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Into the Volcano by Don Wood - review

Into the Volcano by Don Wood

Into the Volcano is an intense mystery-adventure coming-of-age chapter book in comic book style - something of a departure for Don Wood, the illustrator of such picture books as Piggies and The Napping House.

Two brothers, Duffy and Sumo, visit their mysterious aunt in Hawaii, who sends them off on a perilous expedition into the bowels of an erupting volcano, accompanied by strangers whose skills are obvious, but whose trustworthiness is not.

The dangers faced by the boys are terrifying, especially an interlude during which Sumo, wracked by guilt and indecision after he thinks his brother has fallen to his death, is trapped in the dark on an underground cliff, and is visited by the specter of Death. That the children have been exposed to such peril knowingly by the adult who has been entrusted with their care is a dark vein running through the story.

A prose book with this content would probably be suitable for children in grades 3 to 5, and in fact, Sumo and Duffy appear to be no older than nine or ten, but Wood’s artwork brings the perils they face into startling focus, making the book more suitable for grades 5 to 7.

Keenly observed depictions of the Hawaiian landscape and geological processes lend an impressive veracity to this exciting and unusual offering; Into the Volcano is a rare example of a graphic novel for young people that is neither manga nor mainstream.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, diverse cultures, graphic novels

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

Paper Towns by John Green - review

Paper Towns by John Green
I just read the obituary of Anthony Powell in The Economist Book of Obituaries (and oh man is that a great gift for the intellectual gadfly in your life!) and apparently, his advice to book reviewers was “say what it’s about, what you think of it, and perhaps make a joke".

Paper Towns is about Quentin, who has adored his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, from afar since they were nine years old. Q gets to adore her from up close for one long, prank-filled night a month before graduating from high school, and then gets a month to think about the differences, since she disappears completely the very next day.

I think it's a very clever book. John Green, author of An Abundance of Katherines, which I never read but keep thinking I should, sets up a mathematically precise framework for discussions of empathy, presentation, and perception. Without ever using any of those three words, which is - hoo boy - wouldn't that ruin a YA book?!

In the name of deciphering Margo's whereabouts, Q is sent off on solitary missions and vigils, taking him out of his familiar surroundings and giving him time to think. Because Q is carless for much of the book, he must enlist the help of friends, which forces him to consider their needs and personalities. There's even a road trip, the ultimate modern opportunity for contemplation. Every teenager might benefit from such an episode.

Wow, Anthony Powell's advice sucks so far. I wouldn't read this book, given this review, and that's completely wrong, because Paper Towns is one of the rare YA books not involving apocalypse that I might read again just because it's so good. How about if I tell you that Q and his friends are funny nerds - sharp and up to the moment - and the insights come sandwiched between situations involving keg stands, inappropriate deployment of Confederate flag t-shirts, and urine-filled squirt guns?

"I'll ask Angela if she knows anybody," Radar said. "Although getting you a date to prom will be harder than turning lead into gold."
"Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds," I added.
Radar... came back with another. "Ben, getting you a date to prom is so hard that the American government believes the problem cannot be solved with diplomacy, but will instead require force."

There!

Labels: fiction, superstar books, YA

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway - review

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

Let's roleplay a booktalk for this book:
You: Cool kid, maybe 14 or older (there's plenty of swearing), sporting visual evidence of interest in music. Franz Ferdinand pin, floppy hair, vintage Siouxie and the Banshees t-shirt. Something like that. You may be a girl, but you may be a boy too - even though the protagonist is a girl - and it is a VERY fizzy book - I believe that boy music fans will like it too.
Me: Librarian, pink hair, one large but tasteful visible tattoo.

Commence:
Me: Come with me I have something for you.
You: Er!
Me: No seriously you have to have this. You will like it. It is funny.
You: [Panic!]
Me: Ok, see? Audrey breaks up with her boyfriend, he writes a song about it, it becomes a number-one hit and all of a sudden she's just as famous as he is and half of America hates her because she's the one who broke his heart. And Audrey is REALLY funny and very cool. Oh, and she thinks Karen O is the coolest person in the world.
You: Oh. Oh? Oh! Um, ok!
Me: Oh wait, how old are you? There's a lot of swearing.
You: No yeah it's fine. I'll take the book.

Bonus dialog for parents:
Audrey: MOOOOM! Have you seen my shoes?
Mom: I am not the shoe fairy!
Audrey: But if you were?
Mom: By the garage door.

Dude, we have all been there.

Labels: girl books, superstar books, YA

If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid - update

Due to the overwhelming popularity and subsequent unavailability of Jeff Kinney's tales of the self-sabotaging Greg Heffley, I updated my Diary of a Wimpy Kid review with a list of "read-alike" (or appealing to a similar type of kid, anyway) books.

Labels: age: Grade3 and up, boy books, fiction, funny, graphic novels

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - review

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is big. Movie contract, 4 sequels in the works, 40-some weeks on the Best Seller list, including a stint at NUMBAH ONE. It's on our list of Great Books for Kids at the library where I work. In addition, there's a rockin' website, and most importantly, it circulates like crazy - the middle grade boys (mostly) take one look at the goofy cartoons that augment the text, and they do not let go. Not bad for a book that started as a webcomic.

I read and reviewed it a while ago. It was an extremely ambivalent review.

O NOES MAH LIFE SUX
Here's the premise: the titular Wimpy Kid, Greg Heffley, is a middle-school lightweight. By his own reckoning, he's the 52nd or 53rd most popular kid this year. His life is full of the usual middle school misery - an older brother who plays tricks on him, a baby brother he sometimes has to tend, and a dorky best friend, Rowley, who has yet to get his middle-school groove on. The kind of guy a lot of kids can probably identify with.

And like a lot of kids, Greg always tries to find the easy way around the obstacles that face him. Unfortunately, the solutions he come up with frequently involve trying to copy the success of others, exploiting younger or less-popular kids, and crapping all over poor Rowley.

I CAN HAZ DECENCY?
When I initially reviewed this book, my main reaction was: Ick. As the mother of boys, I imagined my own children exhibiting the unremitting lack of consideration that mars Greg's every action, and it broke my heart to think of a child so devoid of empathy.

Doesn't mean I haven't recommended the book. There are some middle grade boys - boys who think fantasy is a ridiculous waste of time, boys who read Calvin & Hobbes and maybe Captain Underpants - and when I see those guys, I press Diary of a Wimpy Kid into their hands. There's nothing wrong with Calvin and Hobbes (I think it was Mo Willems who stated that for the record, and I thank him), but it can't hurt to give a kid another author to read.

However, if it's a parent who has heard about the book, I explain my reservations about the character, hand him or her a copy, suggest that the parent and kid have a conversation about the character once the kid has finished the book, and usually hand the parent a copy of Frindle in addition.

IM IN UR PAPER CHANJIN UR MINDZ
So - just today, Jeff Kinney was in the local paper, and I sat and re-evaluated my opinion of the book.

On the one hand - I can't be too hard on a book that is so popular with those non-fantasy-reading boys. They're a tough, underserved crowd, and props to Jeff Kinney for throwing them a bone.

Besides, children's literature is chock-full of ingenious boys and girls who invent ingenious plans for avoiding work or getting out of trouble. We think Tom Sawyer is smart and charming for exploiting his more-gullible friends and neighbors so that he doesn't have to paint the fence, and we want him to get away with it.

But on the other hand - well, let's let the author, put it in a nutshell. "Oftentimes, Greg does something or says something that needs correction," Kinney says, "and as a reader, you're waiting for an adult to step in and correct him. But none ever does, and I think that's part of the fun of the book." Oh. Is it, indeed, part of the fun? Did I just age an additional 15 years writing that last sentence? That's not music, that's just noise!

UR DOIN IT WRONG
Really, though, Greg's life kind of sucks, mainly as a result of his selfish deeds, and while adult readers recognize that right away, I think that Greg's young audience needs to have that spelled out for them a little. That's where correction comes in - as a consequence, as an opportunity for Greg to learn from his thoughtlessness - or not, that can be funny too. The only character that ever gets wise to Greg's jerkiness is the mom - her eyes are blank behind her glasses, but her body language more than expresses her disgust for her son's actions.

In the end, though... I frequently defend books that parents turn up their noses... at. Junie B. Jones uses bad grammar and she's kind of a brat. Clementine cut all her hair off and colored her head with a purple Sharpie. The kids in Nurse Matilda do terrible things with farm animals, toilets, and treacle pudding. When I defend these books, and in some cases talk them up enthusiastically, the gist of my argument is that any child not raised by wolves can tell the difference between real life behavior and behavior that's exaggerated just to be funny. A kid can watch Speed Racer every morning before school for six years and never once stow away in the trunk of the family car. Believe it. Although that child may be tempted to name her children Trixie and Speed when she grows up - that is a risk.

Any child who has been raised by wolves - ok, that kid will not be given Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Not by me, anyway.

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COMICSES IS FULL OF WIN!
And then there's the weird resemblance to Peter Bagge's seminal slacker comic Hate. The curved posture of the characters, the loopy jaws and rubbery limbs, the gaping mouths and oversize hands - these are all stylistic elements shared by Peter Bagge, but then again, a lot of indie comic book artists draw like that. However, when it comes to amoral, opportunistic, and lazy protagonists in the comic book/graphic novel world? Hate's hero, Buddy Bradley, immediately springs to mind. Greg could easily be a pre-teen Buddy. The fact that Greg's baby brother calls him "Bubby" just cements the deal, in my mind.

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IF YOU LIKESES DIARY OF A WIMPY KID
Read-alikes:

Lawn Boyby Gary Paulsen

Schooled by Gordon Korman

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko

The Thing About Georgie by Lisa Graff

Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff by Jennifer Holm

The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman

Toby Wheeler: Eighth-Grade Benchwarmer by Thatcher Heldring

The True Meaning of Smekdayby Adam Rex

The Stink books by Megan McDonald

The Underwhere Series by Bruce Hale.

books by Jack Gantos

books by Gina Gershon

the work of Andrew Clements

Some favorite books for teens

• Kiki Strike:Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller. Fifth grade girls exploring an underground New York City. History, espionage and adventure.


• The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer. It's sci-fi, but it's not all magicky. Lots of action and an intricate plot. Chiwitel Ejiofor reads the audio version - mmmm!
  


• Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman by Eleanor Upland. In Victorian London, a thief reinvents himself as a gentleman. Interesting information about the jail system and sewers, and a great story. The great Stephen Fry reads the audio version.
  


• Stowaway by Karen Hesse. Inspired by the true story of a boy who stowed away on Captain Cook's ship Endeavour on its 1768 voyage of discovery. Great gateway to the amazing story of the voyage, written with economy and color. I don't remember the name of the reader on the audio version, but he was perfect.
  


• His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) by Phillip Pullman. Indescribable. I ripped through these 3 books in about a week. Metaphysics, politics, fantasy, all in a quick-moving, tightly-plotted story.


• Alex Rider series (Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Skeleton Key, Eagle Strike, and Scorpia) by Anthony Horowitz. 13-year-old MI6 agent. James Bond, Jr.


• Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block. These are lovely. Weetzie and her friends live their dreams in Los Angeles. They fall in love, break up, have babies, and dress like Patricia Field threw up all over them.

Labels: fiction, YA

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg - review

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is my favorite book of all time. In it, two kids, Jamie and Claudia, decide to run away from home. Since they're smart and practical (not to mention snobbish and greedy) and don't want to end up on a curb in Times Square, they plan to run away to a place that's indoors and has some of the comforts of home. They pick the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isn't that great? That's a thought process that basically makes sense. And you can tell right off that this is not going to be your hijinky plot-driven pratfall novel - they don't run away to the circus, they run away to an art museum. E. L. Konigsberg writes great books, with sharp characters, but this is her genius work. An unpleasant, geeky girl with a violin case and an annoying little brother goes into an art museum - and that's the premise for a successful, beloved kids book? Dag.

What keeps this book going, and what fascinated me as a kid, is the view of the off-hours museum through Claudia's eyes. Claudia is a pretty dissatisfied kid, and in the peace and beauty and mystery of the museum, she has a chance to get out of her crabby self and become absorbed in the beautiful, weird, storied objects that surround her. She gets to touch and examine precious things that are usually off-limits, and in the process, one object stops her in her tracks - a small sculpture of an angel.

When it was my turn, my object was Cupid and Psyche by Jacques Louis David.

I came around a corner in the Cleveland Museum of Art, looking for something to write a paper on for ARTH103, and this baby popped me right in the eye. It's enormous, for one thing, and very detailed, almost realistic. Cupid is climbing out of bed, smirking - yeah, he tapped that - and now he's trying to get out of there without waking her. I believe I met this painting before I met my husband, but this is kind of what my husband looked like when he was 19, when we met (minus the smirk, he would insist I point out).

Claudia wants to learn everything there is to know about "her" angel, and in the process discovers something that only the titular Mrs. Frankweiler knows (looking back, Mrs. Frankweiler had to be a registrar - registrars are consistently the coolest, geekiest people in all art museums I've come across). Though the angel isn't really Claudia's, this secret knowledge is. The process of discovery, the possession of knowledge, and her intimacy with the object change her, showing her what is best and noblest in her nature.

When I had my Art History classes in the basement of the Cleveland Museum, I would leave through a set of very high, very heavy double doors. I'd run down the wide marble steps that led to the Lagoon. I was usually the only person there, and at those moments, I always felt like Claudia - I felt like I lived in that museum, and that all the treasures inside of it were mine. Eventually, I spent so much time with those objects that, like Claudia, I did own them in a way. I sat in front of paintings and tapestries and Japanese woodcuts for hours, desperately hoping to find enough to say about each object to fill a ten-page paper.

I am not a spiritual person. Maybe I'm the antithesis of spiritual - I'm a physical person. I believe in the transformative power of knowledge, and I believe that firsthand observation is the best way to gain that knowledge.

When you can take time to absorb the textures and smells of an object, you can absorb its language, feel the actions that made it, and figure out which questions to ask. You can meet its maker.

Me, I know the political climate that Jacques Louis David painted in - I know why there are laurel leaves on Psyche's bed. I know what the missing letters in the Byzantine tapestry were, and I know what happened when the weaver was running out of room on the right side.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the trivia itself that I groove on. What I like is the way you can decode details of the artist's world backwards from the details of the work.

When I finally had a chance to decide what to do with my life, I chose to live in museums, like Claudia. That book showed me a place filled with intrigue and stories, a place where you could figure out things that nobody else knew.

I have spent a lot of time in Claudia's museum, both as a student and working there, and she was right -- knowing that place feels like having a big cool famous friend. It was a privilege every single time I went into the workrooms of any museum I worked in, from Birmingham to Brooklyn to Baltimore.

Maybe if I'd read a different book, a good book about a scientist kid, for example, I might have been a botanist (except I still would have flunked Calculus). But I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and it changed my life.

Labels: age: Grade3 and up, fiction, mystery