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Zac Power: 24 hours to save the world, by H. I. Larry - review

Who bothers to review this kind of stuff? This slender series fiction with a low word count, formulaic plot, and dialogue that feels stiff and slow because the authors conscientiously avoid the use of idiom, vernacular spelling, and contractions in deference to their fragile readers. It can't be that fun to write, either.

Mostly, you just find a cover that appeals to the kid - he may be an A to Z Mysteries kind of guy, or a Daisy Meadows little girl - and you keep pitching those books into his or her hands until he or she is confident enough to move on to "real" chapter books.

But First Chapter Books was my beat for a few years at the public library, and I was always so happy to find a series that was more than just grist for the mill, books that kids actually got excited about reading. I never faulted the authors - ho no. Forty-some issues of Magic Tree House? Who cares if it gets hard to tell one book from another - that series is a comfortable, familiar choice for just about any second grader who walks in the joint. If I can't sell him on Time Warp Trio, I'll settle on handing him Magic Tree House.

So here's Zac Power, twelve-year-old youngest son of a secret agent family, superspy gadgets in every pocket, off on a new top-secret mission every book. He parachutes into danger! He foils villains and escapes booby traps! His hair is always perfect. But truth be told, Zac would rather be home listening to his iPod and practicing guitar.

Ridiculously, this bratty reverse logic totally fascinates kids of a certain age. It does not hurt that the covers of these books resemble action-adventure novels for older kids, and the contrast between Zac's home and school life (boring field trips, household chores) and the fancy shenanigans he gets up to on missions (quicksand, amnesia) is a nice hook.

Difficulty-wise, these books are the easiest of the post-Beginning Reader books. They are great bait for kids who might be a little trepidatious about moving into chapter books, and they are non-embarassing choices for older kids who need easier material.

Here are a few more recent First Chapter series that I recommend:

Elliot's Parkby Patrick Carman. Squirrels in clothes. Cute? You betcha.

Uh-oh, Cleo by Jessica Harper and Just Grace by Charise Mericle Harper. Thank you, ladies, for having the same last name, because I see a lot of cross-pollination between these titles. A girl likes one, chances are she'll like the other.

Max Disaster by Melissa Moss. Page layouts chock-full of color drawings, lists, captions, speech bubbles, and step-by-step instructions for experiments... DANG.

Saving the best for last, Eric Wight has put out the second in his fabulous Frankie Pickle series, Frankie Pickle and the Pine Run 3000. This time, Frankie is building a soapbox racer so that he can move up a rank in Possum Scouts. This is high-quality writing and drawing for the sophisticated younger reader.

The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens - review

Put Douglas Adams and Joss Whedon into a blender and you get... no, yeesh, you'd get gritty red-headed paste that couldn't carry a tune.

Let's try that again. Put The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Firefly into that blender, push Pulse, and you might end up with something salty and sharp and entirely without nutritional value - the kind of cocktail that makes you feel like you're maybe going to sneeze and giggle at the same time. If that sounds good to you, you'll like The Sheriff of Yrnameer. If not, definitely you won't.

This is one of those books that I kept casting in my head as I read. Nathan Fillion as Cole, the small-time criminal who finds himself on the run in a stolen ship full of freeze-dried orphans? No, too obvious. Bruce Willis? Too old. Matt Damon too handsome.

But the cheerful Cthulhu-like loan shark chasing Cole? Definitely Donald Sutherland. And the unimpressed missionary smuggling the children to safety, who in the past I think would have been played by Shirley MacLaine... I could see Salma Hayek.

Rubens wiggles a lot of fun stuff in here - cannibals, a friendly sentient computer that freaks everyone right the hell out, tumbling tumbleweeds, characters with antennae or purple fur, and a whole bunch of could-be shout-outs to books and movies in the hipster geek pantheon.

Or maybe I just liked it because he makes fun of a line I love to use.

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" she asked.
When he opened his mouth to answer, she quickly added, "Don't say prison."
He shut his mouth.

This is an adult book that appeals to the teenager in all of us. Ergo, it's a fine book to recommend to teens. There are a few off-color jokes, but no hot and sweaty scenes, and the swearing is all future swearing:

"What is it?" asked Nora.
"A Dynaco Mark IV StarStation Success!Sat, probably the Apria B model," said Bacchi.
They all turned to look at him.
"And that gip is farged UP," he added.

"Thank you!" yodels the librarian in service to young adults.

Bonus: awesome cover.

Bonus II: Colbert endorsement.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - review

I am revisiting the first in the The Underland Chronicles because my kids are finally old enough for it, and, rabid Percy Jackson fans that they are, they are SOOOO hungry for funny adventure. So far, listening to the audio version in the car, they are alternately spellbound and laughing like something is actually tickling them.

It's good. It's beyond good.

I think one of the keys to writing funny adventure is dialogue, and Suzanne Collins has such a gift for it. She develops speech patterns for each of her underground races and for two-year-old Boots, and leaves Gregor all the cute sarcastic lines every kid wishes he had the wit to say.

Further, Gregor assumes all the worry and responsibility of an older brother, but without getting mired in it. He's a man of action, trusting his instincts and abilities and dogged in his persistence - all good traits, but ones that he will learn should be tempered with planning and advance knowledge. It's a good journey to undertake, and proceeds so organically.

We paused the audio after the first disc (after Gregor has met the human Underlanders and has resolved to get back to the surface before his mom gets too wigged out by their absence) for me to ask the kids if they had any predictions about the plot.

They did not think Gregor and Boots were going to get back in a timely fashion. Check.

They anticipate that Gregor and Boots will meet with peril on their journey. Check.

They wanted me to put the story back on NOW. Ok, ok!

I think my library should re-order new shiny copies of these books, and I think it's time to give 'em a new push to our young friends hungry for adventure.

Ten-four, ready for more! Tentacles by Roland Smith - review

In some kind of odd convergence, I have been reading second books this week. Usually, I read the first book in a series, and if it's good, I lazily allow myself to recommend the series without following up with the later volumes. Man, come on! There are SO many books! And totally not enough time, what with working, and shoveling snow, and US Magazine coming every Friday. And now the Olympics? Luckily, I can read and watch the Olympics at the same time - nice job, NBC. Or Canada. It's tempting to blame Canada for these snoozy late-nite Olympics, after all, "snoozy" and "Canada" go together like "Julia Mancuso" and "the Kim Kardashian of the slopes" (told you I've been reading US Magazine), but it's probably NBC's fault.

Good thing I have the books.

Roland Smith finally followed up Cryptid Hunters with Tentacles.

Regular readers of Pink Me may remember that my 8-year-old read Cryptid Hunters during the blizzard - well, that's because I couldn't wait to bring home Tentacles, but I knew he'd slurp it up before I could get my hands on it if I didn't supply him the first book first. That cover is irresistable!

Since Cryptid Hunters, I've read kind of a lot of Roland Smith. Enjoyed Peak, but I quibbled with its insufficiency of female characters. Loved I,Q unreservedly (Review here). Can't figure out why it's cataloged as Young Adult. In fact, my library splits Smith's books between the children's section and Young Adult, seemingly arbitrarily. I always question the placement.

For example: the two main characters in the cryptid books, Marty and Grace, not only face life-threatening environmental and interpersonal peril, but the emotional underpinnings of their lives are entirely swept out from under them. Their parents are missing in the Amazon. They turn out to not be siblings. They learn that the dreadful villain is in fact a family member. Jeez. It's like a Scarsdale funeral up in there.

In Tentacles, luckily, the family revelations more or less pause. Which is good, because at this point, either we're going to find out that Marty was born a girl, or that Grace's grandmother was the smoke monster on LOST. Nothing else pauses, though. The plot is still rocketing along, despite most of the action taking place aboard a ship - always a challenging setting. Unvarying scenery, static cast of characters, not too many secret caves.

But Smith gets past all that, mostly with miracle technology and a vast ship, although the zippy writing doesn't hurt! This second installment features miniature flying spy robots, disguises, betrayal, murder and accidental death, a glowing gold bathysphere, and, at long last, giant squid. In 1998, I took my young friend Will, his mom and little sister up to see a giant squid in a tank on the 5th floor of the American Museum of Natural History, and let me tell you, it was dead and bleached white by the preserving fluid, its dinner-plate eyes destroyed by marine scavengers, but it still took my breath away.

I very much question the age level for this book. My kid is a voracious and somewhat jaded reader, and Cryptid Hunters bothered him not at all, but I know plenty of more sensitive children who would be very troubled by the sudden unmooring of the main characters. I think I just pitch it older. I've given it to middle school kids by the score, and if a high schooler can get past the label on the spine, I'd hand it to a teen too.

I guess it's like that squid at the museum - Will was thrilled and excited to see a cryptid abruptly switch teams before his very eyes, while his sister Laura held her nose and winced.

Shapes that roll by Karen Sagel, illustrations by Steve Wilson - review

Just as cute dogs are chick bait when you walk 'em in Battery Park City, and my friend Juliet is a magnet for smelly old drunks, some picture books attract hipster parents like flannel attracts lint. Kevin "Squidfire" Sherry's books. Laura Ljungkvist's. William Bee (guy has a book called Whatever, for Pete's sake - if that's not playing to the post-modern parent I don't know what is). The geometric world of Bob Staake. French illustrator Marc Boutavant, whose book Boule de poils et mon canard translates to "Hairball and my duck," and so I must have it.

And don't think that these artists don't know it. There is, as one Facebook commenter put it recently, "A built-in grandparent market" for cool design. (I would call it a built-in godparent / auntie market, but then I am not ready to accept that, at 45, I am in fact old enough to be a grandparent.) So sometimes one gets the feeling that the kid content of these books goes somewhat overlooked in the process of making an extra-groovy high-design kid book. The books of Ann and Paul Rand, for example, are/were too conceptual for most kids, but web-designer uncles just keep snapping them up for their nieces and nephews.

Letters, numbers, colors, and shapes seem to be particularly tempting topics for modern illustrators and designers. Marion Bataille did that stunning ABC pop-up. There's Bruno Munari's ABC. Charley Harper's illustrations have been repurposed into ABC and 123 books. Counting with Wayne Thiebaud. The Shapes of Wayne White. No no, I made that last one up.

The matte white and inky black backgrounds of Shapes That Roll contrast luxuriously with the shiny varnished bright shapes in the foreground, to make a book that is visual and tactile candy for design-minded moms and dads. That varnish is slick and kind of sticky. Oh yeah. But you know what that varnish is really doing? Much as in The Black Book of Colors, the varnish gives the geometric shapes that are being defined in the book a tiny measure of volume, an additional method of communicating to a child what we mean when we say the word "oval."

The rhyming text is swingy and fun to read aloud, with a nice beefy typeface showing you where to put the emphasis in case you weren't going to be able to figure it out yourself. I think if I had one complaint, it would be that this book is too physically small to comfortably share with a big group of kids. It's storytime-worthy.

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick - review

 

When The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg won a Newbery Honor this year, there was quite a bit of woo-hoo-ing. Just as with the Oscars (18 days to go!), Newberys very rarely go to the funny. And so my ears perked up. I love funny! So I checked it out, on audio, and let 'er rip in the car.

Aaaannd... It was not exactly the comedy I'd been led to expect. This, of course, is neither the book's nor the author's fault. Instead, it is a clear-eyed Civil War picaresque told by an orphaned boy doggedly searching for his older brother, who has been illegally conscripted into the Union Army. Homer's journey starts at his home in Maine, where he runs into slave-catchers, and moves south, by rail and by steamship, by traveling show and by hot-air balloon, all the way to the battle of Gettysburg. Using this structure, Philbrick is able to shoehorn in a lot of mid-nineteenth century social landscape. This is historical fiction absorbed the easy way.

Most of the way, Homer's misfortunes are quickly recovered from - he is thrown in a pigpen, but then his furious reaction to the teasing he undergoes is noticed by the proprietor of a medicine show, who rescues him, cleans him up and gives him work impersonating a feral child in his show. Homer even gets candy and meets a nice lady with tattoos. It's a book that bounces from up to down and back again in a peppy, plotty way.

However, once Homer gets to Gettysburg, there's no up side. Philbrick describes the wailing of injured men, the misery of battle, and the terror that Homer experiences, which is intensified once he finds his brother Harold, and sees Harold rush into danger.

My kids were downright stunned by the sorrow and violence in the Gettysburg chapters. But still, I don't call that a bad thing. War is sad and violent, and my kids are old enough to get that message. I will say that the contrast between the last quarter of the novel and the first three-quarters was maybe a little abrupt.

Bob the Builder reads the audio, and while adults may find his broad vocal characterizations a little TOO broad, it is definitely easier on kids when characters have their own distinct voice.

Reading as a reasonable substitute for hibernation

I live in Baltimore. See above. I am too sore from shoveling to do much of a post today, but I thought I'd share what my sons have been reading through our blizzard.

First, a little perspective. The children in Baltimore City have been excused from school since noon last Friday. We have had two snowstorms, depositing a total of about 173.4" of snow, all of which we have had to shovel, since this street hasn't seen a snowplow since... well, Baltimore City has never plowed this street. It's not even considered a secondary road, which I guess makes it a tertiary road, which is I guess one step up from a deer trail.

I had to work Monday and Tuesday during our brief respite between storms, during which time my husband beat a strategic retreat, jetting off to exotic Wichita, Kansas. He can't get back home, of course, because our airport closed, then re-opened, then became swamped with passengers.

Took the kids to work with me Tuesday, and they were angels. The little one helped me find books for customers, and the big one helped out with reader advisory. I was trying to help one little girl find something to read, when my 8 year old son piped up with, "What kind of books do you like to read?" This can be a hard question to answer, especially when you're in 2nd grade, and the girl was clearly stymied trying to answer. So my boy says, "Put it this way - what's the best book you've read recently?" The little girl said "Babymouse," and my son said, "Babymouse! Well then you'll love Amelia Rules!"

I might as well quit. That kid just did my job at least as well as I've ever done it. So I'm going to let them review books today.

My first grader, Zhou (not his real name):

I like Secret Agent Jack Stalwart. I like how the pages are arranged, because it says, "I quickly peeked around the corner and then I saw..." and then you have to turn the page before you can see what he actually saw! And I would give it 5 stars because I like the story too. It seems really fictional. It's not funny so far, and not scary, and I like the picture on the front, because it tells you you're in New York and there's a dinosaur inside.

I used to be reading The Lightning Thief, but now I'm stuck on Jack Stalwart. Lightning Thief was a little hard, I think I'll practice on some more Jack Stalwart, and then I'll go back to Lightning Thief and see if my practice has paid off. Now I'm out of words. Words are buzzing through my head, I don't know which ones to use.

My third grader, Mao (not his real name either):

I've been reading Cryptid Hunters. It's about two twins, um Marty and Grace O'Hara. I like that the O'Hara twins end up getting themselves dropped into the middle of the Congo, because it makes you know there's going to be excitement in this book. The run into alligators, green mambas, and bad guys.

They are hunting for a dinosaur, mokele mbembe, and they go to this like treehouse and while Marty is off getting supplies from where they dropped it the night before, Grace is kidnapped! And Marty goes and tries to save her, and basically that's how they end up discovering the mokele mbembe nest. They're funny the way the talk to each other, and when Marty chops off the head of the big snake with a machete, that's a little scary, and their uncle getting his leg bit off, that was a little scary. But not too scary, because it's a book. 

I've also been reading The Hardy Boys. Let's just say that the Hardy Boys are, well, great, and they start off as two kids of a famous detective. Usually he's away on other cases that somehow get connected to their case. There's always something new, something extra thrown in to the adventure.

I like Joe the best mostly because he isn't as good as his brother Frank, but he always is the one who figures out the big picture, and then Frank gets all the details pinned. I like the old Hardy Boys, because in the newer ones they're part of an organization, which takes all the fun out of it, and in the older ones they have their friends helping them out, which makes me happy.

I got into Hardy Boys because I read The Brixton Brothers. Can you bring me the next Brixton Brothers home from work?

Sadly, I cannot. It's not due til October, which seems like forever away. And at this point, given the head-high piles of snow outside and the six-foot icicles plunging like deadly spears of celestial bronze from the eaves, I'm not sure I even believe in March.

Sunny by Robin Mitchell & Judith Steedman - review

Ohhhh...

There's a passel of new parents
Wearin' thrift store threads
Turnin' cast-off neckties
Into quilts for the bed.

They take guitars to parties
Never cut their kids' hair
You can call them hippies
But I will call them... Sarah.

That's an extemporaneous folk song I wrote just now, inspired by this happy little gem of a book. It is not a very good little folk song, certainly nowhere near as good as the music on the CD that accompanies the book. But the parents in my song, the kind of parents who give their kids names like Utah or Fern, Skeezix or Priya or Ruby or Ezra (most of whom are in fact named Sarah, but some of whom are named Josh or Molly or Jeff), will recognize this item as a thing that they would have made, if they had the time and the awesome indie musician friends.

Mitchell and Steedman craft little ragdoll people with round wooden heads, sort of like what Fisher Price Little People used to look like, but taller and skinnier and more prone to wearing dirndl skirts. In this book, these funky little friends are posed in a variety of cleverly made dioramas representing city environments. The main character, Sunny, wanders around listening to the various city sounds he hears, and then the kids put 'em all together in a music jam. Heavy on the percussion, as most kids' music jams are.

It's the inclination toward the homespun that clicks this book in with those parents, the parents in my song and on my Facebook friend list. I think it's what happens when Pixies fans have kids. They learn that Pete Seeger rocks OUT when he's in good form. They discover that Woody Guthrie recorded some of the best weird children's songs ever. And they'd rather make stuff themselves than settle for ANY of the crap at Toys R Us, and most of the crap at the grocery store.

There - I just drew a straight line from punk to hippie. Or goth to hippie. Indie to hippie. Sheesh. Labels are meaningless, leave me alone.

   

So much love and effort has been put into this project, with terrific results. Look at the black and white pictures they've used in the backdrop of this diorama. That's just the right dash of grit - and there's something like that on each page that halts any possible slide into sweetie-precious-land.

The songs are fun and upbeat, yet gentle enough for quiet time or even a lullaby. And they are real songs, with production effects and key changes and lyrics that make sense. (After 8 years of listening to this stuff, I love to hear artists who respect children enough to craft actual music, rather than cranking out three chords and some chanting and calling it a Grammy nomination.) (No disrespect to Ziggy Marley, or any of this year's nominees - Hi, Eric's dad!)

The doll-like figures are simple enough to inspire a kid to try to make his or her own Sunny. Even the camera angles on the dioramas are well-thought-out. Two girls playing hopscotch are shot from above, as if we are looking down on them from a fire escape.

It's a book any parent could feel good about, and any kid could fall in love with. More Mitchell & Steedman stuff is available on buyolympia - naturally!

Lives of the great artists by Charlie Ayres - review

Brightly written and augmented with activities, Web resources, and fun facts, this book profiles 20 European artists. Each entry, from Giotto to Van Gogh, begins with a summary paragraph and a portrait before dropping readers into the artist's life. They accompany J.M.W. Turner as he sells a painting, and wait with Goya for the Spanish royal family, who are coming for a portrait sitting. Facts about each artist's life, technique, and importance are skillfully blended into these present-tense vignettes, which are recreated from documented sources.

The works of art chosen to represent each artist are heavy on the drama and detail, resulting in high kid appeal and interesting captions. In some cases, sketches are included. The book's design merits special mention: each artist's entry has its own palette, drawn from the works of art used as illustrations, and, despite the multitude of sidebars, the layout is clean and clear. Back matter includes "Chronologies of the Artists," locations of major collections of each artist's work, a glossary, and picture credits.

Unfortunately.

In the school library, the 700s (art and culture) must be the whitest section of the library. I am SO SICK - literally ill - when I look at the ranks of art survey volumes (artist monographs are a little better, with decent books on Noguchi, Foujita, Jacob Lawrence, Clementine Hunter, Augusta Savage, Jerry Butler, and Frida), and see all Europe, all the time. Asia, anyone? Africa?

"Lives of the Great Artists." Pshaw. "Lives of some great European artists of the last 600 years" would be the more accurate title, and would reflect the scope that the author states in her introduction.

I don't blame Charlie Ayres here - she has written a graceful, thoughtful book about a very specific place and time in art history. I am disappointed, rather, with the publisher, for tagging this book with a title that gives the misleading — and offensive — impression that the only important artists are European. Also, if I'm beating on this book, I'm going to go ahead and say it - that cover is an eyesore. Sloppy text in clashing colors makes it easy to find on the shelf, true, but the cover has no relationship to the content of the book, especially given the exciting and tasteful page design. Charlie, you got robbed.

The Underground Gators by Tina Casey, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger - review

I used to run a Circus Arts club at the elementary school. We'd do some hula hooping, some slapstick. It was pretty fun. We got to holler and run around. But when it rains. 24 kids who were expecting to be clowns for an hour, stuck IN A CLASSROOM? BRRRR.

One rainy day this fall, at a loss for an activity, I had a brainstorm for a quickie little vaudeville-y act, something two kids could do to distract the audience while we changed scenery between acts. Jokes! We'd have two kids tell jokes! So on this rainy day, I challenged them to come up with jokes. You ever hear what an elementary school kid thinks is a joke?

"Why did the headless kid survive the shipwreck?
Because he was Otto von Bismarck!"

Otto von Bismarck whut? And why a headless kid? But never mind - we must have done 25 minutes of headless kid jokes. The time passed pleasantly and we came up with an act.

There's a lot of this spirit in The Underground Gators. Why are school buses orange? Because "Nobody wants to argue with an alligator who is holding a paintbrush." Why do doughnuts have holes? So that the alligators can carry an extra on their tails!

YESSS!! It's nonsense, pure and simple, taking as its starting point the persistent myth that there are escaped pet alligators living in the sewers of New York City. Lynn Munsinger, who has always excelled at depicting adorable rosy-cheeked tykes beset by the less-cuddly members of the animal kingdom (David Greenberg's Bugs!, Skunks!, Crocs!), supplies this book with personable gators and bemused children in a bright and lively color palette. Good for a read-aloud, good for sharing one-on-one, good for anyone who could use a laugh!

Do Not Build a Frankenstein! by Neil Numberman - review

Kind of like a new baby / big brother book, but funny in a way that many new baby / big brother books sometimes kind of (ugh) aren't (Mail Harry to the Moon, cough). The kid in this book warns the kids in his new neighborhood NOT to bother with the research, the trial and error, the hard work that goes into building a Frankenstein... that even though it can be fun to have someone to play with all the time, there are downsides: the monster will scare your friends and pets, and, though he is more than willing to push you on the swing, you have to watch out for how hard he pushes.

In the end, the kids get to decide for themselves whether it's worth it having a Frankenstein around, as the monster shows up and suggests a game of monster tag.

Good fun, with loopy, cartoony Jeff-Kinney-esque illustrations. Some super expressions here, as when the kid goes whizzing around the swingset, or electrocutes himself by mistake.

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound: A Birder's Journal by Sallie Wolf - review

Do you have a journal? A place to make lists, sketch things, glue in a clipping or a feather or a scrap of cloth? This is a book that asks, "If not, why not?"

This extremely first-person book of poetry, prose and sketches is ostensibly about birds. But, like many books that are ostensibly about birds, it is really about being alive to the world around you. Sallie Wolf watches the birds around her house for a year, making lists of species, doing little sketches, making poems. And - I don't mean this the wrong way - Sallie Wolf, a talented artist, includes many sketches here that are not intimidatingly well-executed. Gestural, instinctive little drawings. Her poetry is also notable for its humility: grounded in the everyday, she refers to sewing machines and middle school in her imagery. Drafts are included, complete with crossed-out lines. Nothing in this book is overthought or overworked.

I adore this. If you want to show a kid that anyone can make a poem, don't ask them to read Song of Hiawatha. I shared this book with an older friend last week, a hospice patient who peacefully spends a lot of time looking out the window. She's never drawn before, and to my knowledge has never written poetry, but I took her a little stash of art supplies and a sketchbook.

Modest in size, with a design palette as muted as a winter day, with glowing accents like holly berries, this accessible little book will inspire readers to look around and listen, and to record the small events they witness.