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The Freak Observer by Blythe Woolston - review

 

This is not a great YA novel. Sure it won the William C. Morris Debut Award for YA novels, up against two of my very favorite, most cherished YA novels in recent years, Lish McBride's Hold Me Closer, Necromancer and Karen Healey's Guardian of the Dead. Sure I'll urge every teen I see at the library or pass in the street to read it.

But The Freak Observer is not a great YA novel. The Freak Observer is a great novel, period.

Print Workshop: Hand-printing techniques + truly original projects by Christine Schmidt - review

I am anti-craft. I don't mind saying it. The thought of gathering a fistful of pipe cleaners, glue, wobbly eyes, and children all in one place and then encouraging them to interact is just... brrrrrr. Sounds scary and sticky and nerve-racking to me. I have friends who are good at that stuff. Also, there is school, and camp, so my children are not craft-deprived in sum. I know my strengths, and I abdicate my areas of weakness.

On the other hand...

X Isle by Steve Augarde - review

When people express discomfort about the recent spate of dystopian novels for young people - books that feature a grim, brutal, ruined future in which children live by their wits (although often the wits are assisted by some kind of edged weapon) - they are pretty much talking about this book.

After the seas have risen and a series of hurricanes have devastated the planet and drowned the land, people are starving. The people of Baz's London neighborhood rely on a team of divers who trade canned food salvaged from submerged warehouses for items like rabbits, cigarettes, batteries and the like. Once in a while, the divers, who live on an island, accept a small, skinny boy to come to the island to work for them. The island is thought to be a paradise, and parents save up exceptionally rare items to bribe the divers to take their boys.

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride - review

I read a lot of books, right? I read a lot of books that are not necessarily for me. That's what Pink Me is for - I review books for people who choose books for kids. I'm happy with this state of affairs. I wouldn't do it if I weren't. And it's not too often that I have to read something that I truly dislike.

But. Even I have needs.

So, you wanna know what I love? You wanna know what I really, really love? I mean, besides the Spice Girls (obviously), and Peter Stormare? Besides Lou Reed's voice, the Pacific Northwest, fringe on just about anything, and making fun of Martha Stewart (have you ever read her blog? Consumption hasn't been that conspicuous since the Gilded Age!)?

Mirror by Jeannie Baker - review

Two families - one in Sydney, Australia, and one in Morocco. Jeannie Baker takes us through each family's day, showing us warm domestic scenes and sweeping landscapes, making subtle, everyday connections across the seemingly vast gulf of difference separating the two settings.

The Moroccan family gets around by donkey, while the Australians drive a yellow minivan. The Australian kid wears a red t-shirt and jeans, and the Moroccan kid wears his jeans under a red djellaba. Both boys have a baby sibling in a fuzzy yellow sweater. Tea is poured, pets are fed. The Moroccan boy likes to draw: the Australian one writes a story. Maybe they'll write a book together one day.

Nonfiction Monday: Do you Barbie?

As a parent raises a little girl, certain questions will arise.

Do we paint the room pink? What if she wants us to?

Will we ruin her life if we ban glitter? What if we teach her how to use the vacuum and therefore allow her to experience the evils of glitter herself? Will we then be reinforcing gender roles re: housework?

When do we start insisting that she wear a shirt when she goes outside?

Who the hell manufactures hot pants for toddlers and why?

And then there's Barbie.

Nonfiction Monday: Fist stick knife gun by Geoffrey Canada, adapted by Jamar Nicholas - review

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN. It is a brutal chant of a title, a provocative confession from an avowed defender of childhood, a clear-eyed reminiscence, and a concisely laid out description of what happens to a child when violence is an accepted aspect of his social system.

In prose, it's laudable. Everyone should read it. In graphic novel form, it's a bucket of ice water to the face. Everyone can read it.

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan - review

I am sure that very little has to be said about The Lost Hero. Author Rick Riordan is rightly beloved of readers from 8 to 18 and beyond - I know many moms who have read the Percy Jackson books with their kids only to become slaves themselves to the exciting plot, likeable characters, and imaginative scenarios. I myself considered buying The Titan's Curse at Target one Sunday even though I knew the book was waiting for me at the library and I could pick it up when I went to work the next day. I needed to find out what happened next.

But something happened at our school's Lost Hero release party that made me appreciate Rick Riordan anew. Not a big thing, but an important thing to me.

The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea Campbell - review

Say you're writing a book about a teenage boy. You sit down, close your eyes, and start free-associating:

"Teenage boy. What do I think when I think teenage boy. Boners. Boners for sure, yeah. Aspirations. 'Why are my parents such idiots?' Okay, what else... stuck at home, but almost ready to fly away... good, good... Impatient for more autonomy, afraid of what he might do with it. Poor decision maker. Self-absorbed, defensive. Uncommunicative, distrustful. Wow. Teenage boys are kind of a-holes most of the time, aren't they?"

And I think it's this kind of honest introspection that has led to many of the most believable teenage boy narrators in realistic YA fiction of late. You've heard of the Unreliable Narrator? Well, I'm calling these kids the (Mostly) Unlikeable Narrator.

Spud by John van de Ruit - review

I find it a little odd that I love boys' boarding school memoirs so much. I'm an American woman who walked to public school every day for twelve years - the British-style boarding school experience could not be further from my reality.

But then I pick up Moab Is My Washpot and I collapse with laughter. Roald Dahl's Boy is dear to my heart. Hogwarts School is my favorite place in Harry Potter. And doesn't J. M. Coetzee attend boarding school in his memoir Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life, which I only remember as being devastatingly naked and sad?

Heck, I might even be talked into reading Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens's account of his prep school years. But I can't read A Separate Peace again. Made me cry in 11th grade, would make me cry now.

Natural History by DK Publishing - review

I am intensely irritated by this book. Yet I cannot keep myself from paging through its marvels. It's like the Anthropologie catalog - you just know the clothes are poorly made and ridiculously overpriced, but ooh! that skirt is cute!

Billed as "A landmark in reference publishing,' it is instead, like many DK books, useless as a guide in any practical sense. "Over 5000" species are pictured, with little captions, grouped in taxonomic order. But the taxa are only explained in the most rudimentary terms - "The plants in this order are genetically similar but physically different." Oh? In what way? Further, there is no indication of scale, no habitat context, and, while 5000 may sound like a lot? It's not.

Violence 101 by Denis Wright - review

Whew. I am not usually a summarizer, but I think in this case, the only way to introduce this book is to introduce you to its main character, Hamish Graham.

Hamish is a smart, middle-class New Zealand boy of European descent, and, at the age of fourteen, he's already killed a man. And a poodle. And those are just the incidents that made the papers. There's more.

He is, quite naturally, boarding at a facility for troubled youths - boys with violent tendencies and/or brushes with the criminal justice system. The trouble with Hamish's brand of 'troubled' is that nobody can figure it out. He's not a product of an emotionally damaging environment. He doesn't have autism, nor any other disorder that he's been tested for. He has baffled the teachers and counselors charged with his care for years, developing a hearty contempt for them along the way, a contempt that occasionally bursts into violence.

13 Words by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Maira Kalman - review

Bird. Despondent. Cake, Convertible. Mezzo-soprano. And eight more. Write a story using these thirteen words. It doesn't have to make sense. Nope. In fact, it might be more fun if it didn't. (If you can wedge a song into your story, do it.)

I would read this book to a class and let them come up with guesses about how it came to be. I myself am guessing. For all I know, Lemony Snicket startled a pigeon one day and it flew up and hit him hard in the head and when he came to, he only knew thirteen words, so this story came about as therapy. Could be. You don't know that guy's life. Neither do I.

Maira Kalman is at her very best here, layering thick pasty paint in ultra-saturated colors, adding lots of interesting details that could be the result of her own random-word assignment. Tambourine. Porcupine. Pocket square. Nap.

I'm going to come right out and call this a classic. If it were published forty years ago, New York Review of Books would be republishing it right now. That kind of classic.

Monday mashup - New York Comic Con meets the Cybils Awards!

Wow. At one point, as Eerily Similar Paula and her family and I were shuffled through a 20-minute maze of baffles prior to entering the exhibits floor at the New York Comic Con, I looked around at the cosplayers in their itchy wigs (ooh if there isn't a band called The Itchy Wigs, there should be), could not help overhearing the ever-so-slightly Aspy teens talking too loud about extremely qualified and abstruse proper nouns, and reflected to myself that I'm probably not the first person to think that they really could've used some Temple Grandin up in there at the Javits Center.

 

It's a horrible building in the first place, sealed off from the sun like a casino, except in the lobby areas, which heat up like greenhouses. Vast high ceilings fade out of perception and giant distant banks of undirected fluorescents ensure that everything is lit with the same characterless light.

I think it's kind of like being on a space station colony, which totally suits the comic con thing. Temple Grandin should design space stations too, when it comes around to that.

But there were highlights! Highlights there were, and here are they:

J. Otto Seibold presents Other Goose! - review

Since we've been on a singing, storytiming kick lately, I thought I'd offer this Bizarro World Christmas carol my husband Bob made up once:

 

Christmas is going, the goose forgot his hat,
Please throw a penny at the old man's cat.
If he hasn't got a cat, then throw it at his head -
If you throw it at his head then he might be dead.

 

You got that? Have we set the tone, as it were, for this review?

Just Too Cute, and other adorable stories for horrible children, by Mike Reiss, illustrated by Johnny Yanok - review

ZOMG! Check it:

The Oyster
What is moister
Than an oyster?
Grandpa's Pamper
Can be damper.

And that's not the worst of it! In three stories and a bunch of poems, Simpsons writer Mike Reiss deploys gleefully subversive wit to merrily bash the stuffin' out of cute fuzzy animals, exposing them for the gluttonous freeloading nonconformists that they really are. Hee-YEAAAH!!

Think http://www.fupenguin.com/ for the grade-school set, kind of.

I LOVE THIS. I mean, I do not mind funny middle-grade books that rely on farts and pratfalls, dumb insults and dumber adults - but it is a special kind of joy to find someone writing real wit for kids.

Johnny Yanok is a great choice to illustrate this festival of irreverence, adding detail and furbelows to already well-described scenes, pumping the page full of pattern and hot midtone colors. His style, a kind of modified mid-century geometric thing, will be familiar to Cartoon Network viewers and the kind of kid who watches the Pixar shorts that come as bonus features on the DVDs.

That's going to help get this book into the right hands - even though it's shaped like a picture book, this thing is clearly for middle grade readers, who sometimes balk at picking up anything that looks like it's for younger kids. So art that scans older is a plus.

Hipster aunties and uncles, take note. This is just the kind of thing you're going to really enjoy watching the nieces and nephews unwrap come holiday time. Thank me later.

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith - review

What is this?

I know about teen novels with alternate worlds. Usually those worlds are carefully mapped out, explained, lovingly explored by the author.  And I know what is a book with a teenage protagonist who endures a terrible, traumatic experience. Although usually those are girls. It can be rough these days to be a girl in a YA non-fantasy novel. You might get buried alive, or raped, or raped a lot, or accidentally kill your parents, or be in a coma or die, and you will almost certainly be kidnapped. I even know horror. I have read a lot of horror, especially when I was a very young person, and very unsure about things.

So I think The Marbury Lens is horror. But it is non-cheap, un-easy horror.

Songs of innocence and experience - adult weirdness for teens

Well, not just any teen. Teens with a taste for... for the unusual, let's say. Teens who are not satisfied with sports novels and vampire boarding school melodramas. Teens who have read Janne Teller's Nothing, who enjoy truly odd stuff like The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs and Madapple and then wonder why there aren't more books like those.

There are, of course - there are plenty of challenging novels in the YA section, but there's no shame in walking a kid through the adult section, and there's nothing immoral in handing a book about a serial killer to that kid.

Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan - review

I am not sure I even need to write about this book, given that title. You are either going to think that's the funniest thing that has ever entered your house, or you are going to think that's appalling.

Wait, I have 4 elementary school boys around my dining room table right this second. Lunchtime poll:

YNL: Look at the cover of this book. Would you read this book?

Secondo: No.

YNL: No? Too scary?

Secondo: No. I just won't say yes to anything you ask me ever.

YNL: Always suspected as much. Zhou?

Zhou: Yeah, sure, I would read it!

Prime: Looks good to me!

Mao: Ehhh... I'd rather read LEGO Star Wars.

YNL: Like, not right now... would you read it ever at all?

Mao: I've already read it and it's really funny.

 

Well that wasn't very satisfying. Maybe I'll ask a followup question.

YNL: If you were to eat whiny children, how would you prepare them?

Secondo: With pepper and salsa - a lot of salsa!

Zhou: I would bake them and then I would put them with a little bit of bacon, one egg, and all the materials for making a burrito except the tortilla.

Prime: I would probably chop them up, donate them to a restaurant, go to the restaurant, and order something good.

Zhou: With them in it.

Prime: That's what I mean.

Mao: I'd put them in a burrito with salsa, a lot of cheese, and some beef.

Zhou: But that makes you fart.

Better! Me, I would braise those whiny children. I like a slow braise. But there is no actual cooking in this book, although the oven does get preheated preparatory to baking the whiny children in a cake, which doesn't happen because somebody spills the flour. Sorry if I gave away a plot point. I thought it was maybe important to note that no children are actually consumed in this book. You'd be surprised what parents sometimes don't take for granted. Although, come to think of it, almost anything can happen in a picture book. That one book that I thought was about classroom manners and turned out to be about sexual abuse of a child? I have never gotten over that book. And this book is written and illustrated by a New Yorker cartoonist, and some of those guys have an odd sense of what is funny. There was a whole Seinfeld episode about that. And in fact, the guy who wrote that Seinfeld episode wrote this book. Huh.

Endpaper bonus: funny endpapers.

Super Human by Michael Carroll - review

This is the time. The time is now. Michael Carroll's Quantum Prophecy series has zipped beneath the radar like a low-flying caped crusader for far too long.

The Quantum Prophecy trilogy describes a world in which superheroes and supervillains were once a natural part of the world order, keeping the peace, trying to take over the world, doing their stuff. But ten years ago, one supervillain's dastardly plan went tragically awry, and all the superhumans disappeared. Now, a few young people are beginning to exhibit unusual abilities - only to discover that a world of peril and plots has been waiting for them. Dun dun DUNNN!

The Cat's Pajamas by Wallace Edwards - review

Is it me? Am I finally warming up to Wallace Edwards? Or is he getting steadily more charming?

I read Alphabeasts, published in 2002, and, like many ABC books, I found the word choices to be a bit strained, a bit advanced for the audience. I think it's a common problem with ABC books - are they really for children who are just learning their letters? or is the alphabet framework just a fun thing to hang a clever concept onto?

And then I read Monkey Business, Edwards's book of illustrated idiomatic phrases, and while I marveled and oohed and ahhed at the art (ohh, that cover!), at the same time I kind of shook my head. I felt that the phrases illustrated in that book were likely to zoom over the heads of most young children. Experience bore me out on that one, by the way. It did not circulate in our library system very well, yet every adult that I handed it to loved looking at it.

But now, The Cat's Pajamas - same premise, same masterful artwork - charms me completely. Do his animal characters possess a smidge more expression? Are the compositions a titch less crowded? Are the idioms illustrated just a hair more commonplace? I don't know. I think so. What a treat. On a page captioned, "Wade had never driven a submarine before, so he couldn't wait to get his feet wet," a frog drives a Buck Rogers-y striped minisub past colorful reef fish and a skeptical-looking octopus. The submarine has holes for Wade's legs, so his feet, indeed, are wet. As Camilla the Camel waits for the Oasis Express, she "cools her heels," with each foot plunged into a luscious ice cream cone, a blissed-out expression on her face.

Oh yea, oh verily. If you like Wallace Edwards, you'll love this. If you are lukewarm on Wallace Edwards, this book will bring you up to a merrily rolling boil.

The Enemy by Charlie Higson - review

It happens to just about everyone. Sometime in your early to mid-teen years, you wake up one day and realize that, gradually, every adult you know has become a stranger to you. You have begun to understand the fears, jealousies, and appetites that really motivate grownups, and you are appalled. They in turn suddenly do not recognize you as the child they have harbored lo these many years. And so your life becomes a series of surreptitious forays punctuated by skirmish - if your paths cross, there will be conflict, so you do your best to skirt their presence, to avoid their taint. You forge alliances with your friends or toughen up and go it alone, hoping against hope that you will make it.

Hmm. Maybe I'm overstating it. It's been a while, after all - all I can remember is being truly freaked out when my father threw my Kings of the Wild Frontier LP down the stairs because, I think, he was afraid I was on drugs. And my own kids won't be prompting me to mystifying moments of violence for a good 5 years yet.

Charlie Higson certainly sees adolescence that way, though. In The Enemy, all the grownups have turned into zombie-like cannibals. Some plague or something. The kids live in fortified big box stores and send out foraging parties to look for food and weapons. Yup. It's excellent.

Alphapets by Shiho Ishikawa and 100 Shapes by Nao Sugimoto - review

These two are gift books - not suitable for the library, because they are consumed as they are enjoyed. Thus, they're a little off my usual beat, but I couldn't resist.

Clear, happy color palettes and kicky patterns make these two little art activity books catnip for the design-inclined. Which I am. AlphaPets is a book of big block letters, each of which can be punched out, and with a few folds and a few tab A / slot A insertions, turned into a little origami-esque animal that corresponds to the letter. That is, M turns into a winsome mouse, O is a very cleverly-designed ostrich, W is a wallowing whale. We had three generations punching and bending and folding at one point, making all the animals that corresponded to our names.

Maybe a little tricky - my seven year old only managed to make a couple without help, and my mom gave up pretty quickly. Trifocals can only help so much. Also, as with plenty of origami, some animals benefited by a little dab of glue. But there are additional step-by-step photos plus videos available online (currently in Japanese but still very helpful).

100 Shapes may look like a simple book of stencils, but the suggestions for how to use them are quite sophisticated, as are some of the shapes themselves. Of course there is a tree, a house, and an elephant, but also the book includes stencils of the Eiffel Tower, a seated woman, fish, and electric guitar, and a cruise ship. Of the two books, this is the one that has longer legs. Kids are encouraged to combine the shapes to make scenes, color them in using patterns, and use them to cut shaped pictures out of colored paper or old magazines.

Available for a pretty good price, too. Just the thing for those late-summer and back-to-school birthdays!

For the Win by Cory Doctorow - review

I am not a teacher, but I used to do a lot of training - I taught museum staff how to use the database software that helped them keep track of all their stuff. Because of that experience, I now feel comfortable addressing any group not actually armed with edged weapons. Let me put it this way: you ever read From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Of course you have. How would Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler react to having her files transcribed into database entries, so that they could be searched, shuffled, and read... by strangers?

Yeah. These were people who had avoided anything that even faintly smelled of maths or science since, sometimes, freshman year of undergrad. Many used a computer for email, but plenty affected a contemptuous and disdainful attitude, and considered it unfair that now, in addition to being profoundly knowledgeable about, say, Heian period sword guards, they were expected to operate machinery.

Not unlike teaching social studies to high school students, I'm thinking.

Dave the Potter by Laban Carrick Hill, illustrated by Bryan Collier - review

You are going to want this book.

This is a rare story, beautifully told, illustrated with power, and it has ties to things that children can touch and do.

What, you want more?

Heh, just kidding. Of course you do. How about you want a story that will help educate children about the time when slavery was legal in the United States, that does not flinch from the tragic inequities of that period, but which nonetheless is not unremittingly bleak? A story that celebrates a person whose skill and artistry transcended status and transcends time? Now you know. You want this book. I knew you would. 

Kindergarten Diary: as told to Antoinette Portis by me, Annalina - review

Check out this quote from Kindergarten Diary:

We are Room 2K.
We are fine!

Assertive. Clear-eyed. Defiant-like. Almost... anthemic. And, written as it is beneath a drawing of three little kids hanging upside-down, big smiles on their faces and their belly-buttons showing, "fine" begins to assume a whole bunch of meaning:

• First kid (subtext): "Not only are we 'fine,' we are happy and fine!"
• Second kid (subtext): "And we're just going to get fine-r!"
• Third kid (subtext): "Not only did we have nothing to worry about, you parents can quit your hand-wringin' too!"

Subway by Christophe Niemann - review

NOT just for New Yorkers, this swingy rhyming book follows a daddy and his two little kids on a subway adventure on a rainy day. They take the A train from jazzy Harlem all the way to sleepy Far Rockaway. They savor the view as the Q crosses over the East River. They have fun with the map - why take the 1 straight from the southern tip of Manhattan to the southern end of Central Park... when you could take the 3 to the 5 to the N to the B to the C to the 7 to the 6 to the E to the D and end up at the same point?

Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley - review

Dear Internet,

I thought you were looking out for me! How have you not forced me to read Scott Pilgrim before now?

I ask again: HOW has someone not held me down, pried my eyes open, and shoved Scott Pilgrim into my face?

SEASONS by Blexbolex - review

You are familiar with this creature Blexbolex, non? This French illustrator who works in line and silk screen?

Me neither, and Oh My God how have I missed this guy? But wait - I see that he did the illustrations for the recent edition of I Know How to Cook, and that was one big honkin doorstop of a cookbook (and it is French) but I almost had to have it anyway, because of those illustrations.

boom! by Mark Haddon - review

Mark Haddon gets the best book designers ever, doesn't he? The cover of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was plain red with that little silhouette of a dog upside-down, and that told you that the book was possibly old-fashioned but definitely unexpected on the inside. The cover of boom! is the friendliest orange linen, with big lower-case letters spelling out the title and the author's name, and a cute lil' rocket done in nice thick lines. You just want to pick it up and put it in your pocket. Of course, I said the same thing about Mac Barnett after meeting him at BEA, so maybe I'm just a sucker for a linen jacket. (Parenthetically, does Adam Rex every go anywhere without his bag strapped across his chest? What's he got in there?)

BEA (no longer so) brief recap

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian with some of the guys of Guys Read: Jon Scieszka, Adam Rex, and Mac Barnett. David Lubar is lurking off to the right.

Wow. Was this a great show or what! I am still a little breathless, not least from hauling the giant bag of great books away from the Javits Center. And I swear, I only took the great ones, or the ones I expect to be great, or the ones I really want to know about. I didn't take any random stuff, and still there's got to be 30 books in there.

Everything from Charlie Higson's new book The Enemy, which I find especially intriguing because it intrigues my 15 year old friend N, who usually restricts his reading to game guides... to David Ezra Stein's Interrupting Chicken. The title alone tells you that this book is going to be a mega hit at storytimes for preschoolers on up. My son Zhou read it to us this morning - it's a star!

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest - review

Oh, screw Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- give me airships and gasmasks and zombies! (Seriously, is anyone but me getting sick of that stuff? Classic literature - Now Enriched with Humorous Gore! - it was funny once, maybe twice. I've never seen a better argument for maintaining the copyright on great-granddad's novels than The Undead World of Oz: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Complete with Zombies and Monsters. Ooo, cranky on a Friday, aren't we?)

So, here is the thing about steampunk - for such a teeny little genre, it is over-defined to the point of suffocation. People who say they like it seem to know EXACTLY what it is, and what it is has more to do with its material culture - its brass, leather and rubber artifacts - than the usual elements that define a genre. Steampunk can be written in any style or mood: but it seems there really must be goggles.

She Thief by Daniel Finn - review

The obvious and inevitable comparison that this book will invite is to Vikas Swarup's Q & A, aka Slumdog Millionaire. So let me just get that out of the way. If you enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire, if you were not so distracted by its images of radiant children amid filthy squalor and nearly hopeless generational poverty that you were unable to enjoy the story, you will appreciate this book.

That doesn't look right. I guess I should say I loved that movie, love Vikas Swarup. I love India, and I didn't think that Slumdog Millionaire was about poverty. Not that poverty isn't an important subject. Sigh. I give up. Why don't I just review She Thief.

She Thief is the story of Demi and Baz, boy and girl, best friends, orphans, about 11-12 years old, living in the slums of a hot, crowded Latin American city. I was thinking São Paulo until I realized they called people Señor. So, B.A.? Bogotá? Quito? Like that.

The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell - review

Now, here's something I didn't know and wouldn't have guessed - Carrie Bradshaw and I are about the same age. Maybe she was a senior when I was in tenth grade. But still. Jimmy Carter was President when she was in high school; her friend drives a Gremlin; they sing along to the B-52s in the car. Preppy style has not yet hit in its full force, but she lives in Connecticut, and there are girls who dress like that already. Naturally, she hates them.

I wouldn't have guessed that Carrie and I were the same age, because the Carrie I know is the Carrie of the TV show - I know SJP clacking around New York City in absurd outfits. That show was on from 1998 to 2004, during which time Carrie should have aged from about 34 to 40. I lived in NYC during most of that time too. I spent those years getting divorced, getting remarried, getting a graduate degree, and getting pregnant - twice. Carrie spent those years drinking sweetened martinis and frenching people like Alanis Morissette and Mikhail Baryshnikov. No wonder I thought she was 28.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher - review

What is it about Incarceron? Oh, there's all this hype about it, it's the big new series, gonna be (((""THE NEXT HARRY POTTER"" ARG I can't even bring myself to TYPE that phrase without air quotes and a vicious eyeroll and some sort of intricate rude gesture))) according to numerous sources. That kind of guff generally makes me run run run away. Makes most of my friends - grownup and kid - run run run away too.

 

But. I liked a few of the phrases I read on the flap. "Eagle tattoo." "Crystal key." "Dystopic future." Most of all, I was hooked by "Vast metal prison." Just a little darker than many YA fantasy novel settings. I sensed that here there would not be dragons.

Farm by Elisha Cooper - review

Believe it or not, sometimes I get a little tired of picture books. The tiny little morality plays, the brightly-colored cartoon children and their brightly-colored antics... I only read about twenty of these things a week, you'd get a bit jaded too.

But then Elisha Cooper comes out with a new book (or Marla Frazee or Oliver Jeffers or Linda Smith or Lane Smith or...) and I am starstruck again, savoring every word, staring deep into the witty detail of each drawing, and, in Cooper's case, kind of wondering how the heck he DOES that - that thing with his pencil, how a little wavery line is a cat, or a kid, or a cloud, or a tractor.

Let me back up. This book deserves a little perspective. Lord knows Elisha Cooper has employed it - about half the pages in this yearlong portrait of a family farm are long, lean landscapes, full of sky, with an inch of flat earth at the bottom of the page. Have you ever been out in the true Midwest? It is a marvel to me that such an astringent landscape can be so luxurious in color and texture, as if the sky has to put on a better show to compensate for the lack of earthly features. It suits Cooper's style - in books such as A Good Night Walk and Beach, his large, clean forms kept his little wiggly details from ever looking fussy, and the little wiggly details kept the large volumes from looking too austere.

Barn : bean as Big : little.

Not to slight the text. Cooper is as talented almost as talented a writer as he is an artist, and his narrative choices reflect the same little/big aesthetic as his drawings do.

After a storm, the farm swells with sound. The corn rustles. The cattle bellow. A tractor echoes in and out. Birds quarrel. Bugs hum. Their hum is constant.

This language is plain and calm but never boring. There's too much going on for it to be boring: the boy throws tomatoes at birds, the cattle poop. The imagery - "The rows look like wet hair just after it's combed" - is beautifully apt, domestic and understated, and above all, authentic. Very authentic: the family loses a rooster in September, the farmer uses pesticide and fertilizer, and some of the chipmunks don't make it across the road. You almost expect a little sketch of the farmer meeting with a banker.

To sum up, here are some of the things that I love about this book:

• clouds
• the cats that have names
• skinny wavery green beans
• hay bales like a crumbling ziggurat
• a rooster, seemingly deep in thought but really just standing there
• the girl reading in the barn
• dust

  

Long Tail Kitty by Lark Pien - review

Cute cute, but up-to-date and witty too. Four short chapters introduce us to Long Tail Kitty's home and friends, with lots of playing and silliness. Always domestic in scale, but suffused with little fabulousnesses like talking flowers that like cookies, and a tall mouse in a rasta hat. No surprises except for tiny surprises. Vocabulary perfectly suited to the early chapter book reader.

Lark Pien is an indie comic industry mainstay - prolific and imaginative. She self-publishes, she shows in galleries, she goes to shows. She works in Oakland, like my hero Jason Shiga (Meanwhile). Her unexpected, clear colors have given books like (also Oakland-based) Gene Yang's American Born Chinese a fresh look. Having teetered on the brink of non-obscurity for a while, Long Tail Kitty might actually push her over the edge.



Luxuriously produced by Blue Apple Books (from whom I'm going to look for more great things, but boy is that website hard to navigate), on toothy ivory paper that makes Pien's watercolor and ink drawings look freshly painted just for you. Yummy.

This week's ten best teen books of all time, by me

Persnickety Snark is compiling a list of the Top 100 Young Adult Novels - gathering data by means of a poll form (participate here). I am stuck in bed with a weird combination of symptoms - what is it when you have intermittent mild nosebleed, no voice, a hurtful, hacky cough, and abdominal cramps? I guess I'm dying. So I've been giving teen books a little thought, and here are my nominations:

#10:

Go Ask Alice. Because nobody who has read it ever forgot it. In a recent workplace poll, people from the ages of 22 to 58 all pegged it as THE book that "left a lasting shiver upon their soul".

#9:

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsberg. The first book I ever reviewed online, way before Pink Me existed. Determined the course of my life at one point. Tells the awkward, prickly girls to hold on - even they will find beauty and/or reason, a home, something just for them. My review here.

#8:

His Dark Materials (trilogy) by Philip Pullman. An alternate world, with an alternate God. Magic, scenery, intrigue. Polar bears. Late youth is the time to question, and these books prompt questions while being immensely entertaining at the same time. Ignore the fact that Pullman himself is getting to be a real punk, if you can. My debate here.

#7:

ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool by Elisha Cooper. A year in the life of 8 high school students in Chicago - their college aspirations, their relationships, jobs, social standing, grades, everything that's important to them. And it is NOT FICTION.

#6 - it's a tie:

Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart or My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. On the surface, these two books, published fifty years apart, would seem to be very little alike. One is about a girl negotiating boarding school, the other about a boy learning to survive on his own in the 'wilderness' (the Catskills used to be more remote I guess). But I think there is a similar process at work here. Both Frankie and Sam come to terms with their own abilities and limitations, discovering just how far they can push themselves before needing help. Also, both books are extremely entertaining and full of how-to information. I reviewed My Side of the Mountain here, but I appear never to have reviewed Frankie. Odd. I loved that book.

#5:

The Weetzie Bat books by Francesca Lia Block. For their breathless, breathy celebration of the thrill of being young, and because they never shy away from consequences. Also because they are irresistably pretty on the inside.

#4:

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (series). While not written strictly for teens, these are revelatory books for lots of teenagers, exposing them to the idea that adulthood might not be all Jane Austen and To Kill a Mockingbird, and in fact, some geeks never grow up. I reviewed the sixth book in the trilogy, penned by Eoin Colfer, on Pink Me.

#3:

Not the End of the World, by Geraldine McCaughrean. The story of Noah and his family aboard the boat as it might really have happened, if it were to have really happened. Slightly blasphemous? Yes. I think you'd have to say yes. But believers and nonbelievers alike will benefit from looking at a familiar story from a different perspective. My full review here.

#2:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Possibly a perfect novel, this book appeals to both boys and girls, manages you'll-laugh-you'll-cry without manipulating the reader, and most importantly, is heartrendingly believable.

#1:

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. It's a book about civil liberties (disguised as a thriller). It's a coming-of-age-in-a-treacherous-time story - disguised as a thiller. It's a Jeffersonian discussion of the push/pull relationship between security and freedom. Disguised as a thriller. It's also got smart funny dialogue, nifty tricks, cool information about everything from RFID to Jack Kerouac, and a very real-feeling main character. I recommend it to teens and adults alike. Nobody believes me, but I put up a compelling argument here.

The Hidden Boy by Jon Berkeley - review

I have this shower curtain that I love. Stay with me. At first glance, this shower curtain is merely a lacy, toile-y, silhouette pattern of old-fashioned clip-art (what used to be called cuts or spot illustrations) of animals and plants. Like one of those Dover books barfed all over my bathroom (Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Silhouettes if you want to know which one).

But if you spend any time gazing at my shower curtain, which, let's face it, sometimes might happen in a bathroom, you begin to notice details. There's a rabbit playing a bugle. A Bambi and a Thumper staring out at you with decidedly malevolent eyes. An empty birdcage that has apparently been the scene of some violence. Bees are gigantic, while bears are tiny. The petals on some of the flowers are ladies' legs. And the goats rowing a fancy gondola - something about those goats freaks me right out.

The slightly alternate world that Irishman Jon Berkeley has created for his new series The Bell Hoot Fables is a lot like my shower curtain. The elaborate treehouses that make up the village of Bell Hoot are in the midst of an old forest, not far from a still lake and a rushing waterfall. Bees hum, flowers waft their fragrances, the sun warms the leaves. It's a good book to read in springtime.

But undercurrents of tension and strangeness run through the community, and through the forest, as young Bea, who has come to Bell Hoot along with her family for reasons she does not at first understand, quickly surmises. In the first place, her little brother Theo appears to have vanished on the crossing from our world to... wherever Bell Hoot is. Then there's the pale daughter of her host family, Willow, who appears to be wasting away. Thornbushes are planted below everyone's window, and the treehouse ladders are pulled up at night. Conflicts among the families of Bell Hoot are coming to a head, and - not surprisingly - Bea discovers that only she may have the resources to save the day.

The residents of Bell Hoot use a kind of natural magic they call Mumbo Jumbo. Some have incredibly sharp eyesight, some can influence objects with their minds, and some have analytical skills reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. Bea's Granny Delphine predicts that a man will buy a razor on Friday by combining her observation of the man's poorly-shaven face with his reaction upon learning that he is to be paid on Friday. That's neat stuff.

Throwing extraordinary skills into the mix can hurry a plot along nicely, and is fun wish-fulfillment for young readers. Too often, however, the new skills come too fast to be processed by the character and integrated into his or her personality. Not so here. Bea discovers her newfound communication skills in a more meditative manner - it's quite nice, and we feel the character gain confidence as she begins to trust and act on her instincts and reasoning.

As happens sometimes in fantasy-adventure novels, I feel like the ending came on somewhat rushed. Motives are a bit weak. Mind you, this beats the heck out of those protracted wrap-ups you see sometimes, in which every character has to be back-storied and tied up and tucked in... but The Hidden Boy is only the first of a series.

I am quite lucky that "Berkeley" comes between "Aguiar" and "Collins" on the library shelf, as I will be handing this book to readers of The Lost Island of Tamarind and the Gregor books.

And true to the mysterious nature of the forest surrounding Bell Hoot, I have never been able to find that shower curtain for sale again. Someday it will wear out, and I will have to replace it with Christ of the Andes, or Edward Cullen, or something mundane like that, and my bathroom will become just that little bit less interesting.

The Purple Kangaroo by Michael Ian Black and Peter Brown - review

Now I know what the Evil Hate Monkey (some photos not particularly appropriate for work) did when he was but a young, not-quite-evil-more-like-just-an-Impish Smartass Monkey. I need to buy this book for all my friends RIGHT NOW.

One joke (one funny funny joke). Peter Brown's clear, delicious colors. Might look nice in a basket next to something made of chocolate and a few Jordan almonds, don't you think?

Here's the video Michael Ian Black and Peter Brown made about making this book, and you know what? The Evil Hate Monkey thing is not as far off as one might think. Hard to believe anyone ever meets Michael Ian Black and then decides to let him write children's books. But then again, I am wearing a Boy Scout uniform shirt and a chainsaw earring right now and people beg me to do library service to children, so I guess...? standards are really low? Whatever keeps us in Pop-Tarts, right?

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.