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Zero the Hero by Joan Holub and Tom Lichtenheld - review

It's a Friday afternoon and my son, 8-year-old Zhou, is helping me review Zero the Hero. Joan Holub wrote this book, and Tom Lichtenheld did the drawings. Lichtenheld has been a Pink Me favorite ever since Shark vs. Train for his clear, happy colors, lovely layering, and strong, funky line. And Joan Holub's Goddess Girls books are getting a lot of play with my middle grade girl readers. She sent a stack of goddess bookmarks along with the ARC of this picture book, and they were snapped up in a jiffy.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: So, youngster. What do you like about this book?

100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days by Bruce Goldstone - review

100 things I like about this 100th day book:

Ok not. What, come on, do you really need a hundred? Would you even sit still to read a hundred? Yeah one would think not. One would need to have written a book as appealing and clever and also thoughtful as Bruce Goldstone's new book in order to get a reader to actually sit still to read 100 of virtually anything. Or so one might think...

Ergo. A few things I like about this 100th day book:

Hot x: Algebra exposed! by Danica McKellar - review

On Nonfiction Monday, bloggers across the kidlitosphere write about nonfiction books for kids. Despite all the nonfiction I read, I am only an occasional contributor, mostly due to me often forgetting what day it is. Monday really creeps up on you sometimes, doesn't it? Today, the exceptional kidlit blog The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting, with links to all of this week's nonfiction posts.

Let us now praise Danica McKellar. Nonfiction Monday, prepare to eat her math.

Would you, have you, responded with knee-jerk distaste to a pretty girl, a TV star, protesting loudly that "Math Doesn't Suck"? (especially when her book with that title is subtitled "How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail"?) Do you find the magazine-style covers of the pretty girl's books, promising personality quizzes, and "boy-crazy confessionals" along with word problems and polynomials, patronizing and/or pandering?

Well, you might. You might. But don't.

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.