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Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking by Phillippe Coudray - review

There is a giant, bulging slob of a penguin in the refrigerator on the front cover of this book. A giant bulging penguin who has apparently eaten everything in the refrigerator. A bear and a bunny confront the penguin. They are deadpan, silent - are they coming face to face with the consequences of a previous bad decision? Is the penguin a nightmarish symbol of some kind, a living, breathing reminder of our greedy id?

I don't know. I haven't read the book yet. I was just so struck by the cover that I had to sit and gaze at it for a little while. These colors are wonderfully sophisticated - the walls and floor are three different shades of khaki tan, the bear and bunny are two edible browns, and the interior of the fridge is light blue with a lot of gray in it. This is a cotton pencil skirt, a man-tailored ice blue silk shirt, and a very nice leather belt, perhaps from Façonnable. Ok, on my budget, maybe J. Crew.

 

Nonfiction Monday - Animals with Super Powers by Natalie Lunis - review, plus A Memoriam to Charley, a Brine Shrimp

It's a bittersweet day here on the Pink Me couch. The season's changing, the pool has closed. We recently made the not-difficult-at-all decision to finally ditch this bony old beast for a new couch, one with padding in all the right places, one with cushions that have yet to be vomited on. It's an exciting moment, but I can't help wondering if we will be as happy on the new couch as we have been on the - truly repulsive - Jennifer Convertibles sofa that I bought in New York so many years ago. The frog-printed slipcover will be going too.

Will our crazy pillows fit on it? Will we all fit on it? The boys are getting bigger, and nowadays much more likely to be buried in a D&D manual than in a Hardy Boys mystery.

Added to this seasonal introspection is a sliver of bad news that has hit our family unexpectedly hard: Charley, the World's Oldest Living Brine Shrimp, has died.

 

Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka - audiobook review

 

Jon Scieszka has five brothers. Jon Scieszka is a funny writer. Ergo, Jon Scieszka's stories about growing up with his five brothers = funny. Oh, I laughed out loud, all right. I read bits aloud to the librarians in the workroom who wanted to know just what was so damn funny, and they laughed out loud. But we're moms. Moms of boys. We have to think boys are funny, or else go googoo and end up carted away in a van.

I first reviewed this book two years ago. I read it to myself while our house was undergoing extensive renovation. It was kind of a distracted review, touching on Peruvian hats, Luke Wilson and my great-cousin Margaret's nose.

But such a funny book. I really needed the laughs during those dark days - my kitchen was open to the outside world for about a week, making it less kitchen-y and more like, let's say, a shed.

We have revisited Knucklehead this summer, now that it is available on audio, read by Mr. Scieszka himself. I checked it out of the library specifically for the benefit of my husband and his multitude of siblings, many of whom were going to be in from out of town and spending copious hours in our minivan last week.

I'd rather be a kid! Recent and forthcoming graphic novels for kids and teens - Part One

The number of graphic novels on my coffee table right now is a lot. It's a flock of graphic novels, a mountain of graphic novels, a herd, a murder, a gaggle. In fact, I am going to make up a collective noun for graphic novels RIGHT NOW.

What I have on my coffee table right now is a CATASTROPHE OF GRAPHIC NOVELS! It is so great a catastrophe that I have had to split this roundup blog post into more than one part. Today's entry:

 

Graphic Novels on My Coffee Table Early April 2011, Part One: The Early Years

One graphic novel that I don't have on my coffee table right now - but I'm going to fix that, even if I have to arm every mutual friend Dan Santat and I have with Peep guns and malted milk bombs and send them to (nicely) threaten his editor - is Sidekicks. It's a full-length kids' graphic novel from the man who illustrated the Barnett-penned Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World and Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo by Milo and Inky's mom. Mutual friends, see?

There's a trailer. Even if you're not a book trailer person, watch this one. Dan Santat always has the best trailers.

Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Lane Smith - review

Judith Viorst, by virtue of that book she wrote last year when Alexander and his family moved in with her temporarily and made her shiver for the fate of her velvet upholstered parlor chairs (Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days: An Almost Completely Honest Account of What Happened to Our Family When Our Youngest ... Came to Live with Us for Three Months), sticks in my mind as some kind of Joan Didion character. Sharp-eyed, funny, a little uncompromising, extremely self-aware. She lives in D.C., not New York or CT, and D.C. to me implies a certain Nina Totenbergitude.

Or a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweileriness. Like she'd be a person who speaks to children directly and appraisingly, a person who has no patience for the kind of performances that adults sometimes put on in front of children, and who finds the recitations of cuteness or precociousness that children are sometimes expected to roll out in front of adults likewise appalling.

Am I assuming too much about Judith Viorst? Well, clearly. What do I know? Maybe she speaks baby talk to grocery clerks and wears amusement park souvenir sweatshirts every day. But nothing in her new book Lulu and the Brontosaurus would lead me to believe that she is anything but the classy, smart-alecky dame I imagine.

The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future, by Dav Pilkey - review

I probably don't need to bring this book, the first in a new graphic novel series, to anyone's attention. Young people who admire the body of work created by Mr. Dav Pilkey, a body of work that includes perennial prompters of parental protest like Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot and Captain Underpants, are probably all up on top of this new book and do not need meddling grownups to point it out to them. The abovementioned peeved parents will respond to it with the same distaste they feel for the gross-out gags and fart-filled froth that is the main content of all of Mr. Pilkey's work.

But last night one of these boys of mine read the whole thing out loud to me - again - and had all of us laughing, and when a book is as phenomenally phun as that, I feel the need to weigh in.

Zig and Wikki in Something Ate My Homework by Nadja Spiegelman and Trade Loeffler - review

TOON Books loves them some old-fashioned, well-crafted comic illustration style. I read a lot of graphic novels for kids - basically, I read all of them - and it is always so soothing to open up a TOON book. The color palette is consistent and harmonious, there is contrast between backgrounds and foregrounds, shapes are easy to read. TOON artists deploy standard techniques and visual cues like motion lines, graphic text (ZOOM!), and using selective detail to indicate large areas of foliage or other flora, and they do these things well. This stuff is worth learning, and worth doing. It makes the reader's job easier, and especially when you're drawing for new readers, that should be a major consideration.

All right, that's my lecture for the week. Oh, except call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think using pens and brushes to draw children's comics is the way to go. Unless you are VERY good at digital illustration (Bob Staake), you can end up with a monotony of line value that makes it difficult to distinguish the main subject of a drawing.

God I'm such a geek.

Ok. Shake it off, baby. What's the what with Zig and Wikki? What's with those wacky names? How come there's a raccoon on the cover? Is my kid going to snatch this up or what?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading as a reasonable substitute for hibernation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka, by Jon Scieszka - review

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka
Jon Scieszka has five brothers. Jon Scieszka is a funny writer. Ergo, Jon Scieszka's stories about growing up with his five brothers = funny. Oh yeah - I laughed out loud. I read bits aloud to the librarians in the workroom who wanted to know just what was so damn funny, and they laughed out loud. But we're moms. Moms of boys. We have to think boys are funny, or else go googoo and end up carted away in a van.

And I also believe that Knucklehead will make children laugh out loud. There is fire, there is urination. There is getting away with stuff, and there is not a single one of those Peruvian hats with the pigtails down the side that make everyone - EVERYONE - look like Luke Wilson making his very best confused face.

Sorry. Distracted. Been writing in a coffee house lately while my house gets some work done. ("While we're in there fixing the deviated ceiling, how about we give you a whole new kitchen at the same time? Wouldn't you like your kitchen to look like... THIS?" I believe that's also how my mother's cousin Margaret got Patty Duke's nose.)

Back to Knucklehead. Funny, definitely funny. Very reminiscent of Bill Sleator's Oddballs, also a collection of funny stories from the author's childhood, many involving mud. And while the author packs in plenty of forbidden fruit, like how to construct a mortar ("Don't try this at home" - yeah thanks, Mr. Ambassador. My kids get ahold of this and we can say bye-bye to the attic window! (If we're lucky.)), there are also tons of positive messages about the joys of playing outside, the glories of Go, Dog. Go!, the good things about grandparents, Reading Is Fun, and... the value of military academy. Also, the chapters are short enough and the reading level low enough to hand it to, oh, grade 2 and above.

But the thing is, I have never successfully gotten a kid to read Oddballs. The fault in the case of that book may lie with the cover, which is I think more appealing to grownups who like Joseph Cornell and Robertson Davies than it is to kids. But it may be the nostalgia. It may be that kids just aren't as interested in true-life stories that aren't recognizable to them.

If it's the cover, the Scieszka book is going to go better: the cover of Knuckleheads resembles a pulp comic book, with 9-year-old G.I. Jon popping out of a tank turret. But if it's the nostalgia... listen, I'm only ten years younger than our Ambassador, but the world described in Knuckleheads already feels like my parents' generation. Men in skinny ties, nuns in habits with full wimple.

On the other hand, the family that took us in and fed us last night mentioned that they are reading Knuckleheads together, and laughing their butts off. Specifically, the Crossing Swords chapter was mentioned, and I'll say this: "Crossing Swords," in which Scieszka describes how he and his brothers could turn even going to the bathroom into an opportunity for imaginative play (and hoo boy is that the most sedate description you'll ever read for that particular activity!), may well establish this book as the passed-around page-marked Diary of a Wimpy Kid for this year. I'll even go so far as to call those few pages Jon Scieszka's ticket to immortality, and that's saying something.

Certainly we'll be mentioning his name as we mop up the bathroom floor - here's to you, Mr. Ambassador!

Labels: age: Grade1 and up, biography, funny, nonfiction

Tuff Fluff: The case of Duckie's missing brain by Scott Nash - review

Tuff Fluff: The case of Duckie's missing brain by Scott Nash

Thank goodness for Scott Nash. With this book, the first of a series, the illustrator of the Flat Stanley books shows that he, like his late partner in crime, out there thinking of the first graders. Not everybody is. I mean, I love Elephant and Piggie very much, but I bet that when Mo Willems's daughter grows out of Beginning Readers he'll move on to kids' graphic novels (please? that would be really great!). In fact, I wonder if, after my kids grow out of Beginning Readers, if I'm going to continue trolling those aisles for something, anything fun and readable and cool-looking.

Well, hopefully, Scott Nash will always be there for the little guys.

My recent graduate of first grade snatched up Tuff Fluff as soon as he saw it, plopped right down on the floor, and started reading it to his younger brother. That's the highest endorsement I know.

Labels: age: Grade1 and up, Beginning Reader, funny, mystery