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Meanwhile by Jason Shiga - review

My tiny little mind just done got blown.

And Choose Your Own Adventure just got handed their papers.

And when I get this thing home I'm not going to see my eight-year-old for a month, or until he explores each of the 3,856 possible outcomes of this book.

And that number? 3,856? Not an exaggeration. So I think maybe Jason Shiga is a little bit mental.

 

That's Jason Shiga right there, with a five-foot-by-five-foot poster of the giant flow chart that is this book. He claims, in the front matter, that it took various computers and multiple algorithms and excessive jargon to get it into book form, with decision paths running from page to page back and forth in the book and at least one page that is JUST paths with no panels or dialogue, but I don't buy it. I think he gave up the floor of his living room to obsessively arranging and rearranging panels until it all fit, and the reason I think that is because he uses the word "heuristic" in his explanation, and my experience is that anyone who uses that word is, either in a minor baffle-em-with-bs way or in a large-scale baldfaced Vegas PowerPoint black-turtleneck kind of way - lying.

But I don't hang out much in Silicon Valley, which is I think where Jason Shiga lives. Maybe they know what "heuristic" means in Berkeley. Ok I just looked at his resume and Jason Shiga knows what "heuristic" means. He's my new hero.

This is what a page layout looks like. (Most are easier to follow) The color palette is one I especially enjoy - sophisticated midtones and earth tones. Lots of color but not screaming-in-your-face color. The panels and dialogue can get pretty small for those of us wearing bifocals but let's face it - this book is not aimed at those of us wearing bifocals. The pages are a heavily coated rip-resistant material, which is good. All that flipping back and forth could cause a lot of wear and tear.

The plot involves a time machine, a doomsday machine, slapstick, probability, and ice cream. I have to go melt into a puddle of joy right now. Get the book.

Fierce Style: How to Be Your Most Fabulous Self by Christian Siriano - review

The fact that Christian Siriano went to prom with my longtime babysitter has NOTHING to do with how much I enjoyed leafing through this book. (It has everything to do with why I picked it up in the first place though - we miss you Marci! Hope they show Buffy on TV in Ecuador!)

Although the book is for the most part obviously written by a professional, and liberally studded with grating catchphrases that I'm sure are a lot more charming in person (if I never hear the phrase "hot mess" again I will weep not a single tear), there is plenty of real Christian in here. He lists Subway and T.G.I. Friday among his favorite places to eat, advises all women to wear heels all the time, and still has a place in his heart for Saved by the Bell. What do you think - was this tiny, marvelous, gay suburban Maryland kid a Screech or a Zack?

He also thanks my friend Kristen in the Acknowledgments - she teaches jewelry making where he and Marci went to high school. (And about those catchphrases? He provides a glossary: "I call everyone 'lady' because everyone has that inner lady who needs to wear full-length gloves and a bird hat." Here's where I shake my head and have to admit he has a point.)

I love his Manly List of Manly Things to Do: he advises buying a flannel shirt "red plaid only," buying a wallet, or playing a sport, like throwing a frisbee around in the park and then getting a frozen yogurt "with fun toppings!". At the end of the list he confesses "Okay, so apparently this is as manly-man as I get. I tried!" You have to appreciate a fellow who knows his strengths.

This. This is his strength.

In between the pictures of glamorous women and glamorous Siriano gowns (see above, the glamorous but non-model-sized Christina Hendricks, in a glamorous Siriano gown at the glamorous Golden Globes - designers who can dress non-model-sized people get my particular respect, and in this instance I venture to say the ex Mrs. Malcolm Reynolds has NEVER had her fabulous assets clad to such advantage) and snips of style advice from Tim Gunn, Vanessa Williams, Heidi Klum, and Whoopi Goldberg (of all people), there is advice about coping with disappointment and depression, finding your creative voice, and, of course, about making things work for you when you are just a little bit not like everybody else. I know a ton of teenagers who could benefit from the practical, hardworking, slightly self-indulgent advice in this book.

I picture Christian Siriano eighty years old, still tiny, still peering through his pushed-down glasses with that look of terrified resolve. He always looks like he knows damn well the situation calls for a suit and he is showing a flamenco dress, and if that flamenco dress isn't the most heart-stopping thing anyone has ever seen he is TOAST. Lucky for him, that flamenco dress is ALWAYS heart-stopping. At eighty, he will still be surrounded by towering, beautiful women, women hoping he will work his vision upon their bodies - the Valentino of the twenty-first century.

I kind of hope he will have stopped calling everyone "tranny" by then, though!

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According To Susy) by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham - review

I had a review for this book half written, and then I looked through it again. I caught the variety of voices - Twain's, his daughter Susy's, and the author's. I surveyed the back matter - author's notes on Twain and on Susy, and a one-page outline of "How To Write a Biography." And I don't know, man. I'm not sure this is so much a library book as it is a textbook, and I mean that in a good way. It's readable, entertaining, true, and totally instructive. Possibly it should be required in every elementary school classroom.

Much has been written about Mark Twain, one of America's best-known novelists. He has been biographized for all ages and all reading levels. The extraordinary Barbara Kerley (The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, You and Me Together, and Greetings From Planet Earth to name just a few) had been thinking about doing it herself when she came across an interesting fact: Twain's daughter Susy had done it, at the age of thirteen.

What a gold mine, right? Firsthand observations of the biographee by a biographer who knows what young people want to know because she is one herself! So Kerley gets her hands on microfilm of the complete manuscript, finds just the right excerpts, and fills in just the right background and geographical details.

• A cutaway of the Twain house in Hartford shows us Susy observing her Papa all over the house - talking to the cats, reading in bed, striding about the dining room pontificating between courses.
• We are taken to the family's country retreat - Susy's aunt's house - and given a rundown of daily life there.
• Twain's writing process is described in detail, including Mrs. Clemens' judicious editing - she is shown toning down the rougher areas, while the Clemens daughters look on ruefully.

The book is brilliantly designed as well. Twain quotes appear in one typeface, Susy's in another, and Susy's writing is bound into Barbara's larger book as little journal pages. I don't know who thought of that, but it's genius. Hey and speaking of larger books, could publishers please quit with the oversize? Lots of libraries cannot accomodate the tall books, especially in non-fiction, and must shelve them spine-up instead of spine-out, which means they circulate less. (This message has been brought to you by me, Charlotte, Kate, Irene, and a whole bunch of other school librarians.)

If you bought The Trouble Begins at 8 by Sid Fleischman (my respects, old man, you will be missed) last year, you might be thinking twice about buying a second Twain title so soon. But do. The two books complement each other, and this one is for a younger audience.

Susy was Twain's favorite daughter, and she died at the age of 24. As it happens, I ran across Laura Skandera Trombley's new book Mark Twain's Other Woman while I was assembling this review, and found this tragic paragraph:

Twain was alone [in London, after a twelve-month world lecture tour] when a second cable arrived... informing him that Susy, his favorite daughter and the child most similar to him in many respects, had died an agonizing death from meningitis at the family's home in Hartford while her mother and sister were still en route. For two weeks, Susy's fever spiraled and she grew delirious, sometimes wandering through the empty house... As the infection spread, she went blind. She found a gown belonging to [her mother] Olivia hanging in a closet and spent her last hours stroking and kissing the dress, believing in her delirium that her mother was dead... For the rest of his life, Twain mourned his lost daughter."

I am so glad that Barbara Kerley has given us the bright and bold Susy, as well as her famous father.

Tricia is hosting Nonfiction Monday today at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Well you must be a girl with links like that

Strap in for another link round up - the kitty peed on the bed and I am stuck inside waiting for the laundry to cycle, so I have treats for everyone from the world wide web...

I have Courtney Love going all the way in Fug Madness this year, but as it turns out there are many other March Madness tourneys going on. School Library Journal is hosting a Battle of the Kid's Books, Techland wants to know who's the baddest bad guy of all time (and boy I thought I was a geek but I done been served by some of the seeded contestants in those brackets), and over in the Whedonverse the question is not do you hate Gwendolyn Post but rather do you hate her worse than Rack? Dawn Summers has already been knocked out, and I cannot believe that.

The answer is no. And also - bite me.

Philip Pullman just can't leave well enough alone - he appears to be rescripting the story of Jesus Christ as some kind of Jekyll and Hyde item. Excerpt from The Guardian.

Artist Walton Ford is one of my favorites - flawless technique married with disturbing ideas. Here's a gallery tour in Germany.

Gratuitous Percy Jackson reference of the day: I finally have something in common with Cate Blanchett (besides porcelain skin and a longtime association with Hugo Weaving, except mine is less professional and more, um, theoretical). Here she is clutching her 8-year-old son, who is in turn clutching his copy of The Lightning Thief. If I'd had to drag my 8-year-old to whatever function this is, he'd have brought a Rick Riordan book too.

I've never reviewed Scott Pilgrim here on Pink Me: I assume we know all about it and recommend it to our teen readers with regularity. Anyway, the trailer for the movie is out. Do you think we could see a movie based on a teen book that does not star Michael Cera? So far: Nick & Norah, that book with all the boner jokes (Youth in Revolt), and now Scott Pilgrim. He's even encroached upon the Juvenile section - did voices for the animated Wayside School and Rolie Polie Olie! Me, I mostly like his work in Drunk History.

All this Michael Cera abuse started when, upon hearing that Cory Doctorow's teen civil cyberdisobedience thriller Little Brother is going to be a movie, my Psychic Friend Paula set her jaw and growled, "As long as they don't cast Michael Cera as Marcus."

Which prompted me to sojourn over to Tiger Beat looking for a teen actor who I thought had the right smart shifty look. Oh my word please don't follow my lead. I am still seizing slightly from all the pink and all the Justin Beiber. I don't know who Justin Beiber is and I think I can make it to my 45th birthday without finding out.

Oh and hey! Check out me and Psychic Friend Paula and our Young Friend Ryan in these little Reader Advisory videos! Paula does memoirs, Ryan does graphic novels (including Scott Pilgrim) and I do "If you like Percy Jackson" and "If you like Wimpy Kid".

And in today's "I thought I missed TV but it turns out I don't" news, I find that Buzz Aldrin is on Dancing With The Stars this round. That man was the second man on the moon. That man felled a heckler with one punch at the age of 79. We named our (incontinent) cat after that man! And now he has maneuvered himself into a position to be mentioned in the same sentence as a Pussycat Doll and a man who legally changed his surname without knowing that that's not how you say that in Spanish. Wonder if we changed the cat's name she'd stop peeing on our bed?

Time You Let Me In: 25 poets under 25, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye - review

Yes it's poetry. I don't like poetry as a rule, but by god I say yes to this:

...even when
the words grace me with their presence,
they don't always choose to step
delicately into the world, pink shoes
treading softly over the white horizon.
usually poetry slops lazily over the couch
of a page and dangles while I remove its muddy
shoes and rearrange the pillows, all the while
muttering something about Frost and how maybe
his comments against free verse were right
all along (poetry in rhyme always cleans up
after itself) although honestly, you haven't lived
until the homeless free-verse poem on your couch
decides to stay for a cup of tea and, if you're
lucky, lets you take notes on everything he says.

from "invitation" by Mackenzie Connellee, in Time You Let Me In

There's a butt-ton more of that where this comes from - meditations on the last photons from a dying star, the burning feeling of hiding and making out, joyrides and wine coolers, fitting in, learning, rebelling, parents, grandparents, and oh my god breathless love. Something about the sparkling grittiness of late youth - it's all coming at them so fast, no wonder all they have time for is poetry, little phrases of clarity captured on a car ride or lying in bed, strung together and looped across a window.

Here's another little bit:

as far back as I can remember
we've been pissed off,
the whole bloodline, just really pissed.

from "as far back as I can remember" by Jonah Ogles, in Time You Let Me In

If you could say "Good job!" in that delighted voice with the big smile in it that you give a three-year-old who zipped her own coat to a teenage or just-past-teenage poet (which you can't, not unless you want to hideously damage him or her), I would say "Good job!" to Lauren Eriks, who wrote:

I have bed knobs in my hands, portals,
doorways. I can leap over
buildings, baby, bouncing
through walls. I'm free as a
racing rubber ball. When I get lit
on the trail of your Camel cigarette,
you know I can break
every bottle, butt, bombshell around.

from "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by Lauren Eriks, in Time You Let Me In.

As I write this, on this Spring night full of wind, there are teenagers vaulting from the parking garage to the roof of our library, trying doors and evading the cops. We are startled by their sudden presence, by the thump of their feet on our roof. Those kids will go home and write poetry. Or eat a Hot Pocket and play Rock Band and crack each other up re-telling what they just did. That's poetry too.

Poetry Friday is hosted today at The Drift Record.

Born Yesterday: The diary of a young journalist by James Solheim, illustrated by Simon James - review

"I wasn't wearing so much as a hair ribbon. And horror! My mom and dad were there. If I'd known I was going to be born in public, I'd at least have put on a tank top."

Have you ever gazed at that tiny sweet burbling new member of the household and wondered just what's going on in there? Who hasn't? James Solheim's take on it is hilarious - written in diary format is one baby's observations, hopes and aspirations.

"Why is nobody taking me to school? Ever since I was born, it's like they've been avoiding the subject."

It reminds me of that video that was going around a few years ago - the hipster dad and the heartbreaking story of his baby who was born without the ability to walk.

Her baffled baby look riding in that tiny little wheelchair cracks me up every time.

Born Yesterday will be tons of silly fun to share with new big brothers and sisters as a lap book. It will be a great gift for new parents, too.

Goldsmith's Daughter by Tanya Landman - review

Here's one for my antipodean girlcrush author Karen Healey, who wrote the excellent Guardian of the Dead (reviewed on Pink Me a couple months ago). Karen is always complaining that I find YA books and talk 'em up too well, and she is running out of book money. This is not criticism that I am too broken up about - push the sheep out of your way and go to the library!

So, for Karen, a book that I do not especially recommend:

Itacate is a teenage Aztec girl in the splendid city of Tenochtitlan, the daughter of a goldsmith, raised by him and by a nurse since the death of her mother. When we meet her, she is miserably navigating the inflexible rules, ironclad beliefs, and harsh punishments of Aztec society, at odds with the future decreed her by the circumstances of her birth and gender. She's terrible at weaving and making tortillas and wants to be a craftsman like her father.

Then the conquistadors show up, and everything is tossed into a cocked hat. As far as plot disruptors go, the arrival of conquistadors is right up there. Itacate's father, whose skills are waning, is called upon to provide more and more gold to appease the vicious and brutal Europeans, and Itacate must masquerade as a boy so that she may fill in for him. This is a dreadful transgression in Aztec terms, but gives the author the chance to place Itacate into situations she would not ordinarily witness.

There is a lot to like in this book. Ms. Landman skilfully works a luxury of detail into the story. All five senses are engaged by descriptions of the crowded marketplace, the floating fields, the smelly conquistadors and meticulously-groomed Aztec nobles, the gold and turquoise treasures - even the fighting and the food are depicted in vivid language. It is difficult, however, to shake one's distaste for Itacate's love life.

It goes like this: before the arrival of the conquistadors, who will eventually destroy her city, killing everyone she knows, Itacate has a vision of a blonde and blue-eyed youth. And what do you know, she meets this curly-haired young man on the very day that the bad guys march into town. His name is Francisco, and before he became a soldier in service to the Spanish crown, he was a goldsmith like herself. Itacate and Francisco get to know each other while creating a big gold Virgin Mary. He confesses that he despises his countrymen for their greed and brutality. He alone of all the soldiers eschews raping the locals, and he even bathes. He's a good Nazi.

One of the nice things about this book is that the Aztecs are depicted as living in close proximity to their spiritual beliefs, yet are not depicted as ignorant superstitious yokels, even as Itacate begins to examine her faith. In this context, Itacate's vision seems to lend the Spanish conquest a predestined quality. I suppose it is a difficult trick when writing historical fiction to present known events with any element of novelty or surprise. But the mystical quality of a vision is I think a bad choice - there is an implied authority that seems to excuse the Spanish just a little.

In addition, Itacate's response to Francisco's physical appearance feels blatantly Eurocentric: he is described as having "gleaming gold hair" and eyes "blue as the sky". Compared to every human being she has ever seen or could imagine, I would think that this would translate to "monster". The Chinese thought white men were walking corpses - that seems like a much more believable response. And while I accept that it is not outside the realm of human experience for a member of an occupying force and a terrified native of an occupied city to fall in love, in this case I found it both trite and insulting to a character I came to like.

Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham, illustrated by Juan Wijngaard - review

Stunningly atmospheric, this simple, dramatic tale reads a bit like Jorge Luis Borges for kids - realistic and immediate, but with a drop of magic and luck. Tashi lives with her mother, a tea picker in the foothills of the Himalayas. Their day is described in beautifully descriptive sensory terms, from the sweet scent of their morning tea to the "blurred red globe" of the sun on their walk home from work.

Every day, Tashi shares her lunch with the monkeys who frequent the tea fields. When her mother becomes too sick to work, Tashi tries to take over the picking, so that there will be money for a doctor, but she is too small to manage the heavy basket and reach the top of the tea bushes. Despondent, she takes refuge under a tree with the monkeys and cries until she falls asleep. She awakes to find that her kindness has been repaid - the monkeys have filled her basket with the rarest wild tea, the tea that the Royal Tea Taster will pay for in gold, enabling Tashi and her mother to live out their days in peace and health. It's magic realism, Himalayan style.

In an Author's Note, Mal and Elspeth say that they came up with this story after having read many tales involving tea from the Himalayas. They do not say that they've traveled to the region, but I've been to tea plantations in India, and I find it hard to believe that they could so sensitively describe the light, the mist, the way the day progresses without having been there. I could almost smell the tea growing.

The ink and gouache illustrations are likewise marvelous. Juan Wijngaard has a lovely light touch, and great dexterity in capturing the muted colors of early morning, the tea fields in the strong midday sun, and dappled shade alike. His fine-line ink drawings are breathtaking. I'm looking for more from him as we speak.

Insectlopedia, poems and paintings by Douglas Florian - review

I admit, it can be easy to not read Doug Florian. I buy his books, I put them on the shelf, I pull them out when we're doing something birdy, beasty, spacey, swimmy, and I am always happy to have them. But, as with other items that I trust and rely upon (), I don't always pick them up to read and enjoy them.

The Weevils

We are weevils.
We are evil.
We've aggrieved
Since time primeval.

(excerpt from "The Weevils" by Douglas Florian)

That is funny. They are all funny! Clearly, I should open these books more often. And the paintings are prime too - collaged, sometimes gloopy, accessible. A kid could mimic Florian's technique and get pretty good results, and I like that.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! by Jonah Winter, illustrations by Red Nose Studio - review

Let me proceed carefully here.

1. Here Comes the Garbage Barge is based on the true story of the barge loaded with Long Island garbage that meandered up and down the Atlantic coast, rejected at every port from New York to Belize, during the summer of 1987.

2. Jonah Winter is a terrific author of children's nonfiction. I would not and will not assemble a school library without his biographies of Sandy Koufax, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonia Sotomayor, Diego Rivera, and others.

3. The miniatures that illustrate this book, made of polymer clay, trash, household items, paint, glue, spit and banana peels by the immensely clever (and, one suspects, just a teeny bit OCD) Red Nose Studio, are worth spending about a month poring over. As the garbage ages, it gets visibly grosser. It's like a Claymation Christmas special made by the Spitting Image folks. Which - yay!

BUT.

In order, one presumes, to make the people and locations in the story more personable, the characteristics of each are exaggerated. Vernacular spelling is used to distinguish the North Carolinians who don't want the garbage from the Louisianans who don't want the garbage. The Floridians who don't want the garbage are old folks floating in swim rings and the Texan who doesn't want the garbage is riding a horse in a boat dressed like Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum. Ok so far. Cute.

BUT I SAID BUT.

The "boss," the waste management guy back in Long Island, is named Gino Stroffolino. He tawks wit' a Noo Yawk accent and looks like Fredo in The Godfather. Gino makes arrangements with various other characters: Joey LaMotta, who is shown doing business out of a phone booth and who also looks like Fredo; "dis guy down in Mexico... goes by da name of John Smith"; and Rico D'Amico in Belize.

Now listen to me. If the waste management guys - clearly coded as shady characters - in this story were similar in that they were all African American, instead of having a vowel at the end of their names, we'd be up in arms about this depiction. I lived in New York City and I know that the waste management industry was dominated by firms with Italian American names, but those firms didn't operate out of phone booths, and I'm willing to bet that the majority of them don't wear sharkskin suits to the office.

The moral of the story is "Don't make so much garbage!" but, intentionally or not, the villain is Gino. Reading the story to my kids, when we got to Gino, my six-year-old pointed, "That's the bad guy!" My son does not know the history of mobbed-up waste management in NYC - he was reading the code of slicked-back hair, ducked-down head, accent, and suit.

Maybe I was on the fence when the anti-Italian-American Defamation League or whoever they were protested that The Sopranos was making them look bad - oh it was hard to disagree with a show that brought us the comedy-drama stylings of Aida Turturro on a regular basis - but here I draw the line. I won't have a kids' book in my library that so clearly - and, I think, gratuitously - casts a single ethnic group in such a pejorative light.

And all right, blast it. Just as I was ready to regretfully reject this thing on the basis of its ethnic stereotyping, I saw this video, in which the ADORABLE Chris of Red Nose Studio lovingly describes his process in making and photographing the sculptures that make up the illustrations of the book.

You tell me. Are we won over?

All Star! Honus Wagner and the most famous baseball card ever, by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jim Burke - review

Honus Wagner: the name doesn't conjure the immediate haloed recognition that the names Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe, or Jackie Robinson do. If the average kid has heard of him, it is probably because of that fabulously valuable baseball card - the card that Honus himself had pulled from circulation because it came in packs of Piedmont cigarettes and he didn't want his young fans to think that he approved of cigarette smoking.

Right there we know we are reading about a principled athlete, a public figure conscious of his status as a role model, and we can always use more of those.

But, as we learn from Jane Yolen's heartfelt, admiring text and Jim Burke's powerful oil-on-board paintings, Honus Wagner was not only a conscientious celebrity, but also an extraordinary ballplayer, leading the league in batting EIGHT years during the years 1900 to 1911. He has a base-stealing record - three in one inning! - that still stands, and he was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yolen's bio, unlike some sports biographies that focus on a single event or character trait in an athlete's life, gives us Mr. Wagner's story from birth, through an astonishing twenty-one seasons of major-league ball, on to his retirement and Hall of Fame induction. She paints a portrait of the original lovable lug, a bow-legged coalminer's boy with long arms whose youthful strength came from loading coal.

The illustrations are notable not only for their muscular energy - one two-page spread gives us three views of Wagner's wide-legged batting style - but also for a subject-appropriate palette of sandy browns and muddy greens. Faces are often turned away or shadowed by ball caps, lending emphasis to the action. And the composition is masterful: large areas of plain or textured color give these paintings a strong feeling of space and movement.

Great sports biographies are gold in the school library, and this is absolutely one of them.

Well do you, do you do you wanna?

Pink Me has always been book reviews, nothing but book reviews, no contests, no industry gossip, no opinion pieces about the cover of Justine Larbalestier's Liar. There are SOOOO many people who do that better than I do (Betsy, Leila, Susan) and I read them, and you should too!

But I love links as much as the next Internet-addicted book-lovin' swine, and I kind of get exposed to a lot of them, so without any further apology, here are the cool book-adjacent things I've come across recently:

On sale in July: Calvin & Hobbes stamps! Although I think you have to buy them on a sheet with some other goof-offs from the comic section (Beetle Bailey, Garfield, etc.) Comics Curmudgeon finds the unintentional humor in the comics every day.

Bob Staake drew a bunch of covers for not-yet-existent picture book covers, and the readers of the Washington Post were challenged to come up with books to match 'em. Gems like Little Miss Masochist: 101 Tips and Tricks for Getting Spanked in a Timeout World. Who knew Washingtonians were so witty?

If you haven't yet read Seth Grahame-Smith's Galleycat interview, here's your chance to head on over. More mayhem please! And more YA/adult crossover titles that boys, girls and parents can enjoy, too.

Margaret Atwood supports hockey, musicals, and Canada. By singing! That's one game gal!

Entertainment Weekly has read both Beckett and Mo Willems and I am kind of surprised at both.

Kate Beaton's comics on Hark! A Vagrant! are always funny, but I like this explanation of classic paperback book covers extra-much. Exactly like the musings of the girl with the Camel pack in Still Life With Woodpecker, but not as pretentious, or long.

And Popten compares the Na'vi to Ewoks in a point by point comparison.

Lastly, I have a complicated relationship with Dr. Seuss. My grandmother was a librarian at Ted Geisel's local branch, and was gifted with first editions of most of his work. She didn't like it, thought it was nonsense and a waste of time. I, of course, have never thought nonsense was a waste of time, but then I spent six months of my life that I don't get back reading If I Ran the Zoo to my son every night, and now I sometimes warn parents who are leaving the children's section with a whole armload - "Make sure you do your stretches before you try these." They're the most challenging books to read aloud, and some of them are LONG. Anyway, apparently Bennett Cerf found them a little wordy too - Green Eggs and Ham was apparentlywritten to settle a bet with Cerf, then Geisel's publisher at Random House.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi - review

You want my one-line recommendation? This is the most exciting book I have read since Emma Clayton's Roar.

Action, plot, an interesting world... deeper questions of what makes family and what constitutes loyalty... oh man. I am totally hoping there is a second book.

But let's take a step back for a moment. What is this book? It is the first YA book from up-and-coming SF writer Bacigalupi, who has previously won praise for his short stories written for adults. It's about Nailer, a teenage boy who works stripping beached cargo ships of their precious metals: copper, aluminum, stainless steel. Although Nailer's world is desperately poor, it is strictly organized, rather in the image of a mill town - there's a heirarchy of breakers, runners, overseers, and management, and then there's support personnel (hookers and drug suppliers) for those who can't physically cope with the rigors of ship breaking.

We are living in a warmer future, one with higher sea levels and a giant divide between rich and poor. I believe we're somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico (although a two-day high-speed train ride to New Orleans would seem to indicate we started further away). Nailer encounters a rich girl, shipwrecked on a boat whose opulence represents a wealth he can barely comprehend, and he decides to help her - in part because he hopes she can pull him out of his bleak and brutal life, but, even from the start, because his humanity - something in short supply on his beach - will not let him abandon her.

One of the things I like about the book is that we don't get an overview of this world, not at first, and, really, not at the end. The author leaves it to us to flesh out some of the details that he lets drop. Carbon limits. Drowned cities. A seeming absence of government. An emphasis on trade agreements, even at the very tiny level of who gets to strip which part of which dead ship. Hmm. Hm, I say.

Whenever I read a YA book set in an alternate reality - future, alternate past, whatever - I look for the element that seems similar to our current time, and in this book, it's the gulf between rich and poor. Nailer's life could look a lot like the life of the scavengers that I've seen on the beaches in southern India. Nita, the rich girl, who is, I think not coincidentally, South Asian, is an Upper East Sider to the core. Educated and spoiled, strong of body through good nutrition and Phys Ed classes, she manages to keep pace with Nailer purely through strength of will and advantageous upbringing. By the end of the book, both teenagers see each other as real people, but it is debatable whether their worlds can merge.

There is a lot of violence in this book. It's completely consonant with the difficult world that Bacigalupi has conjured. I can't decide whether it is made more shocking by the bright sunlight and tropical setting, or if that setting mitigates it somewhat. It certainly is an interesting contrast, and reinforces the "Third World" feel of the book.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean - review

Geraldine McCaughrean is on a very short list in my head of people who write for children as if they think children appreciate writing. She, along with writers like N.D. Wilson, Jacqueline Woodson and Barbara O'Connor are the Margaret Atwoods and Anne Tylers of children's literature.

These writers appear to have never been told that grown-up literary elements like an ambitious premise, a driven main character, a landscape that reflects or contrasts the character's story - are things that are too rich for the child reader.

Thus we have Pepper Roux, who wakes up on his fourteenth birthday knowing that this will be the day that he dies. And thus he spends most of the next 300 pages on borrowed time, looking over his shoulder for the angels who are bound to be screeching toward him, bent on carrying him off to his eternal reward. If that's not a premise worthy of Jerzy Kosinski or Jhumpa Lahiri, I don't know what is.

And the way that Pepper effortlessly slides into a variety of identities - ship's captain, journalist, horse thief, and even loving husband - requires a complicity of the reader: requires that the reader both suspend disbelief and acknowledge the transparency of the deception, leading the reader to the very adult conclusion that the individual is less important than the role he or she plays.

But then, back again, as, in each case, Pepper's desire to do good affects his performance in each role, driving the plot, providing warmth and humor, and usually driving him on to his next role, as he invariably gets into trouble by investing his adult identities with a child's good heart.

Getting a little academic up in here, aren't we? What did I do with those gummy bears? I have to hide them from the children, and sometimes that means I've hidden them from myself as well.

So. All that literature stuff aside, The Death-Defying Pepper Roux is fully as bracing and adventurous as the title might lead one to believe. Set in the south of France, the salt air in it lifts the hair and stings the eyes. Characters are as broad as a lady's behind in a Toulouse Lautrec poster, and sometimes as sad.

Calamity Jack, by Shannon and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale - review

Did you like Rapunzel's Revenge? I liked Rapunzel's Revenge. I voted for it for Best Graphic Novel of 2008 for the Cybils Awards. Was I not supposed to say that? Oops. But there was practically no contest. The life and wit in the dialogue, story, AND art in that book is... well I've been reading graphic novels since 1987 and I will tell you straight, you don't get many that excel on all fronts like Rapunzel's Revenge did.

I didn't get a chance to review it on Pink Me at the time, because I... because... I forget. But I can remember shoving it into people's faces, saying, "Look! That is a FULL-PAGE detailed aerial overview of the landscape where the action is to take place, and this is a book FOR CHILDREN!" Full colors, beautifully printed, and fine-line drawings, together with a long-form story that hangs together beautifully - you don't see that even in graphic novels for grownups unless they're published by Fantagraphics or First Second or some other the prestige, arty house.

And I need to type the words Nathan Hale just so I have an excuse to link to Space Station Nathan.

Imagine my joy when Calamity Jack followed so (relatively) quickly on the heels of Rapunzel's Revenge. Good-looking Jack the Giant Killer is the focus of this story, which starts up soon after the events of the previous book. Jack is bringing Rapunzel back home with him to to Shytown, a big city full of storybook creatures with a modern (though not too modern - more like 19th-century modern, not Shrek-modern) twist. Shytown is in disarray, at war with giant ant creatures, under corporate law by the evil capitalist giant Blunderboar.

Like that. Strap in, folks, because it'll whisk you off your feet. Every page contains a delight, from screaming Brownies who when placated look like sobered-up Irish football fans, to a bone-grinding machine that makes THE most godawful onomatopoeic noise it has ever been my misfortune to read.

I would feel like I was doing wrong if I didn't point out just a few glitchy things - I wear my hair in a braid, and Rapunzel's braids don't look braided, they look twisted. Also, the scale of the giants doesn't seem to remain consistent throughout the book. A third character, a rival for Rapunzel's affections, is not very thoroughly fleshed-out.

But don't let these tiny things keep you from pressing it into the hands of any adventure-loving kid you know. Calamity Jack joins Rapunzel's Revenge as one of the best gol-danged things on the kids' graphic novel shelf.

Wendel's Workshop by Chris Riddell - review

Let me make a list. A list of all the good-looking and fun picture books with beautiful detailed drawings of robots causing mayhem. In fact, I'll just make a list of all the picture books with robots causing mayhem, regardless of quality. Do you know what I think I'll find? I think I'll find that those books are all good-looking and fun!

What is it with robots? They seem to attract some of our best storytellers and illustrators. Further - you might expect that picture books featuring robots running amok would also convey a message about over-reliance on technology, or abuse of resources, or PUT DOWN THE NINTENDO YOU SHOULD BE PLAYING OUTSIDE... but most of them don't. Or if they do, the message is soft-pedaled, as it is in Wendel's Workshop. Nothing worse than getting hammered over the head with a message when all you're trying to do is share 32 pages of picture book with your overscheduled kid. I SAID PUT DOWN THE NINTENDO.

Wendel is an inventive little mouse with the cutest bedheady tuft of hair you've ever seen. He loves inventing stuff, all day, all night, keeping his inventions that work, pitching the ones that don't. Eventually, his workshop becomes, as I have often said surveying the mess in my boys' room, an unsupportable mess. The piles of junk dwarf poor Wendel. So he invents a tidy-up robot he names Clunk. Unfortunately, Clunk is one of those inventions that don't work, so Wendel pitches him on the scrap heap and starts again.

Tidy-up Robot 2.0 is much more efficient. Also gigantic. Also unstoppable. He reduces everything in the workshop to its component pieces. Furniture becomes sticks, teacups are crushed into neat piles of powder. I like that part, the teacup-crushing. Anyway, once the place is clean, the robot surveys Wendel, gets a load of that hair, and pitches poor Wendel onto the scrap heap too. But who's on the scrap heap? Clunk! And Clunk has an idea!

Needless to say, there is an inventive happy ending, with an explosion and an army of steampunky little robots and a beautiful garden and a cup of tea.

Chris Riddell is a meticulous artist in pen and ink and watercolor, with a delicate line and much time-consuming shading. Luckily, Chris Riddell also has a well-developed sense of humor, so a drawing style that too often with other artists marches straight into The Land of Fussy stays well clear of that place.

He can draw straight lines, clearly, but lines are just that much more fun if they waver a little, right? And who ever has two eyes the same size, anyway? Rich colors and large forms help maintain visual clarity, as do compositions with the background dropped out or with a lot of space in the foreground. It's awfully nice seeing a real pro at work, and I'm not talking about Wendel.

Oh, you wanted that list? Here's that list. Enjoy!

Benjamin McFadden and the Robot Babysitter. A big favorite in our house for years, unfortunately out of pring.

Robot Zot! by Jon Scieszka and David Shannon.

Atomic Ace And the Robot Rampage by Jeff Weigel.

Superhero by Mark Tauss.

Marveltown by Bruce McCall.

Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot series by Dav Pilkey.

Hello, Robots! by The Secretly Punk-Rock Bob Staake.

David Milgrim's Otto and Pip books

And oh, that daggone book with the antique tin toys and the title that's a four-digit number. Arg. I can never remember that book, or find it. Oh wait, that's it right there! Lilliput 5357! (You really don't want to know what kind of memory path I took to get to that. It's embarrassing, seriously - I went to library school? Sheesh.)

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin, art by James Dean - review

Think of the blue dog - those stupid paintings from the Clinton era, which I think that guy is still doing - and then make them cool, not creepy, and of a self-assured cat rather than a freaked-out dog, and you have a starting point for visualizing the powder-coated apehanger handlebar simple authentic genius of Pete The Cat.

DO I HYPERBOLIZE? NO I DO NOT.

Pete (the cat) is a lean blue cat with a full set of white high-tops. Out for a walk, he steps in various fruit, also mud, turning his white shoes various colors, including brown. But he doesn't let it get him down - he loves his shoes no matter what color they are. He is one laid-back kitty.

Listen, y'all - there is even a song. You can sing it any way you want to, or you can download the mp3 from Harper and sing it their way. The text is simple, repetitive, and visually cued - which are the things you really look for when you're doing a storytime. Those same characteristics are amazingly useful for reading-readiness books. After the briefest introduction, any 3- or 4-year-old will be able to page through this book and "read" it - and be proud to do so.

As if all that weren't enough, you should see the art. It is big, saturated, and accessibly sloppy, and Pete the cat is looking at you on every page with his wise, amused, sleepy eyes. I have so far storytimed this to my kids and to a couple of adults, and I plan to take it to a kindergarten class tomorrow. I am going to KILL with this fun book.

Gossie Plays Hide and Seek by Olivier Dunrea - review

Such an excellent little hide-and-seek semi-pop-up book - not too fragile, with lots of slidy flat window-y things, a couple of flaps, a squeaky, and even a scratch 'n' sniff. It's all about prepositions as Gossie the goose looks for all her goslings - in, under, through, on, etc. Olivier Dunrea draws with a light touch and a delicacy that makes these little goslings extremely endearing.

My one complaint is the board game at the end of the book. It's meant to further reinforce the directional words used in the narrative, but it is a snakes-and-ladders type game, with spaces that will send a player back to the start, or jet him or her ahead. I find these kind of games very difficult to manage with little kids. Those setbacks, unavoidable and unrelated to any ability or achievement, can be heartbreaking to a little kid who doesn't yet get the concept of blind luck, good or bad.

Wow, that makes me sound like one of those moms who makes her kids wear their bike helmets when they go sledding. I am not averse to teaching kids about luck and randomness. But I think there are better venues in which to teach it.

Mirror by Suzy Lee - review

Okay. Suzy Lee, creator of the hypnotically joyful Wave and the quiet-but-noisy The Zoo, has a new book. It's called Mirror, and it is wordless, and it involves a little girl who meets her reflection in a mirror. Shy at first, she warms up to it, until she is dancing with herself. The mirror is the right-hand page of every spread. Interesting. Clever. Such a good idea, I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

But wait. About twelve pages in, it starts to go - oh, what's the word? - ukulelepants nutsteak coco-for-cuckoo-poops CRAYZAY. First, the girl's dancing prompts a Rorschach of exploding orange paint and spattering black ink. A little conceptual for many children and some adults, who may be concerned that something behind that kid is spurting flammable liquids, but I get the idea. Dreams made flesh.

And then the girl's dancing takes her behind the mirror, thus, in this book, into the fold. We get a couple pages of freaky symmetrical partial girls, which everyone (that I've shown the book to so far) finds disturbing, and for one frightening white two-page spread, she disappears entirely, before re-emerging from the fold. Whew. Except - now the reflection is no longer a reflection. Like Stevie Nicks in the Fleetwood Mac song, she can go her own way. Which irritates the original girl to no end - so much so that she spitefully gives the mirror a shove. The mirror falls, and breaks, and she is alone again, and huddles on the floor in sorrow.

Suzy Lee isn't your usual cranker-outer of picture books. From my short descriptions of her previous books above, you can see that there is always something contradictory and meditative about her work. It's like white noise that is also music. That's it: Suzy Lee is the Thom Yorke of picture books. And not everybody gets Radiohead, but you can't deny that it's art.

This artist's command of her media - which are, looks like... graphite, sticky black oil pastel, watercolor and inks - is nothing short of masterful. Her line is confident and expressive, shading is smudgy and minimal. Her every figure, every gesture, is a pleasure to look upon.

If you wanted to use this book as a discussion starter on resentment, competitiveness, impulse control, or remorse, you could. But I wouldn't, in kind of the same way that I wouldn't take a group to see Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring to start a discussion about the seasons. Or mountains, for that matter. Rather, I'd present this as the performance of a little story, told in drawings. It starts and finishes with the girl in the same huddled position on the floor, it ramps up slowly, there's a happy passage, a crisis... oh my god it's a book about dance! Hm. I should pretend that I knew that all along, shouldn't I.

Well there's a review that didn't go where I expected it to go. How often does that happen? 

Saving the Baghdad Zoo: a true story of hope and heroes, by Kelly Milner Halls and Major William Sumner - review

This book is absolutely a must-have, no-discussion, gimme-gimme purchase for the school library, the public library, or for any animal-loving kid. The story of U.S. and Iraqi military and civilian volunteers rescuing and caring for zoo animals in post-invasion Baghdad, it is full of wondrous moments: peril, as when a convoy transporting animals on an hour-long journey across town encounters sniper fire; tragedy, when a soldier ventures too close to the tiger cage; nobility, bravery, and humor.

Sidebars give information on the animal species, background about the war, and first-person reminiscences by Major William Sumner, the civilian affairs officer assigned the duty of "doing something about" the zoo. An archaeologist by training, Major Sumner had expected to be assigned to the Baghdad Museum. Surprise!

Lieutenant Colonel Wunderlich, a civilian affairs officer responsible for restoring public works to service in Baghdad, posing with lion cubs.

Not only did Sumner and his team find and care for the animals in the Baghdad Zoo, they gathered abandoned exotic animals from all over the large city, from private petting zoos and palace menageries. In a chaotic six-hour fracas, they rescued sixteen of Saddam Hussein's priceless Arabian horses from a racetrack in the most dangerous part of town. They assisted in the birth of six lion cubs even as fighting continued in the city.

This team worked hard, improvised, begged, went undercover, did research, going far beyond the call of duty to feed and care for these creatures. It's a fascinating story, a terrific discussion starter, an inspiration.