If you live in Baltimore and this sounds like fun, give me a jingle. We're well underway, but we haven't had our first meeting yet, and we might be able to squeeze you in ;)

Some of the books on our list are Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk, Ghost by Jason Reynolds, and The Inquisitor's Tale by Adam Gidwitz. This week, I mightily enjoyed reading Jenni Holm's Full of Beans. Historical fiction without the weight, that's Jenni's M.O. She makes it look easy.

I also read The Best Man, by living national treasure Richard Peck, and Some Writer!, the biography of E.B. White by Melissa Sweet, possibly the best match of biographer and subject I can imagine. And god help me, I have thoughts.

 

 

Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

My goodness did I lap up this book! Every page, every scrap was balm and wisdom and joy - the excerpts from White's correspondence, the photos of him in canoes and on porches, the sketches and scraps from Melissa Sweet's magic art studio of treasures. Even the page numbers, some of which are typed on old red-bordered gummed labels, make one want to pull out the art supplies and a journal and go sit on a stump somewhere.

But - and jeez I hate typing this - is it for kids? Is there enough 'this is where Stuart Little came from' to sustain a young person's interest, or will the (and I mean really stellar) evocation of White's appreciation of simplicity and the outdoors seem repetitive or obvious to people who have not yet had to face the kind of economic and emotional realities that might keep them locked indoors 40 hours a week?

And if not, would that make it less 'good' of a book? I guess that's yes and no. You know what, wait a minute, that's a no. The book is 100% a great book. Whoever it's written for, it stands as a finely honed, perfect encapsulation of an extraordinary talent. Well, two of them. Melissa Sweet comes off almost as well as E.B. White.

Do I buy it for a school library? I do, and I expect it will be used at the very least for author studies. Do I buy it for the public library? Of course I do. Public libraries need to have all the good stuff. Do I buy it for my niece or nephew? I have at least 18 nieces, nephews, niece/nephewlike cousins, and grandnieces and -nephews. I would buy it for like... 4 of them. Hold on. *counts on fingers like a big girl. Five.

But for sure I would buy it for myself:

"There was a lake, and at the water's edge a granite rock upholstered in lichen., This was his pew, and the sermon went on forever." -- E.B. White, "A Boy I Knew," Readers Digest 1940

 

The Best Man by Richard Peck

Agghhh!! I'm drowning in a morass of ambivalence!

This book is terrific. The writing, the insight, the characters - all the things that are here are terrific. It's like... like the objects in the curio cabinet in my mother's dining room. Each item: each miniature domino set, porcelain sea urchin, loose semiprecious stone, expedition medal and antique fountain pen is a treasure, and each for different reasons. In this book, the parents who work from home, one as a marriage counselor, the other restoring antique automobiles - are treasures. Grandpa the architect, in his seersucker suit and straw hat - a treasure. Beloved Uncle Paul, in his bespoke sportcoat and wingtips, who will turn out to be both wise and gay, is a treasure. Archer's house is a treasure. Large, square, situated in a "leafy suburb" of Chicago - I can picture it, I just can't afford it.

Which is not entirely an insignificant point.

Because, like my mom's beautifully lit collection, this book is just about the whitest thing I've come across in a long time. There are things that are *not* here, amid its sparkling array of treasures. There don't seem to be any black people, for one thing. Nor anyone with a Hispanic or Asian surname. And, regardless of the skillful references to Angry Birds and YouTube and Uncle Paul's wedding - it is missing a true feeling of contemporaneity.

Now of course my mom's cabinet doesn't have to represent every facet of the human experience. It would be weird, for example, for her to include a set of manumission papers - to our knowledge, nobody in our family was ever enslaved. And the expedition medal is an object to be proud of - not everybody does the dangerous thing for which it was awarded. But at the time it was given, it was almost exclusively white men who had the opportunity to earn it.

And while Mom may add a new item to that cabinet every few years, it is by its nature disconnected from the present time. That collection (and I mean this as a compliment rather than the reverse) reflects her point of view, and her point of view is that of a white woman born in a leafy suburb sometime before the middle of the last century. God, she's going to kill me for writing this.

In the case of The Best Man, I feel a similar point of view applies. And it's not - it's a valid point of view, and for sure there are kids in Evanston going to one-class-per-grade seemingly all-white elementary schools that are close enough to home that they can walk. But although this may be an increasingly rare point of view, it's not one that is lacking in representation.

I also take issue with the hunky student teacher who shakes up Archer's fifth grade year. All of a sudden, there are field trips! Something new every day! Mr. McLeod takes over for the regular teacher, Mrs. Stanley, when she gets tripped up by improper fractions. Really? Guy teacher shows the ladies How It's Done? Hrrumph.

But my gosh, it just KILLS me to quibble with this book. Uncle Paul's orientation, love story, and wedding are treated so wonderfully - that is, as if being gay were not a big thing, which it isn't. In many families. In many communities. But not all. So that's really nice.

And lord Richard Peck is funny. And his main character learns some things without the reader feeling Taught, which is no mean feat. I personally, a white woman born in a leafy suburb who walked to school until she was 17, very much enjoyed the book.

But I think its time, like that of the quotidian antiques resting on glass shelves in my mom's dining room, has passed. Now is the time for it to be admired for its form and craft, because we are not likely to need to use it.

The End by Charlie Higson - review

I haven't written a stand-alone book review on unadulterated.us in a while - but for this book, the last in a series that I read start to finish, as soon as each book came out, I must. It has been quite a journey for the kids in these books, who have battled their way through swarms of diseased, cannibalistic adults and formed their own societies, legions, and alliances - and it's been a wild six years for me too.

Read with a kid, learn something

Hello dear neglected unadulterated! I love my little old blog, I really do, but man, life goes by so fast these days! I am not as good at posting here as I used to be - nowadays I am more likely to post reviewlets to Goodreads or Instagram. This summer I've been keeping up with #bookaday - and lots of others have too, it's a good hashtag to browse.

What else is happening this summer? I've been pounding the kids' graphic novels (Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award Graphic Novels Subcommittee REPRESENT!) and ferreting out new middle grade novels that would make good read-alouds. I'm noticing more really stellar entries into the early chapter book market - Princess in Black and Yeti Files were just the start of a very nice trend, it seems. And my library system recently had our annual Make a Difference to Children Week.

Which always makes me laugh. Make a Difference to Children Week - as opposed to the other 51 weeks of the year, when we kind of just ignore them, right?

Ha ha NO. Of course not. But during MaDtC Week, we have additional opportunities to have enhanced interaction with kids. Not to bog you down with program details, but parents and kids are given incentives to spend quality time with library staff. These interactions are pure gold. Everybody learns something - the kid, the library staff member, and, if you do it right, the parent. Here are some highlights just from my week - and it's a big system, just think what was going on all over:

BEA 2016 - in living slideshow color!

Finally - my BEA recap in words and pictures! What a mob, what a crowd, what a show!

 

SLJ Day of Dialog 2016 recap

Bit late to the party with my BEA recap this year, but I had a lot to think about. So just think of this post as the online equivalent of the relieved sigh that came from each seat on the shuttle bus as it was claimed by a footsore, shoulder-sore convention-goer at the end of the day. Ahhhhh....

 

School Library Journal's DAY OF DIALOG 

This annual one-day feast of author panels and publisher pitches was so full of talent and intelligence, and went off with so few hitches, and in such a nice, spacious space that organizer Luann Toth has taken to calling it "Day of Sheer Delight." She deserves to - it was delightful!

I sat right down in the center of the second row with my friend Paula - having a like-minded partner at these things is an unacknowledged must. You really need someone to trade significant glances with when a speaker says something amazing or a publisher pitches a book that sounds... um, not amazing. Or else you find yourself standing on the side leaning against a wall, making reaction faces that apparently EVERYONE can interpret. Not that that's happened to me.

 

Richard Peck spoke. National Treasure Richard Peck, I should say. Japan has these Living National Treasures and I really think the U.S. should follow suit. Who should it be? Richard Peck, Lois Ehlert, Rita Williams-Garcia, Chris Hemsworth. What? Why not Chris Hemsworth! Shut up.

Ok AMONG the interesting things Richard Peck said: "Most of who we are is determined in those first five years - when schools fail, families fail first." NB: Peck is a former teacher. He quoted Twain, as well he might: "Humor is anger that went to finishing school." He talked about his themes: "My books are always about a boy looking for a role model. The best role models are dead and the worst are a year ahead of you in school."

And he held up a poster for his book and said, "This is my idea of a PowerPoint." Living. National. Treasure.

 

 

During the nonfiction picture book panel, Candace Fleming and Eric Rohman, husband and wife creators of Giant Squid, described fitting his art and her words together to form kind of a piecemeal picture of a creature about which little is known. Leafing through the book, it's like how we meet the alien in Alien - we see streaming tentacles, a close-up of an eye, every image like a startling flash photo from a camera trap.

Camera trap photo by George Shiras 3rd, National Geographic Magazine

 

Great quotes from that panel:

Mara Rockliffe: "I believe in a usable past - I pick stories to tell not just because they happened but stories that can teach us something. I want boys and girls to know there have always been adventurous women."

Candy Fleming: "I'm a storyteller, not a fact-teller. I wanted a picture book that had some musicality, that would work being read aloud."

And I can't remember who said "Nonfiction picture books can never meet nonfiction standards, because we don't have sources for every moment. If Darwin walks down the street and leans against a lamppost - we are never going to have documentation of every step he takes and every lamppost he leans on."

Julia Kuo: "On the other hand, because of this, you can draw everything the author had to edit out."

Eric Rohman: "Picture books are a collaborative artwork - like opera."

 

Middle grade masters Gidwitz, Holm, Reynolds

The middle grade panel was intriguingly titled, "Truth be told: Big questions in middle grade fiction and what adults keep from children." It's kind of amusing that this panel was nominally about questions, because moderator Betsy Bird got the chance to ask exactly ONE: - her panel of Kelly Barnhill, Adam Gidwitz, Jenni Holm, Jason Reynolds, and Raina Telgemeier picked up that question and RAN RAN RAN. This was a 100% all-star panel - all of these guys write books that are not only popular but, ugh sorry I'm going to have to resort to fancy critic vocabulary - good. Like, DARN good.

 

 

Kelly Barnhill: "As far as your book is concerned, memory and imagination are the same."

Raina: "What you feel is always true regardless of whether it's historically accurate."

Kelly: "We've been telling stories since before we could talk. We invented language to tell stories more efficiently. Story seeks to blend the experience of the teller and the listener." Speaking of efficient - that last sentence is the best functional definition of a successful reading experience I've ever seen that was less than book-length.

Jason Reynolds: There will always be a commonality if the writer is authentic - pain, family, etc. You may not be pursued by knights like Adam's characters or live in Brooklyn like mine but a kid is a kid and if your kids react correctly then you can make a connection. (this is a big paraphrase - Jason is an incredible speaker with unerring word choice, and I wasn't writing fast enough to get it right)

Oh and may I just interrupt myself to say - yes of course I read Ghosts right off the bat and yes it is just as good as you hoped it was going to be. Raina stated during the panel discussion that she was a little worried about this foray into out-and-out fiction, but the story is marvelous, the characters are totally real, and the art - the art surpasses everything she has done to this point. With every book you can see Raina drawing a few more landscapes, adding a few more panels with scenic backgrounds and plants in the foreground, and this book, set on the Northern California coast, has some magnificent drawings of the cliffs and the bay, and the kind of semi-kooky bungalows and plant life you find in that part of the country. Plus, it is so much about endings and transitions and making your peace with change and... I have to admit I got kind of emotional there toward the end.

 

Me and Laini Taylor. I used to have that hair. Remember when I had that hair?

Laini Taylor was the after-lunch keynote speaker, and if Richard Peck is a hero author we all had grown up with, Laini is like our carpool/coffee shop/Twitter sisterwife. In discussing her new book Strange the Dreamer, she spoke about genres and how much she loves them and how she likes it when two of her favorites get together and have mutant babies.

She quoted herself from the New York Times Book Review (girl, there is no shame in that - if I ever get published in the New York Times Book Review, I am going to quote that shit every chance I get): something about how plot conventions and the uses of genre are so popular because they satisfy "cravings that have been satisfied by myth since the dawn of time - cravings like heroism, true love, villainy." She said, "This accounts for the passion of genre readers - their reading becomes part of their identity." And she made up a word that we all immediately took to heart: "readers find things in [genre fiction] - the satisfaction of the desire to be special. We have a myth-hole that wants to be filled."

"Myth-hole," she giggled. "That sounds so wrong." SO WRONG IT'S RIGHT, ya pink-haired Fluevog-wearing intergalactic fairy warrior mom! Laini Taylor is just the best.

How am I doing? Still on the first day, I see. Sigh. Every year I think I'm going to recap BEA in one post, but then I get going and...

 

 

Panel III was a bunch of YA fantasy authors - all women, as it turned out. They were asked if they'd ever felt any pressure or expectations in the way that female characters were portrayed, and the answers were very nuanced. I've asked this question - notably of male authors - and gotten kind of a harrumph answer: 'I don't let market demand push me around;' 'I must stay true to the character;' all that stuff. Which, sure, that's true. But it's also true what Roshani Chokshi said: "Female readers can be extraordinarily critical of female characters - because we identify and care about them so strongly." They all talked about how they're sick of the word "strong," saying, "We don't all have to be Katniss." 

I think I'm kind of in love with Roshani Chokshi - when asked about explicit romantic behavior in their books, she said, "I wanted to write more kissing scenes, but I was living at home with my parents. My dad would walk in the room where I was working and be like, 'What are you writing?' and I'd be like 'DAAAAD!'"

 

And then there was the last panel, which was so chock full of talent I literally was unable to take notes. Kate Beaton was on it, y'all. Kate Beaton has written a book about how babies do not GAF, and she described some of her observations of babies. "You'll be in this coffee shop and there's all this stuff going on, people are having conversations and what not, and the baby is just oblivious. The baby is just trying to get its foot in its mouth." She talked about her sister's baby's first Christmas, "My mom is like, 'do you think he has any idea about the birth of Our Lord?' and I'm like, 'Mom I think he's just discovered his toes.'"

There were other people on the panel. Lots of them. Like, Erin Stead. Jerry Pinkney - Living National Treasure Jerry Pinkney and you can look that up, he won two lifetime achievement awards this year alone. But I have to be honest. KATE BEATON.

 

Kate Beaton drew a tiny Vagrant-y cartoon in my autograph book!

 

After a final round of applause, it was into the signing room! TWENTY-FOUR artists and authors were seated behind tables signing free copies of their newest books to attendees. WHY is Day of Dialog worth the price of admission? IN ADDITION to getting to hear some of the top brains in the business talk about their work? It's because you get to meet the creators face to face and walk away with - literally - as many books as you can carry. Cue ecstatic sigh.

 

Lauren Castillo found a cute place to sign my book.

Lauren Castillo is herself pretty darn cute.

 

Erin Stead looked for a long time for the perfect spot.

 

Michelle Cuevas admires Scott Campbell's autograph in my old book.

 

Kelly Barnhill knew just what to say, cementing the impression I had gotten of her from the panel she was on.

KATE BEATON KATE BEATON OMG

I had every intention of turning this right over to my friend John, but then I started reading it. Mmm... you guys, this right here is quite a thing. You're going to want to read it. No idea about the slippers thing though.

 

Bright shiny things for bright young things and the people who love them: Some new YA (and YA-adjacent) books, Spring 2016

 

I am on a significant roll with my YA and adult reading lately. When's the last time you could say that? When's the last time every book you picked up knocked you on your butt and made you holler on Facebook or DM the author or, in once case because I don't have any access to the author - yell at the author's agent about how good the book was? I mean, who knows agents?

Apparently, I do.

Each and every one of these books deserves a thoughtful in-depth review. And I expect we will see those reviews in the New York Times or Kirkus or the Guardian or somewhere else that hasn't yet employed me to write book reviews. From me, you're just gonna get a list and a couple paragraphs. Pollen. Makes me stupid. So here you go (in ascending order by audience):

 

I love the artists - some new great picture books Spring 2016

I know it's hard to write a picture book manuscript. Some of my favorite people do it, and it seems like a labor of love, with the emphasis on the labor. The very economy of the form means that every phrase, sometimes every word will be examined and held up to the light and chipped at like a tiny gem. Page breaks are a factor. Pace. There's space in a picture book - literally - page real estate, that lets you insert beats and pauses. It's probably more like writing music than it is like writing a book.

But I gotta admit, it's the art that wins me over. I'm so shallow. I think that working on a picture book is probably a uniquely satisfying experience for an artist, especially an artist who specializes in illustration. It's really the only context I can think of in which an illustrator gets to run their own narrative. Their images can reinforce the text or, by opposing it, add perspective or reveal the narrator's blind spots. 

When you've got, say Patrick McDonnell interpreting a Sherri Duskey Rinker script, as in Silly Wonderful You, you'll get deadpan sight gags to accompany the already amusing text. Yuyi Morales might take some of Sherman Alexie's narrator's dialog in Thunder Boy Jr. and put it in speech bubbles coming from other characters, making the story seem to be told by the whole family. (That's a really cool choice for that book BTW, gives it kind of a mythic oral-history feel.) An article in Publishers Weekly tells the story of that book's creation, and weirdly, the two creators pretty much say exactly what I wrote in the first two paragraphs of this post.

I love pencil lines like the beautiful clean gestural ones of Viviane Schwarz and Ross Collins and Julia Sarcone-Roach. I love goofy energy and tiny dots for eyes that are somehow magically expressive! 

Jeffers

Bell

Bean

Castillo

Ismail

Klassen

In short, I just love picture book art. Here are some recent standouts.

Happy International Women's Day to us all: some positive sexuality in pop culture

Not bad - just drawn that way.

You hear a lot, in some circles, about how difficult it is to teach children about values in the face of persuasive and abundant media depictions of violence, licentiousness and other bad crap, including sexual violence and predatory behavior toward women that is often dressed up as romance. I'm looking at you, Edward the vampire. What was that character's last name? Crap, now I have to go check.

Aaaand I fell down a Renesmee rabbit hole. BOY is that character a mess. Talk about a plot Band-Aid, jeez. Need to tie something up? Get Renesmee to do that thought-projection thing and everybody's all up to speed.

The Twilight books and movies are indeed remarkable in the number and variety of bad relationship behaviors that they romanticize. Endangering oneself to get attention? Bella. Stalking? Edward. Treating a potential romantic partner as an attainment? Heyyyy werewolf and vampire, I see you guys dick-jousting over there.

 

I use this image to illustrate some of the less-popular traits of adolescence in our Something Wicked This Way Comes of Age presentation. In that talk, we discuss how the popularity of horror fiction among teens makes perfect sense given the evolutionary imperatives that drive their neurological and emotional development. The whole MUST MATE thing, mostly. 

Must mate - and confused as hell about it. Which is why it's so frustrating when movies and TV aimed at them furnish so very many examples of What Not To Do With, To, or Around the Object of Your Affection; How Not To Refer to Your Guy or Lady; What Not to Ask Them To Do; etc and obviously I could go on all day. But good moments in media exist too. I was inspired to run a few of them down because... well because we took the kids to see Deadpool this weekend. We're bad, we know.