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Books to end all books - WWI for kids

It's 2014, the centennial of the onset one of the bloodiest, most devastating wars in history. A war which should have taught the world the dangers of nationalism, military escalation, and imperialism. Well, we all know how that went.

On the UP side, the WWI centennial gives us (educators, parents, librarians) an excellent opportunity for engaging the kind of reader who connects with nonfiction, especially history, and especially the kind of history that involves guns. I'm not using the word "boys," but you know what I'm talking about.

 

 

Author Laurel Snyder's male-variety offspring enjoying a Civil War reenactment and Nathan Hale's Big Bad Ironclad at the same time.

My particular boys have been reading up on WWI because our family is going to Belgium for a bridge dedication. Their great-great-uncle did a heroic deed and then promptly died, making my husband's brothers and sisters the closest thing he would ever have to descendants. You can read about it here if you are so inclined. We will be touring battlefields and cemeteries and museums, and we have all been boning up just in case the plaques are all in Flemish.

Here are a few recent books for your WWI collection:

Series books for summer pleasure reading - This is the post for parents

 

I know what you want. I see you. You come in to the library with that little-bit-panicked look in your eye: "Oh shit there's no school for like MONTHS and they're going to do nothing but play Minecraft and moan about being bored." Or pull scary crap like balance-beam on an 8-foot fence. YEESH.

I am right there with you. Milo is in the basement right this second watching those awful Sky Does Minecraft YouTube videos. Or porn. No I did not just write that. I take it back. Wait, let me just get him up here, I'll be right back. 

................

He was practicing guitar. OF COURSE. God, I am so not ready for him to be a teen.

Anyway, you want book recommendations for your children so that they do not forget how to read / become glassy-eyed screen zombies over the summer. You want books that are IRRESISTABLE, books that they will plough through and then ask for the next. In short, you want series books, and you want series that have been out for long enough that there's no waiting for the next book.

 

Oh my living room is such a mess and I haven't even been to BEA yet! Middle grade boy books, Spring 2013

 

I know it's a losing battle, keeping the place in some kind of tidy shape, and it's certainly not all the fault of my kids. The books, lord the books. But sometimes I am just in a GET IT ALL OUT OF HERE mood, and such is the mood that descended tonight.

I haven't had the time to read hardly anything lately, so as we picked up books and shelved them or put them in the Back to the Library bag, I got Milo (11) and Ezra (nearly 10) to talk about the books they've read.

 

 

Ezra: Battle Bunny is the result of a ten year old who just watched a whole lot of apocalypse movies making his mark on a cute little Birthday Bunny tale. It's terrifically funny - there's a picture on Battle Bunny's wall that shows a bunny mama leaning over a bunny baby and the ten-year-old added the words "Drink your poison."

NB: The overstimulated ten-year-olds actually responsible for Battle Bunny are Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Matthew Myers... 

Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - guest video review by Milo!

I am a lucky woman. By almost any metric, that's me, Lady Lucky. I can walk under ladders.

One of the ways in which I am lucky is that there are about five authors out there whose work is just exactly what I want to read. I can go to those authors and always always be surprised and moved. Gibson. Liz Jensen. Nick Harkaway. Charlie Higson. Ian Fleming (but that's more of a sick obsession). And by "always always" I mean - no duds. No books that make me go "ehhh." Neal Stephenson for example. Love everything he's written either side of the Baroque Trilogy, but those three books made my eyes roll back into my head, and so he doesn't make this list. 

What I'm getting at - obviously - is that Adam Rex does. I don't know what is similar in our backgrounds or genetics or whatever, but his imagination travels paths that seem enticing and familiar to me - as if they are paths that I glimpsed once from a passing car and wished I had the time to detour into. His humor makes me laugh out loud on trains and in bars.

Which is why I can't review his latest book, Unlucky Charms, the second in The Cold Cereal Saga. This author speaks so clearly to me that I can't tell how he sounds to other people. I can't be objective while I'm giggling out my nose. Luckily, I have a couple of clear-eyed readers in my house who can be relied upon to give you the what when I can't. Here's Milo:

 

 

Now, I admit I read the ARC of Unlucky Charms as soon as I snagged it at ALA Midwinter, and I admit I was going to pass it to Milo as soon as I got home, and I further admit than when this hardcover came in the mail - pretty much before I got home, thank you someone at Harper! - Milo grabbed at it as if he were a magnet and it was made of paperclips, but let me tell you, Milo is not a man who will allow preconceptions to influence his appreciation of a book.

So when he tells you it is funny and brave and awesome - you better believe it. Available Feb 5.

 

 

From Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - Marcos Horchata reporting

 

PS: Good lord I have written yet ANOTHER review of something involving Adam Rex in which I forgot to mention the art! How do I keep doing that? Adam Rex is supernaturally talented as an artist. His illustrations are the kind that kids pore over, looking for clues, soaking up the visual realization of scenes they have already mentally assembled from the author's words.

They exhibit charm, draftsmanship, and a particular genius for realistic expression, facilitated I believe by his habit of sculpting little heads and using them as models. I like to think he mounts those heads on tiny plaques and hangs them on the wall when he's finished - a miniature hall of horrors. Maybe he talks to them, they're like a Greek chorus when he's stuck on a drawing. "Make him fatter," grunts Frankenstein. "With bigger eyebrows!" yells Grandpa Ned. "What is that sweater about?" snipes Barnett. 

This art, by the way, is not something I am worried I'm biased about. I know art, and I'll borrow a technical term from art criticism here and call it GOOD. It's GOOD ART.

Buy this book, buy all his previous books. Support him so that he can keep feeding my habit, and I swear you will thank me for it.

 

Reading on the radio: Great graphic novels for kids

 

From Rapunzel's Revenge, by Hale, Hale, & Hale.

 

Here's your latest list of great graphic novels for kids, courtesy of the legwork I did prior to a recent appearance on WYPR's Maryland Morning. This time, host Tom Hall and I were joined by author and librarian Snow Wildsmith (my idea!) for a talk about which graphic novels, how graphic novels, and, most importantly, why graphic novels for kids. Snow and I get all smarty-sounding at a couple of points there, I totally encourage you to listen:

8-17-12: Comics: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Literally, the Ugly.).

Video reviews PART DEUX: Invisible Sun, Fake Mustache, The Drowned Vault, and The Familiars

The mountain range of books on our coffee table is a constantly shifting pile of bait for my boys. I bring books home from the library every day that I work - sometimes they place requests, but more often I just snag books that I think they'll like or that I am interested in looking at for this blog. The "leave it out casually and they will pick it up" strategy has been praised by many parents, and even endorsed by Judy Blume, and I can vouch for it as well.

Not so say there haven't been some hiccups, as when I found ten-year-old Milo reading Railsea by China Miéville, which I had pretty much brought home for myself. He is also a big David Macinnis Gill fan now, thanks to this practice.

 

The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever! by Stephen McCranie - review

 

Gr 3-6–Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will gravitate to this graphic-novel chapter book featuring an inventive kid and his talking dog.

Mal has typical social trouble at school, hiding his intelligence and struggling to make his feelings known to a cute girl while trying to avoid the class blowhard. His single mom doesn’t seem to be very supportive, sending him to bed without supper, threatening to ground him, and spanking him in the first three chapters, but these travails set him up as an underdog who will prevail in the end.

Reading on the radio - Gift books 2011

 

There is a secret joy that librarians are allowed at holiday time. Although we are ardent in encouraging people to borrow, not buy, most of us... well, we're kind of into books. We can't help wanting to own them. And though librarians vary in the extent to which they successfully keep themselves out of bookstores - some don't even try - all bets are off when it comes to buying gifts for our family and friends.

I stopped in at WYPR's Maryland Morning to talk to host Tom Hall about this subject. I brought a great huge stack of books and asked Tom to pick out the ones he wanted to know more about. If you miss the broadcast, you can listen to our conversation on the Maryland Morning website by the end of the day. The station has also posted a list of the books I brought to the station, or click "Read more" to see an expanded version (book trailers! whee!).

 

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde - review

 

"Who, exactly, is the Mysterious X?"

"They're more of a what than a who. It won't be in a form you'll recognise, and there is something other about X that defies easy explanation. It's more of a sense than a person. A shroud, if you like, that confuses their true form. It also smells of unwashed socks and peanut butter. You'll be fine."

Tiger looked at the note, then at the Quarkbeast, then at where the moose had been but suddenly wasn't, then back at me.

"This is a test, isn't it?"

Yes, little children, this is a test. Are you going to grow up to be the kind of person who not only reads all the books of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but who also seeks out the radio recordings? Will the Discworld become a second home to you? If you cut yourself shaving, will you always claim that "it's just a flesh wound!" in a defensive tone and a British accent?

If so, The Last Dragonslayer is your brand of silly.

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.

 

Darth Paper Strikes Back: An Origami Yoda book by Tom Angleberger

I love it when an author slaps a reference to another book into his or her own, especially in kids' or YA books. It's a sly way of suggesting to the reader, "If you are enjoying my book, here's what I like - you should try it!" Rebecca Stead not only drew inspiration from A Wrinkle in Time when she wrote When You Reach Me, but she wove the older book firmly into the narrative. I don't know anybody who finished that book and didn't at least consider re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's classic. If there's bookshelf in a picture book, I always squint to see what titles the illustrator has drawn.

Charlie Higson wrote a bookworm character into The Dead, and that kid's finest moment was when he defended himself from a mindless cannibal attacker using his copy of The Gormenghast Trilogy as a weapon. That's a great little glimpse into Charlie Higson's head.  

 

The book that Tom Angleberger slides into Darth Paper Strikes Back is Robot Dreams, Sara Varon's nearly wordless graphic novel about a dog and a robot who are pals. That book is full of emotion without being mushy. It says a great deal about loyalty and love without embarrassing the reader.

Hm. Hmm, I say.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick - review

 

Ok I have like, maybe, THREE things to say about this:

1. Last night at 2AM I was three-quarters of the way through Ashes. I had suffered every holy-crap-what-next moment right alongside sixteen-year-old Alex, and I had to put the thing down because my head hurt from staring into the dinky screen of my Sony Reader. I went to bed. Where, thanks to the good works of Ilsa J. Bick, my dreams were lousy with suicidal deer and ominous empty roads and carrion birds. The worst dream I had last night, however - by far - was that I was still reading Ashes, and that it had turned... lame.
2. It doesn't turn lame. Nooooo. No.
3. Sixteen-year-old orphans are the new eleven-year-old orphans.
4. If you are looking for your "next Hunger Games," I got your "next Hunger Games" right here, BABY. Very tough. Weapons, hot guys, camping. A scrappy kid. Subtle social criticism.

 

The novel begins as an intimate first-person narrative from Alex's point of view - she is worn down by sorrow and pain, and craves isolation. When two other campers appear on the scene, she is annoyed, but the reader is not surprised. When all of a sudden there is blood and pain, the reader is surprised. And then when she figures out...! and then meets up with...! and almost...! Like that. Every corner turned in this book was a surprise and sometimes a shock, but we never lose touch with Alex - she never turns into a superhero. The aches that sent her into the wilderness never go away, she just gets new ones.

Ilsa Bick writes her weapons and outdoor skills and scenic Michigan wilderness with authority. She has a real feel for timing, building tension to the point of crisis, then sometimes breaking off and picking up days later amid the consequences of the crisis. Her characters are convincing when they're being stubborn and whiny, convincing when they're in psychic or physical pain, convincing even when they're not convinced of their own selves at all.

In fact, I have made a folk song about this book. This doesn't happen very often, given that I hate poetry and I don't know how to play even the guitar... so you know this is going to be good. SING IT:

 

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.

Dontcha hate it when
You're just looking for a little privacy,
Just trying to scatter the ashes of your parents on the shores of Lake Superior and maybe come to terms with the inoperable brain tumor that's turned your life to shit,
I mean you're just out camping.
And whaddaya know...?

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.

It's a good thing I
Can stand a little physical pain
Cause I get beat up kind of a lot before I fall in love and find a truck and take care of a kid and then lose everything again and smack the crap out of a bunch of teenage cannibals,
And while the cannibals scare me
The Christians scare me worse.

(Which should come as no surprise because...)

Here we are again,
It's the end of the world again,
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun again.
I lost my gun I found my gun I lost my gun I found my gun I lost - somebody give me a Winchester!
I found my gun again.

 

What do you think? Downright anthemic, I'd say. I can't decide whether I sing it like Woody Guthrie or Kurt Cobain or Gang of Four, though.

Books in the beach bag - leisure reading for middle grade

 

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Adult Swim at our pool is fifteen minutes, and I swear, that can be the longest fifteen minutes ever in the history of time. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took you to figure out the new remote. Longer than the fifteen minutes it took Jane Austen to describe who rode in which carriage on that crucial twenty-minute journey to the ha-ha. Way longer than the fifteen minutes you had to stand in line at the DMV, because at least then you could fantasize different options for blowing the building up.

NO you can't have more money for the snack bar.

NO you can't go to the baby pool.

NO you can't play Angry Birds on my phone with your wet hands.

Who likes saying no all the time? Not me. Far better to give the kid a seat in the shade, a cold water bottle, and a just-for-fun book to read. I asked all the kids who had assembled for my younger son's birthday party to grab a book and cram onto the couch for this month's Pink Me banner. Here, amid a long list of entertaining summertime reads, are the books that caught their eye:

 

Leaving it all on the field

Hothead by Cal Ripken, Jr. and Kevin Cowherd

Football Champ by Tim Green

 

 

 

My cousin is a groundskeeper for the Baltimore Orioles, and Cal Ripken, Jr. is his hero:

 

In fact, it wouldn't be too far off the mark to say that here in Baltimore, Cal Ripken, Jr. is everyone's hero. He's my hero just for being a worthwhile hero. So many sports stars aren't. But even if he's not your hero, it is at least impossible to say anything not nice about the guy. Gentlemanly demeanor. Sterling work ethic. Humility. Compassion. Intelligence. Humor. Blue eyes like lasers. And his sense of responsibility toward the kids who look up to him verges on the ecclesiastical. Every sports star should be setting an example like this.

The Adventures of Nanny Piggins, written by R. A. Spratt, illustrated by Dan Santat - review

 

What do you expect from a child care provider? Were you looking for a guitar-playing proto-nun? A mistress of malaprop? That mean-looking lady with the Liz Lemon glasses? Or something a little more... unexpected?

"Oh yes," said Nanny Piggins. "I can regale people with anecdotes from my sordid past and think at the same time."

That's my kind of nanny. In fact, if resumes had epigraphs, I might have to ask her if I could use that quote on mine. It should certainly be inscribed on Nanny Piggins's calling card. After all, I'm just a librarian who used to sell kites for a living - Nanny Piggins is a pig on the run from a cunning ringmaster who has signed her to an exclusive fifty-year contract which stipulates, among other things, that she is to be shot out of a cannon on a daily basis.

So... Mary Poppins she is not.

Pilot & Huxley: The First Adventure by Dan McGuiness - review

 

This book was handed around the living room this morning. I finished it, then handed it to my oldest son, "Stop what you're doing and read this book." He read it, and then handed it straight to his 2nd grade brother. When they both finished, I asked their opinions.

"Outrageous!" said my nine-year-old.

"I can't believe there's a whole city made of snot!" said the seven-year-old.

"The rat-vomit dipping sauce was -- awww!" added the older one.

"Are you sure we're supposed to be reading this?" asked his little brother.

YES. I AM SURE, little ones. At least... this unsubtle yak-fest of a graphic novel is certainly not meant for anyone more than it is meant for you, you independent readers under the age of ten of the boy persuasion. Although I can think of A LOT of little girls who will similarly love this randomsensical grosstastic South Park/sci-fi hip rude funny mashup comic.

The Adventures of Sir Gawain the True by Gerald Morris, illustrations by Aaron Renier - review

I never considered manners to be of any real importance until I had kids. Or before I started working the reference desk. Adults tend to be a bit lazy, after all. We say "uh-huh" and we grunt and generally we manage to communicate and not offend too many people regardless. But kids - kids don't know that the "please" is supposed to be there and so they don't apply that deferential vocal inflection or body language or one of the ingratiating facial expressions that adults can use as shortcuts around saying "please." They are unschooled in the "thank you" nod-and-smile.

The Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman - review

 

There are some authors, I freely admit, whose books I don't read. Not because I don't think I'll like them, or because I don't think I'd be able to recommend them, but because they are already appreciated and sought out by children. Dan Gutman is, of course, like this. Very few kids need my help discovering Dan Gutman.

When you check a kid's prior reading to get a bead on his/her likes and dislikes, there are certain books you can refer to. "What did you think of Harry Potter?" is a fair question - most every kid will at least know who Harry is. The Magic Tree House books (god bless 'em but don't make me read 'em) are in this category, but not a whole lot else. Wimpy Kid. And, of course, My Weird School. You can triangulate a kid's response to these known series to find where he falls on the axes of funny / mystery / fantasy. Hm. That graph would be an interesting thing to draw. Sounds like a job for xkcd.

Give books

Not these books. Fun books. Pretty books. Books that kids will be excited about getting, and will be happy to own. Books like the ones in this SUPER LONG POST. Read and enjoy.

There are so many excellent things to give this year that I am just going to list them out. Here's a handy table of contents:

I am the 8th dwarf: GREEDY

JUST in time for the holidays, YOU can win $500 worth of books from Chronicle Books. More importantly - *I* can win $500 worth of books from Chronicle! We love Chronicle! High production values, witty choices, verrrry nice graphic novels. All I have to do is list $500 worth of Chronicle books, and I might win that list... and all you have to do is comment on this post! They are calling it Celebrate the Haul-idays with Chronicle Books. What are we waiting for?

 

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend. You heard me. Johnny Depp's. Alien Girlfriend. It's forthcoming. French author. Excellent cover. Sounds action-packed and slightly surreal and I want to read it. $17

MORE MORE MORE said the librarian....

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 Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett - review

Transcribed from recording made on hidden micro-spy recording device. Subject: Mao (not his real name) age: 9. File: Barnett review 10-20-19-46. Indoctrination sequence begun...

 

Your Neighborhood Librarian: Ok, so Mao, here we have the The Ghostwriter Secret, the second of the Brixton Brothers books by the perilously undershaven Mac Barnett and compulsively undercapped Adam Rex.

Mao: Who?

YNL: The guys who wrote and illustrated the first one (ooh, new paperback cover). And Guess Again! What did you think of this book?

M: Well I think that it's good, and the cover gives you a really good idea of how it is -- exciting, but also like kind of suspenseful. On the cover, you see them underwater in a pool with bullets coming down, and that is really suspenseful.

YNL: Because?

M: Because, well, I don't want to ruin anything if you haven't read the book...

YNL: But I have.

M: Ok well then because THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN THE BOOK!!

YNL: The bullets raining down on them in the pool.

M: Yes!

YNL: And that's important to you because...

M: Kids do not usually get shot at in kids books! That part was great!

Astroblast! Code Blue by Bob Kolar - review

I always say that Beginning Reader books have the hardest row to hoe. They need to reassure the new reader, they need to give the new reader a lot of achievable challenges, they need to do it in seven words per line or less, and on top of all that, they need to reward this stalwart little reader with a laugh, a surprise, superior art, or hopefully all three! You gots to give that kid SOMETHING that makes her want to keep at it. Learning to read can be hard.

Bob Kolar (how do you know that name? Maybe from Big Kicks, the one about the big bear playing soccer; or AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First. Love those!) solves this puzzle with... puzzles! Every page of this jazzy little number has a visual puzzle: a what's wrong with this picture, a spot the difference, a maze, etc. Not only does this reward a little guy or girl who has struggled through the lines of text on the page, it keeps that kid's eyes ON the page, developing skills that are useful when learning to read.

There are even more puzzles at the end, encouraging the kid to go back through the book again. Smart. Repeat exposure to the same text is a useful strategy.

The art is bright and clean, but harmonious and rounded, with a strong palette of deep colors that prevents the funny animal characters and their outer-space hijinks from slipping into frenzied Hanna-Barbera-land. Here's a Beginning Reader series that I hope to see about twenty of. Hope you're not busy for the next couple years, Kolar!

Nola's Worlds #1: Changing Moon, by MiniKim, Mathieu Mariolle, and Pop - review

The French. What is it they put in the water over there? French people (and Belgians) can DRAW. MiniKim takes the best energetic manga style and superimposes it onto meticulously-drawn settings that incorporate believable volumes, texture, and architecture. Good old-fashioned draftsmanship plus sweeping, pretty, cool-looking characters. NICE.

And then this art was colored to within an inch of its life by a kawaii-loving woman who goes by Pop. The lines are colored, skies are colored and clouded, highlights and shadows are deftly applied, and the color palette is delectable. Teals, pinks, plum, lovely oranges from burnt to sherbet - it's like a candy shop you'd never want to leave, not too sweet.

My library has this shelved as juvenile, but it's been nominated as a Best Graphic Novel in the Cybils Awards in the Teen category, which might make more sense, given the vocabulary and the persistent loneliness experienced by Nola as she is consistently ignored by her mom.

The story, by Mathieu Mariolle, is quick and funny, maybe a trifle scattered, but this is the first in a series after all, and is a translation to boot. Quite nice.

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:

With all your power / what would you do?

Is it just me, or is this The Year of the Superhero in middle-grade and YA books?

I'm all up in the Michael Owen Carroll right now of course, having just reviewed Super Human here on Pink Me; and The Rise of Renegade X is sitting on my to-read pile; I just finished Michael Grant's The Magnificent 12: The Call last night: plus we're listening to Mike Lupica's Hero in the car, and holy god - not since I took one for the team and listened to The Da Vinci Code have I been more appalled by an author's lazy writing, glacial pace, disrespect for the reader...

...oh wait, where was I? Ahead of myself, that's where. That's what happens when you try to write book reviews while listening to The Flaming Lips. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", off At War With The Mystics, is what inspired the title of this post. By the way, if you have food issues, don't click that link, just watch them perform on Letterman, below.

 It is also apparently The Year of Superhero Books Written by Guys Named Michael. Weird. Take that, trend trackers.

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 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.

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.

Spaceheadz! by Jon Scieszka, with contributions by Francesco Sedita and illustrations by Shane Prigmore

We are of two minds about this book in my house. I enjoyed the gag-a-minute writing, while my eight-year-old thought it was too much silly, with no non-silly parts to make the silly parts seem sillier. That's almost verbatim. I should give up this book reviewing hobby of mine, when an 8-year-old does it at least as well as I do. Well. We have it out for a third opinion, and I'll be very interested to hear what that kid has to say.

Reading on the radio

Everyday I read the book. (Well ok this isn't me, this is Elvis Costello, but still. I wanted to use this picture.)

It was a lot of fun, and very interesting, to record a segment at Baltimore's NPR station, WYPR, about summer reading for kids. I was happy to proselytize a bunch of books that I think will have wide-ranging appeal this summer to a variety of readers.

The audio of my interview with Tom Hall, culture editor of Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast, is on the WYPR website. After the break is the complete list of books that I mentioned, plus a few we didn't have time to talk about.

The Amanda Project Book 1: invisible i, by Melissa Kantor

Let's dispense with the disclosure right away - Melissa Kantor, the author of this, the first Amanda Project book, is an old friend of my husband's. Am I letting that influence my review? Absolutely not. Did that influence the fact that I opened this book in the first place? For sure.

I am guilty - more than most - of judging books by the cover, and this one has a cover that I might not have been able to get past. It's hot pink. There's a picture of a slender white girl on the front, her back to the camera. Yes, it's the faceless girl again.

On the other hand, the typography and illustrated doodads on that cover are original and hip. A key, a bird, some vine-y floral stuff - despite the fact that it seems like EVERY teen girl novel is embellished with vine-y floral stuff right now, the vine-y floral stuff in invisible i manages to look classy and fresh. That, as it turns out, is because it was drawn by a young man by the name of Brian Floca (Moonshot, Lightship).

And this, dear friends, is the crux of my review. You can put together a book whose premise has been done before, load it up with ancillaries and gimmicks, clothe it in hot pink and put a faceless girl on the cover, and if the writer is amazing and the web designers are the best and the illustrator is multi-award-winning Brian Floca, you will have a fantastic book.

The Amanda Project shows us how it's done.

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!

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?

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.

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.

Big Nate: In a class by himself by Lincoln Peirce - review

You can tell by the way Big Nate is packaged that somebody - probably lots of somebodies - are hoping that Nate will slot directly into the "If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid" list. I won't keep you in suspense. It will. 

You may be familiar with Nate Wright from the Big Nate comic strip that may or may not run in your local paper. Well, here, he gets his own book. Not a collection of comic strips, an honest-to-Pete chapter book about a day in the life of the sometimes unlucky but awfully confident Nate. Nate's first-person narrative is largely written in prose, but with dialogue and actions depicted in comic panels and illustrations, along with pages from Nate's own comics.

The format, in short, is exactly like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And there are other similarities as well. I think because both Wimpy Kid and Big Nate were daily (or semi-daily) comic strips for a long time before their authors tackled a chapter book, Lincoln Peirce and Jeff Kinney know their boys very well. They have put them into so many situations that they've internalized how each will respond (Quick! Peirce! Nate meets the bad vampires from Twilight! And... go!). There's a believability about these characters that comes from their authors knowing them inside and out.

Also, and this is both harder than it sounds and more important, Kinney and Peirce both draw their characters with a great deal of confidence and consistency. That comes from practice, too. And each panel is drawn, rather than one character blank drawn, and then pasted into many panels with different sets of eyes. That works for Tom Tomorrow, but not in a kids' book.

What's different, though, is Nate. Nate may be awful to his teachers, and maybe not so nice to his big sister and his dad (Nate's mom is never even mentioned, which validates his single-dad family as perfectly normal and Not Tragic), but he is not conniving or thoughtless like Greg Heffley can be. Nate can't even bring himself to forge a note from his father. He has good pals - they distribute noogies and whap each other with their notebooks and make fun of each other, but at the end of the day they do not inflict pain upon each other.

(I should say that I wrote a very ambivalent review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid when it first came out. I still deplore that kid's inconsiderate soul, but I agree with the author that no kid is looking at Greg Heffley as a role model. I should also say that Jeff Kinney was remarkably graceful about that review.) 

And if you like boys, as I do, you will get a giggle out of his poetry celebrating Cheez Doodles and his list of nicknames for his homeroom teacher, Ms. Godfrey. "Pass the Gravy" is the funniest of these, in my opinion.

Haiku, by Nate Wright

You have Cheez Doodles
Fresh. Crunchy. Puffalicious.
Give me one right now.

He's got energy and aspirations, and the attention span of a gnat. He's observant and expressive but average in many ways. Nate knows that his time will come, and he knows that middle school is NOT THAT TIME.

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.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - review

I am revisiting the first in the The Underland Chronicles because my kids are finally old enough for it, and, rabid Percy Jackson fans that they are, they are SOOOO hungry for funny adventure. So far, listening to the audio version in the car, they are alternately spellbound and laughing like something is actually tickling them.

It's good. It's beyond good.

I think one of the keys to writing funny adventure is dialogue, and Suzanne Collins has such a gift for it. She develops speech patterns for each of her underground races and for two-year-old Boots, and leaves Gregor all the cute sarcastic lines every kid wishes he had the wit to say.

Further, Gregor assumes all the worry and responsibility of an older brother, but without getting mired in it. He's a man of action, trusting his instincts and abilities and dogged in his persistence - all good traits, but ones that he will learn should be tempered with planning and advance knowledge. It's a good journey to undertake, and proceeds so organically.

We paused the audio after the first disc (after Gregor has met the human Underlanders and has resolved to get back to the surface before his mom gets too wigged out by their absence) for me to ask the kids if they had any predictions about the plot.

They did not think Gregor and Boots were going to get back in a timely fashion. Check.

They anticipate that Gregor and Boots will meet with peril on their journey. Check.

They wanted me to put the story back on NOW. Ok, ok!

I think my library should re-order new shiny copies of these books, and I think it's time to give 'em a new push to our young friends hungry for adventure.

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.

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.

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex - review

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Adam Rex

I read a lot of funny middle-grade boy books. I, in fact, have something of a subspecialty in "If you liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid." SIGH. *I* didn't even like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Although the author sent me a really nice email thanking me for my extremely ambivalent review. Jeff Kinney = classy guy. No matter what you think of Greg Heffley.

So I end up using the words "goofy," "silly," "cute," and, when I'm feeling not-so-inspired, "funny," in my reviews kind of a lot. Every now and then I have a chance to bust out "witty." Not that often. Binky the Space Cat got a "witty" from me, for its winking and generous portrayal of Binky, an overweight housecat training to be an astronaut. The True Meaning of Smekday I called witty. Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant (which probably also got an "urbane"). And - not coincidentally - these are three of my hands-down favorite middle-grade books EVAR.

Joined now by this first book in what I hope will be a long long long (think Hardy Boys, Barnett - hope you're not doing anything for the next ten or twelve years) series of detective novels starring preteen everyman Steve Brixton and his honorary brother and actual best friend, Dana.

WITTY. This book. Wit to the Tee. There is a prom limo. There is a thug who is "nasty, brutish," and (you guessed it) "short." Mac Barnett even takes a swipe at the ALA's READ posters - truly, truly a man after my own fuggin' heart.

Our protagonist, Steve, a naturally bright kid to begin with, has been thoroughly schooled in the habits and techniques of solving mysteries by his heroes, Shawn and Kevin Bailey, cleancut, midcentury all-American boys who are not only ace teen sleuths but also varsity athletes! The Bailey Brothers' tips (haymaker punches, complicated knots, How To Spot a Scoundrel (hint: they limp)) come in handy when Steve tries to check out an old library book and is suddenly surrounded by a SWAT team of secret library agents!

Except - not only are Shawn and Kevin fictional, they're also conspicuously Golden Age. In the few instances when their advice isn't actually dangerous (Have to jump out of a second-story window? Roll when you hit the ground! Need a hiding place? Behind an airplane propellor is a good spot!), it's ludicrously old-fashioned.

Nice disguise, huh? Luckily, Steve is resourceful and knowledgeable and persistent - and heals fast - plus, all his experience reading detective novels has sharpened his deductive reasoning to a fine point.

The chapters are short, the funny is abundant, and the clues are all there. I'll bet my mom (an inveterate mystery reader) would have figured it out. But neither I nor my 8-year-old did. Listen: I kept reading this book even after the kids were in bed, my husband was out watching the Browns get creamed again (sorry honey) and I had those horny Southern vampires all cued up on the DVD player. I totally needed to see how it ended.

Oh wait - did I forget to mention Adam Rex's illustrations? Again? Adam Rex is brilliant. (I can't wait to read the forthcoming Fat Vampire - Laura, where's my copy?) Adam Rex's illustrations push this thing over the edge - from well-written serial fiction, exceptional grist for the mill of the middle-grade reader's imagination - to something that you could absolutely give as a gift. The cover and spine are exciting and packed full of things to look at, while echoing the format of older hardcover series fiction.

What I need now is MORE.

Diary of a Chav, a novel by Grace Dent - review

Diary of a Chav, (aka Diva Without a Cause), by Grace Dent

Shiraz Bailey Wood is a wannabe ghetto fabulous fifteen year old in Essex. That's Essex, near London, not Essex, near Baltimore, although they are weirdly similar. OUR Essex is a blue-collar community with a reputation for teen pregnancy, lottery addiction, and recreational drug use. It also smells like poo, due to the proximity of the county's sewage treatment plant. (That's according to my colleague TinkerCinderBellaHontas, who grew up there, so don't email me.)

Shiraz's Essex is pretty similar. Her mom, who works at Essex's version of the OTB, cooks nothing that is not processed. Her family watches reality TV to the exclusion of anything else. Her favorite outfit is her pink tracksuit, accessorized with her biggest gold hoops.

And Shiraz speaks in this incessant drawly slang - half Cockney, half what is euphemistically called "urban". It's hilarious, it really is. For a school assignment, she has to write a letter of complaint.

"I have just spent two weeks of sheer unmitigated hell in a half-finished hotel, what was advertised as 'the most stunning jewel in the crown of this fabulous island.' Well if this is your most stunning jewel mate, you ain't got much bling bruv, 'cos this place was a right state and you are a proper liberty sending anyone there."

The whole book kind of reads like a stand-up comedy character gone long-form. Which we've seen - Jeff Foxworthy has a whole slew of "redneck" books. Belzer has written a few novels, pretty much AS Detective John Munch. I used to entertain people with my excellent South Baltimore accent at parties ("Aoh yeah hon, all's zere wen 'at sugar plant sploded - it was sew laut ah fought we's unner attack bah da British again!"*), and I will bet you real money that Grace Dent has been doing her Shiraz impersonation for years. She loves this girl, like you love a trashy cousin who doesn't yet realize there's more to life than chain restaurants, reality TV, and the mall; and in the course of Shizza's year, Dent begins to gently (and not so gently - the mashed rat in the bhaji is pretty rude!) remove her pavé-rhinestone blinkers.

It's so funny, and in the end, it's big-hearted and lovely. The slang will be an impediment for some readers, but there's an equally funny glossary in the back. For example: about the incomprehensible British TV series Last of the Summer Wine, Shiraz says "This is the most boring 'comedy' in the universe... despite never being funny, it is on every week and always has been and always will be until the end of time due to the cast making a pact with Lucifer in 1982 and becoming immortal."

I for one really appreciate that explanation.

*Oh yes, friend - I was there when the sugar plant exploded. It was so loud I thought we were under attack by the British again!"

Fade by Lisa McMann - review

Fade by Lisa McMann

I was with this fun, rather slight piece of YA suspense right up to the 21 Jump Street ending. I think it's a first novel, and for that reason I'm going to forgive the author for cramming as much adolescent wish fulfillment in as possible. "I wish I had a magic power! And... and a boy who pines for me and is secretly hot! And... and... and I wanna FIGHT CRIME!!"

The premise - a girl is unwillingly pulled into observing the dreams of anyone who falls asleep near her - is pretty original; the characters are good. There's a little minor horror and boy-girl smoochies. The slumber party politics are particularly well written, especially an amusing subplot in which the school queen bee is in love with our protagonist's best friend. I don't know if I'll read the rest in this series (Fade, Gone), but I'd read something else by Lisa McMann.

Boats: Speeding! Sailing! Cruising! by Patricia Hubbell, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy - review

Boats: Speeding! Sailing! Cruising! by Patricia Hubbell, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy

I have somehow missed this series, Things that Go! by Hubbell and her two illustrator accomplices. I LIKE IT.

Short, punchy, rhyming text means that you can chug through reading this aloud to a little kid. Extra illustrations and captions on almost every page will capture the attention of older kids. And grownups will groove on the collage art - cuts from old children's books are juxtaposed with nineteenth- and twentieth-century etchings of boats, people, animals, and equipment, and it's all colored and layered over textured backgrounds that look like wallpaper, like peeling paint, fabric or wood grain.

My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie by David Lubar - review

My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie by David Lubar
Nathan's in 5th grade and he's not doing so hot. Not-so-athletic and not-so-popular, not the skinniest, not the best dresser, he seems to be stuck forever at the Second Bester table, which is, for the avid reader of fiction intended for fourth-grade boys, familiar territory indeed.

Well. At least Nathan's not sitting at the Table of the Doomed, which is where Abigail sits, with Snail Girl, Feardinand, and the rest of the socially hopeless. And Abigail, as it turns out, can help Nathan withstand the heartbreaks and disappointments of his not-so-hot 5th grade life. Pretty girls hurting his feelings just for fun. Getting picked last in gym. Ouch. Those first couple of chapters are righteously painful to read.

To make a long story short ("TOO LATE!" hollers the cast of Clue), Nathan is turned into a zombie, which is bad, but at least it means he can do a zillion chin-ups on field day and doesn't get nervous when he plays DS. Luckily for the reader, Nathan has no interest in eating brains. Unluckily, it takes him a while to realize that he's not digesting anything else either, and there's a particularly gross upchuck sequence that many 9 year olds will love very much. My kid felt compelled to read it out loud to me, even after I assured him I had already read it, and there was no need. "Really! Shut up, son! You are grossing me out AGAIN!"

I have to admit, I kept looking for the metaphor. We start out with a rather sensitive boy, who gets doused with a magic scientific potion and can subsequently no longer feel a thing. He begins to excel in areas that were previously difficult for him, but he finds that in some cases, these achievements are not particularly important. In the end, he must make a choice between regaining his humanity and saving a friend's life.

But... ehh, I shrug my shoulders. If there's a metaphor in there it's not exactly written in flaming letters across the sky. If there's some lesson to be learned, it is, thankfully, well hidden.

I mean, the book is (a little bit) about pain. I am glad that my sensitive boy, who also chokes at video games, read it, if only so that he can see he's not the only one. But... what did he get out of it? Did he learn that it's better to feel bad than it is to feel nothing? No, that wasn't exactly the message. Did he learn that being good at video games is overrated? No again, because even I cheered when Nathan showed those other meanie boys his newfound skills, and heck, I'm the whole reason my son sucks at video games.

No. What my son loved about this book, and what other kids will enjoy, are these things: likeable kids facing ridiculous problems; pratfalls, fart jokes, and parents who can't cook; well-written action and familiar cafeteria politics. And a pinkie finger floating in a cup of orange soda.

I, Q by Roland Smith - review

I, Q by Roland Smith Book One: Independence Hall

Hold on to your butts, as Samuel L. Jackson says when he tries to reboot an entire island. And don't try to read this one if you're at all sleepy - Roland Smith has written a spy novel (the first in a series), and he is NOT kidding around!

Our story opens as teenage Q (short for Quest) and Angela become brand-new step-siblings, the children of two single-parent musicians who have found each other, fallen in love, and become massive rock stars at a fairly late stage in life. (Which is kind of a nice bone to throw the middle-aged reader - I had fun imagining Patti Smith as Q's mom and John Doe as Angela's dad. Shouldn't Patti Smith and John Doe fall in love and go on tour?)

Anyway. The new family embarks on a cross-country tour in a luxury bus, but when a crusty old roadie shows up by the side of the road and turns out to be a freelance secret agent intent on protecting Angela from people who want to use her as leverage against her allegedly dead biological mother, a Secret Service agent killed by a suicide bomber at Independence Hall... (remember to breathe)... they realize that their trip is going to be even stranger (and possibly longer) than anything rock and roll could have thrown their way.

I think that sometimes people underestimate how much complexity kids can take. Yes, much of the plot of I, Q hinges on who knows what, when they know it, and how they know it - but that's spycraft for you. The 39 Clues series is similarly sinuous, plot-wise, and also works in missing parents, a boy-girl team, and an overall sense of Trust No-one. Any kid who goes for that series will lap up I, Q like fizzy pink lemonade.

Action, secret identities, shifting alliances, interesting locations (the next one's set in the White House!), groovy rock-star perks (Q can get tickets to the hottest show in town for people who help them), and, most of all, quick-witted cool kids who can think for themselves put this book right up there with the Alex Rider series and other "realistic" adventure novels such as The London Eye Mystery and the Young Bond Series.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade5 and up, boy books, fiction, YA

If you liked the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer - book list

If. You Liked. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. There. I said it.

I have put together this list I don't know how many times in the past couple of years, and I guess I just have to bite the bully (get it? like Twilight shoves all the other books around?) and admit that: 1) People want to read Twilight and 2) People LIKE Twilight.

I mean, why am I such a snob about these books anyway? What was I reading when I was eleven? I'll tell you what I was reading when I was eleven. No wait, read this book - Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick - and you will know what I was reading when I was eleven. And I turned out ok. Reasonably ok. Ok shut up - am I exploring my nascent sexuality with my twin brother or luring my arch-enemy into a leech-infested pool? No. I am not. That was a rhetorical question by the way.

And maybe that's setting the bar kind of low, but I think it is some kind of proof that young readers of Twilight are not going to grow up and fall in love with pale, stalker-y older men. Pale, stalker-y older men are in fact CREEPY in real life, and almost all young women are viscerally and instinctively aware of this. We can trust our girls. (Hi, Olivia! We can trust you, right?)

There's still the issue, recently pointed out by someone at the Princeton Romance Writers Conference (and I am too lazy to go looking for it so I am going to paraphrase), that these paranormal romance novels represent something of a throwback to the old doctor/nurse kind of power differential that turned so many of us against romance novels to begin with (think Mr. Rochester and his employee - Jane - in Jane Eyre). Nowadays, romance novels feature women who are just as strong as, and on equal social footing with, the men, but in Twilight et al, the male character is by definition more powerful than the girl - he's immortal! he can change into an animal! or, uh, sparkle!

But that I don't know what to do about. EXCEPT. To recommend the following pretty good books as follow up reads for people who enjoyed the romance, the drama, the imaginative world of Twilight. Some of these books feature characters with supernatural powers or are set in alternate or future worlds, but some do not. There's at least one cute boy in each, but none of them has a female protagonist as wimpy as Bella.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson. Soapy and irresistably fancy, dripping with drama. Look at that dress!

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I reviewed it here earlier. Catching Fire, the next book in the series, has just been published.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception by Maggie Stiefvater. An extremely cute boy, some psychic torment, a well-written, lovely setting, and a harp. It's all good.

Prom Nights from Hell. Stories by Stephenie Meyer, Meg Cabot, Lauren Myracle, and other writers who are all about what it is to be a girl.

Prom Dates from Hell (Maggie Quinn: Girl vs Evil, Book 1) by Rosemary Clements-Moore. Good-looking teens, more dramatic than it looks, snappy dialogue. I reviewed the third book in this series a couple weeks ago.

Tithe by Holly Black. Anything by Holly Black, in fact.

Margo Lanagan's Black, White, and Red books. Dark, with a side of strange, drizzled with a stylish-sexy port wine reduction.

The somewhat overlooked Troll Bridge by Jane Yolen and her son, Adam Stempel. Music, magic, peril, attitude.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. The first in the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, about drama and magic in a Victorian boarding school.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause. Ms. Klause has been writing about the allure of the supernatural boy for longer than anyone, and in this one, the boy's a werewolf. Grrr!

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Horses, swords, special powers, a fiery heroine, and a gorgeous guy. The sequel, Fire, will be out in early October.

and what the heck... you know what else any red-blooded reader of the Twilight books will like?

Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. It's wrong. It's hot. It's so hot that it's wrong and it's so wrong that it's hot. And you just know "V.C. Andrews" is a pseudonym. Who do you think it is really? Wonder if that's what Salinger's been up to all this time.

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon - review

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon
It's possible that my opinion of this book has been influenced by the appearance in my bed this morning (at, possibly, 7am, I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on yet), of a seven-year-old who wasn't interested in it when I suggested it to him yesterday at the library, but who had apparently woken up, read the whole book, and now needed to synopsize it for me, read the funniest passages out loud, and tell me that he needs the next book in the series RIGHT NOW. He could barely get the words out for laughing.

After we kicked him out (my saintly husband: "Let Mommy sleep, ok? Go read something else."), I fell back to sleep and dreamed about pudgy animated dragon pirates. Ursula Vernon, get your agent on the phone with Noggin. Danny Dragonbreath is good animated.

So. Danny Dragonbreath is the only semi-mythological creature in a school full of non-mythic reptiles and amphibians. He gets a little picked-on for this, but his is an upbeat, enthusiastic semi-mythological 5th-grade spirit, and he doesn't let that bully Big Eddy the Komodo dragon get him down. His best friend Wendell is (predictably) a more cautious, intellectual type, and in the way of mismatched best friend pairs everywhere, Danny has to cajole Wendell into assisting him in his pursuit of unorthodox solutions to common problems.

In this instance, the problem is a research paper on the ocean, a subject that Danny knows nothing about. Danny's solution? A visit to Cousin Edward the sea serpent, who takes the gung-ho Danny and freaked-out Wendell on an undersea tour. They explore a coral reef, a sunken ship, and a deep-sea trench. Along the way, sneaky Ursula Vernon finagles interesting facts about sea creatures and ocean phenomena into the adventure.

But it's the snarkalicious writing that will keep my seven-year-old, and other kids who appreciate funny (I'm thinking it might appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid devotees, if I can get them past the dragon thing) coming back for more. In a sidebar, Vernon writes, "A school of potato salad can skeletonize a cow in under two weeks, assuming that the cow doesn't get bored and move."

Our library system has Dragonbreath filed as a graphic novel, but it's not. It's one of those hybrids, something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with pages of panels carrying the action in some places and pages of text doing the bulk of the work. There could be more graphic passages, I have to say. Ursula Vernon's drawing style is extremely nice - full-on grownup quality work, with a strong line quality and bold shading that highlights each panel's central idea. Think Owly.

Such high contrast sometimes makes a comic look ominous and bleak (Dark Knight Returns, Grendel), but in this case, the choice of grass green as a highlight color keeps that from happening, and it's a technique that is particularly appropriate and effective in the undersea scenes. The vertical panels that show the sinuous Edward diving or rising to the surface are unusually lovely. Page layouts are varied and interesting, but still quite simple and easy to follow.

In sum: . I've been looking for a Babymouse for boys for a long time, and I think Dragonbreath is it - snappy, giggleworthy text and strong, coherent graphic passages telling a fun, friendly, exciting story with just the right balance of realism and fantasy. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs with bated breath!

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

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger
I grew up in Maryland. Which means that every third field trip was to some vast undulant green field that once played host to one of the big bloody shindigs of the Civil War. Bull Run, Appomattox, Antietam. Harper's Ferry, Yorktown. Gettysburg if you were lucky, because at least then there was a side trip to the farmers' market, where all the bad kids bought bullwhips which the teachers confiscated for the bus ride home.

Ohhh, god that stuff was boring to me. Whatever visualizations the Park Service dreamed up: films, dioramas, 3-D maps with little lights, rangers in uniform... I never could get it up for the Civil War. Still can't. Seriously, I'm a full-on adult - a librarian, a photo archivist, a reader - who has never given a rat's rosy rumpus about the American Civil War. It's embarrassing but true.

Which is why Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run has me SO IMPRESSED. Twelve-year-old Stonewall (named after the general by his obsessed parents) shares my outlook - he's been frog-marched to Civil War re-enactments every weekend since he was six, and he knows enough about the Civil War to know that he is not interested in it in the least.

I have to say, I was a little dubious at first. Those obsessed parents are pretty monolithic in their disdain, disregard, and disapproval of Stonewall, and Stonewall is good and sick of weekends without his PlayStation. I wasn't looking forward to, say, a father-son adventure during which they Learn To Appreciate Each Other's Skills And/Or Outlook.

Luckily, when Stonewall is catapulted back in time to the real Battle of First Manassas (aka Bull Run, the first battle of the Civil War), his parents are left behind, presumably to putter around pretending to shoot other History Channel addicts in the twenty-first century. No more jerky dad 'til the very end.

Instead, we get the entire Confederate Army, such as it was at this point in the war: barefoot and smelly, raggedly armed and freshly learning the terrifying and painful realities of battle. And Stonewall's reaction is even more visceral - no matter what words Stonewall uses in his fast-paced, detailed narration, you know that he is really saying "Holy crap!"

The action is easy to follow, though the decision to include a map of the battlefield is a good one. The supporting characters, though a bit broadly drawn, satisfy. The conclusions that Stonewall comes to - about war, slavery, freedom, and bravery - are strongly supported by the events that he witnesses. No murky philosophizin' here:

Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it? (italics mine)

By the end of the book, Stonewall has a mission that reverberates into his own time, a pretty girl to share it with, and most importantly, a reason to attend next weekend's reenactment. Which I assume is also a reason for these authors to write another book. I hope so, because Stonewall Hinkleman humanizes the Civil War like nothing I've ever read.

Labels: adventure, age: Grade3 and up, boy books, historical fiction, science fiction, superstar books